Losing weight through running

So I have been trying to lose weight. Before falling sick to a flu about 2 weeks ago, I was running a 3km route at least once per week and change my diet to include less meat and fried foodstuff. The last time I weigh myself I was at 73kg. That’s a bit of a surprised, as that is more or less my weight two months ago, so something isn’t working right. BMI is still a moderate level…

My purpose of losing weight is basically to keep fit; if I could look good, well that’s a bonus. I was also planning to mix swimming into the routine but I have no idea what’s a good mix would be. I am considering:

  1. Run the 3km route twice per week
  2. Run 1.5km route three times per week
  3. Run the 3km route twice, with a swim in the middle of the week
  4. Run the 3km route three times per week


Honestly, running by itself isn’t going to make you lose weight. There was a Nova episode about training couch potatoes to run a marathon and none of them lost any weight in the first 2-3 months during their training, but they were getting much more fit. While the combination of exercise and diet modification works best, I believe the majority of your weight loss will come from the diet side of things.

I’ve recently started running again as part of my exercise and weight loss routine. For me it’s improving my fitness dramatically and I usually feel less hungry after exercise and sleep better.

For exercise, anything that gets your heart rate up for 30 minutes or so 3 times a week is a good thing. Do whatever you will enjoy and keep doing. Mixing running and swimming is a nice change of pace so that’s helpful to keep you exercising. Swimming won’t burn as much calories as running so for an equivalent workout you’ll need to swim longer.

Keep in mind that muscle has more mass than fat; if you lose fat but build muscle, you’ll be fitter and thinner but the number on the scale won’t change all that much.

At my weight (about 90kg) when I run 5km, I burn about 500 calories. I can consume 500 calories by eating a chocolate muffin. That’s a lot of hard work undone by one stupid muffin! Exercise can help you lose weight, but improving your diet will have a more dramatic effect. A benefit I find with exercise is that I just don’t feel like eating as much junk food, I’m not sure why. Another personal benefit of exercise is that I tend to snack when I’m bored, if I go for a run or bike ride instead, not only am I burning fat but I’m also NOT eating.

I’ll echo the diet comments, but also would like to add that running 3km in 1 session is a good start so keep at it. You’ll want to run more often to get better results, say run that 3k route 4 times a week with gaps in between for rest days.

It also depends how fast you run, you’ll want to make sure you’re on track, at running pace, for at least 20mins each session regardless of how far you go. I find it helpful to run for a block of time and then measure how far I can go in that time. My favourite metric is mins/km, but really it’s whatever you can use to motivate yourself and measure your progress.

What others have said is true, but also, to be honest, 3 km per week isn’t much at all. I’m not that surprised you aren’t seeing a real effect (at least with regards to weight, hopefully you are feeling fitter). For comparison’s sake, a guy training for the marathon could easily put in 100k per week. If you just want to lose some extra fat, I would keep up the dieting, do some strength training, and try and build up to a level where you can go 4x3km with ease. If that’s too much on your joints, mix in swimming or biking in there. Actually, if you enjoy swimming more, and are willing to go hard in the pool, there’s nothing wrong with more of that instead.

Once a week isn’t going to do much. You need to do every other day, at least. Initially your weight will go up, or probably won’t go down much, due to the fact that (as was previously mentioned) you are building muscle.

When you are starting out, long slow distance (what we used to call LSD back when I was a runner) is the best. You get more benefit from running 3km slowly than you will from running 1.5 km fast, even though both may leave you feeling equally exhausted.

Alternating muscle groups every other day helps your muscles recover, so alternate running and swimming (run mon wed fri and swim tues thurs sat), and try to concentrate more on using your upper body while swimming.

Just because I like the beat the dead horse that everyone else has had a whack at:

My own example of how activity hasn’t equalled weight loss:
I’ve been training for a marathon this year, interspersing swimming and cycling (and a couple sprint tri’s) in the mix, and I haven’t lost much of any weight. I started weighing around 194 lbs, and I’m down to maybe 190-189 or so. And this is with 45 minutes of running on tuesdays, 45 minutes on thursdays, and anywhere from 90 minutes to 3.5 hrs on a weekend day (depending on whether the workout is speed work or LSD). Also included in that is about 30 minutes of swimming on M, W and F - with the occasional long swim of 3/4 to 1 mile on weekends (about every third weekend).

However, people tell me that I look thinner and the initial outward appearance is that I’ve lost weight. I can definately tell that the beginnings of love handles that I had are smaller, and in some other areas I can tell there is a little less flab. But overall, I think the weight is just redistributed.

The benefit to doing multiple activities such as running and swimming are that you can increase your fat burning potential. However, as everyone said - diet will do more. I only bring up my example to show that even when you are talking in the range of 6 hrs of exercise per week - you still need diet modification to lose significant weight.

Also - people mention the buildup of muscle as the reason why weight gain may happen initially. There is not much muscle to be built by running/swimming/whatever a couple times per week at only 30 minutes a shot. Most of the weight gain is due to increased water retention because your body is storing more glycogen from carbohydrates - and about 3 oz of water is retained for every oz of glycogen.

This sounds like an ad to stop exercising - thats not the intention!

