The Truth About Losing Weight to Run Faster

- You guys notice that when Josh Kerr broke the world record for the mild the other day, 342. It's like 218 per K, obviously 342 per mile, he was so lean. Did you notice that? He was so lean. And over the last two or three years, I have pointed out to friends often that that guy is constantly getting lighter and lighter and lighter. Pull up a photo of him, go to Google and type in Josh Kerr Tokyo Olympics 2020, Olympic bronze medal. Have a look at the photos of him at the finish. He is at least four kilos heavier than what he is now. I've heard from people that trained with him that he's lost around four kilos. Also, I just spent a week in South Africa and I got the opportunity to run with George Kush in the lead up to Comrades, which he won. And George shared with me that one thing he really focused on in the lead up to Comrades was getting down to a lighter weight. He was 67 kilos when he came 11th, the year before, and he got down to 62 kilos by doing a lot of dieting, a lot of strict calorie deficit work, and he won Comrades easily. Now, it wasn't all because of the weight loss, obviously, it was definitely in part of that and he told me that that was a big focus of his. Christian Blumentfeld, one of the best tri-sleets in the world, in fact, maybe one of the best of all time, shared on many podcasts recently that he realized after the Paris Olympics where he didn't podium, which was one of his biggest goals, that he was about four kilos heavier than what he was in Tokyo when he won. Now, I'm a bit surprised, honestly. I don't know if Christian listens to this. I've known he's listened to a couple of the four, but I'm a bit surprised he didn't notice that 'cause I noticed it from watching the TV and noticed it by watching his YouTube channel. And I even said to David Littman and other friends like when he was preparing for Paris. I was like, he's way heavier now than what he was when he won and strangely, shortly after the Paris Olympics, he came out and said, I was very heavy and overweight and I lost the weight and now he's absolutely dominating again. Welcome back to the podcast. I was very surprised at the analytics of the last 12-minute podcast from the airport in Beijing where over 30,000 people listened to the podcast in just a few days. I think it was because of the length of the podcast. It was just one topic too. So I'm gonna keep some of these going while mixing in with longer conversations as well. But this episode is all about race weight, getting lighter, getting faster. If that's for you, let me start off by saying, if you have a history of eating disorders, if you have a history of unhealthy eating and you know that and you've been told that by a doctor or you think that that might be you do not listen to this podcast anymore. Turn it off. There is so many other podcasts and YouTube channels out there that you can watch right now. I would love to recommend some, but I wanna keep this episode to sub 15 minutes. So I'm not gonna do that right now, but turn it off. You've been warned this episode is not for you if you think that you have unhealthy eating patterns and especially if you've had a needy disorder in the past. I don't understand that stuff. I know it's very real and it's a huge, huge risk. So if that's you, turn it off. I am also not a nutritionist. Let me be clear. However, I have spent hundreds of hours at this point studying nutrition and studying this exact topic. So I've also successfully lost between four and seven kilos on three occasions to drive marathon time from 2.35 to 2.27 to 2.27 to 2.20 and then 2.20 to 2.18. And I really do think by following this and getting down to a little bit lighter, I can probably get down to 2.14 or 2.12. Let's see, I might be wrong. That might not age well, but I'm gonna try. And what I'm about to share with you is why I think it might be a good idea to lose weight, why it might not be and then how to do it. So I first started thinking about this very carefully in 2023. I had been stuck on about 2.22 to 2.23 for the marathon for about a year and a half. I had already run to 20, a year and a half before that, but I had not been able to figure out how to get back to that 2.20. And it only really occurred to me when I looked at race photos of when I ran 220 that I was leaner and skinnier back then. I then started to look at photos of me in races, competing against people in Japan and around the world. And I was like, I'm nowhere near as lean as the guys running sub 220. I then went back and found a photo of me when I ran 220 and I was 70 kilos. I took a picture of me on the scale, I forgot about it. And I realized I was 73 kilos. Now I thought, well, I've pulled every other lever I can possibly pull right now at 73 kilos and I'm just running 222, 223 repeatedly. So I focused on losing four kilos to get down to 68.8, I was in November last year and around 218. I think I may have been able to run a little bit faster in that 218, I led most of the way and I still think I probably could have run a little bit quicker, but I haven't. And since going through that journey, I have