Am I running too much?
 

Im 22, 5'10, 180 lbs, and have been on a mission to lose as much weight as possible in one month. I have been running at least 5 miles (yes) everyday. On some days I will run in the morning and again at night if I have time. Its almost like a high. More recently my calfs have been starting to throb during my runs and after my runs. It isnt that painfull but I just dont know if I am causing any damage to my legs. I looked all over the internet to find out the effects of running too frequently, but have found nothing. Am I running too often? I dont want arthritis or anything, I just want to lose weight and fast! Can anyone help?

You may want to alternate days. Also, losing weight fast is often a bad idea. I run and lift weights on alternating day and I've found it give me a good balance, but I don't usually run more than 2 miles a day.

It's certainly possible. If you went from virtually no running to 5mi/day, you could be tearing the muscle more than a constructive amount. Generally it's considered ideal to run every OTHER day. In the army we do alternating days of cardio (mostly running) and resistance training (push-up/sit-up/weights/etc). At any rate, yeah... I'd dial it back a touch.

A lot of other weight loss techniques work well with a lot of cardio. Eating yogurt in the mornings can help your weight. Avoid caffeine and take a daily (or better yet a twice a day AM/PM) multivitamin. Minimize (don't remove completely) your carb intake. Get enough sleep. There are dozens or hundreds of others.

Back before I learned first hand why engineers aren't fit, I ran a little over a mile everyday and then worked a specific muscle group. You won't lose weight, but you will get fit. On cardio days it was a longer run, 3 miles, then a brief over all workout.

Are you sure you are eating properly to get enough protein to replenish your muscles.

Cardio can be done every day, but running is hard on your joints. Doing too much high impact exercise can be very bad, especially if you're going from 0 to full throttle nearly instantaneously.

Dial back the running to 1-2 miles per day, and buy a bicycle or elliptical machine.

I'd like to stress that point... didn't actually say that in my post. But again, make sure you are getting the protein you need.


Also, what kind of running shoes do you have? When I was running so often, I actually went to the runner's store and had the guy watch my foot/arch and find a good shoe for me. Was the most comfortable shoe ever. Martian said it and it reminded me, good shoes are a must.

Thanks guys, im going to start running every other day. I didnt know how dangerous it was to run too often.

As for the shoes, I use the Nike Plus system. A chip is actually inside the sole of my shoe and a sensor is connected to my Ipod Nano. As I run and listen to music, the Ipod keeps track of calories, pace, and miles. Its very motivational but somewhat expensive (about $300 for shoes, ipod, sensor), but would recommend it to anyone.

For every five miles I was burning 700 calories, so I try to take in about 700 calories of food everyday. I cut back my meal portions to do so. My diet probably isnt healthy because I am eating much less than I normally would, but im eating healthier foods (a LOT of water, skim milk w/whey protein, wheat breads, oats, tuna, low carb foods, ect.) but I was told that if you burn more calories than you take in per day, you will lose weight fast.

Are you a woman? Most men wouldn't be overly concerned if they were 5'10" and 180. I'm currently 35 pounds lighter than you and would actually like to gain weight.

You've been given part of the story. Losing weight ultimately boils down to calorie intake vs output. However, there are levels of efficiency. If you starve yourself, your body will go into starvation mode. It will hoarde every calorie, because from a physiological standpoint you are starving and your body reacts to that. I would say keep within 500 calories at least when dealing with intake vs output. Even that's probably too large a gap, but it's better than the 1500 or so gap that you've created currently.

There are healthy ways to lose weight. There are fast ways to lose weight. There are no fast healthy ways to lose weight.

Truth is the reason why im going so insane with diet and exercise is because college kicked my ass with drinking and unhealthy eating and i gained a good 15 pounds of FAT. I have hardly any muscle at all. I am embarrassed to take my shirt of outside because im a little self conscious of my stomach. Im one of those guys that looks skinny with a shirt on.

