For Samantha, that meant only eating whole grain breads and bare vegetables and completely avoiding things like cheese and chocolate. 

In addition to restricting calories, she was constantly weighing herself and comparing her body to other runners. 

“I always thought I could be thinner and thought if I weighed less, I would run faster,” she said.

Like her sister, Jessica says she also stopped eating certain foods and equated a thin frame with speed. 

“I had always grown up eating healthy meals, but we always had a dessert after dinner,” she says. “However, when I began restricting what I ate in high school, I gave up desserts.”

By their sophomore year at Georgia, they realized they needed help.

“I think a big part of me realizing that I needed help was how weak I felt all the time,” recalled Samantha, who was also dealing with injuries. “There were even times when I went into workouts not sure if I would make it through because I was so hungry and felt so weak.”

Seeing her sister acknowledge her problem with food motivated Jessica to do the same. 

"I realized that if I continued eating in this restrictive lifestyle, I would also start to see my performances suffer,” she said. 

 

Jessica said she was shocked when she saw how little she was eating compared to the dietitian's meal plan for a distance runner. 

 

“At first, I was definitely scared to change, but we would just gradually add things to meals or snacks, and I started to realize that nothing bad is happening to me, and to be honest, I was recovering (from workouts) better than I ever had been,” Jessica said. 

 

Feeling freer to have fun with food, the twins got more creative in the kitchen, whipping up hearty, nutritious meals from a variety of cookbooks, including Run Fast, Eat Slow, which was written by Elyse Kopecky and Shalane Flanagan, the 2017 NYC Marathon champion and 2008 Olympic silver medalist in the 10,000 meters.  

Excited by what they cooked, the Drop sisters started their running_foodies account on Instagram to share photos and descriptions of their yummy dishes with other runners, but didn’t expect it to become so popular. To date, they have more than 1,600 followers, and they regularly respond to messages and questions about their meals from people across the country.   

The twins say Flanagan, who co-authored two cookbooks and is now a coach with the Nike Bowerman Track Club, has been a big role model. (They especially love her recipes that include sweet potatoes, one of their favorite foods.) 

 

“Shalane Flanagan is a huge influence on how I now view food,” Jessica said. “We love using her recipes, and I think the recipes in her books give a perfect example of what balanced meals should look like.”

 

After a morning run, some of the twins' go-to breakfast dishes include: toast and avocado with scrambled or over-easy eggs; banana bread or pancakes with a vegetable omelette with goat cheese; a yogurt bowl with oats or banana bread and fruit and peanut butter. 

 

 

These days, Samantha doesn't count calories or weigh herself, and Jessica no longer views snacking as a bad habit. 

 

"I now eat six or more times a day, making sure that my body is fueled for workouts, especially if I’m working out twice a day," Jessica said. 

 

And with her healthier eating habits, she's also stopped striving to look a certain way. 

 

"As a runner, I view my body not as a label of 'skinny,' but look at it as strong, which allows me to run fast," she said.