Spinning My Wheels
KrunchyMama
Posts: 420 Member
Hello!
I'd like some input about my training. Currently I'm following the Non-Runners Marathon Trainer running plan. I'm just finishing week 5. I have about 28% body fat, 5'8", 177 lbs, female. I'm struggling to determine what I should set my calories to. Here is my weekly training outline:
Short run (5k, soon to be 6.5k) + strength training (30 minutes, usually bodyweight and barbell, with a focus on arms and core)
Medium run (8k)
Short run + strength training, same as above
Rest day
Long run (this week 17.7k)
Rest day
My ultimate goal is to lose weight, but with the running I find I'm hungry a lot, and making poor calorie choices as a result. I know I need to do more clean food prep but tbh I'm often tired!
I'm wondering if it's worthwhile to do calorie cycling, so deficits on my short and medium runs, with a focus on my protein, maintenance on the rest day before my long run, and surplus on the day after my long run.
Thoughts?
Thanks!
I'd like some input about my training. Currently I'm following the Non-Runners Marathon Trainer running plan. I'm just finishing week 5. I have about 28% body fat, 5'8", 177 lbs, female. I'm struggling to determine what I should set my calories to. Here is my weekly training outline:
Short run (5k, soon to be 6.5k) + strength training (30 minutes, usually bodyweight and barbell, with a focus on arms and core)
Medium run (8k)
Short run + strength training, same as above
Rest day
Long run (this week 17.7k)
Rest day
My ultimate goal is to lose weight, but with the running I find I'm hungry a lot, and making poor calorie choices as a result. I know I need to do more clean food prep but tbh I'm often tired!
I'm wondering if it's worthwhile to do calorie cycling, so deficits on my short and medium runs, with a focus on my protein, maintenance on the rest day before my long run, and surplus on the day after my long run.
Thoughts?
Thanks!
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Replies
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When you run regularly, you may find you simply need to eat more often. This can be true even on days when you don't run. The solution is to eat more often, but eat less each time to keep total consumption under control. Many times, you'll need to make yourself stop eating while you're still hungry, to give your body time to catch up to what you've already eaten and stop sending hunger signals.
Where clean eating comes in is eating things that let you feel satisfied for fewer calories. For me, the keys to feeling satisfied are getting enough protein and fiber. While in weight loss mode, I found that restricting total calories while getting enough protein and choosing foods to feel satisfied forced me into a moderately low fat diet; at times I had to watch to be sure it wasn't *too* low in fat. Carbs tended to take care of themselves, I never had a problem with eating too few carbs.
Advice: Track everything you eat. Pay attention to how satisfied you are after eating different things. Over time, you'll learn which foods are too calorie-expensive for the satisfaction they give you and which foods are good value in satisfaction for the calories. This will move you naturally toward cleaner eating, without having to obsess over what is and isn't clean.1 -
if your ultimate goal is weight loss, don't run a marathon!
its going to be difficult to hold a deficit when you're running a lot of miles a week.2 -
TavistockToad wrote: »if your ultimate goal is weight loss, don't run a marathon!
its going to be difficult to hold a deficit when you're running a lot of miles a week.
Lol! Too late! I've actually only signed up for the half marathon (October), but the full marathon I *might* do is the following month. I'll be running with a friend who has a pace of 5:10/km, meanwhile I run about 7:30-8:30/km. I figured if I can drop some weight before then (July-Aug), then I'll be able to increase my pace time closer to the race date (Sept-Oct)0 -
When you run regularly, you may find you simply need to eat more often. This can be true even on days when you don't run. The solution is to eat more often, but eat less each time to keep total consumption under control. Many times, you'll need to make yourself stop eating while you're still hungry, to give your body time to catch up to what you've already eaten and stop sending hunger signals.
