Did you start running to get in better shape? Since then have you began to chase 5k, 10k and half marathon times? As Personal Trainers in Glasgow we work with many Glasgow weight loss people like you and this week we have written a newsletter just for you ….
If you go along to any race or running event across the country this weekend, you are certain to see many runners carrying more fat than you would expect for someone capable of running such distances. Have you ever stopped to questions this? For me it highlighted two things; One that you can be fit and fat and two that running may not be the most effective thing for fat loss!
The benefits of running are vast- from promoting a stronger heart and lungs to better mental wellbeing and almost everything in between, running has been shown to have an almost endless list of positive effect. But when it comes to fat loss running may not actually be that effective…
Often when you start running it will help promote fat loss, but more often than not the fat loss will plateau. Leading you to increase the number of miles that you run each week. This is not a negative but if you are like most people I know then time is not something that you have too much of.
There are reasons why you plateaus with your fat loss when you run. A major contributor is something known as the epoc effect of the workout. Epoc effect is basically how much energy the body is using up to recover from a session after you finish.
When you first started running can you remember how sore you would be after your run? Well when this was happening the epoc of the run was quite high as your body used up energy to repair those damaged muscles. But as the body acclimatised to running the epoc affect decreased alongside the reduction in achy muscles after a run. For most his can be one of the reasons why runners plateau with their fat loss results.
So what can you do to continue to benefit from the epoc effect of your sessions? Well there are two main strategies to introduce; with your running you must vary the intensity of the sessions, adding in high intensity sessions (races, hills or interval) doing this will force the body to continually adapt and change. The epoc effect of a high intensity running session can be as much as high 6-12 hours, compared to only 1-2 hours after a steady run. But here is the big game changer,, the epoc effect of a resistance training (weight lifting) can range anything from 12-48 hrs. Resistance workouts causes’ small micro tears in the muscles and the body then has to use up energy to build and repair these muscle. It is not just this that boosts your metabolism however, resistance training builds lean muscle which has a huge impact on your resting metabolism. The more muscle you have the faster your metabolism will be. So basically by adding in a few resistance session per week you can turn your
You can achieve this by training using functional pieces of equipment like medicine balls, swiss balls, sandbags and kettlebells and staying well clear of fixed machines like the leg press, leg extension and chest press (there is little to no crossover from these machines to any everyday tasks or sporting activity) And don’t worry the average person like you who lifts weights 2-3 times per week will absolutely not end up looking like big Arnie. All that will happen will happen is that will swap some bulky ‘slow burning’ fat tissues for some fast burning lean muscle. You won’t regret doing some ‘resistance training, many of our clients are shocked at how much easier it is to maintain their ideal shape when they have added some lean muscle to their physique and we have seen lots of them run faster and be less injury prone because of it.
The next major reason for runners not achieving their ideal shape is down to some errors being made with their nutrition. The first big one is not paying enough attention to the fuel they are putting into their body. 80% of the fat loss jigsaw is down to nutrition so if you are living on processed poor quality you will never reach your ideal shape or truly meet your sporting potential. Alongside this is another error runners make is overcompensating for exercise. The think that it is ok to eat loads of crap or too many calories because they have ran. This is simply not the case, you will very rarely out train a bad diet. The last error we will discuss is when people place too much emphasis on carbohydrates and in particular refined carbohydrates.
You do not need a fraction of the carbohydrates that you think you need to be able to run. Personally I have ran marathons off nothing more than lentils, vegetables and beans. These are the real slow release carbohydrates, not the ones that the food marketing industry would like you to eat such as brown bread, pasta and cereals. Refined carbohydrates like these will cause a big surge of sugar to rush into the bloodstream, the body will then react to this by releasing the hormone insulin to remove the sugar and store it as energy. Much of this sugar will be stored as fat , and that alone my friend is the number one reason why there are so many Glasgow weight loss runners out there struggling to maintain or lose weight. On top of that insulin overcompensates and takes almost all the sugar out of the bloodstream and this why you feel tired, lethargic and crave sugars more! (Incidentally not a great place to be for optimal performance!).
It is beyond the scope of this newsletter however it is worthy of note that if you eat a high carbohydrate diet you become carbohydrate dependant and the body can only store small amounts of carbohydrates, and this is the main reason why you get so many runners running out of fuel in their runs(bonking). The great runners are all fat adaptive and run on the easier to use and more plentiful fat stores. Take a look at the Glasgow weight loss guide for over 40’s by clicking HERE
So for all those people that were running the Glasgow 10km looking for weight loss this weekend , hopefully this will highlight some really effective ways to get even better results with your Glasgow weight loss plan added to all those amazing benefits of running.
