- Welcome! - Intro to Fat Loss

- Nutrition 101 - How Strength Training Can Boost Fat Loss

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As you make the commitment to becoming a regular runner, you might also be someone who is hoping that this increased running activity is going to help you shed a few pounds from your frame – and it definitely might. Regularly running programs are ideal for fat loss if they are designed properly, such as what you’ll get with the C25K or 10K programs we offer. They help you burn calorie up quickly while also allowing you to make a large jump in your overall health and fitness level. That said, simply hitting the pavement for your runs isn’t enough if you want to really optimize the results you see. To take things up a notch and send your progress soaring, you must take into account two other element: proper nutrition and a good strength training program.

Get these three all lined up and you will see unstoppable results like nothing you’ve ever seen before.

Let’s go into a deeper discussion on how both nutrition and strength training enhance the running program you’re already doing and give you some quick tips as you move forward.

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First let’s discuss a little what is required for fat loss to take place. Some runners think that if they are doing their regular runs, hitting the pavement three to four times per week, weight loss should automatically happen. Unfortunately, they often find themselves seriously discouraged when it doesn’t quite go this way. While doing the runs regularly will definitely enhance the results you see, here’s the problem. To lose body fat, you must take in fewer calories than you burn off on a day to day basis. Simple as that. One grave mistake that many fat-loss seeking runners make is the notion that they can eat whatever they’d like because they are doing their runs. They come to believe that the runs serve as some type of protective mechanism, allowing them to indulge a little more often. So they eat that piece of cake for dessert saying they have a long run the next day, so it’s okay. They’ll burn it off. Only they won’t. And therein lies the problem.

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Many runners who like to eat overestimate how many total calories they are taking while underestimating how much they actually burn off doing their runs. Running is a great calorie burner, don’t get that wrong, but it’s not burning up hundreds of calories each run unless you’re doing 10km’s on a regular basis. You can estimate burning around 100-120 calories for every 2km’s you run as a guideline, so use this as you try and factor in how much you’re actually burning during that run. In addition to that, many people will notice a bump to their hunger level is they start running too much, so if after your run you’re so ravenous you come home and down 300 calories as your post-run snack, there’s a good chance you’ve just broken yourself even in terms of whether you’ll burn body fat or not. So the moral of the story here is that you simply must be paying attention to your nutrition while you do your runs. FAT LOSS OCCURS WHEN: Energy coming in (through food) < Energy going out (through metabolic activities and exercise) Running helps increase the right hand side of the equation, but if the left side is still very high, it’s going to spell bad news for your progression. By taking control over that left hand side, you can really guarantee that your running is going to produce the weight loss results that you’re looking for. So this said, let’s go over some of the key secrets to remember

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When it comes to setting up your nutrition program for faster fat loss and running, you have two main goals in mind:

1.

Lose weight at an appreciable, but safe rate

2.

Maintain energy for proper running performance

If you aren’t careful and try and move too quickly to accomplish the first goal, you will find that you really miss the mark on the second goal. Runners do need to approach fat loss much more differently compared to those who aren’t partaking in running activity due to the fact that they have this additional exercise to support. Here are the main steps that you should take when finding a proper diet to follow.

1. ASSESS YOUR CALORIE INTAKE First, as a runner, you are going to need to eat more total calories – there’s absolutely no doubting that due to the fact that you are burning up more energy throughout all the runs that you do. You don’t want to take in too many calories though, or, as we illustrated above, you’ll struggle to reach the weight loss goals that you’ve set. So where should you be? I’d use a baseline factor and then an activity factor to help you design your diet. First, as a baseline, you need to assess what your calorie intake would be if you weren’t doing your running training. For the average individual who is looking for fat loss, your calorie intake should be set to around 10-12 calories per pound of body weight. Use the higher number if you want to feel slightly more energized throughout the day and less hunger, or use the lower number if you want to promote slightly faster fat loss.

