photo credit: size8jeans
It’s not only possible to lose weight as an endurance athlete at a low-volume training time, it’s actually the best possible time to do it. There are minimal performance goals and you have plenty of extra time to spend the energy on a new approach to food organization and preparation. Yes, it’s a huge downer to be focused on healthy eating habits over Thanksgiving and the Winter holiday season…but for many endurance athletes simply not gaining the winter five pounds (forget losing) is a significant start.
In the fall of 2009, after running a sub-3 marathon at 188 lbs, with no more races on the calendar, I was ready to tackle my biggest event of the season: dropping weight. In the past six weeks I have dropped 12 lbs, down to a very lean 176 lbs (I am 6′ 2″ tall). I can actually see abdominal muscles, am noticeably faster on the run (and recover more quickly!) and had to buy a whole new set of pants and even a new belt. And since I am spending almost $50 less per week on food as I eat less, these additional clothing purchases aren’t a problem.
After swearing I’d never have six-pack abs, I am tantalizingly close and incredibly faster on my runs with no additional training. Getting lean is not just part of becoming a healthier human being, it’s also a distinct competitive advantage.
Here are the very simple rules that I have followed…
Rule #1: Avoid White, Processed Carbs as well as Most Dairy
Cutting out these carbohydrates can have a significant impact on the quality of your daily diet: bread, pasta, rice, cereal, potatoes, etc. The only time I consider this type of food is either just before or just after a workout. By workout I mean exercise of 45 minutes or more in duration; with longer and/or harder efforts requiring more calories to for recovery, although not all of them should be from carbs (see below). Dropping dairy is a bit edgier, I know, but understanding that dairy has high calories per serving of nutrients has driven me to find similar consistent sources of vitamin D and calcium elsewhere. Milk might not have a high glycemic load, but I find it doesn’t satiate me. Dropping cheese wasn’t a problem, but I miss my yogurt. One of my “treats” is a cup of organic plain yogurt with a scoop of vanilla whey protein stirred in.
Rule #2: Eat Sensible Amounts of Good Food, aka Roughage Isn’t The Answer.
I like to eat a lot of food, and it’s predominantly a behavioral issue — I like to take lots of food and spend time eating it…frequently. Changing what you eat, and eating tons of low-calorie foods, taking supplements or even eating lots of “good” foods isn’t the answer. Ideally you will give your body what it needs so it doesn’t need lots of food. Identify good sources of lean protein and built them into effective, easy-for-you-to-prepare quality meals that are filling because of the content and not because you had three pounds of romaine lettuce.
Rule #3: Make Recovery Into A Meal.
Partly to save time and partly to get the protein my muscles need after a tough workout, I have been making a recovery shake (1 cup Almond Milk, 1 banana, 1 scoop Whey Protein). To make the impact of the shake greater, I add ice (6 cubes) and almost another cup of water. This gets my body what it needs after a tough workout, helps to hydrate me and fills me up pretty quickly. I am only doing one workout session a day right now in the OutSeason, so the rest of my day is spent eating as well as I can.
Rule #4: Define Eating Times & Develop Portion Control.
The concept of grazing has always been a challenge for me…I just like to eat and I have a sweet tooth. Nuff said. But the incredible results from making these two basic changes have really transformed how I approach eating.
The first part is as simple as it is tough: No Food After 7pm. I don’t watch TV, but I do spend a lot of time working at night. Snacking was part thinking crutch, part staying awake for these marathon sessions of work. Without thinking, I could easily plow through a ton of high calorie food and just before bed! Now I eat a really solid dinner and wrap up all eating by 7pm. If I am really hurting I might have a glass of wine or a diet coke, but that’s it. The first few days were tough but now it’s just what I do.
The second part, portion control, is also critical. Even good food can add up to have a high metabolic cost if you eat unlimited amounts of it. If you have a self-diagnosed portion problem (think: you like to eat ice cream out of the container, not a bowl), this should be your top priority. Put all snacks in small tupperware containers; serve dinner/full meals on a salad plate. Many times we want to keep eating when we don’t need to; our brain hasn’t gotten the “full” message from the stomach and sometimes just having some water and waiting a few minutes will do the trick.
Rule #5: Tricks, Tweaks and an Eating Holiday
I am no angel with what I do eat, consuming too much coffee and chewing enough gum to power a small generator. Here are the things that help me when my brain wants to eat but my body doesn’t need to.
