Long distance runners - what do you eat?!

Which marathon are you targeting OP? Porridge is great fuel - I mix nuts, seeds and cinnamon into mine. Chia Charge flapjacks are also great (peanut butter favour is amazing). Post run I chuck a frozen banana with milk, nut butter and protein powder in a blender or choc milk also v.good. I need to eat solid food on my long runs and not just gels as my stomach gets sore! Tailwind is also good

Oh I didn't realise how late I was to this thread - apologies!

Don't forget that if you are stressing your body immensely through intense exercise, and don't replenish through sufficient rest and nutrients, your system will react as if to a crisis and suck energy out of processes that are considered non-essential for immediate self-preservation in order to fuel your survival. Those non-essential processes are things like maintaining immunity, fertility, cell renewal (ie healing) and also growth, so you won't even be gaining strength through the extra activity, and will also be effectively fast-forwarding the aging process. Your hormones will be a mess.

The likely consequence is that you will feel exhausted and depressed and eventually hate running. It's really no good.

I've been through similar stuff, although I'm nothing like the athlete you are. Don't lose that positive passion and all your work so far by overdoing it. Let everyone see your health and strength carry you far!

The runners world cook book is good. Do you like nuts? They’re good to carry around to snack on. Try smaller amounts more frequently if you’re feeling sick

Read this article - it's aimed at parents/coaches etc supporting high school athletes but the same applies to adults as well.

And this - a post called eating yourself out of overtraining.

It takes me a while to feel hungry after a very long run (in fact it's usually the day after that I feel the calorie deficit).

Try having a banana milk shake/smoothie as soon as you are back.

That will give you the boost you need. Then after a shower and a pootle have egg on toast.

You need to shake off the old thoughts you had when you were trying to lose weight. Listen to your body and nourish it and it won't let you down.

It’s good your boyfriend is concerned. It took a drunken conversation with my husband to make me see that I couldn’t keep restricting and running/exercising. I’ve always been very open to call out problematic eating that I see with my friends (long history of friend with anorexia that made me promise myself never to ‘keep quiet’) but I didn’t see it when it was me. I was tottering around BMI 18.5, I had all these rules about eating, I was pale, tired, snappy. And I had a lollipop head

A year on, I don’t calorie count anymore. I rarely weigh myself but I know I’m nearly 2kg - 4 whole pounds - heavier than last Christmas I’m also a better body shape - my clothes are still getting looser. That’s because I can lift heavier weights, attack my sport with vigour, and I enjoy running again - I feel strong doing it.

Buy a bag of nuts and nibble on them through the day. Eat full fat Greek yogurt and add some more seeds to your breakfast. Swap the banana for an apple + peanut butter or add a chunk of cheese.

You want to be fit, not fragile.

Bfast: 150 kcal? Depends what a "tablespoon" means
Snack: 100-150 kcal
Lunch: depends how big...
Snack: 134 kcal

It reads like you got to 7pm on less than 800 kcal. Your supper will need to be enormous to get you to 2400 kcal for the day.

The above is, BTW, from concern, and in a tone of ‘swift boot up the arse’. I’m not having go

Your BMR, the number of calories required to keep you alive while lying in bed doing nothing, is 1400 a day (I searched and found your age). Add in intense exercise and you’re up to 2400 maintenance. Maintenance

You’re taking your training seriously. This means you have any number of gadgets and apps that are telling you how many calories you’ve burned on any given run. If you don’t, I can tell you you’ll be around 1700 burned on a half distance (guess, based on my own calorie burn of 1450 but also I’m smaller and lighter). You’re running hard too, so maybe chuck more on top.

You see this and think ‘Brilliant, I’ll bank that, I’m not hungry anyway’?. I used to. I’ve been there. You will get ill. Small injuries take longer to heal. Your legs become drained.

You’re close to underweight. In fact, if you have a full six pack (another thread) and aren’t a pro body builder, you almost certainly are. Your body fat is very low.

Healthy athletes eat properly. Ennis-Hill doesn’t do this, the Williams sisters don’t do this.

Chocolate milk is a good recovery drink for the end of a LSR - it's got a decent ratio of protein/carbs, and it's easy to get down if you don't feel like eating straight away. Good luck.

Agree with MaidOfStars. I think you're struggling to up the calories to the level you need and in fact you are continuing to restrict, perhaps even more now you realise that running + calorie restriction= further weight loss. I find it really, really hard to believe that you would 'forget' to have breakfast before a 2.5 hr run. I ran 14m this Saturday and knew I had to build in time to eat before I did anything else (I can and do run up to 12m or so fasted but no further)

And I say this from a place of concern. Everything you've described reminds me painfully of myself some time ago. I didn't pull it back in time and ended up with a significant eating disorder, my periods stopped and I was very ill for a while. My periods never returned and even at a healthy weight I needed IVF to conceive my first child. It took me a long, long time to disentangle running/eating/calories/body image and reconfigure it in a healthy way. Like you I lost weight initially and then got seriously into running and training which is when the problems properly started.

Hopefully you did eat all that pasta and will continue to eat more healthfully - please, please do. And good luck with the marathon!

You’re right on the lower end of the healthy BMI scale. You cannot keep losing weight.

If the weight is dropping off you ‘like no tomorrow’, you are eating nowhere near enough calories.

If you can’t rationalise that lots of running + not eating properly + scared to put on weight = eating disorder territory, the you need to have a long think.

Calorie dense food. Nuts, butter, etc.

And I agree that 55 miles a week is overtraining.

I ran a sub 3:45 marathon and have never run that mileage. I did one speed work session of one hour. One up tempo run up to 13 miles and then one long run at race pace.
I've moved on to ultra marathons now and only hit 55-60 miles at the peak of my training.
If you are running more than four times then cut a run out.
I'm no expert but I have done Ironman triathlons and relied heavily on Hi-5 4:1 carbohydrate drink straight after training. It definitely aided my recovery and replenished my carbs to stop me dropping too much weight when the training got to approx 20 hours a week. Good luck!

runners world has loads of info about nutrition including post-run recovery nutrition, like this article. RW seems very keen on protein (some articles say 10-20 grams right away), and advocate there that you get some food in within 30 minutes of run-end (within 15 minutes in this article).

Op I'm certainly no expert, but I found eating lots of good fats and protein was the best thing for my running. Don't be worried about eating fats, I didn't gain weight whilst eating these and it really helped my running. Good luck!

@abbsisspartacus 😂

Actually what Ultra said as well! I start my training next week for my spring marathon but my top mileage is only about 30-35 miles at the top end of my training.

Are you following a plan? The mileage seems excessive for a marathon.

So you ran for roughly 2.5 hours at a pretty speedy pace after eating nothing? No wonder you felt rotten, you are going to burn out.
You cannot maintain that kind of speed/distance for training on what you’re eating.

DS asked about how many calories he eats so I was studying bagel packaging earlier (DS has bagel for breakfast daily).

One bagel = 240 kcal, so half = 120. I sure hope you put some butter or cream cheese on there, too.

Like I said, nutrition is part of your performance plan, now.