Nutrition?
 

Today, I got out there ladies-----and I ran 7 miles!!!

I am doing a triathlon on Saturday, very exciting stuff.

In all this intense working out, I've decided to stop counting calories?

I've started eating whatever, and focusing on trying to adopt new lifestyles.

I am trying to eat when I'm hungry now, and try to listen to my body.

Do you think that's a better "diet" strategy during intense workouts?

I feel strange counting calories when I go run 7 miles, makes me feel mental.

tell me what you think

Congratulations on going out and doing a triathlon this weekend! Are you doing a Sprint or Olympic distance?? I completed my first Sprint distance back in March and just started training for my Olympic this week. I have to say I know where you are coming from with wondering about nutrition. It is really hard to be completing workouts consisting of running 6-10 miles, doing 60 mile bike rides and swimming lap after lap and just consuming 12-1500 calories when thats is what you are burning in one workout! Ah!
I know for this time around training for my olympic I will not be using sports nutrition supplements like Gu, shot blocks, and all the other goodies. I am going to try to do it all on my own energy because I don't want the extra sugar and calories and HAVE to lose 50 pounds by November due to Wedding dress time lines haha. I do know when I was just eating when I was hungry while training for my Sprint Tri I did not gain weight but I maintained and didn't lose because I was always pretty hungry with the intense training. I don't know how the heck I am going to get thru this training while also on a strict diet. We will see how it goes...
Good luck in your triathlon this weekend, I am sure you will do great!

Sprint
 

Hi there!

I am doing a Sprint Triathlon, and yeah, it's really tough to know what to eat! You want to make sure your body is getting the nutrients it needs, but at the same time you want to lose the weight. ERG--it's super hard. I would think that by the time I could run a triathlon it'd be easy to lose weight, but woe is me, it is not.

Yes I trained and trained for my Sprint and I only lost 4 pounds. Very frustrating when my garmin said I burned anywhere from 1000-1800 calories a ride. Grrrrr. :( I am meeting with my triathlon coach on Sunday and will let you know what she has to say about diet and nutrition. :)

when i do 10-15km runs, i still count calories. I think that because im running so much it definately makes me more hungry and I am burning a lot of cals, but at the same time its very easy for me to come home and go "oh my god, i worked out HEAPS let me eat lots of carbs" and there goes all my progress

That's what it's all about! Trust your body trust yourself :) Beautiful.

I would say you should still count calories. I trained for a half marathon while trying to lose weight and I definitely feel you on this one, because it was so hard to know how much I should be eating when I was trying to have the energy to run 10 miles and still lose weight. I figured out that I needed to count the calories I was burning as carefully as I was counting the calories I was eating. I used my heartrate monitor to figure out how much I was burning during my runs and added it to my active metabolic rate. Knowing this, I could control the calorie deficit. I usually shot for a 700-1,000 calorie deficit each day. On the days I did long runs, that meant eating closer to 2,500 calories, but I still counted them. I had to find a balance between eating enough to fuel my runs and making those deficits to still be losing weight. I also didn't want to make too huge of a calorie deficit and freak my body out. Counting calories took the guess work out of it.