Managing nutritional requirements for healthy half-marathon training?

[Pigufleisch]

Hi there,
I'm currently in the process of doing half-marathon training. Until now, my primary goal had been weight loss and it's going well. I have been losing aggressively and so I have become moderately accustomed to a low calorie diet (net 1500 cals at the moment due to the recent suggested MFP minimum but I was eating net of 1200 a little while).

Now that my runs are getting longer it has occurred to me that the calories burned, and therefore the amount of calories that I will want to eat back, is going to go through the roof. As an example, my food goal today began at 1500 cals but I gained back 1200 exercise calories. How on earth do runners do it when they start to get up to half-marathon or marathon distances? Am I just going to have to force myself to eat like an absolute monster? How unhealthy would it be for my training and my body if I consistently failed to eat back my exercise calories (bear in mind that I'm already at an aggressive deficit of approx 1kg/wk weight loss).

Any tips about nutrition for runners or advice about keeping healthy and strong while doing this kind of thing would be much appreciated.

[HelenaFitbit]

Hello @Pigufleisch ! Welcome to the Forums 

I'm not very savy on this topic but I know the epic members @Heybales and @SunsetRunner are really good at this subject, I am tagging them on this thread and hopefully they can give you some details 

Good luck with your training! 

[Heybales]

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@Pigufleisch wrote:

Hi there,
I'm currently in the process of doing half-marathon training. Until now, my primary goal had been weight loss and it's going well. I have been losing aggressively and so I have become moderately accustomed to a low calorie diet (net 1500 cals at the moment due to the recent suggested MFP minimum but I was eating net of 1200 a little while).

Now that my runs are getting longer it has occurred to me that the calories burned, and therefore the amount of calories that I will want to eat back, is going to go through the roof. As an example, my food goal today began at 1500 cals but I gained back 1200 exercise calories. How on earth do runners do it when they start to get up to half-marathon or marathon distances? Am I just going to have to force myself to eat like an absolute monster? How unhealthy would it be for my training and my body if I consistently failed to eat back my exercise calories (bear in mind that I'm already at an aggressive deficit of approx 1kg/wk weight loss).

Any tips about nutrition for runners or advice about keeping healthy and strong while doing this kind of thing would be much appreciated.

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Diet already impacts recovery from exercise, makes it take longer. Cardio doesn't take as long compared to say lifting, but the pounding of running still takes some for ligaments and tendons.

So with aggressive (why? you'll just be losing more muscle mass somewhere) you'll be more prone to injury, next workout won't be as beneficial, get sick more often, performance suffer, ect.

Because all you are doing is making the deficit even bigger. No, your body is not happy eating at probably 50% what it really needs - it will find a way to adapt, and the results will not be good.

Worst effect will be injury that knocks you out for 3-4 weeks. Now it'll get chance to recover. Possibly, depending on diet. I've seen people on diets extend out a Dr predicted recovery to 2-3 x as long as normal for an injury.

Best effect will be your performance just isn't what it could be. But until you could compare, you'd never know or realize this difference.

You eat in preparation (perhaps 1-2 hr small snack prior), and then you eat as followup. You realize what the body is doing and what it needs.

So you use your brain not your body to decide if you need to eat.

Within 30 min of workout, a post recovery snack is beneficial to get your carb reserves built back up again to be ready for a good workout tomorrow too.

Clif bars, Equate or Boost or Ensure nutritional shakes (standard version) all have that carb to protein ration of 4:1 to enhance that uptake, and about 250 cal. Chocolate 2% milk can also be mixed to this ratio.

So you may not feel hungry, but your brain knows your body needs it. That is if you want it to perform well.

Even if dehydrated and more thirsty, it's easy to gulp down a bar and chuck a drink - 500 calories - bam.

Suggest you also examine the deficit amount as you keep losing weight, 1 kg weekly can be reasonable if you have over 30 kg to lose, but then it needs to drop from there, before your body forces it slower with negative side effects. Under 30 kg should be 750 g weekly, 12.5 kg 500 g weekly. Final 5 is 250 g. Not sure what the metric choices are, but it drops close to the pound options.

You might also examine a changing daily deficit idea, depending on the extent of your runs. Because when you go longer, you need more, but not totally more.

On days you did a long slow run, you did burn a great amount of fat, and not as many carbs compared to more intense. You only need to eat back the carbs really, so you could take bigger deficit on that day.

But shorter runs, or rest days, deserve smaller deficits.

My final 10 lbs I entered with a full burning metabolism, no suppression from undereating, so very different from majority of dieters when they reach their final 5-10 lbs.

But I took 20% deficit from daily burn when I burned over 4000 cal. Since that was easy going run or bike ride for 3-4 hrs. That was 1 days weekly.

15% from 3000-4000 burn. 2 days.

10% up to 3000. 2 days.

None on rest days burning 2000-2500. 2 days.

I set MFP to maintenance, and then left whatever number of calories equaled that % in the green, so i missed my goal by that much. So if I burned 3500 cal, I noted in Food diary 15% was 525 to leave in the green.

Worked great. Performance didn't suffer, and fat kept dropping. And I actually kept improving from an injury, which for me is unheard of.

[Pigufleisch]

Thanks for that. Plenty of good advice.

On an unrelated note, I'm glad that you mentioned that list of different deficits. I might bring down my deficit a bit to help out with my exercising. I had a large deficit initially to kick start me but now I feel in control of my weight loss so I don't mind slowing things down a bit if it pays me back in better recovery etc.

[HelenaFitbit]

Thank you @Heybales ! I knew I could count on you 

Hope to see you around the Forums @Pigufleisch