Q: How to lose weight before cross country season?
Hey Lauren,
I am running between forty and fifty miles per week. I want to try and lose 10 pounds before cross season. Advice to help please? Also I have a problem with stress fractures and am taking calcium supplements. Do these really help?
-Run4Life
A:
Hey Run4Life,
Feeling pressure to be thin and light is part of the culture of collegiate cross country and many competitive high schools. And I understand the pressure. I’ve felt it many times, especially once I got to college and tended to carry an extra 5-8 pounds in the fall and winter. Every year I would get beat by flash in the pan athletes, and it absolutely killed me.
I’m going to be blunt with you. If what you want is a short window of success and a shortcut to get there, drop weight quickly and train hard. Its a gamble, and you are playing with the highest stakes possible (your health and vitality), but you may have a season of dramatic improvement. It might even last through part of outdoors. You might be All-American even, or win a title. People might recognize your name, and maybe your scholarship will improve. But it is impossible to sustain the eating habits that would let you lose 10 pounds in a few short months. And since you will be training hard while dieting, your body will be silently weakening your bones, ligaments, and tendons for nutrients, and all of this leeches from your raw speed and power. Before you know it, you are in a hole.
Don’t fall into the trap. Don’t put a pressure timeline on weight loss. Don’t worry about the exact number of pounds. The psychological effects can take down the strongest women. One athlete I know, after putting herself under a deadline to lose weight while training hard, eventually found that she cared more about looking skinny than running fast. One of the most competitive girls I ever met literally said to me, “I’d rather be skinny and injured, than be bigger and running fast times.”
My point is really not to scare the crap out of you. But the reality is, deciding to lose weight in a competitive athletic environment is a completely different animal than deciding to lose weight as a sales clerk for example. So if you are interested in long term benefits and success, here is my weight-loss advice:
Take the pressure off. What is the objective? To be a leaner version of yourself, so you can be more efficient when you run, leading you to faster times. Forget the “10 pounds.” It might take 5 pounds to reach the objective. It might take 12. You will know when you get there.
Similarly, ditch the deadline. You’ve made a decision to take your running to the next level, and you’ve identified one way to do that. If you want to lose the weight while protecting your bones, it will probably take longer than two or three months. When you really want to be killing it is the track season, so remove the stress of having to quickly and dramatically change your body, and you will increase your chances of success. Trust that if you make the correct lifestyle changes, your body will respond, and if you allow it do happen in its own time, you are more likely to stay injury free. If its December or May, who cares, so long as it lasts.
Finally, approach your body changes as lifestyle adjustments. When I was finally able to successfully lose weight in college, I made changes to my diet and training that I still use today. Study sports nutrition, or see a professional for a nutrition plan. Educate yourself on what is in the foods you eat. Understand portion sizes and metabolism. Learn about meal timing. And do it all in the name of being fit and powerful, not in the name of being skinny. Above all, never ever put yourself down. Its a hell of a lot easier to improve yourself from a place of love, than it is from a place of self-loathing.
Becoming more “athletic”, not “skinny” is part of what helped me run 14:58 for 5k
I spent most of college at a heavier weight, winning 4 of my 5 NCAA titles
From another work in progress,
Lauren
I love this post. Such great advice and so well put! Thanks for being such a great role model.
Lauren,
You have hit it right on the nose! I fell into the exact trap that you just described and I have seen it in one of my previous teammates. I am still trying to get out of that trap and lose the excess weight I have gained as a result in a healthy manner. It is hard to get the mindset off of being skinny, it is always there I am just learning now how to just ignore it and replace it with thoughts of being more healthy and strong as a runner. Thank you very much for your insight into this all too common problem among female distance runners.
Thanks for this post. What great advice from someone who really knows what she’s talking about.
Oh, thank goodness for your response to Run4Life… you are the real deal Lauren Fleshman. Thank you for being so honest and for encouraging the less “skinny-mini” runners out there to be strong, healthy AND fast.
So true, love yourself and take care of yourself. Thats the starting place for all kinds of successes.
