I am not a trainer nor a coach, but wonder if you could run more often. Why just two short runs a week? Have you been injured? Could you run four times a week? Five? I feel like you will get more bang for your running miles in weight loss than in other activities.

If coming off injury, could you spin or elliptical or stair climb in lieu of leg weights?

I would eat a little more, say 1500 to 1600 calories a day, perhaps follow a South Beach type plan for a week or two to get started.

Thanks for posting.

A few things jump out in your post. Are you using a training plan? Even if your goals are not set on a race, a maintenance/off-season training plan can be a great tool. I have found that personal trainers in the gym do not have the same perspective as an endurance coach. Perhaps you can look around for a plan that would fit your needs/goals.

Weight loss in women after forty is very different.( I speak from experience) Hormones change and have a huge impact on weight loss. A good physicial may be helpful. Also, 1200-1300 calories seems a bit low for your activity level. If your body does not have proper caloric intake, your weight will not change. Nancy Clark has a few good books about sports nutrition and caloric intake for endurance athletes. Using her calculations has helped me to fuel properly and get to a healthy race weight.

Hope this helps. Good luck!

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-TMT

>>I track my calories and am on target +/- 100 calories occasionally. That means I'm taking in 1200-1300 calories a day.<<

What are you actually eating?

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clm
Nashville, TN
https://twitter.com/ironclm | http://ironclm.typepad.com

Iam not a trainer or coach either. But when I was training for my first and only marathon a few years ago, I was frustrated with my lack of weight loss. However, when I spoke to some people about it, their first comment was, you need to train for an endurance event OR focus on weight loss, not both. And now for me, its only when I really focus on diet, not training, that I lose weight. Additionally, it usually takes about 8 weeks for me ot see any consistent downward trend.
Not what you want to hear i am sure, running sucks and so does losing weight(IMHO). best of luck to you, I think we have all been there!

I am an exercise physiologist and a coach and you aren't treading on anyone by asking great questions!
First, my running has really really sucked. About 17' and my legs are fried. I push through to about 25' but by the end it is an embarrassing shuffle. I'm doing leg work when I do strength training and I'm wondering if being tired from that is holding back my running. I would think building strength would help but now I'm thinking I should leave my legs alone for now and focus on core and upper body. My running is more important to me than lunges.
Depending on when you schedule your running and strength training it is highly likely that you are not recovered fully from the strength session so it is most likely holding back your running. If running is indeed more important than you schedule the strength sessions into your program either after the run or do not schedule the strength in the day preceeding the run, it can make a huge difference. You may want to focus on maintenance strength for legs right now. Maintain the strength you have built once or twice per week but schedule your strength sessions around running. Feeling like your legs are fried indicates that you aren't recovered. Exercise tears down muscle tissue, rest and recovery are when you actually grow stronger.


Second, I am not seeing an overall trend downward with my weight. There is no change in the fit of my pants. When the big daily fluctuations are taken into account the line is staying pretty much flat. I've been training regularly again for a month and I'd hoped I would see more progress. I track my calories and am on target +/- 100 calories occasionally. That means I'm taking in 1200-1300 calories a day. My weight is currently averaging 141 and my age is 43.
4 weeks is not a large period of time, if you had an extended period of off time prior to that, the first four to six weeks are all about re-establishing neuronal connections from brain to motor units in the muscles. You may need 4-6 weeks to see an upswing in fitness.


1200-1300 calories is basically a starvation diet for an athlete. Your body will hold onto whatever it's got with tenacity if your brain senses starvation mode and if you continue to train harder and longer while eating so little you will be successful at breaking down your muscle tissue for energy. Not good. Have your body fat percentage measured and work on a target weight from there. http://www.exrx.net has some great calculators for determining target weight based on a target percentage of body fat. Hope this helps you. Good luck :)

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Twitter: @jayasports
Web: http://www.jayasports.com

