Marathon Training Diet

If you are after a diet to lose weight, then training for a marathon is one of the fastest ways to do it.

The reason for this is that we all know how to lose weight. All you have to do is eat less and exercise more. Training for a marathon is the second part of this equation. The more you train, the more calories you burn and hence the more potential weight you will lose through exercise.

The only problem with this is that the more calories you burn, the more hungry you will feel. If you then try and starve yourself then your body will not be getting the energy it needs to physically perform the exercise you are putting it through. If your body isn’t getting enough energy to perform, then you will start to feel tired and lethargic. As you feel tired and lethargic then your motivation will most likely drop and you run the risk of not going through with finishing a marathon.

So what is the answer to losing weight through following a marathon training diet?

What I do when training is to only eat whenever I feel hungry. It sounds simple, but when I am not hungry I don’t eat and when I am hungry then I eat. I simply listen to my body and it tells me exactly what it wants. Through doing this, I have never been overweight.

Through talking to other athletes I understand another reason why people tend to overeat is psychological. The main reasons are that they are either bored and feel that eating fills up the boredom, or they are feeling anxious or nervous and eating food gives them a feeling of comfort. I understand how this feels, however if you keep going back to only eating when your body feels hungry then you should have no problem losing weight through following a marathon training diet.

What I mean by that is that whenever you feel hungry, then eat. This is not to say that if you are feeling hungry that you should go out and eat a roast leg of lamb. What I do is have three main meals per day, being breakfast, lunch and dinner. My biggest meal is breakfast and I generally have a decent sized lunch and a relatively small dinner unless I am feeling hungry. Throughout the day I will then snack on fresh food such as apples or banana’s if I get the sensation from my body that I am feeling hungry.

As you can see I do not starve myself throughout the day, but neither do I overindulge in eating too much food. I think it just follows the natural cycle that your body would have followed as a caveman by eating whenever you are hungry. If you look at the tribesmen in Africa, the Amazon or in parts of Asia then you will struggle to find members of the tribe who are overweight. I think the reason for this is that they exercise as part of their way of life and do not overindulge in food if it is available.

Therefore, if you are wanting to lose weight through following a marathon training diet then you should not only exercise more but also eat less. By eating less, this means only eating when your body feels hungry rather than eating whenever you are bored or to eat to feel comfortable. If you starve yourself of food during your marathon preparation then you run the risk of feeling tired and lethargic in the lead up to your race. If this starts to happen then your motivation could start to decrease and you run the risk of giving up on finishing a marathon.

At the end of the day, the ideal way to lose weight is to exercise more and eat less. This is done by training for a marathon and only eating when you are feeling hungry. If you do this through a correct marathon training diet then your goal of not only finishing a marathon but also losing weight in the process is almost assured.

You can find more information about a marathon training diet in the Marathon Bible, available on this website.

Marathon Complex Carbohydrates | Marathon Glycogen | Marathon Relaxation

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