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Fatburning

While training for a marathon isn't a license to eat anything you want, you'll find yourself eating more energy foods. Marathon training has helped thousands to set up an eating plan which bestows a continuous flow of energy, all day long. The long runs can be the inspiration for a continuous feeding system and the furnace which burns it up.

The Exercising Muscle Cells Become A Furnace
As they are conditioned to burn fat, the endurance muscles used in long runs are the best furnace for burning these excess energy calories. Many marathoners complain that they only lost one or two pounds over a six-month training program and fail to see the "big picture." These same persons would have gained two to three pounds of fat during the same period due to lifestyle. But even those who don't lose a pound usually lose several inches of "stuff" around the hips or stomach.

The most significant transformation going on inside your exercising muscle cells is a true revolution: they're changing from sugar­burners to fat-burners. Over the next few months, your "marathon muscles" will learn how to burn fat all day long, even when you're sitting all day and while asleep at night.

The Diet and Exercise Team

By working on both income and outgo, you'll feel better and burn more fat. As you shift to a diet which is lower in fat and eat snacks throughout the day, you cut down on the addition of body fat by not overeating. When you combine this with regular endurance exercise, you develop the capacity to burn off the excess fuel.

Opportunities for Change of Diet

• discover foods which give you a steady flow of energy
• eating small amounts of healthy snacks
• continuously "powering up" with a PowerBar or other sport performance food before exercise
• drinking water or other fluids throughout the day

The Starvation Reflex

By now you know that diets are read by your intuitive set point mechanism as a form of starvation, planting a future seed for increased fat storage. Over millions of years, our ancient ancestors withstood regular famines, establishing very complex and quick reactions to prepare even for the possibility of food reduction. If you're getting food in adequate quantity and frequency, your system doesn't feel the need to store fat. But the reflex starts into action when you've waited too long between snacks or meals on any day. The longer you wait to eat to eat your next food, the more you stimulate the fat-depositing enzymes. When you eat your next food, more of it will be processed into fat. But that's not all the bad news. A longer wait between meals increases your appetite, which leads to overeating-during the next meal or over the next few hours. Even if you've eaten three to five times a day but have eaten too few calories for that day's activities, you'll experience an increased appetite during the next 12 to 36 hours.

The 40-minute Rule

When you begin to run you burn primarily carbohydrates and very little fat. After 5-10 minutes the percentage of fats burned rises while the percentage of carbohydrates drops. At about 30 minutes, you're burning fats as primary fuel. By that time there are abundant supplies of fatty acids in the blood stream. Hence the value of extending your exercise periods to 40 minutes or more. If running 40 continuous minutes tires you, take regular and frequent walks. To mobilize the fat, it's better to run 40-60 minutes, three times a week, than 20-30 minutes six times a week.

From Galloway's Book on Running, page 243

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