<p>Hi, fireandrain! I think you should do the 5K! They are SO much fun. My first 5K took me over 41 minutes, and that was non-stop running! And there were lots of people who finished before me. It’s just such a feeling of accomplishment to cross the finish line and realize that most people will never do that! The interesting thing, too, is that I ALWAYS run faster in a race than when I’m training, even though I’m not trying. The adrenaline really does kick in and propel you.</p>
<p>My first 10K, I had never run farther than 3 1/2 miles straight. I had so much energy I went 5 miles non-stop. That’s when I was hooked on races.</p>
<p>I did it - 6.2 miles on the treadmill this morning. Still around a 13 minute per mile pace.</p>
<p>Peaceful, I had a long post typed out this morning but when I clicked the server was busy and I lost it. In a hurry now, but here’s a couple of quick tips.</p>
<ol>
<li>If you find yourself heading to the kitchen for a snack, beeline for dairy, veggies or protein snack - no chips, crackers, bread, cookies!!! Carrots and hummus, cheese chunks, a dozen almonds - stuff like that.</li>
<li>Start tracking what you eat - EVERYTHING YOU EAT OR DRINK - on one of the online or app tracking sites - IMO, this is a MUST to learn what your issues are. It can be fun and knowledgeable. A couple of favorite sites to do this: [Calorie</a> Counter, Calorie Tracker & Food Journal | MyPlate on LIVESTRONG.COM | LIVESTRONG.COM](<a href=“http://www.livestrong.com/myplate/]Calorie”>MyPlate Calorie Counter) or [Free</a> Calorie Counter, Diet & Exercise Journal | MyFitnessPal.com](<a href=“http://www.myfitnesspal.com/]Free”>http://www.myfitnesspal.com/)</li>
</ol>
<p>Fireandrain! A couple of us ran our first 5ks this past year! My advice - sign up and just do it. There will be ALL levels of runners and walkers there. Blend in the crowd and just experience it - don’t have any expectations except to cross the finish line at some point! Once you experience it, you will know what to expect and be ready for a 2nd one - and third…and so on! We will all be happy to cheer for you!!</p>
<p>Thank you, MichaelNKat. Nice to get additional ideas so I can change things up a bit from time to time.</p>
<p>My standard warm-up stretches (leg swings, reverse lunges, quads stretch, squats, heel raises on the stairs)
Warm-up walk (2 mins on the treadmill)</p>
<p>4.1 mile treadmill run </p>
<p>Cool down walk (3 mins on the treadmill)
Stretches (same as above)</p>
<p>I normally just write my run distance but the stretching, warm-up walk, and cool down are part of the routine on run days as well.</p>
<p>Welcome to new, returning, and previously lurking posters. :)</p>
<p>Thank you so much for all of the incredible suggestions! I really am enjoying this thread and finding it both inspiring and informative!</p>
<p>MainLonghorn- Thank you for sharing about your running buddy. I was in the same exact position and I am looking forward to committing to walking whether or not my walking buddies can make it!</p>
<p>MOWC- Thanks for the pb suggestion. I already followed it! I love oatmeal and will get some of the portion controlled packs next time I grocery shop.</p>
<p>Lizardly- Great suggestion about making something warm and satisfying and not baking! </p>
<p>abasket- Thank you for your suggestions and for taking the time to write a long post and another abbreviated post after it was lost. I use an iPhone. Is there one program you would recommend for food tracking that is easiest? If it isn’t simple, I am afraid I won’t use it.</p>
<p>I hope I didn’t leave anyone out. Thanks again!</p>
<p>Bunsen-Just discovered the the Precor 3 weeks ago at the gym and will never go back to the elliptical. It simulates a running motion pretty well without impact on the pavement. And the various adjustments which allows you to work different parts of the lower body really did it for me.</p>
<p>Like MOWC I find a teaspoon of peanut butter satisfies both salt and sugar. I also like having carrot sticks or red peppers and a container of hummus. Or frozen blueberries and a bit of plain Greek Yogurt. Or a small handful of nuts (but it’s easy to eat to many of these.) You can also try drinking a cup of coffee or tea before you eat something. I use Livestrong - it gets easier once you’ve used it for a while. If you eat the same breakfast or lunch everyday you can program in whole meals as well as dishes.</p>
<p>By Monday we are supposed to have our coldest weather in 20 years- they are talking 3 or 4 degrees for a low. I left Chicago in 1978 for this reason…</p>
<p>I am one of those who gets obsessed with the “number” on the scale. Down 1.8 pounds since yesterday, so I guess some of my big fall gain was “fake” weight. Trying to be reasonable with my choices. The lemon drops in my office are now gone, although they are not a big calorie item- even in fairly large quantities.</p>
<p>MaineLonghorn is being modest. She also ran a half-marathon in the middle of her Spring from Hell that she was not prepared to run and for which she had not been able to adequately train. She made it upright and with a smile on her face!</p>
<p>I am in one of those weird points in my body’s evolution. I have switched to a program called turbulence training, that combines bodyweight and core strength exercises with intervals, it relies on doing the exercise relatively quickly…</p>
<p>The hard part is I have plateaued weight wise, down about 30+ pounds, and though my pants are getting looser and looser, I can see and feel the difference, and I am seeing amazing muscle tone and definition, I still am caught in the idiotic focus on weight alone…I probably have good stats, but I bet if I went to my cardiologist, he would probably tell me I have to ‘lose weight’ and diet and do an hour of cardio…</p>
<p>I wish there was a better way to measure lean muscle mass and or/ body fat percentage, none of the techniques available at home really work well, whether it is calipers or various gizmos…I can tell from pictures of guys at various body fat percentages that I have prob lost around 10% body fat and that what is going on is I am losing fat, but building muscle in such a way that fat loss weight=muscle gain…the good news is I have only been doing this for about 3 months, so I should have a lot to look forward to…</p>
<p>Hmm, I haven’t used my MAP torch recently, maybe I’ll use it to torture my bathroom scale <em>evil grin</em> <em>lol</em>.</p>
<p>Many of the common ways of estimating body fat percentage (electrical scales, density measurements, circumference measurements, skinfold measurements) are not very accurate on an individual basis on an absolute sense, but they can be used to track trends. E.g. if your electrical scale shows a downward trend, you do not float as well in the pool, your waistline is getting smaller, and you cannot pinch as much skin as you used to be able to, then you are likely losing body fat.</p>
<p>I know I’m ready to run a 5K – I’ve done one outside and took less than 32 minutes. One of my issues is that I have no internal sense of pace. I have a playlist on my iPod that helps me maintain a steady pace; without that I run much too fast and get tired. </p>
<p>I was on the verge of doing a 5K this fall that was being run right in my neighborhood, but I woke up that morning and it was pouring rain. I decided I didn’t want to be miserable in my first race, so I skipped it. Now I have to wait for warmer weather. </p>
<p>Walked plus running intervals for 5 miles at the gym.</p>
<p><a href=“Health.com”>quote</a> - Running just might be the most convenient workout going. You don’t need to be a skilled athlete, and there’s no fancy equipment involved; just lace up your sneaks and go.
