Gray Guys/Girls Master's Focus Triathlon Mentor Group--CLOSED (Page 25)

• +5 points for no weight gain
• 0 points for 0 pounds lost
• +22.4 point for 672 workout minutes
• Total: 27.4 points

Good workouts this week! I'm a little frustrated I didn't loose any weight!

Scott I.



Edited by EchoLkScott 2015-02-22 9:19 AM

Weight Loss Challenge:

No weight loss/gain  = 5 points

Total workout minutes = 666 minutes = 22.2 points (I'll be a fair bit slower this week).

Total = 27.2 points.

Deb - Very admirable HM pace.  Looking forward to reading your report.  

Steve - ChelanMan question, about accommodations - My friend will pull a trailer down and I'll be camping in a tent, hopefully on an adjacent spot.  Are you aware of any close by camp grounds?  I need to study a map of the town and transition areas to get familiar with where we want to be.  I also had a look at your Ancient Lakes and they look worth some time to explore the area.

That's perfect info on the campsites, Thanks.  We want to book our spots PDQ so we don't have to worry about it.  We're planning to drive down the Wednesday before the race so we can check out the courses and I like to swim in the lake to get comfortable with it before the race.  

Deb - great race report.  You handled your race very well.

Weight loss - lost 2.7 pounds this week

Workout - 643 minutes

Here are the current point totals for the Weight Loss/Workout Challenge.

Steve, I don't believe the totals include your numbers from last week and Tom, I have no numbers for you this week.  Just want to make sure you guys get credit for the work you did.

Looks like we are all playing for second as Scott I. continues to dominate although a bunch of us were able to shed some excess baggage this week!  Good job everyone!

(0222_weightloss_workout.jpg)

Until about 10-years ago, I never really had a weight problem.  Back when I was swimming, it was all I could do to pack enough food in replace the 8,000 calories a day I was burning in the pool.  After I retired from swimming, I was a dog handler on a Search and Rescue team so hiking 50-75 miles a week in the high back country pretty well maintained my weight in a healthy range and the occasional swim or bike ride kept me somewhat aerobically fit.  Then about 10-years ago life started to happen - we had some issues with one of our kids (that's always good for some stress and a few pounds), I started my own business - and suddenly my weight was tickling 300 pounds.

In the spring of 2012, I decided to turn the 30-year old dream of Kona into the memory of Kona and began my triathlon journey.  I knew that the first order of business was to lose a significant amount of weight.  I started researching and settled on the Atkins diet, which indeed, allowed my to quickly drop 50 pounds - in less than 6 weeks.  That led to several medical problems, not the lest of which was emergency gall bladder surgery.  The doctor's said the pancreatitis and gall bladder issues were a direct result of the rapid weight loss.  But I digress.  That little episode was enough to get me to return to a well-balanced diet,  My weight was heading in the right direction and I assumed that as I ramped up my training volume, the weight would simply take care of itself.

Unfortunately, it hasn't worked out that way.  I did all the math - I figured out my BMR, then allowed for all of my daily activity/exercise to arrive at a daily calorie goal.  The final step was to subtract enough calories to create a daily deficit so that I could lose 1-pound per week.  Except it didn't work out that way.  My weight was stagnate at best.  I would lose a half-pound one week and gain a pound the next week.  I would increase my training volume and I would gain weight.  i would lower my training volume and lose weight.  I was doing all the right things - I was shopping around the perimeter of the store and eating only fresh foods, I had completely eliminated fried food and processed food from my diet, I was eating 6-7 times a day - yet I was battling with the scale and the scale has been winning.

I finally got to the point where I threw my hands up in disgust and said I clearly didn't understand this whole nutrition thing as well as I thought I did. and decided to reach out for some help.  My wife and I are very fortunate to be Kaiser members and enjoy what many consider to be the gold standard for health care in California.  I figured there was nothing lost in asking so I asked my doctor if it were possible to meet with a dietician.  Much to my surprise, not only did Kaiser have dieticians, but they had sports dieticians - no copay, no out of pocket, just make an appointment and go.

