Weightless and long distance running

vdignum

Hi
I'm 52yo female running average of 40km per week. Training for my 10th marathon in October. Want to loose 8kg (currently 74kg being 25.1) and am looking for support

lorrpb

Wow, that's an impressive number of marathons! Congrats! Just don't restrict too much while training.

TavistockToad

I personally can't lose weight and run long distances... I'm half marathon training and have had to reduce my deficit to 100 cals or the runger just kills me.

I'd focus on losing now before you increase your mileage too much.

dotwilldoit

Good advice from tavistock! I like how my times went down as I lost weight. But if I want to go further than 10k I have to think about fueling not losing else too much stress on my body

spiriteagle99

Actually, now is a good time to lose the weight, before you get into the serious training. I did that this year, before my March marathon, and just went to maintenance when I was at peak mileage. If you've been running 40 km/week for a while, your body is used to that level of exercise and you probably have a fairly good balance of CI-CO. Set your MFP goal to lose 1 lb. a week. I assume you intend to build your base a bit before you start your race specific training? By increasing your weekly mileage gradually you won't need to cut back all that much in your eating. Eat back some, but not all of your calories.

Where a lot of runners gain weight while training is in making the assumption that since you are exercising more you can eat whatever you want. By logging everything you eat, you learn that that assumption is not necessarily true. Yes, you can eat more on the days that you exercise more (LR or MLR days) but you still can't eat EVERYTHING. I had 20 mile days when I ate back every calorie (usually by going out to dinner) but since I usually ate slightly under on other days, I continued to lose weight until I reached my goal. It's harder now that I'm in recovery, since I'm not running as much as I was before the race. However, I know that when I am back to my usual 30-40 mpw, I should get back in balance again.

Just_Jon

I'm in the same boat (but half as many marathons under my belt). I have a fall marathon and am running about the same mileage per week now (some smaller races until training starts). I find I can lose weight early in the season, but once the long runs hit 15 miles (24 km) or more, I can't keep that daily calorie deficit. Even when share the extra calories from the long run day. There's something about keeping my body in the deficit zone that won't allow it to store anything for the longer runs. Last season, I just did my best to drop the pounds before my official plan started in June, and then watched the calories for the next 18 weeks so that I was eating enough but not overeating.