The Ultimate Guide To Weight Loss For Runners 2024

are you a runner looking to lose weight well the world of weight loss combined with running can be a confusing place with lots of conflicting advice being thrown around if you're after safe evidence-based advice to help you lose weight and enjoy running then this is the video for you we're going to run through my three-part system that's going to simplify things and leave you feeling confident that you have everything that you need to lose weight and hit your goals and if you're new here then hey my name is James and I'm a registered Sports and exercise nutritionist I work with amateur and professional endurance athletes to help them train and race better improve their recovery and do all of this while staying healthy and happy so earlier this year I worked with an athlete who wanted to lose weight they had tried it before on their own and had moderate success they had tried different diets like intermittent fasting and calorie restriction and although they had had some success they found that they felt frazzled burnt out fatigued motivation and willpower were down and they were struggling to recover as as well so when I started working with them I wanted to change this because realistically you can still feel good whilst losing weight and we did exactly that they felt amazing and reported that things like fatigue and Recovery were so much better and were able to lose weight successfully and also hit PBS in all of their races so what we're going to do today is run through the principles that I used when working with this athlete and show you how you can apply it to yourself now all of this starts with the basic principles of weight loss which if you break it down is simply calories in and calories out now of course it is a little bit more nuanced than this but in very simple terms if you want to lose weight you need to be in a calorie deficit being in a calorie deficit simply means using more calories than you consume on a daily basis and in order to lose weight you need to do this consistently over time so for example if you account for exercise you might be expending 2 ,500 calories per day but if you only eat 2,000 calories per day you're in a calorie deficit and if you keep this up over time you'll lose weight and this is actually as complicated or perhaps as simple as it needs to be because if you go more complex than this you can actually make things confusing and it really doesn't need to be now where running comes into this is that it contributes to more calories expended on a daily basis so what I mean there is that without running you might need to consume 1,00 calories per day to be able to lose weight but if you add running in you could eat 2,000 calories per day and lose weight which generally makes people feel a bit better cuz they're consuming more food now that's not to say you have to run or exercise in order to lose weight I'm just trying to give you an example with calories because the other important thing to say is that running is so beneficial for you in so many ways it's great for your cardiovascular health for your gut health it reduces the risk of cancer and diabetes and it's amazing for your mental health so the actual health benefits of running in themselves shouldn't be underestimated now when it comes to using running or weight loss it's really important to just say that you need to start at whatever Fitness level you're already at so if you're new to running don't suddenly go and run every day and think that you need to be able to do this in order to lose weight and run for 30 minutes or 60 minutes because that's not the case and actually that's more likely to lead to injury illness and actually burning out and not being able to stick to it consistently over time consistency is the most important thing when it comes to weight loss so you need to bear this in mind and pick an exercise plan or running plan that you're able to comfortably sustain over time start slow and build up and also be aware that being in a calorie deficit which is what you need for losing weight is going to put your body under more stress so it's naturally going to be harder we are going to talk about this a a little bit later on in the video but using the 10% rule is a nice rule of thumb to get you started for your weekly mileage or kilometers that you've run don't go more than 10% the next week and that should keep you roughly in the safe sort of margin and reduce the risk of you overdoing it before you really get started with actually losing weight it's really important to set some realistic goals and have realistic expectations a realistic aim is to lose between 0.5 to 1 K of weight per week and don't expect to lose more weight than this and that's for two main reasons firstly it's to get you in the right mindset and mental frame of mind for losing weight and not to expect too much too soon it's really common for people to be motivated at the start of their weight loss journey and want to lose loads of weight the problem is though the faster you lose weight the harder it is on your body and the more likely you are to run into health risks so that's the second thing to say which is the losing weight at a quicker rate isn't necessarily better there's something called relative energy deficiency in sport which is getting more publicity and more people are aware of it which is brilliant Reds is simply a group term to describe problems that can happen with your cardiovascular system your hormonal system reproductive system your bone health and your mood and this can be caused by excessive weight loss or excessive calorie deficits essentially a sign significant energy deficiency which is repeated over time and essentially the main thing here is making sure that you aren't in too significant a calorie deficit and we're going to speak about calorie amounts in a little bit before we go any further though I think it's worth highlighting that some of you may not actually need to lose weight you should honestly ask yourself if you actually need to lose weight and whether there's going to be positive health benefits from you doing so as a rough Benchmark