Where clean eating comes in is eating things that let you feel satisfied for fewer calories. For me, the keys to feeling satisfied are getting enough protein and fiber. While in weight loss mode, I found that restricting total calories while getting enough protein and choosing foods to feel satisfied forced me into a moderately low fat diet; at times I had to watch to be sure it wasn't *too* low in fat. Carbs tended to take care of themselves, I never had a problem with eating too few carbs.
Advice: Track everything you eat. Pay attention to how satisfied you are after eating different things. Over time, you'll learn which foods are too calorie-expensive for the satisfaction they give you and which foods are good value in satisfaction for the calories. This will move you naturally toward cleaner eating, without having to obsess over what is and isn't clean.
I definitely feel better eating vegetables. I have been focusing on my protein more, but you are right, I think I need to become more mindful about how much I am eating and stop before I am satisfied. I think it would also be beneficial for me to schedule food prep times when I know I'm going to have a busy week, so that I can grab yummy healthy food quickly when I'm hangry.0 -
KrunchyMama wrote: »TavistockToad wrote: »if your ultimate goal is weight loss, don't run a marathon!
its going to be difficult to hold a deficit when you're running a lot of miles a week.
Lol! Too late! I've actually only signed up for the half marathon (October), but the full marathon I *might* do is the following month. I'll be running with a friend who has a pace of 5:10/km, meanwhile I run about 7:30-8:30/km. I figured if I can drop some weight before then (July-Aug), then I'll be able to increase my pace time closer to the race date (Sept-Oct)
so you make your marathon a priority, and any weight loss is a nice bonus....
that's a pretty massive speed increase in a couple of months. good luck!0 -
I just signed up for the premium MFP, thinking that it would allow me to customize my daily calorie goals, but from what I can see, it will only let me do that on a weekly rotation. Which kind of sucks, because I work shift work, so my schedule and workout days are never consistent! I'll keep poking around though, maybe I just haven't come across the area to change that yet...0
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I am training for a half right now too, in October as well. Personally I have set my calories to maintenance for the duration of the training. Since I will be running 5 days a week and continuing strength 3 times a week in addition to walking every day with my dogs I figure that is enough to facilitate recomposition.
Sure it will be slow but really my main goal is losing body fat not "weight" so the end results may be even better than originally planned. From everything I have read it is super important to make sure we are fueling properly, so if you do stick with a deficit make sure you are hitting your protein goals at the very least!1 -
KrunchyMama wrote: »I just signed up for the premium MFP, thinking that it would allow me to customize my daily calorie goals, but from what I can see, it will only let me do that on a weekly rotation. Which kind of sucks, because I work shift work, so my schedule and workout days are never consistent! I'll keep poking around though, maybe I just haven't come across the area to change that yet...
FWIW, MFP calculations of how many calories I need are just plain wrong. So I go into Goals (not even premium MFP) and set my calories to where they need to be. Then I ignore calories added back from exercise, and do my own math in my head for how much more I allow myself for how much running. (Hint: It's a lot less than Garmin claims I burned.) It would be nice if I could just *turn off* the calories added back, and even nicer if I could add a number of calories earned from exercise independent of the claimed calorie burn, but neither of those appears to be an option.
Now, I need to change my calorie goal from time to time. I can do that, and it changes the goal going forward from the day I change it. So if you want to have different goals on rest days than running days, you can do that; you just have to live with the nuisance of manually changing the goal every day it needs to be different from the day before.1 -
I mainly pay attention to the weekly totals/average on the nutrition tab (I don't have premium) and adjust daily intake based on training, etc. Cycling as you're proposing worked for me when training for marathon, as it was very helpful to "save" some extra calories from long-run day, to eat the next day, for example. The main thing was making sure I wasn't over for the week.