So happy to read such sound advice.
I forwarded this post to some friends with the title “More brilliance from our fave runner” – and I think that sums it up pretty well.
This was a very difficult post to write, as its such a touchy subject. I really hope to hear feedback from all sides on this topic. This is just one opinion, so feel free to share a dissenting one.
Hi Lauren,
I have been following your journal and I absolutely love it. This Q&A is amazing. I am a mid-distance runner who always got dusted by the kinds of girls you talked about, and I always packed on a few extra pounds until like Feb of every year. This is a very inspiring, informational answer and I think SO MANY runners (and coaches) need to see it.
Congrats on a great USA’s, keep it up!!!
You are becoming one of my favorite runners!! You are such a great role model and all of your responses are so insightful and you really aim to help people! I hope you continue to excel!!
P.S – I was at USA’s and I was so unbelievably happy for you winning the 5k!! Keep it up!!
FanTASTIC message, Lauren, thank YOU for writing and posting it!
Another great answer. Can you share a little of your strength routine in a future Journal post? Youy body looks amazing!!!
What a well-versed and thoughtful answer! A runner’s outlook on food, whether flippantly irregular or well thought out, is a defining portion of the runner’s life. Whether prone to overeating or constricting intake, one’s relationship with food can easily take over one’s life. Particularly female high schoolers and college students need this advice; thanks for such an insightful answer.
As an aging athlete, a strength and conditioning coach, a nutrition/lifestyle coach, and the boyfriend of a competitive runner, I want to commend you on such a thoughtful and well-written response. Every day I talk to people looking for the same answers, athletic or not. Lying underneath this self-identity of “runner”, there is a much broader organism called “human”, and the overall health of that organism is the base on which the “runner” might take flight. Our culture gobbles up short-term answers because a) we tend to not understand the foundational roots of how things work, and b) we see these short term solutions work “out there” in the world. But only as far as the media covers the story. Days or months or years later, the “fruits” of those actions begin to ripen. And it’s not always pretty. Thank you, Lauren, for using your position in the world to illuminate what is important.
Thanks for your thoughtful response, Lauren. Weight has always been a bit of a struggle for me; I have been borderline with an eating disorder for several years. I’m finally starting to see the light; that eating less and not getting proper nutrition makes bones more brittle and not enough energy to run to my full potential. I used to be chubby and fears of going back to that at times lead to myself making irrational decisions about food choices. I have been a collegiate runner now for 3+ years and as I said I am really beginning to see the light and turn the page on this struggle, and answers like yours to this topic just helps me further. I want to be the best runner I can possibly be, and I hope I can continue to learn to fuel my body properly for optimum performance, because I have big aspirations as a runner and know I’m not going to get very far if I do not first learn to be content with the body I have and feel good about the way I look. I’m making progress, so thanks again for this article. You’re a great inspiration and I have definitely learned a lot from you via this website! THANK YOU!
Hi,
Thanks for writing this as you have. I wish I would have had someone like you to inspire me in a healthy way 10 years ago before I got my eating disorder. But instead I went from being 3rd in Nationals and 5th in Worlds in the 50k (31.1 miles) to barely being able to complete 5 miles now. I have been in treatment before, however, sometimes that is just not enough. I am like one of those girls you are talking about, sorta, I want to be back to running my “fast” 50k times again and shoot for even faster but I can’t get off the focus of my weight and wanting to be smaller. Thanks for being a healthy positive role model.
