Trying to get back in shape

jimgillis123

Hello everyone. I’m a former marathon runner who can’t run anymore due to injury so I gained weight. I’m currently 250 pounds and want to get down to 210. I need to get eating under control and find a hiit option that is low impact. I started lifting weights again and I’m starting to feel better but can’t get back into fat burning mode

Nova

Hi, welcome to the community!!

AnnPT77

If weight is the issue, eating is your main tool to make a change. If you have athletic goals, a slower loss rate will help support performance and maintain as much existing muscle as possible. Your strength training would help with muscle retention more than another modality. Good nutrition is also in the essential mix for athletes.

Why HIIT? It's not magic, and it's trendy and oversold lately. Elite athletes don't train using all HIIT all the time, and they have the best training advice money can buy. Why would us regular duffers go with all HIIT? On top of that, if you're thinking about the kind of HIIT that's fast-paced calisthenics or high-rep moderate-resistance strength training, that has higher injury risk than other approaches.

My advice would be to make a manageably challenging plan for your current fitness level, then progress gradually as you get fitter to always keep a manageable challenge in the picture. Ideally, it would include a mix of cardiovascular challenge and strength challenge, but that can be phased in rather than trying to start everything at once if your fitness is depleted.

I'm not sure what you mean about "fat burning mode". Fat burning is about getting your calorie intake below your calorie expenditure. Just being alive burns calories (more calories than exercise for most people), so do daily life job and home chores (also more than exercise for most people), then any intentional exercise you do burns some calories, too, including your lifting. Intentional exercise mostly just keeps us healthier and lets us eat a little more while losing weight at the same sensibly moderate pace.

The idea that we have to be in a certain heart rate range to lose weight - the "fat burning zone" - is pure nonsense. It doesn't matter what fuel substrate we're burning during the exercise. If we're in a calorie deficit on average over a period of time, that deficit will be filled in by burning stored body fat. (That's as long as we don't do some extreme calorie deficit that burns unnecessarily much lean tissue alongside fat loss!) We burn fat when we're asleep - in fact, most of the calories burned during sleep come from fat.
Endurance athletes need to think about the "fat burning zone" for fueling reasons during long workouts (so they don't hit the wall), but it really isn't important for weight loss.

HIIT can burn more calories per minute than some other modalities, but the duration is self-limiting, because we can only stay at high intensity for short periods. (That's about universal physiology, not about will power.) Also, HIIT is disproportionately fatiguing, compared to lower-intensity work. That can make us drag through the rest of the day, burning fewer calories in daily life than we would if we were more energized - the net calorie benefit can be compromised.

The "afterburn" (EPOC, excess post-exercise oxygen consumption) of HIIT is much trumpeted. Yes, research suggests that the EPOC of HIIT is maybe twice that of moderate steady-state work. Exact number estimates vary, but common figures are like 15% EPOC for HIIT, 7% for challenging but moderate steady state.

Thing is, that's as a percent of the calories burned during the workout. So, if we do 300 calories of HIIT, we burn maybe 45 calories in EPOC. If we do 300 calories of MISS (moderate intensity steady state), it's maybe 21 calories of EPOC. That's a whopping 24 calories difference, or about 8 cherry tomatoes worth. Wheee! And that's before any possible fatigue penalty from the HIIT, and ignoring that we could typically do longer MISS than HIIT without incurring much fatigue penalty.

HIIT has a role in sensible training plans, but it's a small part. Have you run periodized training plans as part of marathon training? The smart way to train cardio is generally accepted to be a process that starts with building base CV and endurance, then gradually adds in more intensity, and eventually some high intensity work. At least that's what I learned during my coaching education (rowing (boats), not running). And that's what I see elites in most CV sports doing. (Yeah, their low intensity would be high intensity for me, but they're dosing high intensity (in their terms) as a side dish, not the main menu.)

Sorry: End rant.

TL;DR: My advice would be to build back your CV capacity gradually with a good plan, starting with CV base and endurance. In addition, lift with a good plan. Keep the total load exercise manageable but challenging to your current fitness level. For the weight loss, shoot for a gradual loss (pound to pound and a half a week, maybe even 2 pounds at your size for the first 20 pounds?). Accomplish the loss mostly on the eating side, fueling your exercise and supporting your fitness goals.