So I went.  I took printed copies of my food logs for the past 6-months as well as copies of my training log for the past 6-months.  I was prepared to defend my nutrition choices to the death because I KNEW I was doing everything right!  After about two minutes of looking at my logs she pulled her calculator over and started punching numbers in, then with a slight smile on her face said, "You are doing everything right except for one small little thing.  You aren't eating enough!"  By not eating enough she meant I needed at least 1,000 calories more per day!

I had heard and read about starvation mode.  I was careful to avoid having so low a caloric intake that starvation mode became an issue and it took quite a bit of convincing to get me to accept what was going on. I hadn't had any unexplained fatigue, I didn't feel a lack of energy during my workouts - how could my body be in starvation mode?  I'm not sure I completely accepted what she was saying but it finally came down to what I have been doing for the past several years isn't working so maybe it was time to try something new.

At the beginning of last week, I started my new diet, more specifically, I added 1,000 calories per day to my diet.  In the back of my mind I think I expected the scale to rapidly ascend to unknown heights.  What happened was I lost weight.  Yes, I have lost weight in the past.  But in the past, it seemed like to lose weight, I had to literally starve myself - I call it the Survivor diet.  Last week, I ate, not only did I eat, there we times I questioned how I was going to eat as much as I was told I needed to eat - and it worked.  Granted I am only a little over a week in to the new diet plan.  Per Janie's instruction, I am weighing in daily and logging it in MyFitnessPal and the weight continues to trend downward.  Who knew?

The moral of my story is that sometimes we need to reach out for expert guidance.  You may have resources available to you that you are not aware of at little or no cost.  I was shocked to learn that not only do I have access to nutritional guidance, but I have an entire team of sports nutritionists that stand ready to help me with nutrition while training and look forward to helping me formulate race day nutrition strategies.  My bad that it took over two years to begin to utilize this resource!

There is an old saying, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."  If what you are doing isn't working, maybe it is time to consider a change.  Whether it be nutrition, weight-loss, run/cycling/swimming technique, training plans, whatever.  Hopefully you won't repeat my mistake and will act before wasting a couple years.

Good job on your HM Deb!

I think you just proved what I have suspected for a long time - we are all just a little bit crazy!

Dan,

Thank you for wearing the uniform and protecting all of our freedom.  I can't begin to imagine the struggle that having to constantly turn your life upside down so you can deploy creates.  You are indeed a better man than me - thank you!

This sums up the distance/duration debate in a way that I think everyone will understand.  Let's imagine two runners, one that runs 8:00/mile at threshold and another that runs 12:00/mile at threshold.  Have both of them run the 5 mile workout that Dan referred to above.  The 8:00 runner will take about 40-44 minutes while the 12:00 runner will take about 60-64 minutes.  They both ran the same distance, but they did not have the same workout.  Nowhere near the same workout.

You can argue that both runners experienced the same intensity during their runs - running at threshold is about a 7 RPE or low zone 4 effort, doesn't matter what your pace is.  But that is where the similarity ends.

The 8:00 runner started out with +/- 20 minutes running aerobically followed by 24 minutes at threshold.  Meanwhile, the 12:00 runner began with 28 minutes running aerobically followed by 36 minutes at threshold.  The slower runner actually had the more intense workout even though they run slower because they spent a greater duration of time at the same intensity during the workout.  8:00 runner was at threshold 24 minutes - 12:00 runner was at threshold 36 minutes.

This is why it is better to plan your run and cycling workouts using duration rather than distance.  Instead of mileage, if this workout were written using duration it might of looked something like this:  Run 20 minutes in zone 2 followed by 30 minutes in zone 4.  That workout would be the same for anyone that does it.  Yes, the faster runner would have run further, but the intensity of both workouts would have been the same and the training stress to both of the athletes would have been the same.  The faster you are, the more you shortchange yourself by doing distance workouts versus duration workouts.

Swimming is a bit of a different animal because swimming is largely planned around intervals of a specific distance.  It has been shown repeatedly that getting in the water and swimming long durations will not apply the same training stress as swimming intervals.

So I will ask the question one final time.  Are you training by duration or are you training by distance?