Eating More To Go Faster

One of the reasons I’ve decided to stop actively trying to lose weight is that it is more important to me to be able to run faster than it is to look a certain way. While I know losing more body fat might make me faster too, there is a serious law of diminishing returns. Once again, it is one of the ironies of weight loss and exercise – the fitter you are, the harder it becomes to drop body fat without losing any of the muscle you’ve worked so hard for. This is because the more muscle you have the more calories you burn at rest, so the more calories you need just to maintain your body. Cutting calories below this amount will have your body using both your fat stores and your muscles mass to maintain itself, so while you may lose weight, your performance will suffer.

I’d like to keep all my muscle and I’d like to get faster too, so I need to make sure I am eating enough to fuel my new muscles and all my training. It’s tough to figure out how many calories I should be eating per day to maintain my weight - as I’ve said before I’ve tried several online calculators and have been given figures ranging from 1600 to over 2300 calories per day. So we’ll try eating an average of 2000 calories per day for now and see not just how it affects my weight, but also how I feel during training and how fast I recover.

Of course that’s assuming I have better luck sticking to 2000 calories a day than I did 1800!

The Score:

Calories:	Protein:	Carbs:	Fat:	Alcohol:	Fibre:
2059.54	115.93g	271.07g	58.05g	0	33.65g
	23%	53%	25%
Calories burned through exercise:		363

What I ate:

Time	Item	Amount
07:45	Vitamins - Centrum Advance A to Zinc, 400iu of Vitamin E, 1000iu Vitamin D3 and 500mg Glucosamine sulphate	1 each
	Cold water	200mL
	Mattesson's Turkey rashers	3 rashers
	Sainsbury's Freefrom oats	50g
	with Sultanas	20g
	Sainsbury's pressed apple and cherry juice	200mL
08:30	Black Tea	500mL
09:30	Raspberry and Echinacea tea	250mL
10:30	Brazil nuts	6g
	Cashews	17g
	Plums	150g
11:00	Lemon and ginger tea	250mL
12:30	Homemade chicken and butternut squash risotto	300g
	Raw Tomato	113g
	Alpro soya original	200mL
	Sainsbury's Be Good to Yourself chocolate mousse	62.5g
13:30	Green Tea	250mL
14:00	Hill run
14:45	Citrus Nuun electrolyte tablet in water	750mL
15:15	Sponser Chocolate Recovery Shake	30g
	in Skim milk	225mL
18:15	Sponser Protein Snack bar	1 bar
20:15	Moorish Vegetable Tagine	300g
	Merchant Gourmet Red and White Quinoa	100g
22:00	Ellactiva Chocolate Calcium Chew	1 chew
	500mg Glucosamine sulphate	1 pill

Plus 500 to 1500mL of cold water sipped from a water bottle throughout the day.

Calorie Burning

It is a piece of irony that after deciding yesterday to let myself eat more, going from 1800 to 2000 calories a day, I had a day where I could have stopped at 1800 easily. For the first time in well over two weeks, I got to the end of dinner and found I’d only had 1625 calories throughout the day. Even with the rice pudding added, I was only just over 1800 calories! Now a large part of that is my decision to have an earlier lunch and skip the morning snack, so I’d have enough time for my workout in the afternoon, but I also managed to stay away from the chocolates and Doritos. Clearly for me, being busy and motivated controls my appetite!

One of the ironies of exercise and weight loss is that the fitter you get the harder you have to work to burn the same number of calories. I started my next 3 weeks of intensive training with a weight routine yesterday. While this has always burned fewer calories than I like, it would appear that 45 min now burns less than 200 calories, which does not bode well for losing any more weight. On the plus side, despite my lower resting heart rate, my higher muscle mass will keep my metabolism high, burning more calories per hour at rest. Simply put, it takes more calories to keep muscles going than it does fat cells, so the more muscles you have the higher your base metabolism. So you end up with this odd balance where the fitter you are, the harder you have to work to get your heart rate up during exercise in order to burn more calories, but the more calories you burn when you are not doing anything.

Which is why even though I am eating more, I may very well still manage to lose those last couple of pounds. Let’s hear it for the benefits of exercise!

