Halfway through marathon training & gaining weight......

[MrsFrankTurner]

.......despite being very aware of my nutrition and incoming/outgoing calories I'm running about 50km a week with my long run currently up to 2 hours the rest being interval/hills/tempo & fartleks. I also tap dance once a week and do a Pilates class.......I have cut out sugar & alcohol completely since new year (I am taking my training VERY seriously!) and I'm eating a high protein/low carb diet only eating brown rice/pasta, quinoa etc when I do have carbs and yet I've GAINED 5lb since I started training and 2lb in the past week ARGH why why why????? I have had a quick chat with Google and it seems I'm either not eating enough or I'm storing glycogen & water; I know I'm not eating too much and yet the temptation to reduce the calorie intake is overwhelming I did not expect to gain weight during blardy marathon training-anybody else experience this or got any words of wisdom to help?! After stepping off the scales this morning,very disheartened, I told DH I shall just eat dust from now on......

I'm no expert but here's my thoughts.

Could you be gaining muscle, which is heavy?

Ditch the scales. If you're doing that much exercise and have a healthy diet then what does it matter what you weigh? It's just a number. I bet the inches are falling away (if you have any left to lose).

Don't obsess about a couple of pounds here or there - that's no more than a decent poo!

I'm sure someone more scientific will be along shortly

But just cut yourself some slack - 2 pounds is really nothing and scales can be notoriously inaccurate and inconsistent.

at a poo:-) yes-think I'm being a bit irrational -I'm just trying very hard to be fit & healthy and I (wrongly!) associate weight gain with me doing something very obvious wrong!

Thank you

it's not unheard of is it, think I read somewhere that 11% of people training for a marathon gain weight, 11% lose weight and the rest stay about the same (probably in RW)

how do you feel? I gain a bit of weight when I'm running (also training for marathon when I'm not waiting for my calf muscles to heal ) but I look smaller and am firmer all over and my body fat % goes down, lean mass up a bit - although if it was possible to gain that much muscle from running bodybuilders would just run 5 miles a day every day wouldn't they? maybe you needed to gain a bit of weight?

How do your clothes fit? Are you sure it's not muscle?

Clothes fit the same but I feel bigger! That may be psychosomatic but it's just frustrating -I am not super skinny and have a normal bmi so am hoping it's muscle-I've had a word with myself & decided to ditch the scales & use inches & my clothes as a guide

I weigh myself daily, it fluctuates by around 2lb either side of a steady average and for no apparent reason.

I can't have lost or gained that amount of body tissue in such a short time so it must be the amount of material/ water in my digestive system and/or changes in muscle glycogen.

IMO any lean body tissue gained is a good thing for health (although for the sake of running efficiency the smaller and lighter the better)

I try to look for changes in body fat, usually apparent around the jawline and midsection, but yeah I hear ya, it's hard not to focus on what the scales say.
Maybe get some that measure body fat...not sure how accurate they are?

I weigh self daily too, and use this app called Happy Scale to do all the calculations and give me a trend (because it does fluctuate dramatically sometimes) so over time I can see if I am genuinely losing or gaining or maintaining and for body fat I take the reading from the scale and the reading from the one-site calipers (Accu-measure, although none of these things are very accurate it's just watching the trend isn't it) and work on the assumption I am somewhere in the middle of the two readings (which are out by over 10%!) my body fat doesn't alter very much at all, with a massive effort I can bring it down a tiny bit but my weight careering around all over the place has to be fluid doesn't it?

I sound obsessed. It's just a sort of hobby. I do have a life too. I think.

obsessed?
not a bit of it, thats just being conscientious :o
I record my weight on a spreadsheet which is linked to a graph.

I'm kinda about those body fat scales, do you think they even show an accurate trend?

sometimes the scales are ridiculous, I prefer the calipers but that's only because they put me in the extremely very lean category (when I think it's just that my podge tends not to collect in that particular site) while the scales are just sort of shrugging in a you-could-do-better way - am crawling back to one of my old gyms tomorrow and might ask them to do a 5 site reading which is probably more accurate

or I could just Stop Worrying, in some ways I quite like my nungas myself a bit fat anyway

sorry op, I wanted to say it's not necessarily a bad thing to gain a little weight while training for a marathon but instead am showing off all my personal neuroses

I gained a few pounds while marathon training.

