Exercising more = must be able to eat more??

How much are you eating now?

A lot of "diets" are WAY too low for an athlete in training.  Take a look at the following calculators and see what they say you need to maintain based on your training schedule.  Then subtract 500-1000 calories per day (NO MORE).  That should put you between 1-2lbs per week

http://www.bcm.edu/cnrc/caloriesneed.htm

http://www.runningforfitness.org/calc/weightloss.php

http://www.mayoclinic.com/invoke.cfm?objectid=4C466CA1-0148-4A4B-87781B6DE512E057&method=full (least accurate in my opinion.  If you are interested I can explain why....)

Also, part of losing weight is an attitude shift.

1) this is a marathon, not a sprint.  Don't try to do things that you will hate doing for a while.

2) you don't HAVE to give up anything.  you DO have to make choices.  I had fettucini alfredo for dinner the other nights, loved every bite.  However I could do that because of the training I had done that day and the way my day had gone overall; I was WAY under calories and had taken in very little fat.  Could I have chosen a more healthy meal?  Yes, but I LOVE Fettucini Alfredo and having it occasionally is just fine.

3) remember the 80/20 rule:  If you make great food choices 80% of the time than making less optimal ones 20% isn't going to ruin your progress

4) note my wording in the last message - there is no such thing as a "bad" food, just better and worse choices.  Try to think that way.  The minute you tell  yourself you can't have something because it's bad it will be what you want most and where you go when you are having a bad day.

Hope some of that helps.

Ru

I wouldn't necessarily wait to increase running.  I started out at 254 (and 5'9'') and was really worried about injuring myself because of running.  I spent the first couple of months running on the treadmill because I figured it would be easier on my joints.  People here at BT encouraged me to get outside because my body needed to get used to running in the kind of conditions I would face when racing AND running on the treadmill is so darn boring.

I think the secret is to be very conservative in how much you increase your mileage.  Most people seem to agree that you don't want to increase more than 10% a week.  Also pay attention to aches and pains.  Aches aren't so bad- it's feel a little achey, but if it feels more like pain, and persists more than a couple of days, I would cut back.

Congrats on already doing 2 races...you are well on your way!

Madeye just said most of what I was going to!

Ignore the "overweight" categorization.  Many professional athletes are overweight and/or obese due to the muscle they carry.  Set a goal, work toward it, then reassess once you get there.

I started at 275 on a 5'5" female frame.  I got to 235 doing mostly elliptical/non-impact exercises.  However I stalled there and started doing aerobics, running, etc.  I am now at 217 and still going.  It's been about 14 months.  That's OK.

Running SUCKED at first, but I have gotten better.  I started with the coolrunning.com couch to 5k program, which in the first week says run 1 minute, walk 90 seconds, for a total of 20 minutes.  I couldn't do it all; I did maybe 4 intervals and had to stop.  That was in June.

The week before last I ran 8 minutes 15 seconds without stopping.  My other intervals that night were 3 minutes, 5 minutes, or 7 minutes long.  And I'm still improving.  Last night I did 1 minute run 30 second walks on the treadmill and could pretty much keep that going as long as I needed.  And NONE of that is particularly fast given my short stubby legs!

The key is not to overtax your body.  If something hurts, stop and either walk or stretch it.  Make SURE you stretch before you run (particularly your calves).  And if you ache the next day, ride the bike, go for a swim, or take a rest day.  (You should have 1-2 of those per week regardless...)

It takes time.  My first sprint is October 2nd and running is still my weakest leg.  I expect to run parts and walk parts, and when I DO run i expect it to be slow.  Frankly I'm hoping that the fact that I'm a really strong swimmer and good biker (from hauling all this weight up and down stairs *grin* ) will make up for it.

Anyway, just listen to your body.  It will tell you if you are overusing something, injuring it, etc. If you DO injure yourself even a little make sure you take the time to heal before you start pushing again, otherwise you will just make it worse.

