I just weighed myself at 169.6 pounds. How do I get back to 150?

oh also, another thing people neglect is sleep. can't eat while you're asleep, so the more time you're asleep, the less time you're eating! i think i've heard that getting adequate sleep also helps regulate hormone levels that may be responsible for stimulating appetite on low sleep (ghrelin? cortisol?). plus more sleep will help you recover when you're putting in 90 mpw to lose that fatty 169.6 belly you've got. good luck.

Just chop one of your legs off...

I found the best way to lose weight was slowly. Two pounds per week is recommended. But after losing weight at this rate for long periods of time to get down to a lower racing weight as suggested by my coach I had a lot of difficulty maintaining the new weight, ultimately gaining it all back.

What finally worked was losing the weight very slowly. (This is probably not what you want to read). I lost 20 lbs over the course of 1 year, with simple changes in my routine. It was very easy, and I was able to maintain an even lower weight, and set new PRs.

Some changes that I found helpful to make:

getting enough sleep, and at regular times if possible

eating meals at the same time everyday

eating healthy foods that you like

eating breakfast everyday

have a really small snack like an apple right after you run to prevent munchies later

One final note: You are recovering from an injury and it is important to think long term and come back slowly. Otherwise, you'll be right back were you started in 2 months.

Good luck!

Vitamin D comes from the sun. There is pleny of calcium in plants. Afterall, that is where a cow gets it. Iron too comes from green leaves. B12 is produced by bacteria in the soil, and new research shows there is B12 in organic produce, but not conventional. So its best to buy fresh organic produce. Greens also contain all the essential fats you need, in the proper ratio O6:O3, without the toxins and unhealthy fats found in fish. I suggest that you download Cron-o-meter, and check my assertions. It is a very useful dietary tool. I have run my best times since I became 100% vegan two years ago, and I don't take any supplements. There is a lot of misinformation out there; most of it comes from the powerful meat & dairy industries. Their lobbists are why the goverment recommendations (food pyramid) are so screwed up.

paleo diet wrote:

can't go vegan gots to get the B12 from somewhere and it's not gonna be plants.

also need that calcium and vitamin D and that's not coming from plants, even spinach.

where's the iron coming from? not enough from spinach or nuts.

best include some meats...but LEAN meat only, and preferably fish to get your omega-6 to omega-3 ratio in a better spot.

or just take a calcium, vD, iron, and fish oil supplement.

also i just learned that not all saturated fats are unhealthy. 16 carbon palmitate is no good, but 18 carbon stearate is good cause it upregulates your LDL receptor.

go paleo or go home.

Its like political parties in here the paleo types versus the vegans.

listen to Runningart2004. My room mate is a big guy.

But he recently started the exact same diet that Runningart2004 described. He was about 315 and is now at 280. He only started 2 months ago. He doesn't exercise at all. The choice is yours...

A lot of research shows that taking supplements does not help as much as eating foods with the actual vitamin you seek, and they can't figure out why that is.

There is a TON of iron in spinach and other legumes as well. Its very easy to eat vegetarian and get the nutrients you need.

That said, meat is fantastic tasting. As a chef I could never go vegan or even vegetarian. I'd feel like i'd be sacrificing too much enjoyment. And cheese, I love cheese.

THe bigger issue is that you should worry less about what ratios of vitamins you are stuffing in your body and more about where your food comes from.

Lean cornfed, meat from a feed lot where tonnes of antibiotics are used is worse than organic fatty meat. Your body is designed to process fats and oils, but won't take kindly to antibiotic resistant bacteria. Plus organic meat tastes better. (Buy both organic and cornfed, and see for yourself.)

Join a Community supported agriculture group. You'll ger fresh in season produce delivered at very low cost. If you eat whole foods andn not processed foods you will lose weight and get the nutrition you need from less calories.

To 'Elite or Bust!'

true dat, vD is formed when cholesterol in your skin is exposed to UV radiation, isomerizes, then gets double hydroxylation in liver and kidneys. but depending on season and latitude, some people may go without getting much sunlight for months. true what you get in the summer probably does ok for you through the winter, but evidence suggests the old DRI's or AI's or DV's or whatever you want to call the recommended amount of intake is something like 3x too low. also vD's role as a nuclear-acting steroid hormone (it's more accurately classified as a hormone not a vitamin) may be inhibited by some components of cereal grains such as wheat germ agglutinin.

iron in green leaves like spinach isn't as absorbable as meat iron cause greens iron is non-heme iron and meat iron is heme iron. oxidation state of iron also matters. for non-heme iron, the reduced form Fe2+ is more absorbable than Fe3+...so if you're gonna get all your iron from greens (or grains) best do so with a lemon juice dressing or a cup of OJ.

for the nerds:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2507689

can't really compare us to cows...ruminants have quite different digestive processes than we do.

the calcium in plants tends to inhibit the iron absorption in plants. that's why if you're a meat person you don't drink milk with your steak.

for the nerds:

http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/reprint/68/1/3.pdf

(this one is pretty readable--bottom line is calcium seems to inhibit absorption of heme and non-heme iron)

i'm not familiar with the new research on B12 in organic produce...any links for me? as far as i know any B12 in produce is next to nothing compared to the amounts in meat.

interesting that the microflora in our large intestines make B12, but we can't absorb it cause we absorb B12 in the small guts.

