Disclaimer: The following tips might not make you a better runner and might actually make you a horrible person.
Embrace extremes. I gravitate towards extremes. It's all about addiction. I can binge almost constantly on food and alcohol for a period of up to 6 months with only a handful of runs in all that time, with most of them being mad dashes to the offy before it closes. The amount I can consume in one day is startling and frankly disgusting. And yet I'm strangely proud of my huge appetite. I can eat until I feel really quite ill and then eat some more. This is where extreme lifestyles create transferrable skills for running. To have the determination to carry on through the pain - if ever there was a maxim to define the mental qualities of the long distance runner this would be it. It is a mental toughness that they share with the likes of hot dog eating champions.
When I first got into running I would eat a bowl of muesli for breakfast, an apple for dinner and a carrot for tea and then go running in the evening. It's going from one extreme to another. This is why you get all these cases of unbelievably obese individuals losing over half their body weight using unbelievably restricting diets - It's just addiction transfer. These people clearly have addictive personalities and for many years lard was their vice. But eating little and exercising a lot can become just as addictive. The way I see it everyone's addicted to something you just have to choose the best one for you.
One word of warning: My dad went on the stupid insane extreme route in his youth, eating salad and running 3 hours everyday. And now he can't walk very well. This is what probably isn't said enough - running destroys your legs. So EMBRACE EXTREMES (in moderation).
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