at least according to Sondre Nordstad Moen. He said that, during camps in Kenya with Canova's athletes, there is one of the worlds top female runners who sit down by the common food table and weigh her food. Moen himself says he thinks about what he eats and has there that he weighed his food. But now he takes it by eye measurement. He says: "I don't think, when she weighs her food - which is her choice - she doesn't need to do it at the common food table".
I gotta be honest; a skinny girl well below a healthy weight is sitting and weighing her food while trying to compete at a world class level, is pretty discusting thinking about.
Do you, or have you ever weighed your own food? Do you track caloric intake?
Tbh, I am thinking about my caloric intake and today when I have been eating a bit more than I thought, I am feeling a bit guilty. There I said it. I've been eating 4000 kcal today when I just ran 20 km. It's not that big of a deal since my usual intake around that amount of mileage is 3500 kcal, I can easily balance that in the coming days.
My curiosity is that, I have lost almost 5 pounds since christmas with around 80 mpw and eating somewhere between 3000-3500 kcal deliberatly during week days and 4000 on weekends. This means that in order for me to have kept my weight I would have needed to 4000 kcal every day to balance my mileage. For those who have somewhat control over these numbers, I can not understand how come for instance some of the YouTubers I see that run fear amount of mileage, don't eat the same amount of food. How come I have lost weight by eating what seems to be more food than them and still lose weight? How come I am never injured or sick, actually lose weight and have great workouts for my level? Is it a coincident that I sleep well and have good recovery all over even with full time job? I think not!
I believe that many of you/us eat according to our needs, but I also think some doesn't. And to those who doesn't, you might not lose weight but other life surpluses such as optimal recovery and overall life stresses because the body might adept to underfueling (read: RED-s). I know this is just pure analogical evidence, but I have lost weight while running less than some and eaten more. Something doesn't add up, I just know that my recovery is great and that I am always ready to push hard on workout days. And, as you might have suspected; I am sincerely proud of how much I actually eat!
PS: as you might noticed there were some ambivalence in this post; I said that I feel somewhat guilty about eating more than intenting today, but then I went on to say I am proud to eat alot. This is a strategy I use to think positive about it, turn something that might be a stressfull event towards something I feel good about. Positive self talk and reinforcement. This might be useful for others who also struggle a bit over eating, which I think most serious runners do. I hope this has been helpful!