Run 4x/week for 2 months - No improvement

swagoner94 wrote: »

kimny72 wrote: »

swagoner94 wrote: »

I mean.. I don't think the only people that ever lose weight are calorie counters. I've logged religiously enough in the past to have a pretty accurate understanding of how many calories I'm consuming and I'm nearly certain that I'm not exceed what I burn. In fact, there are days where I'm sure I'm under eating! At 4 times a week running 3+ miles of sprints at 30+ minutes... It just sounds doubtful to me that that's my issue.

If you are managing to eat exactly the same as you always have by eyeballing portions, then for some reason your TDEE has gone down rather than up. Regardless, if you'd like to lose weight, you need to eat less or burn more. The easiest way to figure it out is to log more accurately, but if you don't want to do that, then you need to find a different way to get into a calorie deficit.

One of the reasons people tend to gain back lost weight is because when you stop paying as much attention, your consumption slowly increases over time, not enough to notice but enough that over time you gain a lb here and a lb there. Saying you are subtly eating more without realizing it isn't a criticism, it's just what often happens. I personally know that I will spend several weeks over the course of each year weighing and accurately logging, probably for the rest of my life, or I start to veer off track. Whatever you decide to do, best of luck.

That makes sense. I've gone in and out of regularly logging and have noticed a similar trend.

Look at it this way also...on the four day you run you're burning an additional 300ish calories...that's a tiny handful of nuts worth of calories.

Also, how tall are you? I agree with a previous poster that it doesn't look like you really have the fat to burn and that you are at a healthy weight...when you're at a healthy weight and lean and trying to get leaner, things get a bit more complicated.

I second the motion to start lifting...keep running, but throw in 2-3 days of resistance training in there...that will do more to change your overall body composition than anything.

swagoner94 wrote: »

cwolfman13 wrote: »

swagoner94 wrote: »

kimny72 wrote: »

swagoner94 wrote: »

I mean.. I don't think the only people that ever lose weight are calorie counters. I've logged religiously enough in the past to have a pretty accurate understanding of how many calories I'm consuming and I'm nearly certain that I'm not exceed what I burn. In fact, there are days where I'm sure I'm under eating! At 4 times a week running 3+ miles of sprints at 30+ minutes... It just sounds doubtful to me that that's my issue.

If you are managing to eat exactly the same as you always have by eyeballing portions, then for some reason your TDEE has gone down rather than up. Regardless, if you'd like to lose weight, you need to eat less or burn more. The easiest way to figure it out is to log more accurately, but if you don't want to do that, then you need to find a different way to get into a calorie deficit.

One of the reasons people tend to gain back lost weight is because when you stop paying as much attention, your consumption slowly increases over time, not enough to notice but enough that over time you gain a lb here and a lb there. Saying you are subtly eating more without realizing it isn't a criticism, it's just what often happens. I personally know that I will spend several weeks over the course of each year weighing and accurately logging, probably for the rest of my life, or I start to veer off track. Whatever you decide to do, best of luck.

That makes sense. I've gone in and out of regularly logging and have noticed a similar trend.

Look at it this way also...on the four day you run you're burning an additional 300ish calories...that's a tiny handful of nuts worth of calories.

Also, how tall are you? I agree with a previous poster that it doesn't look like you really have the fat to burn and that you are at a healthy weight...when you're at a healthy weight and lean and trying to get leaner, things get a bit more complicated.

I second the motion to start lifting...keep running, but throw in 2-3 days of resistance training in there...that will do more to change your overall body composition than anything.

I'm 5'5". Also, there's one particular picture up from quite some time ago where I look pretty lean. That was my personal best. Weight-wise, I'm pretty far from that. Appearance-wise, less of a chasm. I still have some fat to burn to get to that leanness again. I got there before by running 3 miles every single day. Which is why I figured running again would get me there, but it just hasn't. I did track my calories pretty insanely back then as well though.

I can tell you from experience that I basically go through the same thing every spring...right around nowish I start working on my 10 Lbs of winter weight I put on. I always start with upping my activity and frankly not paying a whole lot of attention to my diet as it is overall pretty healthy and I typically have a good grasp of things. It never works...inevitably I always have to go and purposefully manipulate some things in my diet...I don't log and will never log again, so I have to do other things to create that deficit.

Generally speaking it ends up being things like not being so indulgent with eating out on weekends (easy to just enjoy the weekend in maintenance...usually not so much when cutting), cutting back on deserts, not drinking beer save for a couple on the weekend, etc...

Fortunately, once I resign myself to it, it all comes off in a couple of months and I can go back to normal and maintain the rest of the year until winter rolls around again...

There is one thing you may not have thought of. I have noticed that I move less on days I train more intensely, so not all calories gained through exercise are taking my TDEE higher. I had to stop high intensity runs because I noticed I was burning LESS throughout the day on intense days than on normal days despite burning more calories in that half hour than a less intense exercise. So even if you are 100% sure you are eating the same (which you likely aren't), running may not be increasing your TDEE as much as you think. To troubleshoot, I would log your calories accurately for a while because that's the easiest thing to fix before exploring other options.