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So go ahead and make this calculation right now (note, that for those of you who have 40+ pounds to lose, I would recommend that you use a multiplication factor slightly less since fat weight doesn’t require many calories to support it). In that instance, if you have 40+ pounds to lose (and of course you have reasonable expectations of the body weight you can achieve), I would use 8-10 calorie per pound instead. Body weight X 8-12 (depending on where you sit on that scale): _______________ Okay, that is your baseline weight loss calorie intake without exercise. If you did no running at all, that is what you should eat. Now you need to account for those runs since they’ll be burning up energy as well. As noted, I would recommend adding around 50 calorie per kilometer that you run. So if you were heading out for a 3 km run that evening, you now need to add another 150 calories to your daily total calorie intake. By taking this two-pronged approach, it becomes easier to match your energy consumption with your energy expenditure. You could just set a calorie intake target for each and every day, but the problem with that is that it will likely leave you either taking in too many calories on days you aren’t running or taking in too few calorie on days that you are.

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2. FOCUS YOUR CARB TIMING WISELY Once you have your calorie intake worked out properly to accommodate your running, you need to also make sure you are being mindful of timing your food properly. This means taking in energy providing foods when you need them most – before and after your run. Fail to take the necessary nutrients in at this time and you will fail to see the performance you’d like to. What you should be doing is of the calorie that you are adding to your diet due to your runs, add them in healthy carbohydrate format (oats, brown rice, quinoa, barley, fruit) before and after that run. This will give you the energy that you need to get through those runs without a problem. Then during the time periods that you aren’t doing your running, you should be focusing on basing your diet around lean proteins, vegetables, and healthy fats. By taking this approach, you’ll prime your body for fat loss, seeing better results.

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3. DON’T NEGLECT PROTEIN The next nutrient that runners need to take extra special care and attention over is their protein consumption. Many runners get into a ‘carb craze’ where they have a tendency to really overdo the carbohydrates they are consuming at the expense of lean protein. Remember, as a runner, you will be breaking down body tissues on each and every run you do. If you aren’t supplying your body with the building blocks it needs to rebuild these tissues back up so they’re as strong or stronger than before, you’re just going to get weaker and weaker and eventually suffer a large decline in performance. Protein is what provides these building blocks. Protein should be consumed both before as well as after your run and it should also be eaten all throughout the day with each snack and meal that you consume as well. By optimizing your protein intake, you can make sure that you are recovering quickly between your workout sessions and making the process of fat loss easier on yourself as well. Higher protein diets will help you maintain a higher overall metabolic rate as well as help you reduce the amount of hunger you experience throughout the day due to the fact that protein has very little impact on blood glucose levels. #everymomentcounts

4. CARB UP ONCE PER WEEK Finally, the last step to make sure you’re doing regularly is to carb up once per week. This weekly carb up, where you consume more carbohydrates than you typically would is a perfect way to make sure that your metabolism is running as strong as it should and to also ensure that you are going to have the ongoing energy you need to complete those runs. Lower carbohydrate diets – as you will likely be using to prompt faster fat loss – do tend to have negative implications on your total metabolic rate. If you stay on these diets too long without ever breaking, negative side effects are seen including that sluggish metabolic rate and very slow weight loss progression. Not to mention that your energy levels during your runs will decline considerably as well. To help get past this, simply carb-up once per week. Take in around 75-100 grams of carbohydrates within a 3 hour period in addition to your normal daily intake. As you add these carbs in to your meal plan, avoid dietary in the meal that you raise your intake. If you take in a high dose of carbohydrates along with a high dose of dietary fats, your chance of fat gain due to that meal will be much higher. By keeping the total fat consumed at a lower level, you’ll help to avoid any fat gain at all from eating those additional carbohydrates. Good choices of carbohydrates for this time would be things like brown rice, pancakes (prepared using lower fat recipes), bagels, pasta, or your favorite breakfast cereal. Indulge a little and you can use this as a type of ‘reward’ meal for all the hard work with following your plan. So there you have the primary points to know and remember for how you can best feed your body for optimal fat burning results. Eat right and you can feel great, perform great, and look great. #everymomentcounts

STRENGTH TRAINING While running is definitely giving you a great start on reaching your fat loss goals, strength training is really going to boost the results that you could be seeing one step further. Here’s why strength training is so vital to success. When someone wants to lose weight and simply chooses to diet, they have a very long road ahead of them. They have to decrease their calorie intake far lower than normal due to the fact they aren’t performing any exercise to raise their total calorie burn up higher. Also given the fact they aren’t exercising, they are at a very large risk for losing a combination of lean muscle mass as well as body fat. This is very bad news because your lean muscle is what keeps you looking fit and healthy and what also helps to keep your metabolism moving along at top speed. Muscle is highly metabolically active tissue and will burn up a lot of energy to simply maintain itself on a day to day basis.