if your BMI is under 22.5 then you probably shouldn't be trying to lose weight if your BMI is over that that doesn't necessarily mean that you still need to lose weight but it's some rough guidance for all of you watching on YouTube so let's say that you've decided you're going to lose weight you need two things and one of them is a good running plan and the second is a good nutrition plan your running plan needs to be personal to you if you haven't really ran before and you're just starting then 10 minutes a day or 10 minutes every other day might be absolutely perfect for you you can then build this up over time do different types of runs as you get more confident with it and basically have fun as you're losing weight if you're already an experienced Runner then my advice is usually to swap your mindset to training for weight loss rather than training for performance so what I mean by that is don't try to hit new PBS or push your mileage as far as you can and instead realize that actually you're going to be better off just making sure that you consistently hit training sessions or your targets rather than always trying to push it that extra little bit further in an Ideal World you might do different types of runs so you might do long slow runs and you might do some high intensity work as well my preference when it comes to running is to make about 80% of your training really easy and we're talking about 60 to 70% of maximum heart rate the sort of running where you can breathe in and out fully through your nose the other 20% can be high-intensity training if you feel comfortable or confident doing that one of the common misconceptions I've had from working with runners in the past is that they think that every run has to be hard and you have to feel knackered afterwards but that's absolutely not the case so then you need to make sure that your nutrition is good too and obviously that's something that I'm rather keen on to start with I would always suggest that someone knew to the weight loss game does an audit of their food for at least one week now this might be something as simp simple as logging all of your food or drink in a diary or journal or it might be using a calorie counting app and being far more exact with it there's two reasons for doing this and the first is that it's really important and useful to have a log of what you're eating sometimes this is all someone needs to actually be able to start losing weight because they look at the log and they go I'm eating loads of this or I'm drinking loads of sugary drinks and that's putting my calories way out if I change that that's going to bring everything back into balance and that's all I need it can be really eye opening doing this and I would strongly encourage this as the first thing when it comes to losing weight the other reason for doing this and why calorie counting can be useful especially at the start is the aim isn't actually to eat as few calories as possible and actually to be in a right calorie deficit or an appropriate calorie deficit and not make it too severe while there might be some individual variation these are the sort of calorie amounts that I would recommend for the average person and I'd love to know if you think this is what you expected or actually this is more calories than you thought you might be able to eat whilst still losing weight we'll talk about tracking and monitoring later on in the video but I would suggest following these sorts of numbers for a couple of weeks and just seeing what your weight is doing if you need to you can always then change this calorie number by either eating more or eating less based on how fast or how slow that you're losing weight now when it comes to what diet to follow to lose weight realistically you can follow any diet and you can eat any food and still lose weight but there are some basic principles that I would suggest that you should follow the most important thing is that you stick to it consistently over time and diets that restrict the sort of foods that you enjoy eating are often not sustainable which is why I don't suggest following those before any any sort of run so whether that's a short easy run long run intervals whatever it is I suggest having at least 20 G of carbohydrates for reference that might be something like a banana or a sports gel or bar if you're going to be doing intervals then I suggest at least one gram of carbohydrates per kilogram of body weight because intervals are higher intensity and at higher intensities you'll use more carbohydrates compared to fat and you need to make sure that you have have adequate carbohydrate supplies because that's where your body gets most of its energy from during high-intensity exercise it's really important not to skimp on this and it's one area that you can optimize and actually really improve how well you run how much you enjoy it and actually how well you recover too now I've actually got a free video module for you on my website which covers what to eat before I run in far more detail and you can go and check that out if you want I put a link in the description and in the comment section of this video now after your run there's kind of two methods or ways to think about your recovery nutrition and it is really important to get this right too because it can make a significant difference to how well you feel and actually reduce the risk of Cravings or overeating later on in the day because you haven't consumed enough in that post recovery time frame if you're going to be eating within 45 minutes of finishing your run session then just have a normal meal with a good source of carbohydrates and protein and that's perfect and really all you need to do if on the other hand you know it's going to be more than 45 minutes before you can eat anything then you should have a high protein recovery snack my advice is to have between 20 to 40 g of protein along with some carbohydrates in this postr run recovery snack and that should just hide you over until you're able to eat your normal main meal after the runner who I worked with earlier in the year had a real problem with their recovery they found that they weren't