The five key methods of body weight management for endurance athletes are improving your diet quality, balancing your energy sources, nutrient timing, managing your appetite, and training for racing weight. The first four methods are nutritional means of reducing calorie intake and body fat storage without sabotaging training performance and recovery. The fifth method entails correcting common training errors that limit both performance and improvements in body composition. The five Racing Weight methods are practiced during periods of race-focused training and also during the quick start periods that immediately precede the beginning of a new training cycle. But they must be applied differently during a quick start, whose primary objective is fast fat loss, than they are applied within the training cycle, whose primary objective is maximum race fitness. We discussed how to practice the Racing Weight methods within the training cycle in the preceding chapter. In this chapter I will explain how they are practiced differently in a quick start.
DIET QUALITY IN THE QUICK START
Although most athletes can maintain their racing weight without keeping to a perfect diet (and most people cannot sustain a perfect diet indefinitely because it’s too restrictive to provide sufficient enjoyment), anyone can keep up a more or less perfect diet for a few weeks. During periods when you are trying to lose excess body fat quickly, the more you increase your diet quality, the faster you will shed excess fat. For these reasons, I recommend that you increase your diet quality from the level that normally works for you (in terms of average daily DQS) to the level of near perfection during a Racing Weight quick start.
Remember, a quick start is a four- to eight-week period preceding the beginning of formal preparation for racing, during which you try to lose weight quickly but in a way that supports your future training and racing plans. Any diet that earns a DQS of 15 or above is a fairly healthy diet, and there are many athletes able to attain their racing weight on a normal training diet that falls within the DQS range of 15–19. Such a diet can easily allow for a few unhealthy treats that keep eating sufficiently enjoyable. But within a quick start your DQS should shoot up to the 23-plus range (the maximum DQS is 29). This will require that you eliminate virtually all unhealthy foods. This isn’t easy for most of us, but it’s something anyone can do for four to eight weeks.
BALANCING YOUR ENERGY SOURCES IN THE QUICK START
The most important energy source, or macronutrient, within the training cycle is carbohydrate. Because carbohydrate is an important fuel for training, and serves no function other than providing energy, the more you train, the more carbohydrate you need in your diet. Getting enough carbohydrate, which most serious endurance athletes fail to do, will not only enable you to train more effectively but will also help you get leaner.
Whereas getting plenty of carbs is your main concern within the training cycle, in a quick start your carbohydrate intake should come down and your protein intake should increase to account for roughly 30 percent of your total daily calories. There are two benefits of a high-protein diet for the endurance athlete seeking to shed excess body fat prior to the start of a new training cycle. The first is that it reduces appetite, making it easier to eat less. A 2005 study from the University of Washington found that subjects voluntarily ate 14 percent less and lost weight after switching to a 30 percent protein diet.1 This finding suggests that people can achieve the caloric deficit required for weight loss without consciously trying to reduce their eating, by simply increasing their protein intake. Other studies have shown that when people do consciously reduce their eating, they feel less hungry and thus have an easier time maintaining that caloric reduction if they also increase their protein consumption.2
The second benefit of a high-protein diet is that, in combination with strength training, it helps the body maintain or build muscle, so that most of the weight loss that occurs during a period of caloric restriction is in fact fat loss. Non-athletes who try to lose weight with reduced calorie intake and without exercise usually lose a fair amount of muscle mass along with body fat. This limits the desired improvements in body composition and health, and it makes weight-loss maintenance more difficult because the body’s metabolic rate decreases as muscle is lost. Endurance athletes who continue to perform endurance exercise during periods of reduced calorie intake tend to lose less muscle than sedentary persons, but they still lose too much. Studies indicate that athletes who combine reduced calorie intake with strength training and high protein intake are able to preserve most or all of their muscle mass while losing as much, or even more, body fat than those who merely reduce their calories.3
The average American’s diet is 18 percent protein. That’s already a high-protein diet when you consider that for most people a 10 percent protein diet is adequate to support optimal health. But the typical American diet still does not provide enough protein to support a maximally effective short-term weight-loss period in endurance athletes. For the best results you need to get around 30 percent protein, which requires a careful approach.
NUTRIENT TIMING IN THE QUICK START
Nutrient timing should be practiced in the same way during a quick start phase as it is within the training cycle, with one exception. During a quick start phase, some of your moderate-intensity endurance workouts should be performed in a fasted state—that is, first thing in the morning, without a preceding meal and without carbohydrate intake during the workout. This way of timing your nutrition and training to deprive your muscles of carbohydrate will force them to rely on fat and will thereby maximize the fat-burning effect of the workouts and generally enhance the fat-burning capacity of your muscles.
