ZappoMan.com - Fitness Blog

Drat! Gaining weight! — Time to watch my diet!

February 17th, 2007

Yep, I have put on about 6lbs in the last week and a half. Now normally my weight fluctuates throughout the day by as much as 5lbs, so this may not sound like much. But when I say I’ve gained 6lbs, I mean that the median point of my fluctuations has crept up by 6lbs. This morning when I stepped on the scale I was 149lbs, and ten days ago in the morning I weighed 138lbs… So this is real weight gain.

Ok, ok, I bet at least one person out there thinks one of the following things:

• Well, duh! You kept talking about all the weight lifting you were doing, and how you were feeling stronger, of course your weight is up, you’re adding muscles!
• Well, duh! You had a great valentines day feast, it sure looked good to me… it was probably loaded with calories.
• Dude! You weigh 144lbs soaking wet, you’re an Ironman, you are totally fit, stop worrying about gaining a couple extra pounds!

These are all very reasonable things to say… and I’m sure that muscle mass and temporary water retention from the high carb week of candy have something to do with it… but I am also convinced that my generally lackadaisical eating habits are also contributing. So it’s time to get serious about paying attention to what I eat.

I think I can get some help in this department from my wife for two reasons. First of all, for the last 6 weeks we’ve been having a planned weekly dinner menu. Basically, we all agree on Sunday what we want to eat for the rest of the week, and so we know ahead of time what each dinner meal will be. Breakfast and lunch we’re all on our own… but dinner is planned.

A planned menu will be a big help, at least for me, in getting back into a regimented eating routine. I have kind-of a unique personality in that I am free-wheeling come-as-they-go water off my back like a duck… but at the same time, I don’t mind discipline with a purpose. If there are tools and techniques that can be used to achieve something, then I’m all for using those tools. So I see this planful meals idea as a cool tool for getting my diet back in shape.

Secondly, my wife is also feeling like she wants to lose a little weight. Of course I love her just the way she is, but I also want to support her in whatever she wants to achieve, so maybe this is a chance for both of us to become more thoughtful about calories and more importantly the general distribution of our macro-nutrients. I think this is a great chance to as John Rankin points out, pay more attention to how nutrition effects athletic performance.

Now here’s the problem, on Monday we leave for a 3 days 2 nights mini-vacation to Victoria BC. It’s pretty hard to stay on a diet on vacation, and darn near impossible to start one. So, I guess starting out next week will be tough… but maybe I can use next week to plan out how we will actually utilize our menu for macro-nutrient and calorie management. Maybe I’ll spend those days researching nutritional details of the recipes we often use. Once we have it captured, we can reuse that in future weeks. Well, we will see. I’ll keep you all posted on how it turns out.

On the training front, I did a 50mile fixie bike ride followed by a 7.7 miles run. My ride was good, 18.2mph, 2550 ft of total ascent, about a 70% max HR average so a good endurance ride. The run was tough, I felt really worn out, maybe slightly depressed from the weight gain, but maybe just poor nutrition.

As I started the run I could tell it wasn’t going to be a new PR so I decided to try to work on my run-walk strategy and get some idea of pacing require to maintain my 8:00/mile Ironman run goal. I ran the first mile in about a 7:35 pace, but it felt really slow. Took a short walk break, drank some water, ate some Jelly Belly sports beans, and started running, by the time I got to my second mile marker my mile average was around 7:58, so including my walk break I achieved my sub-8:00/mile without much effort. I still felt like I was dragging, but apparently I was running “fast enough”. Miles 3, and 4, were about the same, I payed attention to my walk break times and kept them to 30 seconds, and basically ran to keep the total mile time around 8:00.

Then the turnaround, and mile 5 was much harder, I walked a little longer, 1:20 and so I decided to run through to mile 6. I ended up with 8:30 and 7:59 splits, so I was really slowing. Took another walk break at mile 6, again, a little longer than I wanted almost 90 seconds, and then I just couldn’t get running again, mile 7 was actually an 8:59 split, as I was coming in to the half mile marker I thought I was going to end up with a 9:30/mile I was dragging so much. The last 0.7 miles I was able to run a little faster, ended up with a sub 8:00 mile.. and for the whole run my average pace was slightly over my goal at 8:04/mile.

This was my first run/walk run so far this year. The lesson learned was that maintaining an 8:00/min pace with a walk break every mile is going to be hard. This is ok, I think it just means I should shoot for walk breaks every 2 miles. Frankly this approach is probably better anyway since I know that at the Grand Columbian Ironman they have aid/water/food stations approximately every two miles. So an even better strategy on race day is to use those aid stations as my walk break goals.

Entry Filed under: Fitness, Triathlon, Diet, Weightloss, Ironman, Family, Running, Cycling, Marathons, Strength Training, fixie, single-speed, fixed-gear, food, cooking