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Despite what many inventors of best-selling fad diets would have the public believe, weight loss is a simple issue. Burn more calories than you consume, and you'll lose weight. As a runner, you're in luck, because running happens to be one of the best and fastest ways to expend energy. To lose one pound, you need to burn 3,500 more calories than you eat, and running burns about 100kcal per mile. Running also keeps your metabolism elevated for hours after your workout, meaning you burn more calories even while you're sitting at your desk at work or on the sofa recovering from your run.
Hold on, though, before you reach for that extra chocolate croissant. Runners face a frustrating truth: research has shown that the post-workout metabolic rate is elevated longer in untrained subjects. As you become fitter and fitter, you recover faster, so your post-workout metabolic rate returns to its resting level sooner, and you don't burn as many calories as your neighbour who runs only occasionally.
You're just going to have to make up for it during your training, when your metabolic rate is at its highest anyway – and therefore has a greater impact on your calorie burn and subsequent weight loss. Here are five simple ways to shake up your training to blast more calories. All of them are worth the extra effort: they really work.
Log more miles
Adding more miles to your running week is probably the easiest and most obvious way to burn more calories. By running five to 10 more miles per week, you'll burn an extra 500 to 1,000kcal. It's more exciting than it sounds: the further you run, the better your body becomes at conserving carbohydrates and relying on fat as fuel. You become a better fat-burning machine.A good way to start burning more calories is to add one mile (or five to 10 minutes) to each of your daily runs for three weeks; then back off for a recovery week. After your recovery week, continue to add miles (or time) in the same fashion.
Go long
A weekly long run burns more calories two ways. First, there's the 100kcal-per-mile expenditure: run 15 miles and you burn an impressive 1,500kcal. You may even burn more than 110kcal per mile, depending on the amount of oxygen you use while running and on your body weight. (It costs more oxygen to transport a heavier person.) Women, alas, burn fewer calories per mile than men, since they typically weigh less.Long runs not only burn more calories, but a number of studies show that they also help boost your post-run metabolic rate, often exponentially. A study published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise found that the longer subjects walked at 70 per cent of maximal oxygen consumption, or VO2 max, the longer it took for their metabolic rates to return to their pre-exercise levels. In another study, published in The Canadian Journal of Sport Sciences, post-exercise metabolic rates more than doubled when the amount of time subjects exercised increased from 30 to 45 minutes – and increased more than five-fold after exercising for 60 minutes.
To reap the weight-loss rewards of going long, start your weekly long runs about two minutes per mile slower than your 5K race pace. Increase their length by five to 10 minutes (or one mile) each week for three or four weeks before backing off for a recovery week. If you run more than 40 miles per week, or if you run faster than an eight-minute mile, you can add two miles at a time to your long run. Your long run should make up no more than 30 per cent of your weekly mileage.
Pick Up the Pace
Of course, you'll reach a point – physically, psychologically, professionally – where you can't add more weekly mileage or miles to your long run. That's when you'll have to pick up the pace, and running at your lactate threshold is an excellent way to do that. Your lactate threshold marks the point between almost exclusively aerobic running and efforts that include significant anaerobic (oxygen-independent) metabolism. It tells you the speed at which you cross into a domain that makes running more difficult and fatigue imminent. Stay right on that edge, and you're at an ideal pace for torching calories: you're working at the highest sustainable rate of aerobic energy expenditure.The lactate threshold also represents the transition between your reliance on a combination of carbohydrates and fats versus carbohydrates as a sole source. The two fuels provide energy on a sliding scale – as you increase your pace to your lactate threshold, your need for fat decreases while your reliance on carbohydrates increases. Many people who have heard some version of this are inclined always to exercise at lower intensities to burn more fat. Yet research shows that exercising at or slightly below your lactate threshold intensity elicits the highest rate of fat oxidation. Although the percentage of calories from fat is indeed small when running just below your lactate threshold pace, the total number of calories expended per minute is much higher than at a lower intensity.
From a performance standpoint, lactate threshold runs give you the best aerobic return for your effort, raising your threshold to a faster pace. Increasing the speed at which your threshold occurs allows you to run faster before you tire. The benefit to being able to run aerobically at an eight-minute pace compared to an 8:30 pace is obvious.
To burn more calories and increase your performance, introduce one of the following lactate threshold sessions each week. The pace, which should feel comfortably hard, is about 10 to 15 seconds per mile slower than 5K race pace (or about 10K race pace) for slower, recreational runners; for those more highly trained, it's about 25 to 30 seconds per mile slower than 5K race pace (or about 15 to 20 seconds per mile slower than 10K race pace).
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- 15 x 200m at about 45 seconds per mile faster than 5K race pace with one-minute jog recovery; or.
Crank it up
While the pace you run does not affect how many calories you burn during a run of a specific distance, it does affect how many calories you burn afterwards. A number of studies have shown that the more intense the exercise, the more and longer your post-workout metabolic rate is elevated — and the more weight you subsequently stand to lose. In a study published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, triathletes who cycled at 75 per cent of their VO2 max for 20 minutes burned more calories after their session than they did after cycling at just 50 per cent VO2 max for 30 or 60 minutes.Another study published in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition compared metabolic rates following two equal calorie-burning sessions: a short-duration, high-intensity session (51 minutes at 75 percent VO2 max) and a long-duration, low-intensity session (78 minutes at 50 per cent VO2 max). The researchers found that the high-intensity workout left the subjects with a higher post exercise metabolic rate than did the low-intensity session.
To add some intensity and make your metabolism work for you long after your session, try one of the following interval runs each week. Recreational runners should limit their high-intensity workouts to just once a week. If you're a veteran, though, you can try adding two into your weekly training programme:
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- 8-12 x 200m at about 45 seconds per mile faster than 5K race pace with one-minute jog recovery; or
- 4 x 800m at 5K race pace with three-minute jog recovery.
Run Twice a Day
Although it takes more time out of your day to run twice, it's easier to run a four-miler in the morning and a six-miler in the evening than it is to run one eight-miler. Physically, the two smaller sessions give your body a break; psychologically, you only have to set your mind for the shorter distances. So you're increasing your mileage – and, therefore, calories burned – while taxing your body and mind less.Splitting your run into two shorter runs will also result in two separate elevations in your post-exercise metabolic rate – which will give you two opportunities to burn more calories during the day. One study, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, had women run for 50 minutes at 70 per cent VO2 max one day and twice for 25 minutes at the same intensity another day. The combined increase in post-exercise metabolic rate was higher after the two sessions than after the single workout. By running twice per day, you double the afterburn effect and you're going to stay on the right side of the calorie-burning equation.
