Calorie/carb cycling for marathon training

jessspurr

Hi everyone! I wanted to run this by all you smarties! I am officially in training for my 2nd marathon. My last marathon was about year and a half ago, but in that time I've trained for and run a couple halfs. So here's my problem...I'm fat. I lost a bunch of weight before I started training for my 1st but then I put actually a lot of it back on while I was training (I quit smoking when I started training too- so the long distance running isn't entirely to blame). I'm now committed to a marathon the middle of July and I would sure love to get some weight off before then. Problem is...I know how incredibly difficult it is to run long distances on a deficit and how incredibly difficult it is to keep a deficit when you are always famished from running. SO...I'm going to try to be in a deficit only part of the week. Take a look at this and tell me what you think:

Maintenance calories: about 2,100, everyday I will eat back the majority of exercise calories
Long run is usually on Saturdays

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday 1,400 calories C/50, P/30, F/20
Thursday (start reducing the deficit) 1,800 calories C/55, P/25, F/20
Friday ( a little surplus) 2,200 calories C/60, P/20, F/20
Saturday (maintenance) 2,000 calories C/50, P/30, F/20
Sunday (start heading back down again) 1,800 calories C/50, P/30, F/20

So maintenance I would be eating 14,700 calories a week and with this plan I would be eating 12,000 which would give me a 2, 700 calorie deficit or like 3/4 a pound a week. Do you think the Thursday and Friday calories will give me enough to get through a marathon training long run? Thanks for your thoughts!

The_Enginerd

It would help to state your weekly training schedule as well. Those are all net calorie goals you have listed?

dsg2000

You probably know this, but it's generally advised to just focus on training when in training and lose any weight you need in the off season.

I don't know enough to look at your numbers closely (and @The_Enginerd is probably right, you'd need to list your weekly training miles too), but I will say that looking at your weekly calories is probably wise and you may even want to just try eating the same number of calories every day or, actually, have your long run day be the highest calorie day. Long run usually leaves me famished for the rest of the day, anyway, and to be honest I don't think eating a bit more or a bit less the day before (also in terms of type of food, 'carbo loading' and all that) makes any difference in the run the day after.

OrionSlayer

I don't know enough to advise you on how much to eat versus exercise, or how much you can safely lose while training. I do know that it's important to be well fueled when you do your runs. Schedule your eating so that you get enough calories to have energy to train well. Count in a good recovery meal. Make up the difference in your evening meal. Hope this helps.

jessspurr

Thanks everyone. Yeah...losing weight before starting training is certainly ideal. Unfortunately, marathon training kind of snuck up on me and I didn't focus enough on losing weight in the off season. Time goes by so quickly!! I blinked, and before I knew it I was like... "dang! I forgot to get skinny and now running season is here!!"
You guys will be mad at me if I tell you how little I run during the week...but here it is:
Monday: 3-5 miles
Tuesday: Really nothing except dog walks. I know I need to cross train and once I get my act together I will probably put it in there
Wednesday 5-7 miles (this will go up to about 8-10 during peak training weeks)
Thursday or Friday: 3-5 miles (I actually kind of like to do this last weekday run the day before my long run because I feel like it loosens me up. That could be totally wrong though. Do you guys run the day before a long run?
Saturday: Long run (up to 20 miles in training- I'm at 8 this week and feeling awesome- I started heart rate training and it is changing my whole life)
Sunday: Long dog hikes to keep from seizing up
I should mention that I am one of those people that isn't "in it to win it". My goals are to finish the race with a smile on my face and in a better time than my last one. I am a very slow runner (because I'm pretty fat).
My reasoning for eating the most calories on Friday is because I want to replenish my reserves before Saturday. I definitely plan to eat at maintenance on Saturday (plus my exercise calories back)- but I'm wondering if that is enough or people have any idea how many calories a recovery from a long run require. If people find they have to eat like way more than maintenance that day or find they recover adequately with just maintenance calories plus exercise calories back after a long run.

MobyCarp

jessspurr wrote: »

You guys will be mad at me if I tell you how little I run during the week...but here it is:

. . .

I should mention that I am one of those people that isn't "in it to win it". My goals are to finish the race with a smile on my face and in a better time than my last one.

I keep telling myself I'm not in it to win it, but I have a hard time getting myself to listen. A few random thoughts occur to me, where my experience might (or might not) shed some light on your situation.

I ran my first marathon, Buffalo 2015, without properly training. I ran during the week, and ran long runs with a training program on Saturdays. When I got up to 20 miles, my pace group pushed me into registering for Buffalo.

What they didn't know was, I didn't really have a strong weekly base of miles for a marathon. I peaked at 41 miles the week I ran a 22 mile long run. Yeah, that breaks a few standard training rules. I finished Buffalo, I had a good time, and I was really beat up afterward. One of the things I *think* I learned from that is that I need a much stronger base of running miles than I had to feel good after the marathon. I'm running a lot more miles now than I did before Buffalo; but I'm aiming at a rather higher profile marathon this time.

You can complete a marathon with long runs of 20 and 22 miles, and fairly modest weekly mileage other than the long run. I don't think I want to do it that way again.

On the weight front . . . I'm in maintenance. My goal is to make my weight trend sideways. In spite of my best efforts to increase what I eat in keeping with my increased running, I managed to lose 2 pounds from late December to early March. Then I went on a couple of semi-controlled binges and put them back on, and now I'm back to trying to make the weight trend sideways.

My point here is, it's possible to lose weight while training for a marathon. But weight loss is not the goal, and the loss should not be anywhere near as fast as a traditional fat loss program would target. A pound a month can be done without messing up training performance, at least until the weight gets so low that having sufficient reserves to run becomes an issue. But a pound a week is almost certainly too fast. If you focus on eating to maintain your weight, and you train hard enough, you may get a bit of a weight loss along the way. In my situation, that wasn't a good thing; it sounds like in your situation, it would be an OK thing.

FWIW, in true maintenance I ignore the calculations that MFP makes for what I ought to eat. They aren't accurate enough to make the weight trend sideways. In my case, if I ate what MFP says I should, I would lose weight; I suspect there are people who would gain if they ate what MFP says they need to maintain. Each of us is an experiment of one, and when we get close to goal weight we need to find our own custom numbers instead of relying on the broad averages that online programs use.

STrooper

Let me say that losing between 0.5-0.75 pounds per week probably won't cause you a lot of difficulty, particularly on the 0.5 end of the scale. A few hundred calories short each day can work. Sometimes you'll have some really large deficits but eat back good choices to feel satiated, not stuffed.

Intentionally trying to run a higher deficit to lose weight at a faster rate can be a challenge when training with the increasing mileage.

And while it is easier to run at a lighter weight, as was pointed out, almost every program you read about recommends weight loss outside of the training cycle.

Finally, MobyCarp makes a good point: as you get close to your goal weight you really have to experiment and adapt.