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The ultimate goal of any diet is to avoid the loss of all muscle and only promote the loss of body fat. If you do this, then you will become a leaner, fitter, new you. However, if you do lose muscle mass tissue, then it is possible that you will end up looking softer and less toned even though you have lost weight. This is precisely what you want to avoid since while you may be lighter on the scale, you could look even worse than before. Now, since you aren’t doing no exercise at all but instead, you are running, you will help to side step some of these issues. You will be applying some degree of stress to the body, so from that regard, you won’t be as at-risk of lean muscle mass loss. That said, you do need to be careful. If you are doing too much running and using a very low calorie diet, you can actually see opposite results – lean muscle mass loss. While running can provide some protective effects at moderate levels, at high levels, it will promote loss of muscle since muscle is heavy tissue that your body would definitely like to do without.

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All of this said, running is definitely a better option than simply doing no exercise at all. But, if you really want to take things to the next level, then I would strongly recommend that you start on a strength training program as well. With strength training, you will be applying a much higher level of direct force to the muscles, really hitting them with that overloading stimulus. The result of this? Much greater muscle mass maintenance. When you combine both strength training and running together, you will be doing a much better job at making sure you maintain as much lean muscle mass as possible, while strictly burning up body fat. What’s more is that if you are strength training intensely enough, you will also see a very strong metabolic boost once the workout is over, which will then mean that you can eat far more food and still lose weight – or you can lose weight faster than you otherwise would. A properly designed strength training program can easily increase your resting metabolic rate for up to 48 hours after the workout is completed. So if you were performing a strength training workout routine three times per week for instance, this is going to mean that you will see a faster metabolic rate all throughout the day – every day of the week. It’s really a win-win as far as fat loss is concerned. And, this doesn’t even make mention of the fact that you will have stronger muscles fueling each workout you do, which can then translate to greatly improved running performance. Regular strength training is also critical for runners as it will help them avoid any injuries as well due to the fact that your bones, ligaments, and tendons will be that much stronger.

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So as you can see, when it comes to weight loss, the progression of effectiveness is: 1. Diet only – can lead to muscle loss and requires a very low calorie intake 2. Diet plus running – leads to fitness increase, but can also lead to muscle mass loss 3. Diet plus running plus strength training – the most optimal solution for building leaner, fitter, new you Hopefully you can now see the value in adding some strength training to your running routine. When it comes to adding that strength training, you’ll want to focus on full body workout sessions. These will allow you to hit the muscle groups at an optimal frequency level, doing two to three workouts per week. It will till also give you sufficient down time between these workouts in order to get in your runs and also promote a faster recovery rate as well. Too much exercise overall, especially while dieting needs to be avoided, particularly when on a reduced calorie intake. If you do that, you can quickly move into overtraining mode. Focus on designing these programs using compound exercises such as bench presses, bent over rows, shoulder presses, leg presses, squats, deadlifts, and lunges.

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These will work more muscle fibers at once, thus produce a higher metabolic boosting effect and also help you burn calories faster both during as well as after the workout is completed. I would strongly try out one of our strength training challenges, which will give you a great goal to work toward, all while reaping these benefits. Remember to gradually build up your strength training program. Just like with running, you definitely don’t want to make the mistake of too much, too soon or you will be sidelined with injuries or burnout in no time. So there you have your complete runners guide to fat loss.

Remember that at no point should you ever sacrifice good health and fitness for any weight loss results. Too many runners go to the extreme, using a very low calorie diet and running their body into the ground by working out too often throughout the week. If you do this, you’ll only burn yourself out, cause a loss of muscle, possibly create an injury, and be completely miserable in your day to day life. Instead, choose a wiser approach. One that focuses on moderation – getting you to that end goal in a safe and effective manner. If you do this, once you do lose the weight, you’ll want to continue on leading the active lifestyle for years to come.

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