Weight - and Running (Read 1336 times)

RunZRun --- tell me a little about your YOGA??? Yoga is something I have toyed with but not really gotten into, but I am interested in it....

I have been doing yoga for about 3 years now. I think it helps my running, but mostly it helps my bad back. Yoga is like massage for me. I swear by yoga. Now with a toddler I cannot make it to a yoga class anymore, (and they are not very cheap either), so I do an hour's class at www.yogatoday.com They have an hour of free class everyday and very good instructors. If you are new to yoga I would suggest initially going to some good classes in your town before doing it on your own.

I have been doing yoga for about 3 years now. I think it helps my running, but mostly it helps my bad back. Yoga is like massage for me. I swear by yoga. Now with a toddler I cannot make it to a yoga class anymore, (and they are not very cheap either), so I do an hour's class at www.yogatoday.com They have an hour of free class everyday and very good instructors. If you are new to yoga I would suggest initially going to some good classes in your town before doing it on your own.

Thanks for the info.....I bought a book and have been using it off and on and the positions are difinately different then then normal 'runners stretches' but I like them better because I feel better overall.....but I don't think Im getting enough out of it (and I think on your own at first, you can make mistakes).........I think Ill talk to Mrs John-A and see if we can spring for some YOGA class money.....I think the flexibility would really help my running....and as we get older, the flexibility starts to suffer....at my current age of 56 im OK, but much aware that I need to work flexibility and YOGA sttill seems the best route..........Appreciate the info.....

I don't mean to be the fly in the ointment, but I think we're only approaching this from a very limited angle, which is diet. Weight, as far as I'm concerned, is only factor in getting faster, which seems to be the OP's original point. Will losing weight make him faster? More than likely, yes. Best way to do it: some sort of caloric monitoring has worked for me, with emphasis on light restriction (250-400 cals per day, otherwise workouts go in the toilet). But what always seems to get lost in these threads--at least on the old CR and RW boards--is that in the grand scheme of things, weight is not the primary factor in getting faster: Higher aerobic workloads are. 30 mpw--or whatever that equates to in weekly "time on feet" for you--is a relatively light to moderate load depending on pace. Lydiard, Daniels, and some others say point of diminshing returns are 9.5 to 10.5 hours of running per week. 30 mpw, even at a 10:00 pace, is not close to that. Now, not saying you jump right to that--you'll most likely get hurt. But if you're true goal is to get faster, put in the miles--there's no reason not to ease up to 35 or 40--you'll need to experiment to see where you're at. Work on easy strength work, like pilates, core, etc.--things to gradually change body comp. FWIW, I'm 5' 10" and often btw 155-160, 150 if I'm top shape.But the weight just sort of takes of care of itself, you know. And I have a beer, a slice of pizza, and fatty desert from time to time. Runners have a tendancy to be so all or nothing...but moderation is the key. Dropping 20 bills is a bitch when you're trying to train hard. 5 lbs for now might be good--see how you feel.

Tuscaloosa - You make a number of interesting and good points...I am on my way to 30 or 40 mpw but it took me a few months to get where i am and from here I have to be careful not to get hurt. My main desire is to loose the GUT and look/feel better and I 'think' that if I drop 10 or 20, that alone will make my times faster, however as you state, there are not shortcuts and the mileage is the real factor in getting faster......but your points are well taken...thanks.... Ben Your description is good and encouraging.....thanks..... Additionally, I got a log and have been writing down ever little thing and after only 3 days, I am findiing that I am eating NO NO food (you just dont think about unless you start writing in down). Finding that I grab a few cookies at around 8:00PM that dont need - they add up....and other such things.........so I think I am 'fooling' myself or lying to ME about what I eat too.........you just dont think about it..... Anyway - good points......I 'think' im on the right track.....

