[quote]friedrice683 wrote:
February of last year I was 5’ 10" and 156lbs and thought I was quite flabby, not defined, not skinny, but not fat. So I went on a diet, blah blah blah, a year and a half later, and after anorexia >_< (for about four months or so I only consumed 1000 calories a day), I stand at 5’ 10.5" and 123-125lbs. I feel a lost a lot of fat, but also a lot of muscle, I still am a bit flabby on the chest and ab area. (no 6 pack, no definition in chest). I can’t lose any more weight, that’s just stupid, I want to get a defined look so decided to bulk up.
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Man, I was a 6’ tall cross-country runner in high school, and I weighed in at ~145-150 at my lightest. I went down to below 140 once when I was at summer college and wasn’t eating enough, and I looked like a leukemia patient. The fact that I shaved my head for the heat probably had something to do with that as well, but I FELT like a leukemia patient. I performed best at 155.
This cannot be stated too strongly: You will almost certainly perform better, even as a cross-country runner, at a higher bodyweight.
People have already given you enough ‘advice’ about eating. Regarding training: If you have a certain amount of control over your own training, you might want to consider dropping some of your running in favor of cardio exercise done with weights.
No, not kickboxing or step aerobics; kettlebell or dumbbell swings, cleans, snatches and presses, mixed up with running and calisthenics. I promise that you will be surprised by how much cardio stress this puts on you.
And this kind of training is much less likely to burn off muscle than doing long, slow distance training. It’s similar in that regard to running hill sprints and walking down (which is another workout with which you could replace long, slow distance workouts). You could also go to CrossFit’s site (google it) and check out some of their workouts.
The kind of training I’m describing above is what I did when I was ‘converting’ from distance athletics to lifting weights. Give it a try; I found that I ran my mile almost as fast when I was doing this stuff as I had at my fastest in high school, despite cutting out almost all running.
If you do a lot of this sort of training (doing some of your cardio with weights and calisthenics instead of long slow distance, really dialing up the intensity in your exercise circuits) you might be able to gain muscle mass while maintaining or even substantially improving your performance in your sport.
And if you ultimately decide to drop your sport in favor of something ‘heavier,’ you’ll be much better prepared for it than you would be if you had continued to pound the pavement.