no plants have DHA which is important for brainnnns. and despite the fact that ALA from stuff like flaxseed technically converts to DHA, less than 2% of ALA makes it to DHA because humans have reduced activities of the desaturase and elongase enzymes necessary for these conversions, so flaxseed is essentially useless in that regard. best eat some salmon...i think the plant exceptions are one or two kinds of algae or liverworts or something like that. lots tastier to eat fish though.

agreed about the meat and dairy lobbyists. the kind of meat i'm advocating is LEAN, not feed lot type stuff.

also, from the paleo perspective, our ancestors simply did NOT eat grains (agricultural revolution only happened 10,000 years ago...modern humans have existed for about 195,000 years). and it was impossible to get enough calories from veggies, fruits, and nuts, thus there is good evidence that paleolithic diets consisted of about 55% calories from meat and fish and 45% calories from plants...latitude dependent with regard to fish vs. plants as many plants aren't available in northern latitudes when everything's frozen.

so from an evolutionary perspective vegetarianism makes no sense at all. but from a practical standpoint, in today's society, eating paleo is impractical and expensive...but from a scientific standpoint its on the $$

and your case study for your own PR's doesn't count. i have been massively boozing and recently ran a marathon time waaaay better than anything i've run in other distances (2:28 marathon, pr's 15:55 5k, 26:10 8k) but that doesn't mean that its cause my boozing i ran a decent marathon, as much as i'd like to think so. :)

in response to the other guy posting about how supplements aren't as well absorbed as the natural forms, i think in general that's true but i think fish oil capsules are an exception. not 100% sure on that.

rebuttals...

also true dat about plants having good fiber, phytochemicals, less insulin, IGF-1, renal acid load...hadn't heard the bit about cysteine, methionine-->homocysteine, but yes homocysteine is bad.

the moral: go meat, produce, and anti cereal grain. there are also good reasons to avoid dairy, but i'm partial to pizza, yogurt, and breakfast cereal with milk.

To paleo diet:

Yes, for Vit D it helps to live closer to the equator. That is where we evolved, and that is where all other primates live today.

Yes, the iron in plants is not absorbed as efficiently as the iron in animals. But you can still get plenty in green leaves, as long as you eat enough. And yes, Vit C helps with iron absorption. But green leaves have plenty of Vit C too.

Too much calcium inhibits iron absorption? Sure. Drinking milk is bad for many many reasons.

A link for B12? Here is a good one:

http://www.raw-food-health.net/VitaminB12Deficiency.html

A good link for getting essential fatty acids from plants, a fantastic talk here:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7305832096911620394

I agree that grains are bad. I prefer fruit and vegetables.

"from an evolutionary perspective vegetarianism makes no sense at all" - false. Its been well documented that, in most hunter-gatherer societies, the gathering produced most of the calories. Futhermore, chimps & gorillas get almost all of their calories from fruit & greens.

A vegan diet is much better for the planet than a paleo diet also.

Looks like the vegans won!

My racing weight in my prime was 140, but a couple of decades later I was shocked, shocked!, to find that I weighed 169 (and I'm also 5'11''). At that point I wasstill running about 30 mpw.

I found a 2500 calorie a day diet for athletic people in Outside magazine and just started eating what it said to eat when it said to eat it. In a matter of weeks I dropped 9 lbs. but then it got harder.

After a year I got down to 150 lbs. And actually started running well (age adjusted). Surprise!

I've maintained that weight plus or minus a lb. or two for a couple of year, but I'm now on a campaign to get to 145. This morning I weighed in at 148+.

Suffice it to say, it's all calories and activity. Figure out how much you're burning, how many calories are in what you eat, and go from there. It's that simple.

I ran a 500 - 1000 calorie deficit, and since it takes 3500 calories to gain or lose a pound, I was comfortable losing a lb or a bit more a week, at least initially.

After the first couple of days, I never even felt hungry. After a couple weeks I no longer missed ice cream. For me, the whole secret was eating exactly what the diet said to eat when it said to eat it, so I could do it with no thought or effort on my part.

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.

20 weeks, averaging a pound per week is a good target, but don't get obsessive about it. Plenty protein, less refined carbs, especially wheat products. Wholegrain wheat is good but there are very few such wholewheat products that aren't overpriced.

It's easy to lose weight once you get into good eating habits, and you will probably feel better too.

Also, weight loss is not usually linear. You'll have weeks where you'll lose nothing, then others you'll lose 5 pounds. The body is trying to fight you.

Alan

I've popped up to 185lbs at 6'4". Was 170 last summer.

My goal is back to 170 by July.

I've been running zilch lately.

Gonna start with 30-45 min of running 5 days a week and Bikram yoga 5-6 days a week.

Diet is pretty well dialed. Just dropping cheese and booze out of it should work. Most of my gain came from inactivity over a long and disasterous Denver winter.

Suns coming out today. I'm getting back after it!

my problem is eating out of boredom

I think most guys lose their ability to lose weight in their late 20s regardless of how much they exercise.

If you took antibiotics frequently in your 20s, it may be even worse.

Personally I think runners especially who were on high carb low fat diets are severely lacking in Fat soluble vitamins and nutrition therefore their body tells them to store everything they eat as fat.

Slowly start adding fats into your diet and gradually increase.

Do not go overboard too fast as your gallbladder needs time to adjust.

No I am not advocating giving up carbs and going full Keto, but if you are in your 30s and just seem to be putting on weight when you are even exercising more, add fat to your diet or else your low calorie deficit dieting will become a rollercoaster ride for the rest of your life.