I know this might sound impossible but it is sooooo accurate. Running/exercise will not keep you from gaining weight. It can help you out a lot in the good fight for healthy but standing by itself it will not do it. EATING! is the determining factor. I mean you can gain, lose, or stay the same without exercise. You might not be as healthy overall but your weight can be stablized or moved in the direction you desire. Of course the best combination is using both exercise and proper eating to lose or maintain weight. This is a hard lesson for me as a runner. I dreamed of the possibility that running could offer me a carefree life regarding food and treats. How far from reality my thinking was.
It is very easy to eat more than you burn while exercising. Even after running 50 miles you can eat more calories than you burned even before you go to bed that night. Here are some examples from real life calorie expenditures that I have experienced and what I could (and have) eat to still be able to gain.
- 6 miles @ 7:28 pace= 857 calories. My normal is to eat 3 maple bars. This adds up to 1,380 calories. I actually do this too!!!
- Marathon @ 10:19 pace= 3,617 calories. After this last marathon I ate: 32 oz of Mt. Dew @ 440 calories. I then ate two sausages with buns: 1,100 calories. I also had a two scoop ice cream cone at B&B: 565 calories. So that is 2105 calories within about 2 hours of the marathon. This does not include the 1,400 calories I ate during the marathon nor does it include my dinner and snacks later in the day. So adding what I wrote up I have already consumed as many calories as I have burned just 2 hours after the race.
This are real life examples and it is here to prove to myself that eating is far more important in weight issues than is exercise for me. I can do the exercise but I need to focus on proper eating again. It is a myth that endurance and vigorous exercise makes you hungry. Good exercise actually supresses hunger. It does not however supress the thoughts of entitlement to food though. Hopefully you enjoyed a small journey into the depths of my life. HAHAHAHAHAHA
I went to my weight watchers meeting last night. I almost did not go since I did a marathon last weekend. The only problem is that I did a marathon the weekend before so I skipped that week’s meeting too. I just figured that it did not matter how much I weighed or what happened, I needed to go the meeting. I wasn’t going to weigh-in at first but I did anyway and I did not do so good in that area. This will be ok though. NO need to panic. NO need for guilt. NO need to give up. NO need for any negative behavior actually. What is the meaning of a bad weigh-in anyway: It just means that I ate to much. That is it. Plain and simple. I ate more than I burned. Basic stuff. Modification is necessary if I want to go the other direction.
The marathon/training run went very well. I got up at 3 a.m., ate my food, had my coffee and then headed out for my first 10 miles for the day. Right after I finished my 10 miler I went over to the starting line to wait for the official start. There were around 180 something people running the marathon and a multitude were participating in the half-marathon and half-ironman distance triathlon.
YOU ARE NOT, NOR WILL YOU EVER BE, IMMUNE TO TRIPPING, BACK-SLIDING, MESSING UP, GOING OFF PROGRAM, GAINING WEIGHT!!!!
I don’t want to tell it like it is. 