The Score:

Calories:	Protein:	Carbs:	Fat:	Alcohol:	Fibre:
1995.37	125.46g	237.40g	60.60g	0	26.40g
	25%	48%	27%
Calories burned through exercise:		190

What I ate:

Time	Item	Amount
08:15	Vitamins - Centrum Advance A to Zinc, 400iu of Vitamin E, 1000iu Vitamin D3 and 500mg Glucosamine sulphate	1 each
	Cold water	200mL
	Scrambled eggs	2 eggs
	Heinz Beanz, reduced sugar and salt	185g
	Mushrooms	110g
	in butter	5g
	Sainsbury's pressed apple and cherry juice	100mL
08:45	Black Tea	500mL
10:30	Raspberry and Echinacea tea	250mL
12:15	Homemade chicken and butternut squash risotto	300g
	Alpro soya original	200mL
	Fresh strawberries	77g
	Sainsbury's Be Good to Yourself chocolate mousse	62.5g
13:00	Green Tea	250mL
14:15	Resistance workout
	Citrus Nuun electrolyte tablet in water	750mL
15:15	Sponser Chocolate Recovery Shake	30g
	in Skim milk	225mL
18:30	Twinings Camomile, honey and vanilla tea	250mL
19:45	Baked salmon	98g
	Merchant Gourmet Red and White Quinoa	100g
	Kraft Light Honey Mustard dressing	10g
	Frozen peas	100g
	Muller rice pudding vanilla custard	190g
21:00	Sainsbury's fruit and seed mix	40g
22:00	500mg Glucosamine sulphate	1 pill

Plus 500 to 1500mL of cold water sipped from a water bottle throughout the day.

New Diet Goals

Last week was supposed to be start of another heavy training period for me, but after the funeral on Monday I just couldn’t seem to get motivated, and feeling ill on Wednesday didn’t help. I was also unmotivated to eat properly, and spent a lot of time comforting myself with chocolates and toffee. Not to mention using rice pudding as a lunch time staple! So no surprise that this week’s averages are just about as bad as the week before. I averaged over 2300 calories per day, with only 175 calories burned through exercise. The nutrient balance was way off too, with 19% from protein, 49% from carbohydrates, 30% from fat and 2% from alcohol. Keep in mind that I’m shooting for 25% protein! But it seems that whenever I get the urge for treats they are always high sugar, high fat ones.  

I doubt I have lost any weight this month, though my clothes are still fitting well – all of them – so I don’t think I’ve put on any weight either. To be honest, I think that ship has sailed and I’m not really going to lose those last couple of pounds without more effort than it’s worth. I’m heading into the part of my training where I do more speed work and fewer long slow sessions and gym sessions. I was trying to lose body fat by training my body to burn fat for fuel during my runs, hence the rather high percentage of fat in my diet. But that only works if you then do long slow endurance workouts without taking on extra carbohydrates. Now that I am doing shorter but faster workouts I need more carbohydrates, plus my long runs are now well over an hour, so I need carbohydrates there too in order to prevent myself from hitting “the wall” and stopping. This being the case, it’s time to lower the percentage of fat in my diet and up the carbohydrates.

So the challenge this week will be to lower the percentage of fat in my diet from 30% to 25% and raise the carbohydrates to around 50%, while keeping the amount of protein at 25%. As I’m no longer trying to lose weight, calories can creep up to from 1800 to 2000 per day. Not that I’ve been eating 1800 calories per day for a while, but at least now I’ve stopped trying to!

The Score:

Calories:	Protein:	Carbs:	Fat:	Alcohol:	Fibre:
2258.58	102.97g	275.83g	71.75g	14.20g	23.96g
	18%	49%	29%	4%
Calories burned through exercise:		Rest Day

What I ate:

Time	Item	Amount
09:00	Vitamins - Centrum Advance A to Zinc, 400iu of Vitamin E, 1000iu Vitamin D3 and 500mg Glucosamine sulphate	1 each
	Cold water	200mL
	Mattesson's Turkey rashers	3 rashers
	Nature's Path Gluten Free O's	50g
	Alpro Soy milk	120mL
	Sainsbury's pressed apple and cherry juice	200mL
09:30	Black tea with milk and sugar	500mL
10:30	Black tea with milk and sugar	500mL
13:30	Waitrose Broccoli & stilton soup	300g
	Rannoch smokery Scottish pressed game terrine	60g
	Amisa Buckwheat crispbread	38g
	Waitrose Caramelised red onion chutney	17g
	Fresh strawberries	105g
	White wine	75mL
14:00	White wine	75mL
	Cadbury's Dairy Milk chocolate	10 squares
15:00	Green Tea	250mL
16:30	Raspberry and Echinacea tea	250mL
17:15	Irish Yoghurts Diet Pear and Mango	125g
	Sainsbury's fruit and seed mix	40g
	Twinings Camomile, honey and vanilla tea	250mL
20:00	Baked chicken	80g
	Mrs Crimble's Sage & Onion stuffing mix	80g prepared
	Sainsbury's Sliced green beans	80g
	Bisto Best Chicken Gravy	about 5g
	Essential Waitrose Bramley apple sauce	about 20g
	Waitrose Melange Champagne and Amaretto chocolate mini eggs	53g
21:30	Ellactiva Chocolate Calcium Chew	1 chew
	500mg Glucosamine sulphate	1 pill

Plus 500 to 1500mL of cold water sipped from a water bottle throughout the day.

