no weight loss

Hello!

I am a little frustrated.  My friend challenged me to do a 1/2 marathon.  The thing is, I have not run in 15 years, so I am a very new runner.  I accepted the challenge because I thought that this would be a great way for me to lose my unwanted 15 pounds.  Here I am about 5 weeks later and I have stayed at exactly the same weight I was when I started.  I have stopped snacking and eating like I used too.  I eat something small in the morning.  Usually yogart and fruit.  For lunch I have a Healthy Choice Steamer bowl (yummy!).  If I need a snack I have a granola bar, then for dinner, usually some sort of meat, veggies and a side dish.  I do not drink soda and I might have one cup of coffee a day.  I average right now to exercise at least 45minutes- 2 hours a day depending on the schedule.  I give myself one day off a week to do absolutley nothing.  On two of the days I do strength and stretch workouts.  My runs are usually 4-5 days.  What am I doing wrong?

Thanks!

Denice

I would count your calories and then use the tools here to see how many calories you need. You are most likely not eating enough, especially if you are training for a half marathon! You are burning lots of calories! Your body needs energy. Good luck with the half marathon and training :)

thank you, I will count them today.

I can't find the link, but someone recently posted a good link to a woman's personal experience in going through marathon training.  She gained weight while doing the steady-state cardio that was required by the marathon, but dropped it quickly when she switched to HIIT after the marathon.  It just seems that the two goals are difficult to match up.  You've got to eat enough to keep training effectively.

However, if you're not counting calories, that would be a great start.  And keep track of how many you burn, as well.  From your dietary description, my first thought is that you're not eating enough to support your exercise.  But without knowing the details of things like how many calories you're burning in a day (base + exercise) and how many you're eating, anyone's guess will just be a guess.

Another thing to check is whether you're losing fat, but picking up a bit of muscle.  It probably won't be a one-to-one ratio, but if your pants are fitting looser in the waist and tighter in the legs, that could account for some of the no weight loss.

Clint

You're not eating enough.

I can somewhat relate. I trained to do a 100 miler on my bicycle this past year, but I learned that wanting to lose weight and training for an endurance even its 2 different things.

If you already know you'll have zero issues finishing the race, and you do not need to worry about appropriately training, I would say it's okay to focus on the weight loss and to use this event for weight loss purposes. Weight loss is really about 80% what/how you eat and 20% exercise (for example, I can easily eat 5,000 calories in a day, but jogging for 1 hour only burns 400 calories for me).

I'm pretty confident you do not yet have the endurance base yet to finish the race (you mentioned it's been 15 years since you last ran). That said, my advice for you is to really focus on the training and the endurance aspect and not worry about your weight loss. Training for an endurance event requires somewhat different focus than weight loss.

I've learned it's better to focus on the weight loss in the off season, then start training at your new found weight for better performance. If you're event is 6 months away, you can do a little of both. First 3 months focus on weight loss, last 3 months really focus on training.

Best of luck to you!

I think it also depends on your goal for your race.  Is it to complete, or to compete (i.e. finish with a certain time).  If it's simply to complete the half marathon, there's nothing wrong with that, for sure!  But to do that, you can likely get by with 3 runs a week, and make one of them a Long Slow Distance (LSD).  Bump up that LSD by a small amount each week until you're running 22 (just slightly over half marathon distances) or more kilometers.  Then you can work on bringing that time down slowly.  I would say you can likely still lose weight on this plan by counting your calories and monitoring your calories burned, and try to keep your deficit "reasonable" (like between 3500 and 7000 calories per week).  I trained to complete a sprint triathlon this summer, and lost the bulk of my weight while doing so.  I was very new to exercise after taking many years (2 decades?) off, and I was never a runner either.

On the other hand, if your training is a lot more intense (and it seems like yours might be), you may find it difficult to balance your body's need for fuel with your desire to lose weight.  And something might have to give.  If you've got time, you may want to tone down your training for now and just build up your base miles while trying to lose weight.  And then closer to your race, worry about training hard and making yourself faster.  Basically, what bigkorean says. :)

In any case, I'd start by tracking the calories in vs. out, and go from there. 

Clint

Thank you all for your advice and stories.  I have decided to not focus on my weight loss.  I have 8 weeks left of training for the 1/2 marathon.  At this point it is to simply- complete it.  I think after that marathon though I will slow it down, do just 3-4 miles a day, less per week and concentrate soley on my weight loss.  Thanks again! I appreciate it.  I never knew how supportive runners were until I started running!

Yup, just a bunch of athletic supporters in here! :)

Make sure you post back with your results!  I'm planning my first half marathon in the spring.  Today was the first run in my training plan, and I'm pumped.  We'll see if that carries forward 6 months, though.

Clint