Running and Weight Loss TRUTHS?

I stick to my calorie goal each day. I run for cardio. i do not pay attention to the MFP "ectra calories" thing. I was able to lose easily.

My advice would be to hold out and be patient.

I started a new exercise regime a while ago and I gained 2 pounds until my body got settled into things.

The golden rule is that if you are eating at a deficit - you WILL lose weight. It just doesn't always happen immediately and especially if you are making quite a few changes to your body through diet/exercise.

Stick with it. Don't weigh in too often, even when I was losing weight I wouldn't bother stepping on the scales more than once a fortnight. Take measurements and relish the achievement of doing the C25K - that in itself is something to be proud of.

I have just finished week 2 of C25K and I have some mixed emotions. I guess that first of all, I am really actually proud of myself for sticking with an exercise to the degree that I wanted to get off of the couch last weekend to run - and actually got up and did it. I am really enjoying running and I hope it turns into a lifelong success story.

Well done, I started C25K about 15 months ago, and I'm now part way through a half marathon training plan, having lost a couple of stone and significantly improved my bodyshape and health.

***Running as a method of weight loss WILL NOT WORK unless calories are reduced.***

The only thing that will lead to weight loss is working at a calorie deficit, that is you consume fewer calories than you expend.

Any form of training will help by increasing the number of calories that you expend, however if you're using the MFP model then there is a deficit already planned in, so you should recover, at least a proportion, of those calories to maintin your planned deficit.

Well, okay, sure. I get that. I've been reducing calories through MFP and then recording meals and workouts... So, again.... Why am I not losing weight?

If you're making a number of changes all at once then it's not out of the question that it'll take time to see results. Two weeks isn't long, and if you're new to logging your intake and your expenditure then it may take some time to tune your understanding of what it is on both sides of that equation.

An observation that I'd make is that when I started my calorie goal was set a bit low, and whilst the principle stacked up it was actually affecting my background activity level because I was so fatigued and hugry. I was opting to send an email rather than walk up two flights of stairs to speak to someone face to face. When I corrected that, I saw results.

Stick with it. I actually put on 7lbs when I started running and was told which makes sense, that you are toning up and replacing fat with muscle, and muscle weighs heavier than fat.

That's very unlikely when one is in calorie deficit, although as long as there is adequate protein in the diet there shouldn't be significant loss in the leg muscles.

Muscle is higher density than fat, hence many people staying at the same weight but being much trimmer in terms of appearance.

My own approach is predominantly running with a small amount of resistance training, but it's always worth including some resistance training in a running programme. Resistance work helps reduce injury risk and later in ones running development it can help running performance as well.

Example:
1,600 calorie daily allowance
+ 175 calories burned by walk/light run exercise
= 1,775 revised calorie allowance

Yes



That said, I rarely eat back all of my exercise calories. I did when I was early in C25K as 200-300 cals isn't a lot, but right now I have 1200 available and I'm about to head out for a 12km recovery paced run where I'll burn another 800-900 or so. There is no way I can eat 2000 plus in one meal.

No, y'all are absolutely right - two weeks isn't long enough to measure anything, really. I am not too put out by the scale, honestly. Didn't mean to suggest that at all. My success story right now is that I'm sticking with my original plan and my numbers and am looking forward to C25K week 3 instead of dreading it. That's huge for me, as someone who hated running in school and have always thought poorly (and judgmentally) of running, unless it was from a zombie horde... But I digress!

I think that in the context of the original post, what I meant to suggest was this: if MFP calculates the calories burned in an exercise I just completed, then adds that same amount back into the daily allowance which I then use, doesn't that offset itself?

Example:
1,600 calorie daily allowance
+ 175 calories burned by walk/light run exercise
= 1,775 revised calorie allowance
(Which is still less than the BMR or whatever it's called that is 2,300+ per day)

But I think you guys have more or less addressed that by saying that MFP calculates a deficit regardless of exercise, right? Ugh! I can't stand it when people don't understand simple concepts, and well, it looks like I'm one of them today!