If your saying that its not healthy to lose weight fast, its like sayin i am fucked for this summer. Its a lose-lose. Either be fat or be unhealthy. Ill take unhealthy.

Don't be superficial. Health has long-term benefits. Summer does not. You're looking for the quick fix that doesn't exist. Perhaps there's a lesson to be had here about not putting things off to the last minute.

If it's worth doing, it's worth doing right. You're paying the consequences of irresponsible lifestyle choices. You can continue to be irresponsible and pay heavier consequences later or you can own up to your mistake and fix it. College didn't kick your ass. You did it to yourself. Man up.

its called diet my friend. speak to a dietitian.

and im not talking about those crash diets. if you are runng 5miles a day then your body needs energy stores ie. carbohydrates. but it also needs to recover, so it would be a good idea to increase your protein to help with muscle recovery and growth..maybe a protein shake after your run.

id say take it easy on the running if you have gone from zero to hero. the last thing you want are stress fractures...then you;ll be sitting at home doing nothing at all playing playstation while racking up the calories.

id definately reccomend PLENTY of fruits and veggies. it will keep you full and away from junkfood too

I gained 75 pounds of fat in college, don't feel bad. :thumbsup:

also remember life is a marathon, not a sprint. you don't have to get it done and complete immediately. keep working at it... and you'll get there.

If you took a 3-year college program, you gained, on average, 5 lbs. a year.

Losing more than 1 or 2 lbs. of fat per week can be dangerous (and difficult to maintain, I might add).

If you have hardly any muscle, be sure to work in some weight training. Depending on what you do, weight training can actually burn more net calories than running, as your recovery period of 24 hours or more boosts your metabolism. Eat a balanced diet. And don't overexercise. It creates stress and can work against your goals. Get proper sleep. Same reason: Stress.

A pound of fat is worth 3,500 calories. You need to burn that much over and beyond your net calorie expenditure (food calories - calories burned).

Rushing toward an unrealistic goal is a recipe for failure. It's possible to lose 15 lbs. by the end of the summer or just beyond, but any faster than that and you might be losing both fat and muscle. Not good. (This too is unsustainable.) Remember that if you weight train, your net weight won't matter so much as your fat percentage. I can gain weight while losing fat fairly easily with the right program. (I'm doing it right now.)

Work for the long term. Do it right for the rest of your life.

Back to running ... most people in serious or semi-serious training for races of 10K or above will run 5 days a week. Marathoners will gear up for a race by running over 100 K per week. It is not inherently "dangerous".

However, when you first start running, running on alternate days while gradually building up your mileage is the correct way to go.

If you are trying to lose weight via running, you want to keep your heart rate in and around the 60-65% of max range. This will optimize your weight loss more than running harder will.

There are a lot of formulas for determining heart rates but if you can carry on a complex conversation or sing a song while you run, you are probably in a good heart rate range for fat loss.

Good luck!

If you're losing more than 2 pounds a week, you are on a crash diet, and the weight loss is unlikely to stick around. If you're only eating 700 calories a day, and burning 700 calories a day, your body will be forced into starvation mode and it will fight to keep on every extra pound it has, so all your good effort will backfire.

Losing weight is about more than restricting food intake and exercising a lot. It's about an entire lifestyle change. It's not about a diet. The main mistake I see other people making when they try to lose weight or maintain their weight is that they don't eat enough. For instance, to maintain my current weight at my current activity level, I need to eat 2439 calories or so per day.

For you, given your level of activity, you would need to eat 4091 calories to maintain your current weight. Obviously, you want to lose weight. Let's say you want to get down to 160. You can't do this overnight if you expect it to stay that way. It has to go slowly if you want it to stay off. Shoot for around 2500 calories if you want to keep up your current activity level. Yes, that much. Why? Your body needs fuel. What do you do when you run? You burn the fuel. Your body needs fuel just to operate--not just to exercise. Keep that in mind.

I can't imagine the havoc you are wreaking on your internal organs right now, seriously. This will have lasting, long-term consequences if you keep going the way you are going.

