Weight gain and endurance running

TxDesertFox

I ran my 5th marathon a week ago, and after avoiding the scale for months I stepped on and found I gained about 10 lbs. I know for sure that's not all muscle weight because I've definitely put on some fat in the belly area. This is the first year this has happened to me (in previous years I had the opposite problem). I'm now in my off-season so I can go back to eating at a slight deficit and focus on incorporating more strength training.

Any endurance runners/athletes have this issue? How do you avoid gaining weight (fat) during training while still fueling enough to sustain yourself during long runs?

spiriteagle99

Log carefully while training. I made sure that I ate enough to fuel the runs without going over too much. I burn a bit more than average, so have a bit of leeway when I am really hungry at night, but mostly I try not to let the fact that I'm running more cause me to eat a lot more than I burn. Because I log, I can see that one restaurant meal can have more calories than I burn on the longest run, so I try to be careful and not tell myself that I can eat more because I earned it.

cyndit1

First couple of marathons that happened to me. After that I was VERY careful with what I ate and logged. Rungry is a thing. Lol

TxDesertFox

cyndit1 wrote: »

First couple of marathons that happened to me. After that I was VERY careful with what I ate and logged. Rungry is a thing. Lol

LOL Rungry. I used to log very strictly but I found that I was so focused on staying under that I wasn't consuming enough towards the last half of my training and for my very long runs, that I was getting lethargic and my long runs were just absolutely miserable. I did better with my marathon in November in terms of fueling and PRed, but then this past one a few weeks ago I maaaaaay have been just a teeny tiny too relaxed with my diet. lol By that, I mean, I logged my food but really didn't care much what I was eating and how much for about two to three weeks.