Frustrated

[runnerchi]

I have started tracking my food and incorporating weights into my marathon training. I started this 2 weeks ago and joined the 12 Week Challenge here on this site this past Sunday. When I weighed in this past Sunday I was at 153. I weighed in this morning and I'm still at 153!

Here is my current training routine (I'm running around 40 miles per week for my training) and a sample of my diet:

Sunday - Ran 16 miles
Monday - Elliptical for 40 minutes and abs
Tuesday - 7 miles
Wednesday - 4 miles and legs
Thursday - off
Friday - planned run of 7 miles and abs
Saturday - 5 miles and upper body


Sample diet:
Breakfast - 4 egg whites, whole wheat bagel
Morning Snack - Kind Bar
Lunch - 3 oz. Turkey Sandwich on Rye Bread, 1 cup grapes, 1/2 avocado
Afternoon Snack - 1 apple with peanut butter
Dinner - 4 oz of salmon or 4 oz of chicken, salad without dressing, brown rice and 8 fl.oz. of skim milk

Does anyone have an idea what I could be doing wrong? I'm putting in a lot of work and I guess I'm just really frustrated.

[kfisherx]

Uh.... You're running 40 miles a week in prepartation for a marathon and trying to lose weight..

Those are completely insane (and unrealistic) goals when placed together. Running a marathon is an elite athlete sort of thing and you have to feed that and feed it hard. You are completely under eating. Go back to the challenge and make your goals performance related NOT physical related. See if you can up your bench press or something and see if you can actually eat enough calories to sustain your obsession with endurance sports. Those are the sorts of goals you should be setting right now.

[erinlee01]

^^^ Absolutely agree.

[runnerchi]

Uh.... You're running 40 miles a week in prepartation for a marathon and trying to lose weight..

Those are completely insane (and unrealistic) goals when placed together. Running a marathon is an elite athlete sort of thing and you have to feed that and feed it hard. You are completely under eating. Go back to the challenge and make your goals performance related NOT physical related. See if you can up your bench press or something and see if you can actually eat enough calories to sustain your obsession with endurance sports. Those are the sorts of goals you should be setting right now.

Thanks for your response, it's appreciated.

A few things stuck out to me in your post:

1) you mention my goal of training for a marathon and losing weight is "completely insane", how? Is it not an assumption that the more I train and healthfully eat that I will lose weight?

2) I'm not an elite by any stretch of the means....not yet at least ;). At 153.2 pounds, 5'7", I have about 30 pounds to lose to get to the "elite" body frame. I probably should've mentioned that my goal for my marathon in March is to simply run the whole thing without walking any part of it.

3) "your obsession with endurance sports"? I'm a bit baffled at that. How did you get running 40 miles a week and 1 day of Elliptical to be a definition of obsession?

BTW, that's cool you live in Oregon...long live PRE!!! :)

[sonti]

^Training for a marathon (ie. building endurance, mileage, preventing injuries) requires you to fuel your body for it - meaning eating more calories. Losing weight means eating less calories. If you are not adequately fueling your body enough to even maintain itself, then introducing long distance mileage, an activity that is hard on the joints (pounding pavement!), and trying to increase your cardiovascular capacity doesn't make sense and leaves you prone to injury.

Not even the average athletic person can run a marathon. Hell, I can lift very heavy weight but I'd be out of breath after 30 minutes. A marathon is 26 miles, that's a LOT of running, even for the average athletic person. So yes, it is 'elite' in the sense of fitness in general (but of course not 'elite' in the sense of an Olympian). If you hang out with a lot of runners then maybe you think it's not so big of a deal but it certainly is :)

I understand from your other post that you and your husband are marathon runners? That's fine, nothing wrong with that at all, but I wouldn't suggest undereating when training for a particular marathon. You still need to eat. You eat less than I do and I don't run at all, but I lose weight. If you want to run, don't expose yourself to injury/exhaustion :) Fuel yourself properly and let it happen slowly.

[birdiefu]

At your stats and that activity, it looks like you would be burning 3k+/day, yet your diet looks tiny (less than 1500 cals? With barely any fat...), you are so not fueling your body enough.

[leggomyeggo]

I have started tracking my food and incorporating weights into my marathon training. I started this 2 weeks ago and joined the 12 Week Challenge here on this site this past Sunday. When I weighed in this past Sunday I was at 153. I weighed in this morning and I'm still at 153!

Here is my current training routine (I'm running around 40 miles per week for my training) and a sample of my diet:

Sunday - Ran 16 miles
Monday - Elliptical for 40 minutes and abs
Tuesday - 7 miles
Wednesday - 4 miles and legs
Thursday - off
Friday - planned run of 7 miles and abs
Saturday - 5 miles and upper body


Sample diet:
Breakfast - 4 egg whites, whole wheat bagel
Morning Snack - Kind Bar
Lunch - 3 oz. Turkey Sandwich on Rye Bread, 1 cup grapes, 1/2 avocado
Afternoon Snack - 1 apple with peanut butter
Dinner - 4 oz of salmon or 4 oz of chicken, salad without dressing, brown rice and 8 fl.oz. of skim milk

Does anyone have an idea what I could be doing wrong? I'm putting in a lot of work and I guess I'm just really frustrated.

Holy cardio, batman :) That's a ton of running.

As a fellow runner (whose current goal is fat loss) I am not convinced that goals of building endurance while shedding fat can peacefully coexist. I read this great article the other day by Rachel Cosgrove in which she described her body comp changes while she trained for an Ironman. Here is the article:

http://figureathlete.t-nation.com/free_online_article/training/the_final_nail_in_the_cardio_coffin

Look at her pics after the Ironman and then the pics after her fat loss program that she did after the Ironman...truly worth a thousand words ;)

[kfisherx]

Thanks for your response, it's appreciated.

