Marathon training vs Daily Calorie intake

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  • Christi6604
    Christi6604 Posts: 245 Member
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    Thanks. I'm eating them back 99% of the time, but Sunday, I didn't finish until 2, then ate. then ate again...there are only so many hours in a day. I had high calorie food! I'm trying not to focus on weight loss - but a 10 pound gain is not ideal. When I lost weight and hit goal a few years ago, I had to up calories by 100 per day to get over a plateau. I'm definitely not a habitual under-eater. I'm just not navigating the marathon training eating well at all for some reason.

    Good luck with your marathon!

    Sunday was unusual for me, maybe I'm eating back too many? I don't know. When you say you "eat back all but 500" are you talking about what MFP gives you plus the exercise cals it gives you, THEN subtract 500?
  • stealthq
    stealthq Posts: 4,298 Member
    edited November 2015
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    Christi6604 wrote: »
    I'm glad to find this thread. I've been marathon training and have packed on 10 lbs. I haven't made the best dietary choices because I think I've been super hungry but I seriously don't think I should have packed on 10 pounds. I had maintained for a couple years, so I don't believe I'm deluding myself.

    My marathon is Dec. 5th, so my longest training week is next week, then taper starts.I ran 18 miles on Sunday, and was up 2.6 pounds the next day. I've tried eating a bit more this week, but the scale hasn't moved at all. It is not "muscle" - I wish!

    Should i use "moderate" exercise as the selection? I have a desk job. I'm 5'3 and now, sadly, 178 pounds. MFP puts my baseline at 1310 if I add my weekly workouts and divide by 7.I also had my gallbladder out in Dec, if that makes any difference. I struggled until very recently with digestion issues while training, but I think I finally have that worked out. I had been unable to eat prior to a run...now I can have a piece of toast or a roll, but that's about it.

    I think the TDEE method would be best, but I'm not sure how to work that with the varying training. Help?

    If you stick with MFP, set your activity to sedentary since you have a desk job. Use the following calculation for a good approximation of the calories for each run (this is net, not gross, so you should be able to eat all of them and not just a percentage back and maintain)**: net cals burned = 0.63 * (weight in lbs) * miles run

    If you shift to TDEE, I'd recalculate it every week using the avg miles per day you plan to run as your exercise.

    ** As always, calories burned is an estimate - if you find your weight isn't doing what you anticipate, then make adjustments!
  • Christi6604
    Christi6604 Posts: 245 Member
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    Thank you, that is helpful. I'm working on the adjustments - thanks for your help!
  • Christi6604
    Christi6604 Posts: 245 Member
    edited November 2015
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    That formula gives me 242 calories less than mfp for my 9 miler as an example and 540 less for my 18...thats definitely enough to make a difference. ...thank you!! I'll give that a shot and adjust again as needed.
  • gdyment
    gdyment Posts: 299 Member
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    And -300 for the chomps and -whatever for any gatorade or sports drink. It doesn't take much to eat back a big run.
  • Christi6604
    Christi6604 Posts: 245 Member
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    It really doesn't. I figured 300 on the chomps, but I don't do sports drinks..Just water.
  • stealthq
    stealthq Posts: 4,298 Member
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    Christi6604 wrote: »
    That formula gives me 242 calories less than mfp for my 9 miler as an example and 540 less for my 18...thats definitely enough to make a difference. ...thank you!! I'll give that a shot and adjust again as needed.

    That's what I found when I started running longer distances. There wasn't much difference for shorter ones, so I didn't really notice anything while building to 10K other than it was taking a bit longer than I expected to lose a pound. It was after that when the effect became noticeable.
  • heathandamanda
    heathandamanda Posts: 4 Member
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    You need calories for long runs you run them off. Just a 10 k is like around 1,000 calories burnt. You have to have fuel or your body will crash and go in starvation. You can have lower calorie days but not on long run days.
  • Christi6604
    Christi6604 Posts: 245 Member
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    I just wanted to let you know that stealthq gave me worked great! I lost a couple pounds and my weight held steady after this weekends long run. I believe mfp was just giving me too many calories for exercise, so I was overeating a bit.

    Thanks everyone!
  • stealthq
    stealthq Posts: 4,298 Member
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    Glad you're having success, OP!
    heathandamanda wrote: »
    You need calories for long runs you run them off. Just a 10 k is like around 1,000 calories burnt. You have to have fuel or your body will crash and go in starvation. You can have lower calorie days but not on long run days.

    How much you burn depends largely on how much you weigh. You have to be fairly heavy to be burning 100 cals per km. The generally reported gross calorie burn for someone who weighs 150lbs that runs one mile is 100 cals. That's 3/5 of the amount you're claiming (1 km ~ 3/5 mi) - and it's the gross burn, not the net.
  • BrianSharpe
    BrianSharpe Posts: 9,248 Member
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    susie383 wrote: »
    I need some advice on whether I'm eating enough to sustain my marathon training. I train 6 x a week which includes 2 gym sessions of approximately 90 min each and then 4 runs, one of which is usually around 2 hrs or more long.
    Based on the above and me wanting to lose 0.5kg a week, MyFitnessPal says I should be on 1200 calories a day. I've been sticking to this for a while but have started feeling really tired and have had 4 colds since Christmas and I'm wondering if the low calorie intake has something to do with this???

    Doing a 2hrs run on 1200 cal? No wonder you're feeling tired.

    You need to fuel those runs, to get an idea of the additional calorie expenditure from your runs multiply .63 x your weight (in lbs) x distance (in miles) (the approximate metric equivalent would be about .86 and substitute kg & km)

    I've been known to eat 1200 cal for breakfast on my long run day! You'll really need to fuel the longer runs as you approach full marathon distances, don't count too much on losing much weight during the later phases of your training (and don't be surprised if you put on a kg or 2 if you carb load leading up to the race - a gram of glycogen bonds with 3g of water.

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