It’s also one of the most efficient ways to blast fat and burn calories – about 600 an hour.</p>
<p>Sure, walking has its benefits, but research shows that running kicks its butt when it comes to shedding pounds. One recent study of 47,000 runners and walkers, from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California, found that the runners burned more calories and had a far greater decrease in BMI over a six-year period. The joggers who started out heaviest (those with a BMI over 28) lost up to 90% more weight than the walkers did.</p>
<p>“Runners are more likely to stay at a steady weight than those who do other forms of exercise, and they’re more efficient at losing pounds when they need to,” notes Paul T. Williams, the lead researcher of the study.</p>
<p>One simple reason: The higher your workout intensity, the more post-exercise calories you continue to burn.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>The article has links to some training plans, from C25K to distance racing.</p>
<p>I think that is VERY misleading. I suspect that the self-reported “runners” in this study probably did many things that contributed to lower weight than the self-reported “walkers” in the study.</p>
<p>The problem with this message, and it is a message that is hammered night and day, is that you have to run to lose weight or that running is the only way to lose weight. While running is a very good exercise, it is not the ideal way for an overweight person to exercise. Very high injury rate. And, even over the long-term, for a very fit person, running should ideally be just one part of an more comprehensive fitness program.</p>
<p>I actually think that walking is MUCH better recommendation for an overweight person starting to exercise, with running coming down the road after some pounds have been lost, some muscles strengthened, and some fitness achieved. It would have been insane (literally, insane) for me to have started “running” at 250 pounds. There’s a high likelihood that the wear and tear would have resulted in injury sidetracking my entire effort.</p>
<p>I’d be interested to hear from some others who have lost significant amounts of weight? Sabaray, do you think that you could have started running from day one without breaking your body?</p>
<hr>
<p>Stepping back even further, I don’t even think that the whole paradigm of “burning calories off” is a productive approach to fat loss. That’s just not the way it really works. Study after study has shown that exercise doesn’t work as a fat loss study (although these studies almost always look at low intensity cardio exercise). It’s better to think in terms of eating to lose weight and exercising to get fit.</p>
<p>Apparently, he pulled off quite the daily double. Using exactly the same data from the study, he published one article showing that running was better and another article proving that running is not better than walking! Don’t you love “scientific studies”?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The article did answer my curiosity about the 47,000 participants. They were subscribers to fitness magazines who filled out a survey:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Skinny (“normal” BMI is quite slender) middle-aged fitness buffs are hardly representative of the average overweight person looking to start exercising and shed some body fat!</p>
<p>idad, while I agree with your analysis of why a 250-lb person should not count on running to jump start weight loss :), I think your statement that “using exactly the same data from the study, he published one article showing that running was better and another article proving that running is not better than walking” is not correct even in light of the following quote from the link you posted. According to the quote, the first article apparently concentrated on who gained less weight, and the second one looked at prevention of high blood pressure etc. So my conclusion would not be that the two articles show completely opposite results, because they looked at different things in the same population.</p>
<p>Isn’t it obvious that (compared to walking) running gives you more and higher intensity exercise for a given amount of time, but can significantly increase the risk of injury if you heel-strike, and may be too high intensity for a very unfit beginner?</p>
<p>Most runners in rich countries with padded running shoes heel-strike, but those in poor countries running barefoot or in thin sandals land on the toes or mid-foot.</p>
<p>My Fitness Pal has an app and it can sync with RunKeeper , an app many of us use to track our exercise - whether running, walking, biking, elliptical, rowing - whatever! The nice thing about them syncing is that when you set up MFP, it will determine how many calories you should have per day based on your current height/weight and how fast you want to lose - then, when you exercise and log it on RunKeeper you are “credited” those calories you burned off!</p>
<p>Another app I recently downloaded and like is Fooducate - has some great nutritional info, lets you scan UPC 's for your daily food, has short daily tips, etc. </p>
<p>Both are free - download them (or other ones people might suggest) and see which one suits your fancy!</p>
In a hurry now, but here’s a couple of quick tips.</p>
:</p>
Don’t you love “scientific studies”?</p>