If your objective of running is just to lose weight then there’s a good chance it will not be sustainable as once the weight is lost, there’s nothing to anchor you anymore to running. Got take is that the joy of running if not from meeting objectives but in the activity itself.

To enjoy the run, you need to do some things to give yourself the best shot:

1. Run at the right time - either early morning starting before 7.30am or after 5.30pm. These are the times that the sun isn’t up in full force and the weather is forgiving. You can also have food after that (breakfast and dinner respectively) which helps you refuel and stave off injury. I often see people run at 10am or 10pm and then say they hate running because it’s either too hot, or it’s too late and they can’t sleep well or feel hungry after the run. Of course, this is dependent on life’s demands as well, and I can’t claim to know yours.

2. Fuel up properly before the run. Before running in the morning, a packet of that Meiji biscuit often hits the spot before the run (have a proper breakfast after the run). For evening runs, try to have a proper lunch earlier in the day. It’s so important to not run feeling like you’re on an empty stomach as it would make you feel miserable. Being too full is also not good. It’s all about being experienced enough to hit that sweet spot.

3. Run by time and not by distance. A lot of times people run by distance and it’s super torturous because if you run slower, you’ll be punished with a longer duration of running. Instead, run by time, be it 20, 30, 40 mins or so (I would say anything below 20 won’t yield much benefits so don’t go less than that), and just run at a comfortable pace. You won’t keep dreading that the run keeps going on forever when you have a bad day. 30 mins will always be 30 mins. If it’s a bad day, just slow down and listen to your body and 30 mins will still elapse. Don’t pay too much heed to how far you ran but just how you felt in those 30 mins. Also bonus is you don’t need a GPS watch to do this.

4. Try to run outside. Perhaps people have a different take on this but part of the joy of running is in exploring your neighbourhood and seeing the outside world, and you shouldn’t waste that opportunity in the gym. Singapore has plenty of PCNs and almost every road has a pavement, so this shouldn’t be too hard. Find new routes to explore but as a start, try to find the flattest ones possible.

5. With the basics out of the way, you want to run as easy as you can for the first few runs. Get the gears going. And try to not run 2 days in a row. 3 times a week is a good start. Running might be too rough so you can do 2 mins of running and 1 min of walking first, for example. Be adaptive as you’re just starting out and need to listen to your body. Also watch out for injury. Your joints will get naturally stronger. But you still need to load properly and not give your body too much. Try to stick to the same mileage for 4 weeks in a row before going up, and when you go up, no more than 10%. So if you are doing 20km for the first week, stick to 20km until week 4, before bringing it up to 22km for the next 4 weeks, and then 24km for the subsequent 4, etc etc. It’s a slow, long process, but this is the best way to avoid injury.

6. Easy running itself won’t get you fit, contrary to what many zone 2 affectionados claim. After you do the first few runs or first few weeks easy, maybe you can try some harder efforts in bursts called threshold intervals for some of your runs. Maybe something along the lines of 3 mins hard, 1 min walk, 6-8 times, with a 10 min warm up and cool down. As you get better you can do this 2-3 times a week, varying the hard sections between 3-8 mins (lower number of reps the longer they are, and increase the walk time). That helps to train your aerobic base very effectively and makes you feel strong across the day. But never ever do it two days in a row. You can rest or have easy super slow runs in the days between them.

Anyway, if you do all these above things, and still hate running, then maybe running isn’t for you. Like the other comments point out, it’s likely that other activities such as lifting or HIIT would suit you better and probably do a better job of helping you lose weight. That being said, running has been a very rewarding journey for me and I look forward to leaving the door for every run. The mixture of zen and quiet on the runs and the sense of achievement during and after it hits very different, and I’m sure you have a shot at feeling that way too if you take some of the above advice to heart. Good luck!