An interesting article: http://nymag.com/news/sports/38001/index4.html

The key is that among the many things regulated in this homeostatic system—along with blood pressure and blood sugar, body temperature, respiration, etc.—is the amount of fat we carry. From this biological or homeostatic perspective, lean people are not those who have the willpower to exercise more and eat less. They are people whose bodies are programmed to send the calories they consume to the muscles to be burned rather than to the fat tissue to be stored—the Lance Armstrongs of the world. The rest of us tend to go the other way, shunting off calories to fat tissue, where they accumulate to excess. This shunting of calories toward fat cells to be stored or toward the muscles to be burned is a phenomenon known as fuel partitioning. The job of determining how fuels (glucose and fatty acids) will be used, whether we will store them as fat or burn them for energy, is carried out primarily by the hormone insulin in concert with an enzyme known technically as lipoprotein lipase—LPL, for short. (Sex hormones also interact with LPL, which is why men and women fatten differently.) In the eighties, biochemists and physiologists worked out how LPL responds to exercise. They found that during a workout, LPL activity increases in muscle tissue, and so our muscle cells suck up fatty acids to use for fuel. Then, when we’re done exercising, LPL activity in the muscle tissue tapers off and LPL activity in our fat tissue spikes, pulling calories into fat cells. This works to return to the fat cells any fat they might have had to surrender—homeostasis, in other words. The more rigorous the exercise, and the more fat lost from our fat tissue, the greater the subsequent increase in LPL activity in the fat cells. Thus, post-workout, we get hungry: Our fat tissue is devoting itself to restoring calories as fat, depriving other tissues and organs of the fuel they need and triggering a compensatory impulse to eat. The feeling of hunger is the brain’s way of trying to satisfy the demands of the body. Just as sweating makes us thirsty, burning off calories makes us hungry. [...] If it’s biology, and not a lack of willpower, that explains why exercise fails so many of us as a weight-loss tool, then we can still find reason for optimism. Since insulin is the primary hormone affecting the activity of LPL on our cells, it’s not surprising that insulin is the primary regulator of how fat we get. “Fat is mobilized [from fat tissue] when insulin secretion diminishes,” the American Medical Association Council on Foods and Nutrition explained back in 1974, before this fact, too, was deemed irrelevant to the question of why we gain weight or the means to lose it. Because insulin determines fat accumulation, it’s quite possible that we get fat not because we eat too much or exercise too little but because we secrete too much insulin or because our insulin levels remain elevated far longer than might be ideal. To be sure, this is the same logic that leads to other unconventional ideas. As it turns out, it’s carbohydrates—particularly easily digestible carbohydrates and sugars—that primarily stimulate insulin secretion. “Carbohydrates is driving insulin is driving fat,” as George Cahill Jr., a retired Harvard professor of medicine and expert on insulin, recently phrased it for me. So maybe if we eat fewer carbohydrates—in particular the easily digestible simple carbohydrates and sugars—we might lose considerable fat or at least not gain any more, whether we exercise or not. This would explain the slew of recent clinical trials demonstrating that dieters who restrict carbohydrates but not calories invariably lose more weight than dieters who restrict calories but not necessarily carbohydrates. Put simply, it’s quite possible that the foods—potatoes, pasta, rice, bread, pastries, sweets, soda, and beer—that our parents always thought were fattening (back when the medical specialists treating obesity believed that exercise made us hungry) really are fattening. And so if we avoid these foods specifically, we may find our weights more in line with our desires.

Consistency and patience has worked for me.

#1.

I think that losing weight and being a better runner are probably opposing goals. I'm not going to say those things are polar opposites but I think trying to accomplish more than one goal might mean you accomplish none. Consider, a lot of "experts" now think that High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) is the best workout to burn calories but for a running program that would be a disaster. In general a person burns approximately 80-140 calories per mile regardless of speed (it's all about the O2 used!). If you walk 3 miles and then run an easy 3 miles you're going to burn the same amount. For the sake of argument let's say you burn 100 calories per mile and it takes, on average, 3,500 calories to lose a pound then you need to run 35 miles a week to lose a single, solitary pound. In reality, your mind/body is going to convince you that you are doing all that work and you don't need to watch what you eat. It's very easy to eat 500 extra calories a day. Also, most gadgets will overestimate your calories burned while most humans will underestimate their calories consumed. When I started marathon training I told myself that I could eat whatever I wanted because of my mileage. I jokingly called it my marathon diet. I gained 2 lbs the first week on my new "diet" and promptly went back to watching what I eat. Bottom line is that if you want to lose weight then diet is going to be 80-90% of it.