The downside of depriving your muscles of carbohydrate before and during long workouts is that it reduces performance. For this reason, I recommend performing mostly well-fueled workouts within the training cycle, when performance is the top priority. But in a quick start period, when rapid fat loss takes precedence, doing one prolonged fat-burning workout in a fasted state each week will help you achieve that objective.
MANAGING YOUR APPETITE IN THE QUICK START
There is a difference between eating less food and eating fewer calories. It is possible to eat fewer calories without eating less food. The best way to do that is to replace some of the calorie-dense, low-quality foods in your diet with less calorie-dense, high-quality foods.
Consciously eating less is not a viable long-term weight control strategy because it produces hunger. This is why the Racing Weight system does not require athletes to eat less within race-focused training periods. However, eating less can be tolerated for short periods of time, and to lose fat quickly eating less is necessary.
Specifically, you will maintain a daily calorie deficit of a predetermined size throughout your quick start. The size and duration of this deficit should depend on how much weight you need to lose. As mentioned previously, there are three different quick start plans. Those who are 5 to 10 lbs. above their racing weight will maintain a daily deficit of 300 calories for four weeks. Those who are 11 to 20 lbs. above their racing weight will maintain a daily deficit of 400 calories for six weeks. Those who are more than 20 lbs. above their racing weight will maintain a daily deficit of 500 calories for eight weeks.
WEIGHT LOSS IN THE QUICK START
How much weight can you expect to lose on each of these quick starts? Your exact results will depend on a variety of factors, including your diet and activity level before the quick start and your genetic disposition for weight loss. As a general rule, you can expect to lose 1 pound of body weight per 3,500 calories of energy deficit you accumulate. The total energy deficit in the 300-calorie-per day, four-week quick start is 8,400 calories, which equals roughly 2.5 pounds of weight loss. The total energy deficit in the 400-calorie-per-day, six-week quick start is 16,800 calories, which equals 5 pounds of weight loss. And the total energy deficit in the eight-week, 500-calorie-deficit quick start is 28,000 calories, which equals 8 pounds of weight loss.
Additional weight loss can be expected as a result of the training element of your quick start. To get an accurate estimate of this additional weight loss you would have to calculate energy expenditure in the quick start training plan you follow and compare it to energy expenditure in your current training. You would also have to account for the possible effects of the different types of training you do in the quick start—particularly high-intensity intervals and strength training—on your resting metabolism. But assuming your quick start follows an off-season break from training or a period of moderate, maintenance-level training, you can expect to lose at least 0.5 pound per week in addition to the weight you lose through your energy deficit. That brings our total estimates for minimum weight loss to 4.5 pounds, 8 pounds, and 12 pounds for the four-, six-, and eight-week quick starts, respectively.
It bears mentioning that all this weight loss is likely to be fat loss, whereas weight-loss plans that do not include high protein intake and the types of exercise done in a quick start typically produce muscle and water loss along with fat loss. Your body-fat measurements before and after the quick start will verify that the weight you’ve lost is pure body fat.
REACHING YOUR GOAL WEIGHT
As you can see, these rough weight-loss estimates fall short of the differences between current weight and racing weight that I use to match individual athletes up with a specific plan. Why are the quick starts not designed to take athletes all the way to their racing weight? Two reasons. First, it is important to avoid losing weight too quickly as an endurance athlete. An energy deficit exceeding 500 calories per day, which would be required to lose weight more quickly, would not allow you to perform well in workouts, thus sabotaging your fitness. Second, additional weight loss is almost inevitable within the race-focused training period that follows a quick start, especially if the Racing Weight system is used to guide your nutrition and training habits. So it’s reasonable to anticipate additional weight loss within the training cycle.
How much additional weight can you expect to lose within a Racing Weight training cycle? Again, it depends on many factors. The Racing Weight system is designed to yield weight loss very gradually, because only very gradual weight loss supports the objective of maximizing race fitness, the primary objective within the training cycle. If you complete your quick start and begin your training cycle just 2–4 pounds above your racing weight, which is ideal, you can expect to lose that excess by the time you reach your peak training period. Athletes who begin a training cycle 10 or more pounds above their racing weight typically lose approximately 0.5 pound per week when following the Racing Weight system.
Race-focused training cycles usually last 12 to 24 weeks. So, for example, it is not unreasonable for an athlete who is 20 pounds above his racing weight to expect to lose 20 pounds and attain his racing weight in an eight-week quick start (yielding 12 pounds of weight loss), followed by a 16-week training cycle (yielding 8 additional pounds of weight loss) in which the Racing Weight system is applied.