recovering well after sessions just feeling a bit beaten up muscles always hurting and feeling fatigued when we optimize their recovery nutrition it made such a difference to them so I can't stress this enough how important this is because it really will reduce the risk of injuring yourself or burning out and just mean that you can stick to your diet consistently over time and keep running as well it's also important to make sure that you have recovery days so don't feel like you need to exercise or run every single day in order to lose weight because that's simply not true and actually it can be far more beneficial to make sure that you build in those recovery days because it means you get a physical and mental break and that's really important we know that lack of sleep makes it much harder to follow a diet and people make worse food choices so you're actually going to really benefit Yourself by sleeping well and prioritizing that because you'll be able to stick to your diet better so really what I'm saying in this whole section is you're not looking for as fast or severe as possible you're actually trying to do it as slow as possible because this is going to keep you healthier it's going to keep you safer and it's going to make you feel far better whilst doing it so you can enjoy it and not feel frazzled whilst trying to lose weight so let's say that you've got your training plan sorted you've got your nutrition plan sorted and you're feeling awesome about it and everything's going well what can you do to to keep yourself on track and also in case there are slight hiccups or you go through some bumpy patches what can you do to keep yourself motivated one of the things which you could do is to join a running club and this can be an amazing thing to do if you want to take the pressure off of always feeling like you're running just to lose weight or want a bit of a social element to your running I know so many Runners who have joined running clubs and been so happy they did because they've made friends and met with likeminded people and it really brings that new element to their running you might also decide to book a race and actually this is something which I do over the winter periods because it gives me that end goal and kind of gives me a reason to keep going when I'm not necessarily feeling like I want to run now this might not be for everyone and you don't have to do it but it can be a really useful tool for keeping you on track I think one of the things which is underappreciated as well is just how good running can be for your mental health it can be so liberating to go out the door and leave your stress behind you so sometimes when you're out there you just forget and you can zone out don't think of it just as running for weight loss think of it as you're running for you and for a better healthier you because there is so much more to it yes the weight loss side of things is perhaps your main aim but don't underestimate the other benefits that you're going to get from from it now when it comes to tracking your weight loss my suggestion is to weigh yourself once a week and I don't really recommend weighing yourself any more frequently than that you can get really significant changes in your weight on a day-to-day basis and we're talking as much as about 2 kilos of weight and if you weigh yourself more frequently than once a week you can get into a really negative mindset because of these fluctuations what starts happening is people decide their calories or their training based on their weight on that day and we don't want that we want you to be following a safe and sustainable plan and we also want you to stay positive find a day where you can predictably know that you're going to be eating roughly the same sort of thing exercising the same sort of amount in the previous 24 hours so when you wear yourself in the morning you can do that reliably every week you could also use apps to plan your training and your nutrition to make sure that you're staying within the right sort of calorie amounts and to make sure that you're following a sustainable Progressive running plan this can be really useful especially from the training point of view I don't necessarily recommend that you calorie count all the time or forever because you don't need to and it would be better to learn the sort of foods that you're eating or the meals or the recipes how many calories are in those roughly and how they might correlate to your training and where you are with your goals but it can be really useful to check in periodically with something like a calorie counting app just to see where you're at with things and make sure that you're in that good safe range so we've been through the nutritional side of things the training side of things and talked about how you want to balance your running and your diet and be able to stick to it consistently over time but there's one more thing which is really important for me to say and that's to have fun with your running your running should be enjoying enable it might not always be fun especially if you're doing a hard session or a long session however in general your running should be fun and if it's not that's a real flag to actually check in and make sure that everything is in Balance make sure you are eating enough that you're not overdoing the intensity or the amount of training that you're able to do make sure that you're recovering well sleeping well hydrating all of those simple basic things if that starts going off then you can reassess and make changes as necessary to get you back into balance one of the things I talked about earlier in the video was how important your nutrition can be for your recovery and how it can make such a difference and I've ran through this in another video and I've put it up on the screen for you so you can go and check it out

Channel: Nutrition Triathlon

Views: 48,415

Keywords: running for weight loss, running, weight loss, walking or running for weight loss, weight loss for runners, how to lose weight running, running plan for weight loss

Id: oQZh2uWLdWg

Length: 17min 48sec (1068 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 07 2024