Running, like cilantro or “What’s Luv?” by Fat Joe, can be a polarizing subject. Most people fall into one of two camps: those who love hitting a stride every morning, and those who would sooner do anything to avoid it.

For most of my life, I was planted firmly in the latter camp. I topped 200 pounds for the first time as a 5-foot-4 college freshman, but really, the battle to manage my weight had been years in the making. My size, and more specifically, how I felt about my size, seeped into every aspect of my life, from the circuitous, hill-free walking routes I’d take to lecture to how I chose what clothes to buy. After nights out with friends, I’d dread waking up the next morning to notifications of new tagged photos, because I knew some of them would put me on display for the world to see.

I dabbled in different types of exercise over the years, with varying degrees of success: travel soccer, high school volleyball, and a stint teaching hip-hop dance classes, which is still the fun fact I tell on first dates. At my college gym, I watched hours of forgettable rom-coms while cranking away on the elliptical trainer at a ten-percent incline.

I always hated running, though. At age 12, I remember entering a neighborhood 5K with my dad; I also remember placing dead-last, followed by only the sweeper police car crawling patiently behind me. Three years later, I didn’t make the junior varsity volleyball team because I couldn’t run a mile in under 10 minutes. Every single time I laced up to “run,” I felt as though failure—in some form or another—was the only possible result.

The summer after my freshman year, though, I took a job at an overnight camp in Connecticut, where I essentially got paid to be a kid again. I spent my days keeping an eye on the kayakers, supervising the arts and crafts studio, and making intricate shopping lists of the items we’d need to pull-off an all-camp six-hour relay race. When it came to exercise, with neither elliptical trainers nor the Netflix streaming library available to me, running was suddenly my only option.

So, I made myself a promise: Every single day, I would run to a lamppost located a considerable ways down the road, and then back to the cabins again. By most runners’ standards, it wasn’t far; I estimated the total distance to be about a mile. But I vowed to squeeze it in every day, no matter how long it took, and no matter what other camp-related responsibilities I had to fulfill. The ensuing streak lasted for 61 days—the entire time I spent at camp that summer.

I started to feel better about the person I was seeing in the mirror, sure. But to my great surprise, I learned to love running, too—enough to eventually integrate it into my career. I went from dreading the sport to plotting vacations around spots with the best running views. I’ve finished seven marathons and more shorter races than I can remember, and am now a certified run coach. These were the secrets I discovered to changing my outlook.

1. Make it a non-option: I was very specific about when and where I would run. The timing: after lunch. The route: that long stretch of tree-covered road. Because I did not allow myself to deviate from the plan, it became something I did without thinking, like brushing my teeth or putting on deodorant in the morning.

Research in the British Journal of Health Psychology found that 91 percent of people who wrote down when and where they would exercise each week ended up following through on their ambitions. I made myself a chart down at the arts and crafts shed, and hung it on the back of my dusty cabin door. Every day, with sweat still dripping down my arms, I’d cross off the day’s effort—a badge of honor, along with fresh bug bites on my ankles.