The unfortunate reality for those who carry the most excess fat is that more than one quick start followed by a race-focused training period may be required to reach optimal racing weight. Don’t let this discourage you—the positive effects of each incremental improvement on your fitness, your performance, and your overall sense of well-being will begin early in the quick start and push you toward your end goal. The timeline below shows how weight loss is likely to play out in both the Quick Start and throughout training. Consistency and awareness will be critical to your success.
WEIGHT LOSS BEYOND THE QUICK START
Don’t be fooled into thinking the primary goal of the Racing Weight plan is weight loss. Whereas the goal of losing weight, more specifically fat, is the main focus of the quick start, your priorities should shift as you begin a race-focused training cycle. You will continue to lose remaining excess body fat during the training cycle, but weight loss will occur more slowly as you prioritize building race fitness and fuel your body accordingly using the Racing Weight plan.
|
Quick Start |
Racing Weight Plan |
Primary goal |
Fat loss |
Building race fitness |
Secondary goal |
Building foundational fitness |
Fat loss |
Furthermore, your total training duration (quick start and training cycle combined) should be determined by your race goals, not your weight loss goals. This marks another shift from the quick start, whose duration is in fact based on weight loss goals. Whether the race-focused training cycle that follows your quick start is 12 weeks, 24 weeks, or something in between is determined by the date of your chosen peak race. The closer your training cycle duration is to the maximum limit of 24 weeks, and the closer you are to your racing weight at the start of it, the more likely it is that you will attain your racing weight before your peak race.
TRAINING FOR RACING WEIGHT IN THE QUICK START
Your training during a quick start period can and should be quite different from your training within the training cycle. To start with, because the quick start precedes the beginning of race-focused training, your training volume needs to be lower. If you tried to shoulder the burden of peak training volumes before the training cycle even began, you would surely burn out before your primary race. High training volume is an effective way to stimulate fat loss, but it is not the only way. The quick start training plans I’ve created maximize fat loss in a volume-efficient way with a combination of very-high-intensity interval sessions, strength training, and prolonged fat-burning workouts, some of which are performed in a fasted state.
These key workouts also serve to prepare your body for the race-focused training to follow. Sessions of very short, very-high-intensity intervals burn a lot of fat, especially during the few hours after you complete them, through a phenomenon known as excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC). They also cultivate reserves of speed and power that you can develop into sustained speed in the training cycle that follows. Strength training will slightly increase your muscle mass and with it your metabolic rate, so your body burns more calories at rest. It will also give you a solid structural foundation to absorb and profit from race-focused training later. And prolonged fat-burning workouts maximize fat burning within the kind of steady endurance format needed to prepare you for the base training that will follow the quick start.
Now, you may recall that in the Introduction I described a study that seemed to show that combining high-intensity interval training with calorie restriction was less effective in increasing the power-to-weight ratio in cyclists than either interval training or calorie restriction alone. In fact, the study showed just that. But the combination of interval training and calorie restriction actually yielded more weight loss than either measure alone. Since weight loss is a higher priority than performance improvement within a quick start, combining high-intensity intervals and calorie restriction in this context is appropriate. You will take full advantage of your quick start weight loss to maximize your performance later, within the training cycle.
You could map out your own quick start with these guideposts. As long as you understand how to reduce your calorie intake appropriately, how to format a sport-specific strength program, and so forth, it is unlikely that you would make any wrong turns. But if you want a guarantee of no wrong turns, I suggest you simply follow the detailed quick start meal and training plans I’ve devised for you.
1 D. S. Weigle, P. A. Breen, C. C. Matthys, H. S. Callahan, K. E. Meeuws, V. R. Burden, and J. Q. Purnell, “A High-Protein Diet Induces Sustained Reductions in Appetite, Ad Libitum Caloric Intake, and Body Weight Despite Compensatory Changes in Diurnal Plasma Leptin and Ghrelin Concentrations,” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 82. no. 1 (July 2005): 41–8.
2 M. Flechtner-Mors, B. O. Boehm, R. Wittmann, U. Thoma, and H. H. Ditschuneit, “Enhanced Weight Loss with Protein-Enriched Meal Replacements in Subjects with the Metabolic Syndrome,” Diabetes Metabolism Research and Reviews 26, no. 5 (June 2010): 393–405.
3 S. Mettler, N. Mitchell, and K. D. Tipton, “Increased Protein Intake Reduces Lean Body Mass Loss During Weight Loss in Athletes,” Medicine & Science in Sports and Exercise 42, no. 2 (February 2010): 326–37.