Eating for a Marathon

Nutrition
1

As I have mentioned on a few other posts, I am training for a marathon. I have been a sprinter and lifter most my young life, so the training and nutrition associated with endurance is very foreign to me. I posted my current diet on another thread of mine, I will re-post below

Meal 1: Oatmeal, berries, 2 eggs, glass of milk, glass of O.J.

Meal 2: 1/2 lb. Fat Free Cottage Cheese & Carrots

Meal 3: Whole wheat tortilla with Chicken Breast a little cheese and salsa

Meal 4: Fat Free Yogurt and Berries

Meal 5: 2 scoops of Low-Carb Grow!

Meal 6: 1/2 lb Cottage Cheese

Note: Surge on 3 lifting days and intense running day. Diet is not exact, somedays I will only have 5 meals, and I have about 1 - 3 cheat meals each week. I take about 9 grams of fish oil a day and 6 grams of flax seed oil in capsules.

The people that gave me advice indicated I am not eating enough. I am 6’1" 210 lbs. which is overweight for me. I would like to run the marathon (October 8th) under 185.

I could really use some help here guys, this is by far the most useful website that I frequent, there is a great variety of different training programs and diets we all have access to. However, I haven’t much luck finding good diets for the kind of training I am involved in (with good reason it is afterall a lifting site.)

So you guys have all the info, this is what my week will look like:

Sunday: 3 mile run

Monday: Bench, Shoulder Press, and dips

Teusday: 10 mile run

Wednesday: Pull ups, bent over rows, bicep work, ab work

Thursday: 4 mile run

Friday: Squats, ham curls, calf raises, hyper extensions

Saturday: 2 mile run

REPEAT, with different running distances

Any advice on my diet or training would be greatly appreciated. Let me know if you have more questions, I will check my post multiple times a day.

Thank you,
Alex

2

On what APDuncan27 wrote:

I don’t think you are eating enough.

I am more than willing to talk about this but… Why are you doing the race…

Goal?
Lose weight?
Bet?

3

I am doing the marathon because of a few reasons

  1. I need a new challenge

  2. I really have never done anything endurance oriented before, I would like to see how well I can stack up against the endurance crowd.

  3. I was pretty shocked to see how much weight I had gained over the winter, figure this will be a good way to lose it.

4

[quote]APDuncan27 wrote:
I am doing the marathon because of a few reasons

  1. I need a new challenge
    [/quote]

Good

Good

[quote]

  1. I was pretty shocked to see how much weight I had gained over the winter, figure this will be a good way to lose it.[/quote]

Not so good. But you are honest.

IMO, I still think you are eating too little. Think 26.2 miles. You can still lose the weight without starving. You are asking for overtraining syndrome.

5

Do you a) think I have a good base with my current diet and just need to add more calories or b) need to tear it apart and start all over.

How many calories do you think I should be eating? How many grams of carbs?

Also keep in mind I took six months off from training. I am gaining strength fairly rapidly in all my excercises. I want to lose weight, but I also want to minimize muscle loss, or maybe even gain muscle. (Probably a very tough balance)

6

Meals 5 and 6 scare me the most. 2 meals of protein with very little else.