Pheidippides’s BodyBlog

Nearly 4 weeks into my 14 week marathon training program (Marathon — Dec. 7), I’ve effectively forsaken all fitness and health goals other than running faster and longer. The concentration is helping my running, mostly, but it’s holding it back in one way: I am not losing any weight, and as a result I’m not getting the benefit of running faster that I thought I woudl get from carrying fewer pounds.

So, without detracting from my running focus, I’m going to add a six-week diet program to my training.  Starting Monday, Sept. 29, I will concentrate on losing one pound, at least, per week, for a period of six weeks,  so I lose a total minimum of six pounds by November 10.  At that point, with only three weeks to go before the marathon, I’ll stop focusing on weight loss and instead focus on getting ready for the marathon.

The components of the plan will be:

1.  Careful eating.  I will not, strictly speaking, follow a purely "clean" diet, but I’m going to be a lot better than I’ve been.  It will involve planning what I eat day to day and week to week to avoid unplanned snacking and late night eating.

2.  Cardio.  This is the easy part.  I’ll be running 35 to 45 or so miles per week.
3.  Strength training.  I’ve really let this go, and I can feel the strength loss in my upper body (although my lower body is doing great with the running).  My plan will incorporate weekly minimums of curls, pushups, rows, and ab work so I maintain some muscle while I lose weight.
4.  Measurements.  This weekend I have to either fix my digital scale or just decide to use the somewhat less precise analog scale.  I will measure my weight and my waist every single day, in the morning, before eating anything.

I’m going to try what I call the "ratchet effect" diet method.  That is, holding on to whatever weight loss I manage, so I don’t yo-yo back and forth.  If I lose 1.5 pounds the first week, then I’ll still try to lose a pound the next week rather than mentally go easy on myself.  The hard pounds to lose are the last ones, anyway.  It’s easy for me to get down to 169 (I’m about 172.5 or so now); it’s hard getting lower than that.

Hopefully I will get the weight down to a meaningful (as opposed to mere water loss) 166 pounds (or maybe a bit less than that), from my current level of around 172.
More on this as I work out the details.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 26th, 2008 at 10:29 am and is filed under Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.