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RE: September 2013 - The Fear Mounts
I’ve long been curious about weight loss, calorie intake and diet in general. It seems such a simple equation: calorie intake - less calories burned = weight lost or gained. And yet for a long time we had the French paradox of high fat and high alcohol diets yielding little or no obesity and similarly low levels of heart disease among the French.
And now we have the so-called American paradox, which is the reverse, whereby in recent years Americans have lowered their average daily calorie intake (one study says it is now well below the recommended daily requirement) and yet obesity levels have continued to rise.
I also see odd paradoxes amongst my own friends and workmates. I’ve often been puzzled by obese people at work who seem to eat hardly anything much at all during the day. Do they cram bucket-loads of fatty foods into themselves at night, I wondered? Well, clearly not. They’re generally intelligent, sensible people who do not eat themselves stupid at home. Yet they are technically obese.
I did my own self-testing over the last seven days. I’m not exactly overweight, but have about 2kgs of excess belly fat I’d like to shift before race day. So for seven days I checked my calorie intake carefully and exercised vigorously every day. Despite three nights of meals with friends which of course made things difficult, I averaged a respectable 2,014 calories per day. In theory this is 500 – 600 calories below my recommended daily intake. However, given that I ran 51 km over four days and did strenuous gym sessions on the other three days, this intake of 2,014 calories should have been well below what I actually required, i.e. I should have seen a positive result in body composition.
In fact, the result was a weight gain of 0.3kg, a slight loss of muscle and most alarmingly, a big gain in body fat of 1.1%! Good God! Why?
Even more bizarre, the previous week I paid little attention to diet, ran only 15km and did maybe one or two desultory gym sessions, yet lost 1.3kg in weight and lost exactly the 1.1% of body fat that I gained in this week of careful diet and much exercise!
This is too weird. Of course the body is an organism, not a machine, and changes to your input and output parameters won’t show instantaneous changes to its structure, but still it is perplexing.
Looking back to my training and weight stats last year I see a similar pattern. When I ran hard and fast – around 200km per month, I gained weight and body fat and lost muscle. When I followed that with an easier month, the opposite happened – I lost weight and body fat and gained muscle.
The only slightly plausible explanation I’ve read for all of this seems to go something like this: in periods of alternating calorific intake, the body adapts to operate normally at the lower level as far as it can, i.e. it becomes remarkably efficient at processing low levels of calories. Then when your calorie intake increases, it rapidly stores what are by now excess calories as fat ready for the next lean period. In other words, the only sensible way to lose weight and/or maintain a healthy weight is to get there very gradually and eat as evenly as possible each day without rapid changes in calorie intake. Which means, therefore, that diets are counter-productive, and permanent lifestyle change is the only answer.
Well, maybe.
What I do know for sure is that I feel better when:
• I run at least 30km per week.
• I cross-train at least three times per week.
• I restrict my bread intake.
• I drink less alcohol.
If I continue to do that, I really don’t need to worry about my weight – it will (eventually) take care of itself.
Anyway, another good tempo run to report. After falling asleep in the train on the way home (again) after work, I really felt impossibly tired and dreading the prospect of a run. Just walking from the station was draining, so how could I do a challenging hour of fast running?
Well, I wouldn’t be much of an endurance runner if I let a bit of tiredness get in the way, now would I? And to be honest, that thought was the only thing that got me changed into my running gear. And of course, yes, it was very oddly another good run. A little over 11 kilometres in an hour is a good run by my standards any time, but when as tired as I was, this was a little beauty, so I’m very pleased. If there’s a bad run coming up, it doesn’t matter – this past week’s four runs have all been excellent and I’m feeling pumped (despite the weight gain and body fat increase).
11.2km, 1hr
YTD: 884.6km
A special track du jour is therefore required - and this one is a beauty:
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September 2013 - The Fear Mounts
