I was doing 180-mile weeks training for the Angeles Crest 100-miler. Then the news came that the race had been cancelled due to the Station Fire near Los Angeles. Due to this disappointment, I immediately stopped running completely. I took 14 days off, but didn't change my eating habits. I went from 138 to 152 during the 14 days.
I started running again today, and it felt tough.
Discuss.
9 calories per gram of fat makes 4090 calories per pound of extra weight per day. Do you burn an extra 4090 calories every day by running 180 mile weeks? I guess the run itself burns an extra 3000 plus the high metabolic rate during the rest of the day, hmmm, looks about right.
More and smaller meals teach the body to metabolize faster. This is fairly common knowledge, but seems underutilized. When I'm taking time off, (if I'm eating this way) my body will keep metabolizing very fast off of this and stay at the same weight for quite a while. In your case, if you're doing all of this... then adjust and eat less, while still eating many smaller meals. I'll be honest: To me the bad sign is you didn't reduce your eating while gaining the lbs. If I was gaining weight at that fast of a rate, I would've done something by the 4th day.
possibly chronically dehydrated and no real glycogen stores.
Taking time off of running, his glycogen stores finally got back to normal, dragging in 2-3 grams of water for every gram of carbohydrate stored, then the extra water to make up for the dehydration?
We'll never know, now if a before and after body fat test was done, then that would be interesting.
I believe its mostly fat. I feel fat right now. I've heard 1 lb of fat is 3500 calories, and I was probably burning 3500 calories per day doing 180-mile weeks with a lot of trail runs with big elevation changes, and so I literally put on a pound of fat per day when I stopped running.
It was mostly water. It is almost impossible for your body to gain a pound a day. Regardless of the physics, there are other things going on here. I bet you will lose "weight" pretty quickly once you start running again, but it will be mostly water.
pennywise de clown wrote:
I believe its mostly fat. I feel fat right now. I've heard 1 lb of fat is 3500 calories, and I was probably burning 3500 calories per day doing 180-mile weeks with a lot of trail runs with big elevation changes, and so I literally put on a pound of fat per day when I stopped running.
I'm not nearly as knowledgeable on diet,excercise and physiology as other people on the board. Just know the very basics. What you wrote makes total sense to me. You would of had to be taking in a lot of carbohydrates to do the kind of training you were doing. If you stopped running altogether but still had the same diet, your weight gain seems about right.
It's glycogen storage and water for the most part.
Alan