Running 5k a day to lose weight...

Long Time Reader

Hi All,

Can anyone advise how much weight I expect to lose a month if I stick to the below plan:

Run 5 km burning 490kcal length - 35mins each day.

Breakfast - fruit and fibre

Lunch - Traditional brown bread ham+cheese sandwich

Dinner - rice + tuna or brown pasta and chicken breast

I'm 97.5kg

6 foot tall

thx a mil

Long Time Reader

Long Time Reader wrote: »

Hi All,

Can anyone advise how much weight I expect to lose a month if I stick to the below plan:

Run 5 km burning 490kcal length - 35mins each day.

Breakfast - fruit and fibre

Lunch - Traditional brown bread ham+cheese sandwich

Dinner - rice + tuna or brown pasta and chicken breast

I'm 97.5kg

6 foot tall

thx a mil

I cycle to work totaling 8km a day too.

marketty

You need to look up the calories of your food and total them for the day.
Assuming your a guy your recommended intake to maintain weight is 2500ish calories per day.
So you want to be taking in less than that, and/or burning it off.
If you take in 2500 a day and burn off 500ish running that's a weekly deficit of 3500 calories which equates to a pound of fat. Reduce your calorie intake to 1500 a day and keep up the running and 2 pounds a week would be easily achievable. Also if you do 5k a day for a couple of weeks your fitness will improve and you could increase the distance (time allowing obviously) and increase your weight loss even more.
Finally try to be a bit more active in your day to day activities as well as taking regular exercise, try walking to work/shops if that's practical, take the stairs to the office or whatever, all these little things add up too. Try not to obsess too much about the scales, definitely only weigh yourself once a week preferably at the same time, and try to find ways to enjoy the running so it becomes something you want to continue for health and enjoyment rather than just a means to lose weight.
And good luck!

meijin

Long Time Reader wrote: »

Run 5 km burning 490kcal length - 35mins each day.

Don't run every day, especially if you're just starting and weight a bit too much - you'll injure yourself; every second day would be better, but still running is high impact sport so you should be careful

Breakfast - fruit and fibre
Lunch - Traditional brown bread ham+cheese sandwich
Dinner - rice + tuna or brown pasta and chicken breast

What has helped me was actually adding 2 more meals/snacks, so I would eat every 3 hours, but no calories in between. I was losing on average 2 lbs per month without any extra physical activities.

Hard to tell how much you can lose... best way to find out is to try it

marketty

Just saw that you cycle to work so that's good too, if you enjoy it and have the time maybe take a bit of a detour on the way home and try to increase the distance.
The simple answer is you need to take in less calories than you're using each day. You can see from running 5k that the body is really amazingly efficient when you think about how little food that is,only a couple of chocolate bars and it takes a lot of jogging to burn off! So be strict on the calorie intake and make sure you have a deficit each day

jinxremoving

I would think you might need to add some vegetables in there! maybe put some spinach in your sandwich at lunch, salad or steamed veggies with your dinner. apologies if you eat them already.

you could try varying your exercise a bit, maybe turn one training session into a HIIT one. also if you've only started out running you might injure yourself doing it every day.

Best of luck with the weightloss

gearoidol

i starting running in may 2011 after giving up cigs after 15 years.Im 5'10 and weighed 13 stone.I ate alot of take away ,chocalate bars etc.
Now nearly a year on i have lost nearly 3 stone and weigh just over 10 stone.I have ran 5k every weekday for a year and a 10k on Saturday mornings(I take Sunday off).I also do 8km on the bike or 15 mins on the cross trainer every day.
I still eat anything i want but have cut out the choc and takeaways.I still have hot chicken rolls for lunch ,full dinner in the evening (steak,fajitias,Stirfry) and maybe scrabled egg on toast for supper.
a 5k took 32 mins when i first started (it took me a month to actually be able to do a 5k) and now i am running them in an easy 19:30 -20 mins 5 days a week.

My philosophy is never give up something you cant stay off cos ur only torturing yourself.If you eat a whole load of junk food one day ,put an extra bit of effort in to burn it off over the next week.

Simple maths dont eat more calories than your burning off and you'll be fine.Plus running is fantastic ,get to see the countryside and i found helps improve sleep an awful lot.Im probably going to be flamed here for my views on diet etc but it works for me