I'd recommend checking out a program like DietPower if you are truly interested in changing your life and really losing weight. What you are doing now is not a lifestyle change--it is a way to damage your body.

Oh, and just so you know--I lost 45 pounds in just over 6 months, the healthy way, and it's stayed off for over a year now.

Have you had any sort of formal training? Running that much can have serious consequences if you have bad technique, and expensive Nike shoes will only make it worse by allowing you to run 'comfortably' with bad technique.

So you're going to combat one extreme irresponsibility with another extreme irresponsibility, in the other direction? Learn some moderation, man... 15 lbs. of fat is not obese, and you can lose it, but not in a month. Unless you want to put yourself in the hospital at the same time. You have to give your body the time it needs to work it off, not force it into starvation, which is only going to make you GAIN weight. Seriously, use your brain here... be responsible, if you want to correct your previous irresponsibility. It never pays off to go to extremes, especially when it comes to your own body... it has limits, and it will haunt you in the future if you don't pay attention to them now.

You didn't gain it all in a month and you're not going to lose it in a month. Other posters have given good advice, especially about the 2 lbs/week loss thing. Crashing just means you'll weigh more than you do now a year from now. Lifestyle is key for the long run. And what they said...

nothing to say

I agree with a lot of whats being said here, in fact all of it unless I missed something. One thing I didn't notice, which doesn't mean it's not there, is I didn't hear anyone talk about stretching. I don't run, too hard on my knees and legs. But I do hit the gym 4-5 times a week and I do walk 5 miles a day. My gym time is designed to target different muscles on different days- ie one day arms and chest, next back and abs and then legs. I usually take a day off after those three days and then start over. I started walking in yards (I crushed my leg a few years back) and over time worked up to several miles. Before doing either I spend 10-15 minutes stretching. I find it helps greatly.

I do yoga on a daily basis; I find it's a great combination of stretching, resistance, and learning mindfulness.

Yoga sounds smart, though I confess to not knowing much about it.

It's funny I walk to the gym, it works out to be right at 2 miles. Recently a guy who also works out there has stopped to ask if I want a ride. In my best Spanish I tell him I'm walking on purpose. I think he gets it now. But almost everyday when I get there he's walking on a thread mill. At first I thought well maybe it's a programmable thing, you know with "hills" etc... No it's a one speed, no incline, no computer thing. Then I thought well maybe he lives a lot farther way, nope right around the corner from me. I can't for the live of me figure out why he doesn't just save the gas and walk to the gym.

My guess is if I could ask him there would be a logical reason. I simply need to work on my Spanish more.

Arthritis is a bone injury (for our purposes anyway), and unless you already have it, you aren't going to give it to yourself this way. What's most likely happening is that you're overexerting some muscle group in your calves because of some small inefficiency in your stride. It may or may not be fixable but probably doesn't matter since you're not training for racing. The "throbbing" is almost certainly your calves telling you that you're doing too much without giving them a chance to adjust to the workload, so your choices are to cut back or power through. IMO you should cut back. Note: I am assuming that by "calves" you mean the muscles and not any connective tissue. Without seeing exactly where you mean, I can only guess based on your very vague description.

Now, as far as "running too frequently", you're asking the wrong question. Back in the day, I ran on a 14-day cycle with one rest day averaging 14-19 miles a day, depending on where I was in my macrocycle (the 14 day period is the microcylce). There's no such thing as running too frequently, and you can actually run every day for several calendar years and get no adverse affects. What you can do, though, is build mileage too fast, which can cause all sort of soft tissue damage, including your IT band, achilles tendon and all sorts of other grissle that you never thought you had. The general rule of thumb is to add an additional 10% to your mileage every week until you're running the weekly distance that you want. If you've gone from 0 to 35 miles/week like it appears, you are inviting injury.