I'm sure there are lots of theories as to why it might be but I don't think it matters. My clothes didn't get too tight!

Mrsfrank, what would you eat in a typical day?

Suzanne and Mitchy...daily weighing and spreadsheets ...do you think you should maybe, you know, get out more? ? Are you bikini models?

it's just an anxiety thing with me I think, I like to know these things, I also weigh all my food where possible - realise this is not normal but went through a horrible period of being a few stone overweight due to medication, which I pretty much have to stay on, so whatever helps to keep that under control is ok

would probably do a spreadsheet and graphs if I was more numerate but am pleased that I found an app to do them

I'm only kidding a bit.

he he,
I do get out...I go to the gym:o

I like graphs and spreadsheets,
I have spreadsheets for other things too, monthly and quarterly business turnover, profit percentages etc
All in lovely colours with special rainbow effects

I find it interesting the way it fluctuates in response to changes in activity levels, thats why I'm interested in the bodyfat scales

just be thankful you are not one of my real life friends trying to serve me a meal while I get wrappers of the ingredients out of the bin and zap the barcodes for MFP

I am getting better at just looking at a meal and thinking, fuck it, and just logging 1500 calories for the whole thing

it is hard to fuel yourself properly for marathon training though, the hunger goes beyond your actual needs but if you undereat you run like shit - it got better when I committed carbicide on a regular basis

anyway op, when is marathon? which one?

it's life logging, thats fashionable now...I'm sure it is

I realise this is straying from OP, but Mitchy do you not have a sense by now, after logging for so long and staying within a limit, if you are overeating though, and if/when you do occasionally do that, know that you will be back to normal eating the next day and it won't have done any harm?

yes, am not terrified of gaining weight PANTS ON FIRE but because of marathon training it has been v helpful to share my food and exercise diary with my coach, it's how I realised I needed a massive amount few more carbs especially around long runs and what helps me to recover better from those and that sort of thing, and of course the difference between eating 2000 calories but only netting about 400 after a long run and so on

I will probably keep it up unless am not training for something

it's all probably yet another way of avoiding confrontation with all the Real Things I have to worry about

Thank you all for replying -wow mitchy I'm starting to feel I need a spreadsheet! Maybe that's my downfall - I don't have enough spreadsheets

Today I have eaten: Greek yoghurt with raspberries for breakfast, chicken omelette for lunch & I just got in from work so DH is warming up his homemade tomato soup which is onions, tomatoes, garlic & balsamic vinegar; I've drunk 3 cups of tea, 2 fruit teas & a lot of water! I did a 25 min treadmill interval session this morning.

wanders off to start spreadsheet of waist size

That's nowhere near enough food, is it? Soup, chicken omelette, yogurt with raspberries is a lovely healthy lunch for someone running 30(?) miles a week. It's not a day's food. Where are the carbs?

I am where are the carbs too? this is one of those things where calories are not created equal - maybe have been brainwashed but it helped me a lot to aim for about 70-75% daily calories to be carb based (not plant based carbs, pasta style carbs)

I alter the quantities according to miles per week but breakfast is porridge with berries, chia seeds and honey; lunch is usually an omelette with lots of veg (more of a frittata really) plus toast if I have been for a run, supper is pasta or rice or quinoa with meat or fish and vegetables

gained weight when miles crept up but visibly smaller and needed smaller clothes etc

Its not enough of anything really! Your body must think you are on a desert island - it will be conserving fat at all costs. Aren't you feeling tired? Definitely need more carbs, protein, veg and fat! The carbs don't have to be the horrible high GI ones, have lentils, beans, chickpeas, sweet potato. Add in snacks of raw nuts, maybe some apple and nut butter or cheese. Add a side salad to your omelette with spinach, avocado, beetroot, toasted seeds - any other veg you like. Have carbs before your runs, they will all get burned up, then have a small snack with carbs and fat afterwards for recovery.