basically shared on different mediums, on podcasts, on YouTube channels, on Instagram, all sorts of places about this strategy. And I have heard from at least 200 people personally with their stories. A people that had followed this advice that have gotten faster, that have really enjoyed their journey, have achieved marathon goals or half marathon 10K goals that I didn't think was possible. And strangely, I've actually heard of pretty much no people that have had injuries. No doubt some people get injuries following this advice, but my argument to that is, people get injured doing anything. If you add sprints into your training, like I talked about last week, or if you're trying to tune in any K a week, like some YouTubers, you are probably going to face risk of being injured. I want to clear, there are some very high volume YouTubers that are injured all the time. So there's risks involved in this, just like there's risks involved in almost anything. Okay, before I dive into the media part of how to do this, even though some of you listening might have heard bits and pieces, I want to try and condense this. I just want to have a little bit of a side jab at some people that criticized me for this stuff. I put out an Instagram post yesterday, which has had very, for the most part, positive engagement. But it's been forwarded on to some nutritionists and some people that have had a crack at me saying, "It's irresponsible." And some doctor came out and said, "For fuck's sake, you should never follow this. It's dumb." And I looked at all these people's profiles and I realized one thing in common amongst basically all of them. They were all not very fast runners. I know this might sound condescending. I really mean for it not to be. I'm just trying to be factual. They weren't fast runners and basically none of them were trying to coach people to run fast or to be really good at an endurance board. They were people that were focusing strictly on nutrition. Their whole idea was to be play it very safe. But let's be honest. Like, is reaching the absolute peak shape in the marathon or half marathon safe? It's not safe. Like, you have to train extremely hard and take risks. And I categorize this same idea in there. It's risky for sure. With that said, I would argue that this strategy that I'm about to share is less risky than doing 220 a K a week or more. Okay, so if you are a nutritionist and you're sitting here listening to this or a doctor or a physio or something like that and you're shaking your head going, this guy shouldn't do this. It's really risky. Ask yourself these questions. Sorry. Are you fast? Have you coached anyone to be fast? If the answer to those two questions is no, please maybe hesitate and just ask yourself those questions. We all have different goals as people, as mentors and mine is to try and help people get as fast as possible. As I think I said already, I've coached at least 50 people that have followed this exact advice and that have improved in some cases, 15 minutes in the marathon. In other cases, one or two minutes. And I've heard of no people having injuries yet. And yeah, the amount of YouTube comments and just different bits and pieces I've seen on forums and stuff, I've just seen such a positive response to this. So here we go. Okay, in order to lose weight, you must be in what's called a calorie deficit. Let me quickly do an overview of what a calorie deficit is even though most of you would know this. You basically have to be burning more calories than you are consuming in a given time unit. The easiest time unit to use is a day because that's just an easy way to think about it. And you want to always be thinking about being in a calorie deficit for most of the week. Now this next part is really critical because this is where nutritionists and physios and doctors, most of them for some reason decide to completely ignore this next part, which is key. You need to be doing what's called carbohydrate cycling throughout the week in between the calorie deficits. Let's dive into all that quickly. Calorie deficit, let's go through it. Personally, I like to aim for an 600 to 800 calorie deficit per day. How do we work this out? Most people listen to this, males between 25 and 50. I know that by looking at the analytics, it's like 95%. And you are probably working a job where you walk about 5,000 steps a day. You're burning around 2,000 calories a day, give or take. It's not exact. I'm throwing out rough numbers here. You should probably go to a specific device or K-calorie to get specifics. Then you need to add on how many calories are you burning from exercise? You're burning around 700 calories per hour of easy exercise, easy running, and around 1,100 to 1,200 for high intensity exercise. So then work that out. For most people listening to this, if you're training at 100k a week or more, you're probably burning around 3,000 to 3,800 calories per day, approximately. Try and be more specific with that. I'm throwing out very rough numbers 'cause I want to make this relatively-- brief podcast, then you need to consume less than that to lose weight. Very simple. Now, let