A few points in no particular order from a trainer :
1) Your energy intake is too low to support your current level of training. Neither I nor anyone else here can accurately assess your caloric needs owing to individual variation and other factors which cannot be addressed in such a forum. There is very often a "conflict" between energy requirements which support training and one's desire to lose weight; and all too often the latter trumps the former because women (and I say this as one) tend to put emphasis on weight loss over everything else.
If your desire is to become a better athlete, you must consider the needs of this first.
Very likely, your difficulties extending your running time come at least somewhat from this (other sources, too, to be addressed later)
2) Increasing your ability to run longer/farther comes via two physical approaches and one mental one. Physically, you will benefit from one long run/ week and one (or more) interval sessions /week rather than running the same time/distance every session (this suggestion is very basic- meaning that you many have additional long, tempo or other sessions. My point is : Variation.
Details can be offered- I'm keeping it very simple here)
The mental approach is this : Get comfortable being uncomfortable (a phrase "stolen" from my coach). This does not mean red-lining very session nor does it mean that your training should injure or harm you. It means that hard training has a place and a benefit which many of us tend to avoid because it is....uncomfortable. Again, what this means to you specifically cannot be addressed in an on-line forum. My point: Discomfort can be a valuable training tool.

Part II with a revision- Having actually READ a part of your post that I overlooked prior.......
Seeing now that your focus is weight loss I stand by my beliefs that your caloric intake is too low, adding intensity (intervals) to your running and challenging your notion of "hard" will help you toward your goal.
In addition, an increase in resistance training, rather than adding more cv work, will help both your lean body mass and your strength while running. Women tend to overemphasize cv work and de-value the importance of weight training.
Finally, you may find yourself in a more realistic place if your goal is something other than weight-focused. Regardless of the source, "desirable " (whatever THAT actually means....) weights often have no basis in reality as bodies vary far more than any chart, scale , doctor or "fitness magazine" cares to recognize.

Great posts from toreishi. I'm not a trainer, but have been a swimmer, rower, and triathlete over the last 15 years, reaching a relatively high level in each, and I read up on this stuff all the time, so I'd like to think I can contribute something.

I agree with what many people have posted here that your calorie intake sounds much too low for someone doing your level of activity. As counterintuitive as it seems, increasing your caloric intake a little bit may help your body to release some of its fat stores, as well as enable you to recover better from your workouts and complete them with better quality. That leads me to the main point I wanted to make: make sure you are conscious of when you are eating with respect to your workout times, and in general. Eating the same amount of calories more spaced out throughout the day will help your metabolism stay high and your blood sugar to stay more level. Make sure you are eating enough pre-workout to fuel the activity you're about to complete, and enough post- workout to replenish your depleted glycogen stores and repair muscle damage (good carbs, + some protein).

If you try all of these things and still aren't seeing any progress, might want to set up an appointment with a nutritionist to dig a little deeper. Good luck!

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I am not an expert but used to weigh 200lbs and lost 90 of them with nothing special other than diet and exercise. I'm 33 and 5'0.

For me, what worked best was getting my resting metabolic rate checked at a physiology lab. Metachek was the machine I believe. That gave me an idea of what my body burned sitting in a chair all day and I went from there based on exercise.

I also exercised at least 45-60 min 6 days a week at higher resistance FIRST thing upon wakening. Elliptical or treadmill. Again, intensity was my focus.

I didn't eat after 7:30pm unless I was hungry.

I still eat only the most natural foods and stay away from processed things/meat that are packaged to look healthy but carry lots of sugar/salt.

Oh, and I still eat every few hours instead of loading the hump so to speak.

I hope this helps!

Thanks for the great advice everyone!

It is a tough balance around the calorie requirements. I did the calculators and they all came in at 1500/day. So I need to combine cutting back calories and exercise to burn that 3500/week to drop the pound (which I've read is what it takes).

My struggle really is whether cutting back on strength training and adding in more cardio would be more effective.

I'm going to sit down today and come up with a training schedule. I'm going to hold off on working with my training until next month. I think she's been too rough on me. I am so sore when she is done with me my workouts the next day are suffering.

Time to do some re-adjusting.

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Jen

"In order to keep a true perspective on one's importance, everyone should have a dog that worships him and a cat that will ignore him." - Dereke Bruce