The weight and training balance dilemma!

Since my last race, I have really been getting into the swing of watching what I eat again. When I was first introduced to the idea that weight loss could help me in race situations, I realised on return to the scales, that I had let almost 9lb slip back on. Ooops. It’s just a habit I got out of, like we all do.  I had started to get lazy, eat more junk, stop cooking as much. So I embraced the home cooking again and got back out the low fat cook books. Since I am still off work for a few more weeks and have the time to do it. I am finding the balance quite hard to be honest. At first, I did quite well, but then one week, I lost 4 lb. I didn’t get to lose 4 stone by accident you know, I am actually getting quite good at weight loss (when I set my mind to it that is!!) You would think that this was good, right? Coach was NOT happy with me. This coincided with me experiencing fatigue in training, and I was told off for losing too much weight all in one week. I very quickly learned that the balance of eating to fuel my training, while still trying to lose weight was going to be much more tricky than I first thought! I had to be reminded again that food is fuel, and without it my training will suffer, even if I am thinner!! I was ordered to eat more and disregard the diet for the race week. So I did, well I thought I did. I must be just a little too good at this weight watchers thing because that week I still lost 2.5 lb. Ooops! If you had said to me not long back that I would be getting told off for not eating enough, I would have laughed. Gosh, its hard work!!  So, I started the online food diary. I realised that sometimes I had really not had much at all. This is NOT GOOD! Heavy training unfortunately does the opposite thing to me than it does to most people, it makes me LESS hungry. So I have had to go back to drinking SiS recovery milkshakes after training, (strawberry is my favourite at the moment!) or if I do forget to eat, by treats to myself are peanut butter and/or nutella on toast. Especially tasty after a long session! So, last week I managed a loss of 1lb. Normally I would be rather upset at that measly amount, but apparently for coach, that is spot on. Balance restored (I hope). It is proving to be much harder than I thought to strike a balance between eating the right amount to lose weight (with the aim of hitting my target ‘race weight’), yet still being able to sustain hard fast exercise. To be quite honest, when I was originally told by coach I had to trim down a bit to get to optimal race weight, I was dreading going back to the weight watchers eating, but it’s MUCH easier than I thought, maybe a little too easy!

So, I am listening VERY closely to my body at the moment, and go training armed with energy bars and gels, just in case I haven’t got the balance right and need to ‘top up’. I went out without them the other day, what a fatal mistake!! I had stopped using them because of the calorie content, but they will have to become my friend for a while again, well at least till the hard training leading up to Budapest is all sorted. J 

Weight loss and weight maintenance is not an exact science, it is quite tricky, even for me!!