My First 10Km Run!

Yesterday was another beautiful spring day and I took full advantage of up. My husband and I were up at a decent time after a good night’s sleep so I was warming up for my long run by 10:30am, with breakfast well behind me. The weather wasn’t as warm but was very sunny and I was wearing just the right clothes. The run was quite difficult to start with – bit stiff all over and achy knees, but after a while I got into it. Until about the 7^th kilometre, at which point I stopped noticing the nice weather and pretty scenery and was just counting down the time until I could stop. However, I did manage my first 10Km run without stopping or walking and even sped up for a strong finish in the last 2 minutes.

My recovery period went well – I stretched, ate a really high protein lunch, hit the shower then had a nap. I woke up with no headaches and very little muscle soreness, which was a pleasant surprise. But then I got hungry. And my husband, who had just come back from a trying 4 hour bike ride, decided he wanted junk food. So off the shops we went, coming back with a couple of essentials (eggs, milk) and lots of chocolates, Doritos and snacks. I might have resisted if we’d had dinner at the usual time, but it was almost 9pm before we ate a real meal. So after an uncontrolled dive into the Doritos and dip, followed by chocolates after dinner, I am up 600 calories and 34g of fat.  

I used to wonder how people training for marathons could possibly be overweight. I mean running for two hours or more several times a week must burn loads of calories, right? Well I am less surprised now that I know just how calorific snack foods can be. Combined with an increase in appetite from all that training and I can see how someone could eat their way through just about any amount calories burned in training. Not a lesson I wanted to learn, but one I am going to have to take to heart if I am to lose those last couple of pounds this spring.

The Score:

Calories:	Protein:	Carbs:	Fat:	Alcohol:	Fibre:
2766.92	131.09g	301.53g	107.99g	11.9g	29.11g
	19%	44%	35%	3%
Calories burned through exercise:		838

What I ate:

Time	Item	Amount
08:30	Vitamins - Centrum Advance A to Zinc, 400iu of Vitamin E, 1000iu Vitamin D3 and 500mg Glucosamine sulphate	1 each
	Cold water	200mL
	Poached eggs	2 eggs
	Genius brown bread toast	2 slices
	with Flora Light	8g
	and honey on one slice	8g
	Mushrooms	100g
	in butter	5g
	Raw Tomato	113g
	Waitrose pure squeezed orange juice with bits	200mL
09:00	Black Tea	500mL
09:45	Black Tea	500mL
10:30	Easy long run - 75 min
	265mL Sponser Isotonic, fruit mix	20g (1 scoop)
12:00	Citrus Nuun electrolyte tablet in water	750mL
12:45	Sponser Chocolate Recovery Shake	30g
	in skim milk	225mL
13:00	Heinz Beanz, reduced sugar and salt	185g
	Mattesson's Turkey rashers	3 rashers
	Total Greek yoghurt	125g
	Sainsbury's frozen mixed blueberries and strawberries	100g
	500mg Glucosamine sulphate	1 pill
16:00	Citrus Nuun electrolyte tablet in water	750mL
16:45	Fresh Strawberries	100g
	Brazil nuts	6g
	Cashews	17g
	Lindt Excellence 70% cocoa dark chocolate	40g
17:30	Green Tea	250mL
18:45	Doritos Hint of Lime corn chips	50g
	dipped in Philadelphia light cream cheese with chives	83g
20:45	Homemade chicken and butternut squash risotto	332g
	Stir fried Kale	34g
	in Olive oil	7.5mL
	with Pine nuts	4g
	White wine	125mL
21:30	Waitrose Melange Champagne and Amaretto chocolate mini eggs	46g
22:30	Ellactiva Chocolate Calcium Chew	1 chew
	500mg Glucosamine sulphate	1 pill

Plus 500 to 1500mL of cold water sipped from a water bottle throughout the day.