The other thing that you want to pay close attention to, as other have said, is your shoes. At 35/week, you need a mid-level shoe that can provide the kind of cushioning and support that you need. Personally, I don't like Nikes (that's my opinion, and you're welcome to your own), but you should go to your local running store (if you have one) and get fitted for something the suits your gait, mileage and goals. Don't fall for gimics. Running shoes are generally good for about 400-600 miles depending on the brand, where you're running (trails will extend the mileage, concrete will drastically shorten it) and if you're rotating a couple of pairs or not. If you don't have a local running store (note: going to Foot Locker is like going to Best Buy for a high-end computer. The employees there aren't trained in what they're selling), go online to find one of the 5 or 6 that do a great job and have a 800 number. Roadrunner does a great job, and the customer service folks are all hired because they have a running background.

I spent 12 years as a pretty competitive track, road and cross country runner and know this stuff pretty well, so feel free to ask questions about anything. I'm always happy to help.

No, you just need to be smart about it. You aren't going to lose a gut by running for a couple of weeks, even at age 22 or whatever. You need to be smart about what you're doing and make sure that you incorporate your diet into your overall plan. If you keep running longterm, you'll eventually get to the point where it doesn't matter what you eat - for me, that point was around 75 miles/week - and you'll just constantly need to feed the fire. You generally start burning fat 30 miles into a run (depending on how much energy you're exerting), but as your body adapts to the new pressures you're putting on it, it will take longer to acheive that stage. The good news is that when you reach that point, you're in pretty damn good shape.

Wait, 30 miles or 30 minutes?!

sorry - that's minutes. Bad typo, eh?

keep that up and you could qualify for the olympics...

maybe he meant minutes and not miles unclephil :P

Here are a few things to look at around the use of a heart rate monitor. They are a great way to measure what is going on with your body regardless of age, weight or level of health. And if you want to burn fat from your body you can't beat it for a way to monitor what you're doing.

Check out this article and this chart (the chart has two pages - read the second page and understand what they're saying!).

http://www.lifetimefitness.com/modul...ning_chart.pdf

http://www.duathlon.com/articles/1460

http://www.active.com/story.cfm?CHEC...STORY_ID=12408

http://www.trifuel.com/triathlon/tri...ate-000574.php

You burn more fat at a slower pace (under your threshold) than you do at a higher pace where you are burning sugar for fuel. When that is gone and you stay at a high pace you r body goes for the muscle for fuel. That's where you heard others talking about the problems with a 700 calorie/day diet. If there's no sugar left and you are cranking to high your body goes for the easiest to process source - muscle. It's easier for your body to process fat at slower tempos.

Anyway, read through all this and think about getting a heart rate monitor. You'll be glad you did if your are serious about weight management and health.

jazz always has the best advice when it comes to this sort of thing. running, athletics and the like.

i always look forward to his responses and was surprised he hadnt answered earlier! id take his advice if i were you.

5 miles a day is not really all that excessive. 10 miles might be. However, if you're hurting, your body is telling you something. It might be a good idea to listen.

In my opinion, surface is more important than shoes. Beaches are best for reducing impact, but the slope can get to you if you're not going both ways. Grass and dirt are far better than concrete, or asphalt. The scenery is usually better where there are natural surfaces.

Are you enjoying the running? If so, do it in a way that will allow you to continue. If you don't enjoy it, do something else.

5 miles a day isn't anything to worry about at 5'10" / 180 / reasonable meals.

Hell, that sounds like something the average American should strive to achieve.

Then again... I'm a half-insane paratrooper and we're stupid like that.

I'd recommend taking a joint supplement. I didn't give a crap about "super magic wonder pills" until I starting sounding like a bowl of rice krispies after some hardcore mountain runs in Afghanistan. Stuff worked for me and my body notices if I don't take it.

If you didn't notice 'em before... you'll notice your knees protesting soon.

Pssst, Crompsie.. you missed this post:

Agreed, so long as that's not the starting point for training. That was my point. Anyone with no prior injury or health issues should be able to work their way there in short order. Generally speaking, starting at 15 miles/week is a good idea. 20 miles/week can be done if you've got a decent cardio base going already, but 35/week is going to overload something fairly quickly, which is my guess as to what happened to the OP's calves.