- Hunger Testing Protocol: Two glasses of water. If you think you might be hungry, try two 8-oz glasses of water and wait five minutes. If you are still hungry, then consider a small healthy snack.
- Behavioral Hunger Issue / Oral Fixation? I use chewing gum and/or hard candy to keep my mouth busy when I am not eating. I am not starving myself, but I know very well when I do or don’t need to eat. These little treats get me my sweet fix without compromising my diet goals.
- One Binge Meal A Week. On this day you can eat anything you want. Yes, anything. First it’s good for your body to have nutritional variety (even the bad kind), and mentally this makes “staying good” with your food that much easier. Besides, if you are anything like me, lean you will be excited to eat badly but will quickly tire of just pounding food. And you can’t do that much damage in a single meal (really).
Common Pitfalls
The above advice is perhaps overly simple, but it’s certainly effective. Tackling body composition is not an easy journey, and to be done right a long-term commitment to eating and living well needs to be made. Many approach the weight challenge with insane reams of data regarding calories and glycemic index numbers, additional widgets they add to their computers and/or phones, or even complicate eating by taking supplements or appetite suppressants. The simpler your final protocol is, the more likely it is that you will be able to start — and continue — to execute it.
Many of these activities become ends in and of themselves, putting another obstacle between you and your lean goals. Sure, counting calories is potentially effective over the short-term. But the point is that you learn (A) how many calories you need at a given time and (B) choose good food to provide those calories when needed…not to become the best, most consistent calorie tracking fool in North America. Develop an understanding, identify means to meet your needs, execute. Repeat.
Here’s a short list of some of the activities/things you want to avoid if at all possible:
- Counting Calories: Fun at first, this quickly becomes a zero sum game that encourages you to pick “less” over picking good, healthy foods. Instead, learn to eat well and experiment with eating less than you do right now. Get used to being just a little hungry. There are some really crappy food substitutes with labeling that screams No Fat! and Natural Flavors! Just because apples, oranges and grapes come in budget clear plastic bags (maybe we should change that!?) doesn’t mean they aren’t good for you.
- Appetite Suppressants: Very appealing but not effective (or healthy). Any time you need to add a pill to remove a problem (aside from a medical one), seems like a really bad idea to me. As an athlete, your body sends out hunger signals for a reason. Learning to discern when they are related to boredom (like after 8pm at night when you watch Law & Order: Criminal Intent) or a true need (after two glasses of water and waiting 10′ you are still hungry) is a hard-earned, incredibly valuable skill. Simply outsourcing that responsibility to a pill really defeats the whole purpose of this exercise.
- Meal Replacements: I think really just a different flavor of the above piece on suppressants. Simply swapping out what you eat now for some pre-packaged item or shake isn’t the goal; making an appropriate food choice you can repeat is what will “stick.”
- Setting Unreasonable Goals: Without a doubt, this is the biggest pitfall of all. People set some ridiculously challenging goals for themselves under the assumption that harder is more motivating. In reality easily achieved yet incrementally harder goals are far more effective. Instead of committing to never eating chocolate again, you can defer yummy chocolate to your Binge Day and find other low-calorie ways to get a chocolate fix during the week (think easy to find or even an organic option). Here are two examples:
If your goal involves you saying “never” or “no more” to a particular food choice, it probably won’t work. Develop the discipline to have some (not all!) of your yummy treat and you’ll be much happier person. Hint — if you wouldn’t ask your spouse / friend / child to do it, then you shouldn’t ask yourself. You’re human too!
Conclusion
At the end of the day lot of endurance athletes eat more food than they need and even use exercise as the excuse to eat poorly. They consider the exercise regimen “work” and treat sweets and other foods as “rewards.” This same mentality kept me about 6% over what I would consider my optimal weight — the place where I swim, bike, and run (and live!) at my best.
Learning to live “lean” as I am right now, is as much habit and repetition as it is hard work. Properly managing your food intake is definitely not easy, but the incentives are high. Here’s just one example, confirmed with my personal (but not scientific) 5k repeat testing. Conventional wisdom holds that losing a pound can mean a running speed gain of about two seconds per mile. Since my weight loss, my threshold pace has dropped from 6:10/mile to the low 5:50s — in 6 weeks, during the OutSeason with minimal work.
Come to think of it, running 24 seconds faster per mile would have put me onto the age group podium at Timberman 70.3 this past year. Now that’s incentive!
Keep me posted on your journey!
Hi, I'm Patrick McCrann. 
