[marbear24]

I've been running for about 2 years now. The most I've historically run is a 10k. I mostly run 3 to 5 miles, and burn off 350 - 600 calories. I tend to eat back about 70% of what I burn. My daily calorie goal is 1570, and I tend to be hesitant to eat anything over 2100, which is what I need to maintain my weight. This normally isn't a problem, as I don't burn enough for that to become and issue. However, I recently began training for my first half marathon. 70% of my calries burned after 10 - 13 miles has me eating a LOT, and its kind of freaking me out.

How have you all handled long distance running and counting calories for weight loss?

P.S. Sorry for the random title... my phone went crazy and posted this early as I was deleting the title and trying to retype it.

[autodidact]

Hummm, I have been wondering what will happen when I up my distance. After my big hill run I ate a lot more that day (all low carb). It does seem to be a problem. I hope other people will have some ideas.

[mkroyer]

if you are serious about losing weight while concurrently training for your first half, then id suggest dont eat back ANY of the exercise calories!
If you feel like you need it, go ahead and up your average daily allotted cals, because of added acticvity, but i wouldnt up it too much

1) you have no idea how many calories you are actually burning.
im sorry to be the one to tell you this, but if youve been running for 2 years, regularly, then you arent burning HALF of what you think you are. Your body is conditioned to the act of running itself, and although runneing LONGER distances will prove to be a change, it still wont effect your avg cals burned per mile , it will only really affect your recovery period/process, and ALSO serve to make you burn LESS than you do now (per mile, as you become more conditioned) You are not burning the average (mythically) touted "100 cals per mile" I dont know where that came from and its awful. Im sure SOME people burn 100 cals per mile, but the MAJORITY do not. AND ESPECIALLY NOT the *seasoned* runners. Id guess you burn closer to 50 than to 100 (im not saying you burn 50 cals/mile, im just saying on the spectrum, its probably closer to 50 cals than it is to 100 cals, ie; 74) and as you lose weight, you will burn less, and as you become even MORE conditioned, you will burn even less.....
Sorry that was so long-winded

My take-home point, is that where fatloss is concerned, dont eat back exercise calories because you have no way of knowing (accurately) what you burned, and we ALL have a sense of entitlement, meaning we all FEEL like we burned more, and DESERVE to eat more, etc etc..


#2) do not worry about nutrition supplementation until your runs are more than 90 minutes to 2 hours.. you have that much glycogen stored and available in your body to fuel your run. (eat normally what you would eat that day untill you are surpassing this mark) At THIS POINT, the only supplementation needed is the addition of some form of fast acting/pure sugar carbohydrate DURING the run itself... runners gels, goos, candy etc.

3) Do not *EXPECT* to lose weight while training, ESPECIALLY if you eat back your calories. POssibly since only trining for a half you could still see some decent weight loss.
BUT above all else, fatloss is 100% about diet!!! Training/exercise is about making a body you will love when you get to goal weight (or to achieve some other exercise related goal, like a half-mary)

So what half marathon are you running in?? Are you training solo, or do you belong to one of those running/training clubs?