Including some cites regarding that glycogen/water thing:


Here (a little more scientific)

Actually, a google search of ‘glycogen water’ results to an incredible number of hits referencing that 3:1 and 4:1 ratio. Too many to list here, but I wanted to provide some substance for my earlier claim.

Every little bit helps, but, to put it into perspective, running 3km should shave off something in the neighborhood of 200 calories.

Well, fitness is more important than the weight, honestly (losing the belly and the love handles too).

My diet now is really just rice and vegetables, and tofu. However, I can only eat outside as my landlord doesn’t let me cook and man, some of those food could be oily.

I personally, then, would probably alternate 3 days running with 3 days weight/resistance training. And I would go with running at least 30 minutes, no matter what the distance ends up being.

edit: I should say, and work your way up to the 30 minutes level if you aren’t fit enough, your joints don’t like it yet (or try cycling or swimming). It’s quite easy to go too hard and injure yourself. I’m 34, and when I started running again last year, I went straight into my high school workouts, which were 4-8 miles a day, 5 days a week. I hurt my foot about six weeks into this. After recovering, I eased myself into it (for me, this was starting 3-4 miles) and now I’m back to doing 6-14 miles with no joint pain whatsoever. Listen to your body.

As other’s noted you don’t really lose weight through exercise. If you don’t change your eating habits you’ll lose about 5 pounds, if you’re lucky maybe up to ten.

But there’s a little bit more to it than that. You always hear on TV and such that American children (especially) are too fat, because they get no exercise.

Now this seems to contridict my statement. If they’re not gonna lose more than 5 or 10 pound why do they say this?

This is why:

There are three basic areas Americans fail at with weight loss. They mindless eat when, watching TV, at the computer and when they are bored.

Now you have to examine this, this is when they MINDLESSLY EAT. In otherwords they’re eating for no reason.

This explains the weight gain. It’s not that sitting in front of a computer or TV is burning any less calories than reading a book.

The thing is when you are sitting in front of a TV you’re more apt to eat mindlessly and for no reason.

This is why when you run, you probably will lose more than 5 or 10 pounds. Because you’re doing something rather than mindlessly eating. So you’re not consuming extra calories, ergo: (don’t you love that word) you’re losing weight.

My advice to running is get a great pair of shoes, it’s worth it. I used to think it didn’t matter, boy was I wrong. Good shoes help keep your feet and shins comfortable. Then try different things.

I also recommend getting books on tape. Boredom is what kills most exercise programs. I live in Chicago with an excellent public library so I can check out lots of books on tape. I find when I’m exercising I no longer get bored, 'cause I’m interested in the book.

Also check out archive.org, you can download old radio shows in public domain, if you’re not into books. Those old shows are good and will keep you from getting bored.

Everyone is different so keep varying your routine and good luck

This is what I’d do, too. And when you increase your running, if you’d like to keep on the conservative side, start increasing your time by 10% every three days to a week. So, if 3 k normally takes you 15 minutes, run for 18 minutes for a few days. If that’s comfortable, increase another 10%.

I always had to watch my diet to some degree when I ran. I actually had better control of my weight once I started doing some cycling as I got older and didn’t recover as well from running. Cycling to work was the best as I had two sessions a day.

I believe cycling is better as you can work at a higher aerobic effort(burn calories faster thus more per session) and go for a longer time than running.

The impact you feel from running adds to the overall fatigue of running as opposed to no impact with cycling.

I could cycle 25 miles in the same time/effort as running 10 and not feel as fatigued.

Here’s something embarrassing about me : I can’t cycle >.<

Likewise, I have little experience with gym. I had an old wrist injury so I am not really considering weights, which pretty much limits me to swimming and running. Though I would prefer swimming over running anytime, the only stroke I know is the slow-as-turtle breast stroke. Does that help?

And I can’t swim.

Swimming should be just as good, it’s full body work and world class swimmers do enormous distance.

What kind of injury? It might actually respond to having the surrounding muscle stregthened.

It goes back to the days of being me a conscripted solider. There is a routine check we have to perform at the end of the day with our rifle, the check clear. I have no idea what I was doing, but I always use my hand to pull back the cocking mechanism, instead of using my arm. I guess that plus the usual push-up and stuff like that lead to a wrist sprain. The specialist I had visited say it would go away in a year, but it has been about five and it’s still there.

It is a kind of throbbing pain; at the beginning it was so painful that I could not sleep. Now my wrist (right hand) always get tired easier than the left, say if I am carrying heavy objects. There is always a kind of tension there.

Don’t worry, I know all of you are not doctors :smiley:

from a place at the tropics, not in the US.

Does the wrist show any instability? If so, you might have a torn ligament.

Otherwise, some stretching exercises should help with the tension, you probably have some adhesions or scarring in there. You should do some strengthening work to rebuild the muscles in your right wrist. You’ve probably been favoring it and let it lose some strength.

Wrist curls, reverse wrist curls and hand grippers will work well, just start light and monitor your condition.

What should I look out for? X-ray scans reveal, well, nothing (back then).

Thanks for the tip; I guess I would do those under supervision of a friend who knows what he’s doing or under a gym instructor.