Do you skip stretching after a run? When was the last time you had a good stretch session? If you’re guilty of running a lot and stretching a little – I have 5 tips to help you get started with stretching today! These are easy do-able stretch hacks to get you going. Remember – Stretching […]
The post 5 Easy Tips for STRETCHING after a Run appeared first on Run Eat Repeat.
Hi All,
I am a frequent reddit lurker stopping in here with a few questions for the r/loseit community. Over the past year or so, I have been in the same cycle with my weight loss journey and was hoping I could find some help here to break out of it.
As a kid and in highschool, I was always on the chubbier side, but when I got to college I lost around 25-30 pounds and got my weight down to about 160 pounds. The last couple of years, I have had my weight slide back up to the mid 170s and I am once again trying to get back down to 160, but am struggling. I have tried calories counting and meal prepping, but constantly hit a plateau in the high 160s.
My nutrition regimen involves meal prepping on Sundays and calorie counting along with my fitness app. I have done this where I have meal prepped anywhere from 1000-1500 calories per day for the week and stuck to my diet. I am good about not straying from my meal prep Sunday-Friday. Most of my bad cheat days come on Saturday and Sunday due to going out to dates with the girlfriend or hanging out with my other friends in general. I have been able to lose 7-8 pounds and get to the 167-169 range, but once I get there, I seem to be hitting a plateau.
My cycle which I have been going through the last couple of years is this:
Does anyone have any advice on how to break this cycle?
As my flair says, I am a 5’9” male who is 27 years old. I work a desk job, but am pretty active. I lift weights twice a week and do cardio 2-4 times a week (I love to play hockey and golf but will also do cardio at the gym if I am not skating or golfing that week).
Thanks in advance for the help and good luck on all of your journeys!
This is a weekly post for the runners of LoseIt. When I say 'runners', I mean all levels of runners from brand new to seasoned veterans. You can be someone just thinking about your first run. Or someone just start C25K. Or someone who is training for their tenth Ultra-marathon. All are welcome here.
This post is mostly for running-related NSVs, weekly updates, tales of first runs, training or race reports, and questions/advice for runners in the LoseIt community. There's lots of great runners here and lots of experience to share -- that could help other LoseIt runners.
In addition to this, I also will ramble on about some topic related to running to exceed the automod filter on short posts. This week -- the gravity of weight on performance and how such thinking seeps into us all.
This week in article in the New York Times, Mary Cain, an incredibly fast and promising young runner reported her training and career were woefully derailed by the Nike Oregon Project lead coach Alberto Salazar.
I Was the Fastest Girl in America, Until I Joined Nike
https://nyti.ms/2PQHCLH
Cain, a young world-class runner, reported that when she showed up at Nike for training, a weight goal (114lbs) was used to belittle and openly shame her. An arbitrary ideal racing weight and a berating, unsympathetic Salazar were at the center of her complaint.
All of this ultimately feels tenuously related to my own thoughts of "if only I dropped xx pounds/kilos I'd be faster/better." I'm no elite athlete by any measure - but I feel like I've had an inner Salazar yelling at me at times.
There's a movie dramatization of the rise and fall of Lance Armstrong (The Program) that plays out a different version of this. An incredibly talented, pre-PED Lance enters the Tour de France and gets beat handily by a select group of cyclists. It's no secret, those cyclists have something in common. They work with a sports performance doctor, Michele Ferrari, who used PEDs in their training but also had methods for defeating blood tests and not getting caught.
In the movie, Lance wants in with this doctor. He goes and sees Ferrari and asks to put him on the program. The doc turns him away handily. He says something like, "Look at you, you are too big. Come back when you've leaned out and lost weight."
Controlling your body to get to your goals is very inline with feelings around weight loss. Replace your own feeling of being rejected, turned down, etc with this scenario. Even this guy at the top of his game -- his body isn't enough, isn't right.
There's an ideal balance of weight and performance that elite athletes train to hit. It should be something that shows in your performance. It should be measurable, demonstratable. Anyone who drops 50 lbs/20kg knows that you get faster.
Ask anyone who drops a lot of weight quickly how their training is going. How is their performance as they are cutting weight. The answer will be a mixed bag. Because weight loss is not aware of your performance goals. It's just weight loss. It very well may sap muscle and lean mass to decrease performance at points. I've seen it. It's periodically very hard to train when dropping weight. You have more energy but the depth might not be there. When you dig down to push on for mile 10, you might find the bottom of the well. You adjust quickly, but if you keep pressing on, it can stay harder and get harder still. The only bad runs I've had have been from deep caloric deficit running.
There's a fine line between being too demanding while coaching and leaving performance untapped. While I am no expert here, and certainly not a professional coach, I think partnering with those you work with is always critical.
Why didn't the goals start with performance results? And only as framed by performance, use weight as one of tools available to the athlete? Why wasn't this a partnership or challenge between the coach and the athlete?
If Mary was given a bigger role in her training I suspect it might have turned out differently. How she improved her performance should have been in a partnership with the coach, and performance specialists as revealed with training results, testing and nutrition. I'm always surprised that the levers that manage performance is treated as something that is like a black box that the subject isn't given complete visibility into it.
Look how empowering realizing that calorie counting and a deficit causes weight loss is here at LoseIt. Open the black box up -- and you untether what you can do.
Some might make a case for harsh leadership and group competition can push talented people to new rarefied air of true greatness.
