Weight Loss & Training

Losing weight can be difficult at the best of times, but throw in training for an event and the challenges just multiplied.

Cut out too many calories and you don't have the energy to train, don't cut out enough and you don't see the results you want.  It's a bit of a balancing act, but not impossible.

• Be realistic about how much weight you want/need to lose.

Based on your time frame, it may not be realistic to lose a significant amount of weight.  Figure 0.5-2 lbs/week, depending on your activity level and starting weight.  The more weight you have to lose, the more you will lose in the first few weeks/months (1-2 lbs).  As you get closer to your goal weight, the amount each week may get less (0.5-1 lb).

• Use the off season for weight loss and maintain it during the racing season.

During the off season workout volume and intensity are not as high as during the racing season.  This is the time when cutting back on some unnecessary calories should not effect your training as much as it might during the racing season.

• Plateaus are not necessarily a bad thing.

You're likely not going to lose weight every single week.  This is natural.  Sometimes your body needs a little time to readjust based on the weight you've already lost and training volume.  While cutting back on calories is important in weight loss, cutting out too much may stall any progress.  More is not necessarily better.

• Cut back on unnecessary calories, not key nutrients.

I'm always amazed at the talk around the amount of sugar that is in fruit and cutting out other foods high in fibre, vitamins, minerals, energy, but continue to eat foods that provide very little nutrients, only calories (muffins, cereal bars, snack foods, etc).  When you're looking for places to cut back, look for foods that provide calories but not essential nutrients.  These 'extras', while tasty at times, are the first place to start.

• Beware of the liquid calories

Often people are very diligent about what they are eating, but miss the calories living in their favourite beverage.  This is extremely common.  It is easier to drink a lot of calories than to eat them.  And because liquids empty out of our stomach relatively quickly, we can end up feeling hungry not that long after.  Some drinks are important and provide a lot of nutrients, but most are just flavour, sugar and water.  Those are the ones to cut down or replace altogether.  Water is usually the best choice because it's essential for good health and has no calories. 

• Use tools to your advantage.

There are many online tools that can help you keep track of what your eating, how much and the corresponding calorie intake.  This makes it much clearer to know what to reduce or identify when you have times of 'mindless eating'.  It will also help you to not cut out too much.  Never go below your minimum calorie intake (most sites will figure that out based on your age, height, weight and activity level) or it will effect your ability to lose weight and training appropriately.  Small consistent changes work best.   

• Forget the cheat days/meals

I've never like cheat days or meals because it seems too much like dieting or restricting.  Health eating should be a lifestyle that you can maintain for your life and not just until a specific event is over.  The 'diet' mindset usually leads to temporary drastic changes not positive, sustainable ones.  But that does not mean you cannot or should not enjoy yourself from time to time.  Food is so much more than just fuel. If you really want a specific food, have it ... but not all the time or every day.  Make a conscious decision to have it on a specific day at a specific meal or time only. 

Depending on how much weight you have or want to lose, it may take more than one off-season to get there. 

 Consistency and constancy are the keys.  The best nutrition plan is one you can stick to long term, and enjoy.

Four Letter Word Month

For the past few months, training has been going really well.  I've gotten in workout that I planned, ate healthy, and had plenty of energy to finish, until now.  I made two mistakes this week that ended up with me having to cut short my long run and tweak my running distances. 

I've been doing indoor bike training 3x/week (on my road bike, not a spinning bike) since the end of October. It's been hard at times, but doable.  Now we've transitioned to lactate threshold training, affectionately called '4-letter word' month.  I'll let you figure out some of those 4-letter words yourself.

Tuesday was out time trial, 2 8-min segments to determine max speed and distance.  I managed my fastest speed and distance ever in the four years I've been doing indoor cycling.  Thursday morning was sprinting, sprinting and more sprinting.

For the past 4 months, I've been swimming 1x/week for about 1 hour, just to 'get it in'.  For the past two weeks, I've committed myself to swimming 2x/week and started using my nifty swim workout for Triathletes book I bought years ago.  So each swim is averaging 2500+ meters and over an hour.

While all this was going on, I was also increasing my run distance by 1.5 km each week since the boxing day 10 miler.  As my distance was increasing, my pace was also getting quicker (but it didn't feel like that).

So what were my two mistakes?  My intensity & total workouts increased and I didn't increase my calorie intake.  And I  kept increasing my run distance without a 'recovery' or down period.

The result was running out of energy early on in my run and leaving me tired and cranky.  So Friday morning, as I struggled to make it back to my car, I decided to change my strategy on the fly. 

I've signed up for the Chilly 1/2 marathon on March 6th. My focus has always been distance, not speed, so I'm shortening my run for next week and then building up to include Chilly as another weekly run, not a targeted event.  I'm planning to use this same strategy for Around the Bay in April.

Luckily for me, there's several weeks between Chilly and ATB to change course, depending on how the next few weeks pan out.

2015 Year End Review

So because it's the year end, I thought I would take the time to review my initial goals that I made back in September to see where I'm at and what needs more work.

Here are my original goals:
1.  Lose ~50 lbs & change my body composition
2.  Incorporate strength and flexibility
3.  Distance, distance, distance

So how am I doing with each goal? And what can be improved?

Goal #1

• I'm almost half way to meeting this goal. The original plan was to focus on losing before training got too heavy or intense.  During that point, it's important to eat enough calories to properly fuel the training or I won't see any speed or distance gains.  If I can maintain this pace, I should meet my goal in another 3-4 months (March/April) which will be perfect timing.
• I'll continue my focus on health eating, cutting out unnecessary empty calories (mainly from added sugars) and pre-planning meals.

Goal #2

• I've already been doing Pilates on a weekly basis and some Yoga.  
• Starting next week, I have Pilates classes scheduled for 2x/wk with an instructor who knows how to challenge me.
• I'm planning on adding some upper body focused resistance band workouts 1-2x/wk

Goal #3

• I've been systematically increasing my distance each week, no more than 1.5 km/wk for running to avoid injury
• Over the past three months I've mainly been swimming 1x/wk.  Next week I plan on swimming 2x/wk.
• Monday's & Wednesday's indoor treadmill runs will get longer and tailored for interval or tempo runs.

2015 Training Distance Totals (using Garmin Forerunner 910xt, not including twice weekly treadmill runs)

October Totals             November Totals             December Totals                   Overall 2015 Totals
Swim - 3.67 km             Swim - 1.32 km                 Swim - 3.47 km                      Swim - 9.47 km
Bike - 50.43 km             Bike - 232.01 km.              Bike - 241.61 km                   Bike - 524.01 km
Run - 37.59 km              Run - 32.26 km                  Run - 58.93 km                      Run - 128.78 km

Luckily for me, I've remain injury free and relatively healthy (only 1 mild cold so far), so training has remained unimpeded this far.

The next phase of training (Jan-Mar) will continue the focus on indoor training, intervals and building my base.  I'll have two scheduled races during this time (Chilly 1/2 & ATB) that will drive my running distance.

The race is no longer 'next year'.  It is 10 months away, which seems like a long time, but as a friend & training partner always says '"each weekend counts".  I need to keep moving forward to meet my goals and finish in 15:30 ... or better ;)