Food Diary

Here is a screen shot of what I plan to eat tomorrow (race day) taken from myfitnesspal.com:

I love this website because you can enter your weight and other information and it will tell you how much you would weigh at a certain point in the future based on your diet each day. It's motivating! There are a few things that I don't like about it, so I ignore them. Primarily, the number of grams of protein it suggests and the number of grams of carbs. As you can see, it thinks I will be consuming way to many grams of protein. Personally, I think it's a little low given that it's a race day. Also, it thinks I'm consuming too few carbs. That might actually be true for a race day, but I only want to consume carbs before the race and the race is early.

You might also notice that it recommends 1,802 calories as my goal. I think that's pretty good for a race day. In general it recommends 1500 and adds additional calories based on exercise. For this entry I input an estimated time and pace for the race tomorrow. For optimum weight loss and strength training, I think a roughly 500 calorie per day deficit is a good thing. 1 pound corresponds to roughly 1000 calories, so a 500 calorie per day deficit amounts to roughly 2.5 pounds of weight loss per week. In reality, a high protein and the corresponding muscle gain will offset some of that weight loss, which is fine.

In general, if you account for eating more than this in reality (humans are weak), the fact that running a 4k results in burning more than 272 calories, muscle gain, and the inherent error in all of these measurements I would conservatively predict 10 pounds in 1.5 to 2 months. Keep in mind that this would amount to a higher degree of fat loss as muscle is much more dense than fat.

I would also like to make clear that one should only limit themselves to this few calories while they are both training and trying to lose weight. Once an optimum weight is reached, caloric intake should go up by a pretty decent amount (depending on the continuation of physical activity).

I would recommend keeping a food diary on myfitnesspal and posting the entry each day. I plan to do that starting day! :)

Trial run and Foot Numbness

Kait and I hit up the firecracker 4k course for a practice run in preparation for race day (July 4th). Our time was a blistering 28:48 which wasn't too bad given that we were both pretty tight and the course pretty much sucks (certainly not one of my favorite). There is no doubt in my mind that we can shave a couple of minutes off of that on race day. I'd like for us to get under 26:00, but that might be pushing it for a 4k this early in our training.

Kait experienced some numbness in her feet towards the end of the run which isn't uncommon, but is a serious pain in the butt (and feet). For me, I find that this generally occurs when I first get back into running, get a new pair of shoes (especially when I get new shoes), or run on the treadmill (less frequently). I've read numerous articles that suggest that it may be due to feet swelling during a more intense workout. I've run with quite a few new runners and they all seem to have this problem at some point or another, which leads me to believe that it's a combination of swelling feet, tight tendons in the feet and shoes that have not fully broken in yet. As the article suggests, it's common, but something worth keeping an eye on.

In other news, I'm starting to think about a training diet and will be posting my suggested diet in the next couple of days (if not later tonight). I think it's important to start tracking meals sooner rather than later. Ideally one would plan all meals in advance based on the desired caloric intake and distribution. A good website for such planning or on the fly assessments is fitness pal . You can make an account and get the nutrition information for individual food items or recipes. It's a great place to store foods that you commonly eat and it even allows you to track your workouts. It has a lot of nifty features, more than I've ever used. It even has an app for your phone!! Oh the world we live in...

Jess