Eating right and weight management in non running season

As soon as Mumbai marathon was out of the way, a new beast started troubling me, the beast of weight management during non training season. The weekly mileages are low, and throw in some vacations, a couple of festivals and some parties, there goes fitness out of the window. My coach and I worked really hard in the last season to get me to this fitness level, however I am still not at my ideal racing weight, but still my Heart Rate and the speed is pretty decent right now, I don’t want to lose all this hardwork in the coming 6 months.

The first thing I did, was started maintaining a food log, yeah I jot down whatever I am putting in my mouth, right from ice cream to beer to candies. To help on this task I have installed My Fitness Pal on my Android phone, this app has a long list of Indian foods so it is much easier to keep a track of what you are eating. This pretty much used to tell me at the end of the day of what I should have been eating and what I shouldn’t have.

The second important thing I did was keeping the weekly running mileage to 35-40 km. The other secret in this is, don’t stop doing the speed runs and tempo runs, maybe reduce the intensity a bit, but still keep doing it, the biggest secret of my weight loss were the tempo and speed runs, where the intensity is relatively higher than the easy runs, hence that fastens the metabolism a lot.

After 5 weeks of maintaining a food log and good mileage my weight started showing a downward trend. Additionally I have been eating ONLY home cooked food, with alcohol / beer only on the weekends. The home cooked food part has made a lot of difference in my fitness level.

After 3 years of togetherness my Garmin Forerunner 305 finally dies 3 weeks back, I decided not to get another Garmin for the time being and run on the feel and cadence. I have been doing that since some weeks and I find it much more peaceful and a lot of less stress in my head. Occasionally I have found myself running faster than usual on the tempo runs as well, maybe because now I can’t keep looking at the pace every 30 seconds and hence there is no stress and I have started running purely on the feel. I am not sure if I am going to pick up another Garmin or not, maybe during the training season I might pick up a basic model which just gives me the distance and the Heart Rate.

And don’t forget the most important part of all : Lots of sleep!