me be clear. If you follow what I just said then in the last minute, every single day, you probably will get injured and you probably will hate running very quickly and you'll probably go backwards. This part is important. When you have a hard workout coming out, which is VO2 max session, threshold session, long run, basically anything with when you're a zone three or above, I don't really like the zones that much but it's just easy to use here. Threshold, marathon effort or above, you basically need to forget about the cub cycling all together. Sorry, forget about the calorie deficit all together and this is the easiest way to explain it. When you're 12 hours out from a hard workout, so your hard workouts on Wednesday morning, at six in the morning, the night before, at dinner time, 6 pm, that period of time you want to try and hammer the carbohydrates. I personally recommend completely forgetting about calories for that window of time. 12 hours before the workout and three hours after the workout. During that time, my strong tip is to forget all numbers and just hammer the carbohydrates as much as you can. Have huge amounts of rice, huge amounts of potato, bread, pasta, all these candy, I love, I have lots of candy and especially in the session, sorry, in the meal after the workout, if you really want to get down to numbers, some people just love to have numbers to follow. Aim for 300 to 350 grams of carbohydrates in the 12 hours before and then other 100 grams after it. But I recommend not worrying about it. Just go big, get full, obviously not full right up to the point of the actual workout but especially in that sort of 12 hours out to two hours out from the workout. I know most of you are asleep during that time but just do your best to have as much as you can. And that will enable you to use these carbohydrates sugar and glucose for energy when you really need it. So for two days of the week, basically, yes, if you're doing two hard sessions a week, you're not going to be in a calorie deficit. In fact, you may be in a slight surplus and that's fine. But then in the other five days of the week, go back to the deficit and over time you will lose weight. I've lost 10 kilos in the last three months doing this pretty safely. I train pretty well this morning. I feel great. So it's very important. Once again, I just want to say this again because it's amazing how many people just ignore the carb cycling part and they get very critical about the whole calorie deficit. You're ignoring the most important part if you're thinking that way. The carb cycling part is key. So go hard on the carbs for those 12 plus one hour for the workout and then another three hours. What's that? 17 hours and then go back to the deficit. So that's it basically. Like if you do this, your chances of getting injured, I would argue you're pretty small. Couple other side points. To be in a calorie deficit, you really need to then think about like which foods can you eat, which will make you feel pretty full and will basically make you not feel too hungry. So there's some good tips there. I think veggies and lean chicken is good. Pumpkin, muddy, borderkin talks about this and his podcast a lot. I loved it. Pumpkin seems to be a good one. These foods tend to be very filling and very low and pretty low in calories for how filling, for how heavy they are. Throw it into chat GPT or Claude. Find me foods that are low calorie for how heavy they are and how filling they are and just follow that. That's what I'd stick to in the calorie deficit window. Outside of that, forget it. Just hit the carbs hard and enjoy the food. I love that window. It's like a treat. It's like a time to just binge and eat a lot. He'd candy. I buy packets of chocolate and candy and after the workout, it's like my little window of time where I just love just eating just carbs. So I'd love to keep talking about this for hours but I want people to be able to digest this simply. Follow this advice and I'm almost certain that you will not hurt yourself. I mean, like I said, still risks you might and if you do, maybe you didn't hit the carbs hard enough, etc. But this advice has worked for so many. I've heard Christian Rylin felt talk about it. Josh Kerr basically talks about it in lots of his content as well. He doesn't preach it because he knows that it's a bit risky and he doesn't want to get that hate because people come out of the woodwork like they do to me which I just don't really listen to anymore. Just don't worry about it. But yeah, if you want to learn more about this, I did a YouTube video two years ago called How I Lost 8 Pounds in two months or why I lost it. Sorry, I'm on my other channel, the running channel. The Instagram post about it very clear sort of document about how to do it as well. You can follow. And if you want to chat about it, send me an Instagram direct message or an email. It's all in the details below and I'd be happy to chat. And yeah, if you don't think you need to lose weight and you're happy with your weight, then forget this whole podcast. Just turn it off and forget it. All right, let's meet you guys again soon.