In the movie Whiplash a young talented jazz drummer in college is shamed, berated, belittled, and tortured by his teacher. This deplorable behavior is rationalized by the teacher as driving true talent to lofty heights -- only available via torment and ego destruction. "Charlie Parker was only made great because when he made a mistake his band leader threw a cymbal at his head." The teacher sees anything less than unrelenting demands and criticism uponthe young drummer as tragic and weak. In a revealing moment of the movie, the teacher says "Good enough" is the worst thing ever said to the young and talented.
The young protege reacts to this strongarm mental abuse by pushing himself to mental and physical breaking points. Ultimately his career details for a period.
One can draw parallels here to Mary Cain's accounts of her training. There is a good level of pressure and criticism and there's a line that can crossed.
So why bring this all up here in LoseIt? How am I (or you), some slow anonymous runner like Mary Cain? Or a talented young drummer?
Your weight is linked to your running performance. But your performance is also linked to it is your mental preparation and drive, all your training, your nutrition, and your physical make-up. There are ways to improve that are mentally healthy and those that aren't.
Think about the atmosphere of LoseIt subreddit. There are healthy group Dynamics and bad ones. Is it necessary for optimum performance for you to destroy yourself mentally? No, never.
Mary Cain is really amazing. She was so fast -- a lightning strike. If this can happen to her, if her weight and her size can be used to not propel her forward but derail her -- that's widely telling.
Imagine what social pressure and self-imposed goal weights means to the average runner? It's powerful stuff.
There's progress you can make on your own, without harsh shame, without hard limits. Have at them. Be a great runner on your own terms.
Have you seen in yourself or from others a harsh line drawn to make you better? Do you draw those yourself? Does tough standards make you better or beat you down? Do group dynamics build you up or rip your heart out? Is there a good use of these techniques?
How did your week go? Get in your miles/kms? Finish a week of C25K? Run for the first time? Run a race? Have a question or need advice? Let us know!
anyone h log
I have been struggling with weight loss for months. Now I have cut out most junk and eat mainly salads and lean meats. I also try to exercise for an hour a day. At first, I thought all diet food had to taste bad, but then... I gave up diet food from the store and decided to go all-out on fresh food.
I am becoming more of a cook in the process. I have discovered that garlic goes great on some fish!!! If you can, some minced garlic, rosemary, oregano, red pepper, minced onion, parsley and basil on mahi mahi - I have NEVER had fish taste so hood!!!
Walmart has a bag of four frozen mahi-mahi for $5. They have some salt-free garlic and herb seasoning that just... Mmmmm. Brings out all the best in the fish. And they're roughly 100 calories cooked! You can't beat delicious, low-calorie food.
I started my weight loss plan about two weeks ago. I decided to cut out all soda, and i have kept that so far. (Which is something to be proud of, since used to eat multiple liters of coce a week) I go for walks few days a week, and very randomly do some cardio. I no longer eat snacks when bored. Is it really this easy?
Interestingly enough, i haven't lost a single pound. It's not something i'm very concerned about, since from what i've understood, it can take time before the results can be seen on the scale. Anyway, i've been feeling better, and more fit. For literally years, i tought losing weight would be hard, so i'd just stick to my unhealthy lifestyle. I was 110% sure i can't hold on to soda-free lifrstyle for more than a week, and that i'd just not be able to stop randomly eating when i just have nothing else to do. Well shit, i no longer have any desire to eat anything unless i have to.
I know the answer. It is yes. It is easy to lose weight. Or atleast it's simple. Just eat less calories than you consume. But is it easy to do, that is a different thing. But... After the first few days, i've had zero complaints about this. I literally feel like i have 100% changed my lifestyle.
So finally, is this really as easy as it appears, or am i missing something?
Almost a year ago ( January 2019 ) I had some relationship issues and was severely heartbroken during the beginning months of this year . Because of this I would constantly binge eat on food , and soon enough the consequences were showing up . I’ve always been thin and no one seemed to notice my weight gain ( mostly around thighs and stomach area ) I believe my waist was around 28 inches . I was “ skinny fat “ . I was 5’3 and around 128 lbs . This caused a lot of insecurities on top of the problems I was already dealing with . Afterwards this summer , I decided I needed to truly move on from the situation and joined the gym . Although I feel like it didn’t do anything I discovered calorie counting . I followed CICO and it truly worked . I learned how to limit my portions and stop binging . I’m now around 106-108 lbs and my waist is 25” . I’m extremely happy . None of my pants fit me properly anymore but I don’t mind it at all , I feel satisfaction from it . Not many people have noticed my weight loss ( most of the weight was lost around my thighs and stomach area ) . But now I feel like I’m a bit stuck with calorie counting , I don’t restrict or anything and have proper meals but I am still young and feel like this has kind of taken over my life . I think what I most deal with is the fear of gaining those pounds back. It’s mostly because I’ve tied that weight gain to those difficult moments and now that I’ve recovered from that time I do not wish for anything that reminds me of it to come back . I’m extremely proud of myself for losing the weight and feel like if I gain weight I would be extremely upset .
Hi all! I'm back on the CICO train and was feeling really good until this morning, when I accepted that I'm in my first plateau. What words of advice, encouragement, and understanding do you give yourself when you're in the same boat?
Things I'm doing right
following CICO
eating under my TDEE every day
logging everything into MFP
increasing exercise (although building good diet habits is my main focus right now)
Things I know
I've lost 9 pounds this past week; that is both a lot of progress and also a lot of bloating/water weight (it's easier to lose early)
Rapid weight loss isn't healthy or sustainable
I will continue to lose weight as long as I continue working at it
Plateaus happen; be patient