For what it’s worth, weight-loss is actually quite easy, safe and healthy if you know the science. I’ve never seen it described better than in Joel Fuhrman’s book, Eat to Live. The basics: 1. Fats, sugars, and starchy carbs are the danger foods; therefore, eat them only when needed – during and immediately after exercise; otherwise, just have a few dates. You’ll really lose weight faster if you avoid starchy carbs completely. 2. Eat a TON of vegetables – salad can make you thin and keep you healthy – make salad the main dish. Salad is as good as the dressing and the add-ins. You can make a very good-tasting simple dressing with Trader Joe’s raw smooth almond butter and either OJ or frozen pineapple juice plus a bit of soy sauce. Almond butter won’t make you fat, btw – proved it to my satisfaction, at least. 3. Eat a ton of fruit, but not too much dried fruit. It takes 16 oranges to replenish the calories expended in a 10-mile run. You will NOT gain weight if you eat lots of watermelon, pineapple, apples, mangoes, on and on. 4. Reserve “builder” foods for when they’re most needed; e.g., eggs are a wonderful pre-exercise food if eaten at least 8 hours before; and whey protein + a little cheese is a great post-exercise recovery food. Otherwise, eggs and dairy will put on the weight. If you do this, you’ll lose weight fast and healthily. And if you do weight work at the gym the right way, you’ll lose even faster. E.g., work out for strength, not bulk – emphasize very heavy deadlifts of 85-100% one-rep max with no more than 10 seconds per set and 5 minutes between sets. You’ll get STRONG and you won’t get bulky. – signed, a 68-year-old stud muffin (per girlfriend)
Thanks for a fantastic answer! You are a tremendous example to young female distance runners who are in need of pure honesty (from a father’s perspective). Congrats on USA’s. I really enjoyed the interviews on the various running websites.
Great answer, Lauren. I wouldn’t change a thing about it, and I hope it helps run4life. I wish we’d had the internet when I was running college x-c (well, ok, we did, but it was 1994, netscape 1.0, dialup modems etc) because the advice and example of someone like you would have gone a long way toward getting me out of my own head and my own narrow, short-term obsession with weight and fast times…
run4life: my own experience (which I had as recently as 6 months ago, and I’m 33 years old!) is that getting too obsessed with training and weight loss is a good way to get injured quickly. It’s a pattern. Every time I get into the “omg I’m so too fat and slow” mindset, which I still do occasionally after all these years, what happens is I train hard, unnecessarily lose a few kilos, and six weeks later I’ve got an achilles injury, hamstring pull, you name it – my body’s way of saying “hey, what the h***?”. Your body does great things for you every day without your even realizing it. Be nice to it: be impressed with how awesome it is that you can run all those miles! Sleep, eat, and take regular recovery days, and the reward of faster times will come.
Heather, this is great advice. One of the hardest lessons to learn as an athlete is to trust that if you do the right things (rest being one of them) the fast times will come. You don’t always need to be pressing…living in a constant state of low-level anxiety. That’s another secret destroyer of your health: stress.
This is a fascinating topic and I could talk about it all day. I don’t think there can be enough open, balanced discussion when it comes to teenage girls, sports, and body issues.
Stress is definitely not our friend. I was just reading something about cortisol levels and their effect on long- and short-term health.
Another thing I wanted to add is just another thing that clicked for me, in terms of dealing with these big eating, running, existential issues, was reading a description of what happens to your muscles, at a cellular level, when you train. Basically the description I read said that if you could see your muscles cells under a microscope after a hard training session, they would look all shredded and tattered – and THAT is the damage your body needs the fuel to repair. And then the text went into which nutrients you need and why. Somehow I was just like “Whoa” (think Keanu in Matrix, complete with blank, open-mouthed stare) followed closely by “geez, no wonder I’m always sick and injured and tired…”
clarification: I wrote “what happens is I train hard…” I should have written “train *too* hard” or perhaps even “overtrain” (perhaps not in a medical sense, but definitely on the borderline, i.e. racing heartbeat, insomnia, etc). Nothing wrong with training just plain old hard, as long as you treat yourself right in other respects
Scale weight does not tell the whole story! It is possible to train harder, gain a little muscle mass, lose lots of body fat, and the scale stays the same. Incorporate percentage body fat measurement into your program for a more accurate picture.
Definitely, Helen S! I second that.
I wish I understood much more about it. I have been to a number of blogs and forums today researching specifics, a good many websites I have went to I have found the opinions section has become a slanging match. It’s not really the sort of thing ladies speak about, i really had been hoping someone right here could really help out?
