A brief background. I mentioned in previous posts that I started running in an effort to lose weight (Not Always about Speed and About Sugar). It worked as I’d lost approximately 80 pounds by September 2016 (this has been a multi-year journey). I say approximately because I don’t know my heaviest weight…at a certain point it’s depressing to get on a scale. Now it’s time to start again.
It’s about running. Want to run faster? Then lose some weight! Of course this advice is only true for those who have excess weight…like me. I can also attest to the accuracy of this as my speed improves as my weight has dropped. At one point I thought that “all I needed to run a Boston Qualifier was to lose more weight.” When I started working with my coach I told home that I’d read that I’d gain 2 seconds per mile for every pound lost. So if I lost 20 pounds I’d run 40 seconds faster per mile and would qualify. Sounds simple, right? He was a bit skeptical and suggested that I focus on training. I focused on both.
But then I stopped losing weight last fall…and I was training for a marathon, followed by training for another marathon. I began more intensive strength trading and have noticed changes – good changes – in my body. So, I decided to measure my body fat percentage as a better measure and with my new digital high tech scale I immediately “gained” 4 pounds. Of course it wasn’t real but rather a different measure. It also let me know my body fat was 28.5%. In the final weeks before Mountains2Beach I decided that staying off the scale would be better for my morale.
The good news is that I qualified for Boston (story here M2B recap). A couple days after the race I weighed myself and discovered a 4 pound weight gain, for real this time. Yikes! I could have been depressed but instead I thought, “how cool that it was my training that got me there.”
4-6 Weeks of Focussed Eating. Now, I have a bit of a break and have decided to put a little renewed focus on losing those last pounds. How? By doing what I did to lose the first 80… eat real food and not too much of it. I will also target a daily 400-500 calorie deficit. This is not a permanent change. The permanent change is the eating real food and not too much of it.
I want to emphasize something important here…and that is that I am currently happy with my weight, with my size. If I hadn’t become an endurance athlete I would have been happy to maintain here. But I think I have more speed in me and in addition to training hard, I’d like to see what I can do when I get to my optimal racing weight. There’s also the added benefit of less weight for my body to carry.
It’s interesting that I’ve successfully done this previously…and I’ve successf maintained weight loss… and yet I’m a bit nervous as to whether I’ll be able to stick with it for my 4-6 week. So I share here. And I’ll let you know how it goes.
