Once a skinny runner wrote:
I've been injured and kind of depressed since December of last year. I realized I was gaining weight but never stepped on a scale, until today. I'm nearly 170 pounds. I realize I just need to create a calorie defecit, stop eating crap, and run more (no problem there now that I'm healthy), but I was wondering about how long is this going to take? How much should I shoot to lose each week? How much protein should I eat?
I'm 5'11 by the way.
You will still run your normal amount -- don't increase the running just to lose weight; increase running only to increase fitness.
Doesn't matter if you eat CRAP or not -- matters only how many calories you are eating. It's EASIER to eat fewer calories if you don't eat crap, but you can lose weight eating only at McDonald's if you want.
Pretty much you need to lose 20 pounds. You should plan to lose 2 pounds a week, so you could do it in [let me get out my calculator]...10 weeks.
Here's a GUIDE to go by:
Men burn 12 calories per pound per day ON AVERAGE (and it varies with age a bit) when AT REST. You weigh 170, so you burn 2040 calories per day if you just sat on the couch and did nothing else. Since you are MORE active than that, you could eat 2040 calories per day and carry on with your normal life and likely lose a couple pounds per week.
You need to have a deficit of 3500 calories A WEEK in order to lose a pound of fat, so for 2 pounds a week [again with the calculator] you need to have a deficit of 7000 calories a week.
I don't know how much you are running, but let's say it's 5 miles a day. You burn about 100 calories per mile. 5 miles a day x 7 days a week = 35 x 100 calories per mile is 3500. So, if you sat on the couch all day and did nothing other than run 5 miles a day, and you ate 2040 calories a day at 170 pounds, you would lose a pound in that first week with the running. Your caloric requirements drop every week you lose weight, so you need to adjust each week to keep pace.
Knowing that you probably do SOMETHING other than just sitting on the couch, you get to add more calories to your daily limit. Is it 200 more? 500 more? 1000 more? Depends on how active you are.
In the first week, if I were you, I'd eat 2040 calories a day (and you can be VERY healthy eating that) and run 5 miles a day and see where you are at the end of the first week. Typically in the first week of weight loss effort, you lose the most you will of any week -- most of that is excess water weight that is lost as you decrease your carbohydrate consumption (this just happens in general when you restrict calories). I would bet also that you COULD eat more than 2040 a week and lose at least a pound, but remember you are likely going for 2 pounds a week on average.
If you ate 2040 the first week and ran 35 miles, my guess is that you'd lose 4-5 pounds that first week. Do the same thing the second week and you'd likely lose just 1 or 2.
Anyway, watching the calories for the short term is the key. Once you slowly get fit again and are running more, you can relax a bit on watching the calories so much.