You want to consider which of your goals is most important: losing weight, adding distance or increasing speed, and focus on that first. If the other goals need to slow down or wait until they move into the #1 slot, that's okay. Of course if you're meeting your top goal and are able to accomplish the secondary ones too, that's just an extra bonus. For me, the closer I got to marathon, my #1 shifted from weight loss to doing well on the long runs and ultimately the marathon, so I intentionally went into maintenance as the long runs got longer. After I crossed the finish line, I went back to weight-loss mode for the remaińing few pounds.1 -
polskagirl01 wrote: »For me, the closer I got to marathon, my #1 shifted from weight loss to doing well on the long runs and ultimately the marathon, so I intentionally went into maintenance as the long runs got longer. After I crossed the finish line, I went back to weight-loss mode for the remaińing few pounds.
Yes, i figure I'll be in weight loss mode until the beginning of September, then I'll switch to maintenance. I'd like to keep working on my distance too, but I recognize that my pace time will suffer as a result2 -
That is a big increase in speed, especially for a low mileage plan. You should pick your race pace based on your actual fitness, not on an arbitrary number (like your friend's speed.) Marathons are hard enough. Going out too fast usually leads to a death march the last several miles. After you have done your HM you'll have a better idea of your fitness so can try one of the race predictor tools, bearing in mind that they assume you are training at 55-70 miles per week.1
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spiriteagle99 wrote: »That is a big increase in speed, especially for a low mileage plan. You should pick your race pace based on your actual fitness, not on an arbitrary number (like your friend's speed.) Marathons are hard enough. Going out too fast usually leads to a death march the last several miles. After you have done your HM you'll have a better idea of your fitness so can try one of the race predictor tools, bearing in mind that they assume you are training at 55-70 miles per week.
I know I won't improve to my friends pace. If I could get to a seven minute kilometer I'd be over the moon. Currently I'm 7:30-9:00, depending on the terrain. I'm definitely not putting in that many miles per week (yet). This week my plan says 39 km total, but I think I'll actually be like 43 km.0 -
KrunchyMama wrote: »spiriteagle99 wrote: »That is a big increase in speed, especially for a low mileage plan. You should pick your race pace based on your actual fitness, not on an arbitrary number (like your friend's speed.) Marathons are hard enough. Going out too fast usually leads to a death march the last several miles. After you have done your HM you'll have a better idea of your fitness so can try one of the race predictor tools, bearing in mind that they assume you are training at 55-70 miles per week.
I know I won't improve to my friends pace. If I could get to a seven minute kilometer I'd be over the moon. Currently I'm 7:30-9:00, depending on the terrain. I'm definitely not putting in that many miles per week (yet). This week my plan says 39 km total, but I think I'll actually be like 43 km.
That's still a minute per kilometer quicker than you are now in a few weeks time...
Just for comparison, i took 30 seconds a mile off my half marathon pace in a year....0 -
TavistockToad wrote: »KrunchyMama wrote: »spiriteagle99 wrote: »That is a big increase in speed, especially for a low mileage plan. You should pick your race pace based on your actual fitness, not on an arbitrary number (like your friend's speed.) Marathons are hard enough. Going out too fast usually leads to a death march the last several miles. After you have done your HM you'll have a better idea of your fitness so can try one of the race predictor tools, bearing in mind that they assume you are training at 55-70 miles per week.
I know I won't improve to my friends pace. If I could get to a seven minute kilometer I'd be over the moon. Currently I'm 7:30-9:00, depending on the terrain. I'm definitely not putting in that many miles per week (yet). This week my plan says 39 km total, but I think I'll actually be like 43 km.
That's still a minute per kilometer quicker than you are now in a few weeks time...
Just for comparison, i took 30 seconds a mile off my half marathon pace in a year....
You're probably running much faster overall though? I figure it's like when to have a lot of weight to lose, it comes off quicker the higher you are
When I started running in January I was running a 15 minute mile on the treadmill. I've broken 11 minutes and change just a few times. I think I probably could do it, but it would have to be my focus.
Today has been a break from focus for me though. I've really got to get into a better habit of taking my B12, because I feel drained and overwhelmed when I stop taking it0
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