What is the philosophy of running to get thin?

A friend sent me his weight loss results: in the past half year, he successfully reduced from 186 pounds to 134 pounds. On average, I run more than 10 kilometers every day. I run half a horse once a week and break a pair of running shoes. He was fat when we met last winter, but now he looks like a boy chasing the wind.

Several times, he scolded me for not running well. When I explained that it was too hot, he replied, "I'm in Singapore. It's hot every day." There are several people like him around. I have a friend in Shanghai who, some time ago vowed to lose weight to 150 jin, I asked him if he achieved, and he said he was moving toward 140 jin. Everyone was about the same age, and it seemed that once they turned 40, they suddenly got tired of themselves, went to war with themselves, went back to suffering, quit smoking and drinking, ran, and walked.

I've been there myself. On the National Day of the year before last, suddenly feeling disgusted with the life of socializing outside every day, sent a farewell dinner circle of friends. Over the next six months, I lost 30 pounds. When I read Haruki Murakami's "What am I talking about when I talk about running", I also want to imitate his running, to the playground ran two laps on the panting. But once I lost weight, I fell in love with running.

Murakami said that artistic activity is inherently "unhealthy," and that some writers "fight fire with fire," choosing decadence and, as in Faust, selling their souls to the devil in an attempt to achieve artistic beauty. A healthy way to detox is to run.

What Haruki Murakami says about a writer's health is more about the soul. And we talk a lot about biology and how life is out of whack, and that term is "midlife crisis." I believe that the constant exertion of running is a symptom of a midlife crisis. But it's more complicated than that. These crazy guys, probably also know, fat is not important, no matter whether fat or thin has rationality, as long as in a healthy range. But there may be something magical about the process of going from fat to thin.

I don't buy the idea that it's just the dopamine that comes out of running, that you're in the grip of dopamine pleasure. It's a put-down and a fallacy: There's no dopamine before running, so what drives these crazy guys to "decide to run"? Between sleeping, reading, or hanging out with friends, why do we choose this least interesting activity?

Even compared to other sports, running is always the least appealing. Running is more of a contest with oneself. People who run in the park always walk in silence. Even the "running group" with social nature is also lonely individuals when running.

According to one scholar, this seemingly solitary run leverages the influence of new media and the middle class to generate a crowd based on new body politics, challenge and change the stale urban landscape, and then the liberation of countless individual levels will converge to transform society. This is the highest praise for running, but in today's marathon carnival in China, it seems difficult to draw such optimistic conclusions as "converging into social transformation".

Thus, running is more of a "philosophical act." It has to do with thinking. Runners have a pleasure that is almost unshared and all their own. It satisfies them and frightens them, just as they do when they are young and confronted with the development of their bodies. It's akin to a kind of "criticality": the feeling of being on the edge or edge of a knife. With each run, the runner will feel this sense of "criticality", which gives people a certain freshness in facing life.

For middle-aged people, getting "thin" may be a deliberate "philosophical action". It is a fight against the dual meaning of human instinct and time. It is the rebirth of "human". For those who have lost weight, the greatest satisfaction is not to attract external attention, or even to be "healthy" in physical examination, but to truly have a new self. This process no matter how strong the external force can not be deprived.