What is the easiest way to run a faster 5k without training longer or harder?
Lose weight!
Reduce body fat – consume fewer processed carbs and more natural fats, whilst eating when hungry. For me personally, addressing this brings a gain of around 50 seconds per kilo over 5k. This is the easiest way to get faster whilst reducing injury and health risks. There is also the added benefit of more energy, better sleep, more confidence. How many minutes is that lot worth? It’s really a little strange to be hammering your body incredibly hard with brutal interval training for fairly tiny gains when you can knock minutes off your 5k time just by addressing this.
Maybe some believe the hype of the fitness marketeers and that they will lose the belly fat just by doing high intensity intervals as they will be ‘burning more calories’. Unfortunately the metabolic stresses caused by this will spike cortisol and insulin production – two of the main fat storing hormones. This is ignored by the calorie counters.
Think hormones before calories and you will find your weight normalising, along with food cravings. It is totally wrong to regard your body as some kind of ‘fuel tank’ which is simply topped up or run down and that when it’s empty you get uncontrollable hunger. It is ridiculous to think of calories all being the same since they are metabolised in different ways – for example it requires a vast amount of energy (i.e. calories, if you like) to metabolise protein, whereas carbohydrate is readily absorbed.
The body has no measure for calories as such but it does respond to carbohydrate, fat and protein, as well as stress, happiness etc. with production of a vast array of different hormones – these are what control what you eat and weigh.
As well as eating the right foods to normalise hormone responses, you can also normalise your weight by avoiding stress, sleeping properly and reducing frequency of meals to prompt fat burning by reducing insulin production.
You will not achieve your ideal racing weight otherwise, unless you are a young athlete who has a faster metabolism or you are one of those fortunate few older adults who can eat anything without gaining weight. Many runners are as overweight as the general population, believe it or not, and this massively limits their performance, however ‘fit’ they are.
For help with weight management (and not just runners) which addresses the true causes of weight gain and exposes the myths designed to produce profit not health then please get in touch for a free informal chat.
Contact David at Roads to Freedom on 07504439555 or email info@roadstofreedom.net.
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