I completed a half-marathon. That means I traversed, in a period of just over 2 hours, a distance of 13.1 miles. I completed the training to meet this goal. To manage that task, I went from running 12 miles per week to 25 miles per week. I felt like I had really managed to accomplish something. Then I stepped on the scales…
Why people quit
One would think that the number of calories I was burning per week to run that distance would be so large that I would have lost a substantial amount of weight. To avoid getting discouraged, or obsessed with weight, I resolved not to weigh myself during the training process. So, the day after the run, I stepped on the scales… And the answer was… 215 lbs. Holy cow! How was that possible? That was nearly enough to make me quit.
Looking for the answer
A good, hard look at the calories burned in running shows an interesting fact. At a weight of 215-pounds, if I go out and run for two hours at a ten minute/mile pace, I can expect to burn between 1600-2000 calories. That’s about the equivalent of nearly a day’s worth of food. But, of course, that isn’t how much I run every day. So that number needs to be averaged out over a week’s worth of time. Looked at that way, that 1600 calories equates to about 250 calories per day. The equivalent of two sodas. Once I was finished feeling sorry for myself, I came back to the following fact:
Weight = Calories consumed per day – calories burned per day
Turns out there are some great tools on the ‘net to determine how many calories one should consume to achieve a target weight. I figured that the Mayo Clinic should be a trustworthy source for that information, and you can find their calculator here. In this calculator, you enter your gender, height, age, target weight, and estimated activity level. The calculator then spits out an estimate of the number of calories you should consume per day to maintain the desired weight.
The fascinating thing about looking at weight this way is that the number of calories per day to maintain a given weight varies only by a few hundred calories/day when your activity level is increased from ”Somewhat Active” to “Active.” That’s the equivalent of two 12-ounce sodas in a single day. Not very much food by today’s standard.
I was slowly coming to the realization that my method of managing my health wouldn’t work anymore. Prior to this point in my life, I had always managed my health by just exercising more. With the constraints of family and a full-time job, and I guess getting older, that approach just wouldn’t cut it.
It was time to learn about calories. Great.