Beautifully said, Lauren. I’m new to your site and really appreciated your response here. I’m thinking about your comments “Study sports nutrition… Understand portion sizes and metabolism. Learn about meal timing.” I’m a runner who tends to eat less the more I run and it’s not healthy for obvious reasons. I’ve been paying more attention to what/when/how much I eat and how much better I feel/run when I’m eating more. Can you recommend some reading in sports nutrition that covers metabolism and meal timing? thanks so much!
Hey, thanks for the great post. Honestly, about five months ago I started a new dieting regime, I’ve been on the chubby side my entire adult life and I’ve tried everything. I found personally that the only thing that worked for me was hard work and putting the effort, take a look at this, it changed my life http://DietingHelp9.cowurl.com. Good luck and thanks for the great tips.
wow this is a great blog! i love your theme, did you have to pay for it? or was it free?
This is hands down the best advice on weight loss I have ever read.
This post was sincere and beneficial! Thanks for your valuable insight Lauren!
Thank you so much Lauren for the post.
Lauren you are such an inspiration
your perspective on this matter is so grounded and your message is important for athletes in such a personal sport to hear. I couldn’t agree more with everything you said! I spent about 3 1/2 months training for my high school xc season. I watched what i ate and kept a food diary on my ipod (yup-there’s an app for that!). Keeping a food diary helped me to take a closer look at what i was puttting in my body and make sure i was getting enough nutrients. After all my training (around 30-40 miles a week) and changing my eating habbits, i dropped 6 pounds and i still i felt strong and i made varsity!
What a fantastic site and informative posts I definitely will bookmark your website
Thank you so much Lauren! I gained about five pounds over the winter and now that track has started I’ve been stressing out about needing to lose weight. The thing is though, even at a lower weight last year, I’m still way faster this year than I was last year. I need to just calm down and focus on being healthy, not skinny. Again, thank you so much! You may have just saved me from a mess I don’t want to get myself into – that is, disordered eating.
Just curious Lauren – what diet changes did you make in college? Or was it just another year or two of mileage and racing under you? And what was the weight difference between the two pictures?
Thanks again for the wonderful post. I hope every HS an collegiate female runner reads it
Thanks so much for this fantastic post. This is well-written and truly thoughtful advice to fellow runners. I wish I’d read this twelve years ago, though I found my own way out of the darkness that plagues so many talented, driven, aspiring runners. I found that I ran faster and faster the skinnier I became until I was so skinny and nutrient-deficient that it was hard to walk up a flight of stairs without fainting. Took me about seven years to get well, and I am running forty lbs. heavier than those dark days and my times are just as fast. I’m now a healthy & happy woman and a much stronger runner. Amazing what the body can do when the mind and body work together in a healthy, happy way. Thanks for your thoughtful words.
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I am under pressure because my cousin is a track and field & cross country high school state champ and she was accepted into an Ivy League college because of her hard work in track. She started training everyday in 8th grade till forever. While I’m a slob at all this running, and my mile time in only 7:04. And I have no faith in myself for waking up at 5am to run like 10 miles everyday, because I procrastinate looking up these articles online whether I should go outside to run. And now my parents believe I have a good chance if I run to get into these colleges.
I planned to have my summer to focus on running, and maybe catch up to my friends. But obviously 2 months isn’t going cut it to become some high school champ at cross country. It’ll probably take more than a year for me
I don’t know what to do, or really who I am. Am I a runner, or not?
Lizzie,
There are lots of ways to be a runner. Your cousin’s way of doing it is only one way. It’s not how I did it, or lots of other athletes who went on to run in college and beyond. I never ran before school. I only ran during cross country or track practice in the afternoons. The bottom line is, only run if you want to run. If you run because someone makes you, or because you feel like you have to, it won’t be fun. And the thing is, when you run for YOURSELF, it really is magical. So tell your folks to back off and just do it at your own pace, on your own terms. If you can join a team, that’s the most convenient and most rewarding in my opinion. The relationships you make with your runner friends are the best part.
xxL