People keep asking me
 

How weight have i lost, my answer is none. I just do a jog /run 10 miles almost everyday. I started do this abt the last wk in March of this yr. I have only lost 1 inch in my waist, for some odd reason i can't get myself below 140, so i stopped trying. I figure that maybe i will start to lose when my body is all done toning up. I feel this is a huge benefit from exercising everyday.
My daughter & i were shopping the other day trying on clothes in the fitting room & she said to me, Wow Mom you have awesome looking leg's,lol. I then asked her if she wanted to start running with me, she just gave me her look of are you crazy , Well i tried maybe someday.:)
Oh i also do weight watcher's (flex point's) so i am watching what & how much i eat everyday. I am at the lowest pt's that anyone should eat (20 pt's per day as well as what ever i have from my activity pt's).

You run 10 miles a day and you eat the lowest points that anyone should eat??????

No wonder you're not losing weight. Your body is probably SCREAMING for nutrition. I"m sure you have great legs :) but running doesn't build muscle anywhere else on your body ... and eating that little means that you're probably not going to lose any weight because you're starving your body otherwise.

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My thoughts are in line with Photo Chick. Something definitely sounds eskew.

This may seem like a stupid question, but do you actually need to lose weight? And I agree with PhotoChick, you may not be eating enough. I don't know how much activity points you are giving yourself but maybe not enough.

I think you may have miss understood me , I don't run the full 10 mile's, i walk it too. I run anywhere's from 4 to 5 mile's just depends what i feel like doing on that given day. I eat a total up to 30 pt a day with my activity point's included. Some day's i feel stuffed & it's hard to eat my full (ap) pt's for that day. My weigt is 140 & i'm 5'4 tall, i'm within a "normal weight" for my age (47) at least that's what the dr has told me.

The point i was trying to make was that how one's body can look so much different when one exercise's. I'm always told noway you don't weigh that much, i offer to get on the scale & show them.

Running or walking ... 10 miles is a lot. I walked 5 miles on Friday and it took me slightly over an hour, even walking briskly. And my HRM showed I'd burned over 500 calories. Running/walking 10 miles a day is a LOT of exercise and it's possible that you're burning upwards of 900-1000 calories that way. And 30 points is ... as best I can remember ... somewhere around 1600 calories? At 140 lbs, if you're doing 10 miles a day and burning 900+ calories, 1600 calories just isn't enough.

Also it'll depend on WHAT you're eating, as much as the number of calories you're eating.

Honestly, without more information from you though, it's going to be hard to give any real advice.

What do you weigh now? How much weight have you lost? Over what period of time?

Do you do any exercise other than the run/walk every day? If so, what?

What are you eating to get to your 30 pts? How much protein? How much carbs? Are you absolutely sure you're measuring things accurately?

Give us more information to go on and we can probably help you some.

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Also, how tall are you? How old are you? If you are doing ten miles A DAY -- even if you were ONLY walking them, I agree with Photochick that with the info you gave us, you sound like you are not getting enough nutrition to fuel your metabolism and help you lose weight. With that level of exercise and so few calories, you may be burning your lean muscle mass (which means your metabolism is getting lower and lower, and making it harder and harder for you to actually burn off your fat).

Oh and someone else mentioned this, but do you need to lose weight? Depending how tall you are, 140 can be pretty darn thin -- I am only five pounds under that, and at my height and with my lean muscle mass, that translates to a Size 4 in most stores -- even a Size 2 some places. At 140, I was between a Size 4 and a Size 6.

We need more info, and we'll do our best to help you figure this out.

I think Chuckie mentioned she was 5'4 and 47 years old.

I do have to agree with most of the other comments in the you probably aren't eating enough.

I also found when i was doing looong runs my weight loss tended to stall significantly and I even gained some (and not from muscle...my scales have a body fat reading function). I was running anywhere from 8 miles to 20 miles, 5 or 6 days a week without any other form of exercise (so no strength training, cycling, etc).

In the last month I have cut back on the distances so I now run 5 or 6 miles but upped the intensity. So where before I would run at about 7.5 mph I am now alternating through 7.5 to 10 mph and including steep inclines and sprints. I have also re-started my weights routine.

In just those few weeks my clothes are significantly looser around the waist, hips and thighs (I'm a pear lol so thats BIG for me :)) and I have lost about 3 pounds.

Oh, and I am eating cleaner as well. Slightly less calories than before (I was eating at maintenance) but more salads, high proteins, good grainy breads etc and less salt.

HOWEVER!

To address your actual point - I do agree with you that exercise goes a LOOONG way to improving the way your body looks. I am a size 4-6 in US clothing or 8-10 in Aussie - I weighed this much in highschool and was a size 10-12 US or 14-16 Australian.

Only difference is I am all muscle now and was all flab back then!

Oh...and yes...running gives you awesome legs :) They are my favorite part of my body. Especially my calves!

Yeah, I'm not a distance runner type of person - I'm going to do my first 5k next year and it's a big change for me, so I don't have personal experience here, yet. But my understanding is that distance runners - and I'm not sure what counts as "distance" or if 10 miles qualifies - but that distance runners tend to not lose weight when they're training heavily.

It makes sense to me because one of the things you learn about exercise is that your body works to become more efficient at anything you do regularly. It's the reason you should mix up your exercising frequently - because becoming "efficient" at something means burning fewer calories. And that's NOT the point of exercising. :)

So if you push yourself to run/walk a long distance every day, it makes sense to me that your body would become very efficient at doing so, and so you would burn fewer and fewer calories. I know that marathon runners often gain weight during training exactly because of the efficiency issue and because the body learns that you're going to put a lot of stress on it and begins to hoard nutrients for the next long run.

That's also why HIIT is so much more effective than hours of long steady exercise. HIIT keeps your body changing tempos and therefore keeps it from becoming too efficient in managing your cals and metabolism.

I'm certainly not saying that you should quit running distances if you enjoy them, but do be aware of how doing distance work every single day can impact your weight loss. If it were me, I'd swap out some days of distances with a few shorter, more intense rounds of cardio and even some strength training as well.

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This is SO true. I'm currently training for a marathon and run 20-30 miles per week, and my weight loss has completely stalled (actually, fluctuated up and down). I've been losing the same 5 lbs over and over. I try upping my calories, gain, then lower them and lose, but feel hungry. It's a bad cycle. It's really hard to juggle running with my weight loss goals, simply because it takes time away from other forms of exercise (weight training, HIIT, etc.)

I'm going to try to re-arrange my schedule so that I can start weight training seriously again.

Do you do hills or any speed work, b/c that generally gets the weight loss rolling again as those types of running workouts give the body more of a challenge. Also randomly running faster even from lamp post to lamp post adds a little more variety to plain old running.

Yep, that's what happens to me too. I run anywhere from 25-35 miles per week, since I'm in half-marathon season. Plus I cross-train all of the other days that I'm not running. It's really a challenge to get enough carbs and calories for fuel, but not go overboard. I'm in maintenance mode now, so I'm not necessarily trying to lose more weight, but it's a constant battle not to GAIN weight. Partly I get SO hungry from all of that exercise that I tend to eat more than I need to, and partly I think because my muscles retain more glycogen (and associated water) to fuel the expected demand. It is just never easy ....

My regular running route includes hills, and sometimes I'll mix it up so that my body doesn't become conditioned. I'd love to get some speed work in there, but every time I do that I don't recover enough to do my next training run, so for now I'm just focusing on slow, easy miles to build them up.

I find when I am running a long run -- like >9m then I will not see weight loss the next day, no matter what my cals but I will see loss in the next day or two no matter what I eat :)