And as I said before, eating is about choices.  You only have to make good choices 80% of the time to substantially improve your overall condition.  (Another anecdote:  I can't deal without something sweet after dinner and before bed, both because I get hungry and because that is my weakest time of day and when I feel most deprived.  So my day-to-day goal is to leave myself calories for that treat each night.  Right now it's a brownie with a big glass of milk.  There have been times when it was a cupcake with frosting, birthday cake, ice cream, etc.  To me it is my daily reminder that I ate well the rest of the day and my daily reward for doing so.  My husband is trying to lose a bit of a gut and for him, that treat is chips or something salty.  But again, it is a daily reward for getting the rest of it right.  It really does help.)

Small changes.  If you try to do too much all at one time you will frusterate yourself.  Make one or two small changes per week and let them sink in before you make more. 

Ru

You need to create a 500 calorie deficit per day to lose approximately 1lb per week.  And you do have to adjust your intake as you lose.  However your body also 'adjusts' your metabolism based on what you take in and how much you exercise.  It gets used to it.  So that makes calories a target but it isn't straight math. 

When you hit a plateau you need to really shake things up.  Change your training routine entirely.  Eat your maintenance level for a few weeks to reset your body before you start trying to drop again.  A plateau is what led me to training for a tri in the first place and that big change in my training has broken me off of it.

EEP!

You aren't losing weight because you are eating too LITTLE!  800 calories isn't enough for a person in a COMA.  It takes more than that to keep your heart beating and your lungs operational.  It certainly can't support an active person without damaging your metabolism!

The human body is remarkably resillient and made to withstand periodic famines.  For that reason it has something called "starvation mode".  When you eat too LITTLE your body will do what it can to adjust and than stubbornly hang on to fat on the assumption that this is going to be a long famine and that you will need that to survive.  End result is that any weight loss is actually MUSCLE loss (bad).  When you throw on long exercise sessions, you only make it worse.

You need to eat MORE!  Quite a bit more!

Go to the calculators above, determine what you need to maintain your weight based on your activity level including those long workouts (which are only really necessary if that is what your training plan calls for; I never exercise more than an hour a day including weight lifting) and then subtract NO MORE THAN 1000 calories per day.

One other thing; you might actually put on a pound or two as you get your body up to a reasonable number of calories, because it takes some time to readjust.  You can minimize that by going immediately to 1200 (which is the minimum anyone should eat unless under doctors supervision) and then upping around 100 calories every few days until you hit the level spec'ed above.

Eating that little damages your metabolism.  Eating that little and exercising that much puts you dangerously close to what the average anorexic does, even if you aren't really anorexic.  You should NEVER be eating that little except under the supervision of a doctor, and even then it really isn't a good idea.  You should only exercise that much when training for a major event, certainly not every single day.  And you shouldn't do both at the same time.  You are doing your body FAR more harm right now.....

(Sorry to be the bearer of bad news here, but even women's fitness magazines rarely recommend below 16-1800/day to lose weight these days.  Men need quite a bit more than that.  I know you were just trying to do what you've been taught (eat less, exercise more) but the body is a complicated machine whose first goal is survival.  It adapts to whatever awful thing we do to it.)

If you are female, please feel free to join us in the forums at www.shape.com - we have an excellent community there of women who understand weight, weight loss, eating, nutrition and exercise, and who are all working together to find the right balance for each of us.

Although this sounds backwards, if you are truly eating 800 calories per day, you probably need to eat MORE, not less.  Your body will go into starvation mode, as madeye said, and hold desperately onto anything it can get.  One of the things that helps to lose weight is to build a little muscle, which also helps so you can go faster, work harder, etc.  At that level of calories, you're not going to be able to do that at all.

At a guess I'd say that you probably need to be eating at least 1500 calories a day.  Double what you're eating now. 

Try this.  Up your protein, cause you're probably not getting enough for your needs.  Keep your fat% at about 20% or a little less, and focus on complex carbohydrates (i.e. veggies, whole grain stuff)  Start upping your calories slowly and what you'll probably find is that you're not gaining weight either.