A few things stuck out to me in your post:

1) you mention my goal of training for a marathon and losing weight is "completely insane", how? Is it not an assumption that the more I train and healthfully eat that I will lose weight?

2) I'm not an elite by any stretch of the means....not yet at least ;). At 153.2 pounds, 5'7", I have about 30 pounds to lose to get to the "elite" body frame. I probably should've mentioned that my goal for my marathon in March is to simply run the whole thing without walking any part of it.

3) "your obsession with endurance sports"? I'm a bit baffled at that. How did you get running 40 miles a week and 1 day of Elliptical to be a definition of obsession?

BTW, that's cool you live in Oregon...long live PRE!!! :)

Others have answered already but let me re-iterate...

1. On being an "elite" athlete. If you are competing in marathons you are considered an "elite" athlete (PERIOD). Wrap your head around that for a few moments before reading on. There are precious few people in this world who compete/train for that sort of accomplishments. So congratulations to you for striving for such greatness. Now that you realize that you are an elite athlete, you have to re-think some things in order to have a long, healthy self.
2. Eating/bodycomp work while being an elite athlete is a whole different ball game than dieting and bodycomp goals without the lofty training goals. Woman who are athletes at any high level will have to keep their bodyfat levels at the 20% range in order to be succesful in competition. I keep my own bodyfat mid 20s for football season or higher. A higher bodyfat allows for performance and for recovery/energy up to a point where it slows you down to much (balance act). So first thing to consider RE fatloss while an athlete is what is realistic and what will not hurt my goal or performance.

Female endurance runners (what you are) can often get away with lower bodyfat percentages but it still becomes a tricky balancing act of bodyfat to performance. I would not go below 18% personally even for an endurance sport.

Being in a deficit WILL result in reduced energy and higher possibility of injuries so it is generally insane to try to be in a deficit while also trainingn for an elite sporting event. When you are training for sport, it is possible to also diet but I (personally) would not even think of doing it without the help and guidance of my mentor and nutritionist Alan Aragon by my side. I have been working with him for a few years and I know that he would try to talk me out of losing bodyfat during football season but if I persisted he would help me but the pace at which I lost would be ULTRA slow. (like a half lb a month on the scale)
3. RE the "obsession" thing.... It was more tongue in cheek sort of thing BUT if you do not think that running 40 miles a week is a lot, I ask you to go find 10 friends at work or anywhere (not also training for a marathon) who run that much. It is an insane amount of running for most people and even for some people who do marthons.

I am curious RE the eliptical. What is that about?

[CottageChz]

As a fellow runner (whose current goal is fat loss) I am not convinced that goals of building endurance while shedding fat can peacefully coexist.

^^^ this. Couldn't agree more.

If you're training for an endurance event such as a marathon or even a half marathon, the fat loss is going to have to get moved to the back burner.

If someone is overweight and just starting to run, ya you could drop some lbs in the beginning. But no way you can train for those events, and those distances, and that weekly milage in a deficit! And even if one did manage to pull it off it would most certainly lead to injury and would be an uterly miserable process. And that would be a shame because if you love the sport, training for something like a marathon is truly an enjoyable and life changing journey.

[toodlepip]

Holy cardio, batman :) That's a ton of running.

As a fellow runner (whose current goal is fat loss) I am not convinced that goals of building endurance while shedding fat can peacefully coexist. I read this great article the other day by Rachel Cosgrove in which she described her body comp changes while she trained for an Ironman. Here is the article:

http://figureathlete.t-nation.com/free_online_article/training/the_final_nail_in_the_cardio_coffin

Look at her pics after the Ironman and then the pics after her fat loss program that she did after the Ironman...truly worth a thousand words ;)

Oh I was just going to post that article too. A lightbulb went off when I first read it a year or so ago as when I endurance trained for a half-marathon I just ended up skinny fat and couldn't figure out why I wasn't thin. At the same time I also think Rachel Cosgrove was severly underfueling herself. 2000-2500 calories when doing some 8 or 9 hour sessions? I'd imagine 2000 is probably close to her maintenance. Her math seemed to be way off.

[CottageChz]

Oh I was just going to post that article too. A lightbulb went off when I first read it a year or so ago as when I endurance trained for a half-marathon I just ended up skinny fat and couldn't figure out why I wasn't thin. At the same time I also think Rachel Cosgrove was severly underfueling herself. 2000-2500 calories when doing some 8 or 9 hour sessions? I'd imagine 2000 is probably close to her maintenance. Her math seemed to be way off.

Me too. I hate looking back at most of my photos from my half marathons. My arms were noticably less toned than they were before I started training! It was very discouraging!!

[thepowerwithin]

Holy cardio, batman :) That's a ton of running.

As a fellow runner (whose current goal is fat loss) I am not convinced that goals of building endurance while shedding fat can peacefully coexist. I read this great article the other day by Rachel Cosgrove in which she described her body comp changes while she trained for an Ironman. Here is the article:

http://figureathlete.t-nation.com/free_online_article/training/the_final_nail_in_the_cardio_coffin

Look at her pics after the Ironman and then the pics after her fat loss program that she did after the Ironman...truly worth a thousand words ;)

^^^Although I am not a runner, in the past, I have been known to do 2+ hours of cardio per day 5x a week to fight the fat and ended up feeling frustrated with the same ole fat in the same ole places.

When I stumbled upon this article a couple of years ago, it truly changed my life and I believe it's a must read for everyone trying to battle fat with cardio.

Thanks for posting it.