Your MFP goal includes your deficit. So you eat back exercise calories to keep your deficit from getting too large. You're likely retaining water from starting new exercise. It will go down in a couple of weeks.

So for the sake of argument let's say my calorie goal is 1500. That's 500 calories less than I need to maintain my weight. So if I run and burn off 300 then my deficit is now 800, which is too much. I'd eat that 300 back to keep my deficit the same. Make sense? For me MFP's exercise calories are always spot on. Others find them to be high so they only eat back half. I'd give it a couple of weeks though before you change anything.

Stick with it. I actually put on 7lbs when I started running and was told which makes sense, that you are toning up and replacing fat with muscle, and muscle weighs heavier than fat. After a while the weight started to come off and ive now lost 2 stone and have stayed at a size 8 for 2 years, by eating within my calorie allowance most of the time ( ofcourse I have days where I fancy treats and I have them). To maintain my weight as it is, I run approx. 15 miles a wk, swim twice a week and bike once a week and although I don't loose anymore weight I maintain and can have treats. It will take a while but you will get there, you are doing brill keep it up.

You are not going to put on muscle running while eating at a calorie deficit. You did not put on 7 pounds of muscle. It takes eating a surplus of calories plus lifting lots of heavy things to put on muscle and even then its not easy. Any initial weight gain while running is due to water and an increase in glycogen

Weightloss is calorie deficit that's it. How you create that deficit is up to you but if your not in deficit you wont lose weight so yes you need to control your diet as well if running is part of your routine. You can run all you like but if you're eating too much you wont lose weight.

Example:
1,600 calorie daily allowance
+ 175 calories burned by walk/light run exercise
= 1,775 revised calorie allowance
(Which is still less than the BMR or whatever it's called that is 2,300+ per day)

But I think you guys have more or less addressed that by saying that MFP calculates a deficit regardless of exercise, right? Ugh! I can't stand it when people don't understand simple concepts, and well, it looks like I'm one of them today!

Provided that you have set up your activity correctly, MFP gives you a calorie that includes your weight loss deficit WITHOUT exercise (this is why you get those calories to eat back when you log them). MFP basically calculates what your maintenance calories would be if you just lived your day to day life without any deliberate exercise and then takes a cut from that number as per your desired rate of loss. When you exercise, that becomes additional activity which would increase that maintenance number and thus increase the calories you could eat while dieting to lose weight while maintaining the same deficit.

Where people tend to go wrong here...1) they underestimate their intake...even professionals have difficulty accurately estimating their intake. I highly recommend a food scale at least to establish whether or not your estimated servings of whatever is accurate. 2) they overestimate calorie burn. You should be giving yourself some margin for error here...data bases and calculators are notoriously inaccurate for calorie burn...often by as much as 50%...same for many apps. I use a cycling app that tells me I burn around 1,100 calories cycling 15 miles in an hour...my actual burn is somewhere between 500 - 600 calories. So, you're going to want to leave a "cushion" when estimating your burn and calories to eat back.

Additionally, these calculators are pretty good starting points...they are pretty on for a lot of people and not so much for others. Ultimately, nobody has a calorie requirement of exactly XXXX calories...so you have to make adjustments as per real world results. That said, I'd give it longer than a mere two weeks. I've been hammering away at all of this going on 2 years...2 weeks is a drop in the bucket.

Along your little safari here you're going to find weeks where you have bigger losses and weeks with smaller losses and weeks with no losses...and even weeks with gains from excess waste in your system from the last time or water retention or whatever...it happens. Ultimately you have to look at all of this as a trend...you have to perform trend analysis over a much longer period of time...this is far more important than the week to week or day to day numbers. I'd also suggest doing some heavy reading on natural body weight fluctuations...particularly as a female, they are going to be a major player in your little safari.