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Brittany Runs a Marathonopens with Brittany, played by Jillian Bell, going to the doctor.
You want me to pull a medium-size working dog off of my body.
A woman sitting behind me let out a loud, Ha!
I might have, too, had the scene not hit so close to home.
Brittanys current height and weight, which her doctor rattles off, is basically … my body.
(Im a little bit taller.)
A body that Brittany is about to spend the next hour and a half of movie trying to fix.
Over the course of the film, Brittany and Bell loses 40 pounds.
(Jern works the night shift, and Brittany covers days.
It gets a little slow toward the end.
She gets a stress fracture weeks before the marathon and cant spin up the race.
When she crossed the finish line, I cried.
Brittany is saved by her friends, who appear on the curb cheering for her to finish.
Ask, at your own risk, any distance runner mid-marathon cycle to show you their toenails.
Theyre usually gross or nonexistent.)
When Brittany talks about what its like to beseenas a woman when she loses weight, that hit me.
Men suddenly found me worth talking to and hitting on and generally treating like a visible human.
This did not matter to them.)
Not eating much and running off the measured calories I did permit myself wasnt sustainable.
The weight slowly crept back, but the running habit stayed.
I liked the mental clarity.
I liked the ritual.
It didnt make me any less of a runner.
Brittany getting her life in order is inextricably linked to her weight loss.
Theres a whole community of proud, fat runners out there.
We run 5Ks and half-marathons and full marathons.
The extra-intense ones run ultramarathons.
(Thats anything longer than 26.2 miles.)
Were not running to prove anything to anybody.
Were not running to lose weight or fix something about ourselves.
Though the world often treats us as though we should be.
Snell finished the marathon.
A week earlier,shed completed a 100K in Arizona.
The first time a doctor did that to me, I was in high school.
TheBMI scale was invented in the 1800s and has been repeatedly called into question for its inaccuracy.
(Just Google fat woman cancer misdiagnosed and youll find no shortage of examples.)
In real life, Jillian Bell has since started a hashtag campaign for body positivity, #IGotALottaBodies.
Its a message Brittany probably could have used a little more of.
But thats the thing.
Even in those first, slow painful weeks running just a block or two … Brittany wasalreadyrunner.
She already had a runners body.
Lacing up sneakers and putting feet to pavement made her one.
Weight had nothing to do with it.