I know a guy that logged 120 miles/week every week for 5 years. He ran every single day in that time, and I've seen his logs (when you're really hardcore, you log every single mile you run along with the route and conditions). He went to 3 Olympic trials in that time (2 marathon, one track) but never qualified. He also the top placing American at the NYC marathon two years in a row.

There's no such thing as running too much - as I think I said - there's only building too quickly or putting too much stress on the body's systems.

Nah, I saw it... I just figured the guy had to be lying or unaware of his intake.

700 calories a day with that level of activity gets you a free ride in the ambulance when your body hits the organic equiv of the Nintendo reset button.

700 calories a day for that individual's estimated needs is like trying to run a car on 50% gas / 50% water.

...

Note to self: I'm jealous, this guy runs more than I do. OW, MY PRIDE.

Also: Rumor has it exercising twice a day (such as running) is more beneficial for weight loss than a single longer period.

You may want to run for two 3 miles shots instead of a single 5.

He doesn't eat more tuna than you, so be happy. Also, that was no an innuendo.

Tuna has too much mercury, anyway. I opt for wild Alaskan (Pacific) salmon, myself. It has more omega-3s too, which are a good anti-inflammatory.

well, i dont think i went from "zero to hero". i probably averaged about a run a week throughout college, so my legs were in decent shape prior to the recent insanity.

i gained 15 lbs between freshman year and this year. i didnt get any taller and i dont lift weights so it is definetly fat. beer, taco bell and pizza are the explanation.

ive lost 7 pounds in 2 weeks. i took 2 days off from running and my legs feel much better, my self esteem is better, my mood is better, i feel better overall. i take a digital picture every day and there is obvious difference in my appearance from day one to now. i am liking the results.

some of you say that this will all backfire and i will just gain everything back. i disagree. i realize i cant keep my insane pace up for too much longer or my body will be in danger (maybe it is allready, as some have explained). my plan is to gradually increase my calorie intake to a healthy level over the next month. once i reach that level (2500 or so a day), i plan to maintain it.

i made a huge spreadsheet on excel keeping tabs of literally evertyhing i consume, # of pushups, miles, ect. I titled it "30 days of hell".

when the 30 days of hell are over i still plan to exercise and healthy foods. i will NOT gain that weight back!

redwings, crash diets like yours rarely work in the long-term. You're forming habits in your 30 days, and you've already stated that you're going to relapse.

If you want to keep it off, start making exercise an every-day habit. A "run a week" doesn't mean that your legs were in decent shape. Maybe they were, and maybe they were. Unless you were doing something you haven't disclosed (not that this is a deposition), then cardiovascularly you weren't in decent shape. Obviously you've adjusted to that, but you're still inviting soft tissue injury with what you're doing. If nothing else, you need to do some cross-training - swimming, biking, stairmaster, anything that's going to lessen the impact on your legs. Running can cause lots of impact injuries like stress fractures.

The diet thing, though, is really just a poor, poor idea. You need to make sure that you're not only getting enough calories but also that you're getting the right kind of calories. Too much or too little protein, carbohydrates, salt, water, etc. can all cause very serious long-term health problems. You need to rethink this or at the very least run it by your doctor.

Don't get too confident. If you're doing things the wrong way, most of this weight loss will consist of fluid, fat, and muscle. As an example, with crash dieting, if you lost 20 pounds in 20 days, the first 6 to 10 pounds would be fluid, and the rest fat and muscle. Oh, you'd also lose other things such as aerobic power, strength, and metabolism.* Isn't that effectively stunting you against your goal? You'd be setting yourself up to fizzle out when you're trying to work your body to were you want it to be.

Doing things against the good advice listed here really is unsustainable. It's well documented.


*From the book Power Eating, 3rd ed., by Susan Kleiner, PhD, RD.