Does losing weight/the journey to race weight become easier once you get there?

No. Leaned out peak race weight should be more or less unobtainable year round. It's normal and healthy to gain weight outside of peak season, and the ease of losing it does not change IME.

It definitely depends on how you go about researching your goal weight. Unfortunately, slow weight loss is a lot more substantial, as most people who lose weight too quickly often gain it back. Thereby, you should not be in an overly aggressive caloric deficit to avoid this problem as well as Relative-Energy Deficiency Syndrome(RED- S). In fact, it's recommended that athletes trying to lose weight consume a caloric deficit of no more than 500 calories/day.

The good news however is that you can get leaner though physical activity despite slow weight loss. Adding in resistance training can make a big difference. I personally have experienced noticable improvements in my body composition by adding in strength training 4-5X/week in addition to all the running and cross training I was already doing. This was also without any changes in diet and calorie counting. Because muscle is more metabolically active, adding muscle while losing fat would increase metabolic rate, thereby also making weight loss more substable.

My bad for not making a couple things clear:

1. I am asking if maintaining ideal weight is easier than the process of losing weight in order to get to that weight

2. I'm not necessarily talking about race weight, but rather getting closer to it. I think that the weight I was at towards the end of cross country was not only not race weight - it was heavier than ideal for early season as well (BMI of 21.3, and I'm not even close to muscular).

You can't effectively gain muscle and lose fat at the same time. You can do one or the other. Gaining muscle prior to cutting to race weight may prove a bit helpful, but while you're in a caloric deficit you wont gain much muscle if any.

timshel wrote:

My bad for not making a couple things clear:

1. I am asking if maintaining ideal weight is easier than the process of losing weight in order to get to that weight

2. I'm not necessarily talking about race weight, but rather getting closer to it. I think that the weight I was at towards the end of cross country was not only not race weight - it was heavier than ideal for early season as well (BMI of 21.3, and I'm not even close to muscular).

Yes, maintaining above race weight is easier than losing it initially. E.g. I'm a 5'9 woman and spend most of the year 134lbs±2. Race weight is 127. 70mi weeks gives me a TDEE of ~2800/avg/day, which is more food than I find comfortable to eat. A few years ago I got discharged from eating disorder treatment at 173lbs and it only took me ~6mo to get back to 140 through diet, then another four to get back to 135 with running added back in. Things definitely slow down when you transition from just cutting clearly excess body fat into the last few % of non-essential stores.

Cutting the extra ~7lbs for fall XC will take me May through August and absolutely sucks. Despite numerous attempts to sustain it year round I just can not do it without suffering tendon and bone injuries.

If you are new to strength training, you certainly can lose fat and gain muscle at the same time, even in a slight caloric deficit. Part of the problem is however most runners do not strength train frequently/consistently enough and/or are in too high of a caloric deficit to see a noticeable effect.

jazzytherunner wrote:

If you are new to strength training, you certainly can lose fat and gain muscle at the same time, even in a slight caloric deficit. Part of the problem is however most runners do not strength train frequently/consistently enough and/or are in too high of a caloric deficit to see a noticeable effect.

+1. The myth that you can’t do both has been widely busted. To the extent it’s true, it’s a qualified statement in that it’s much harder if you are already relatively low in body fat or are in a severe caloric deficit.

In fact, you can do both even with caloric maintenance or slight surplus, the reason being that muscle density is 20% higher than fat, so body recomposition can happen even with a slight surplus and net weight gain.

The set-point weight hypothesis would suggest that, all else being equal, your body will crave its way to its ideal set weight from any other weight and that it’s easier to deviate upward than downward from that set point, so that would suggest that it’s no easier to maintain weight below the set point than to get there except to the extent that getting there obviously needs a higher caloric deficit than staying there.

On the other hand, your RMR depends on other factors like your muscle/fat composition, so if you are more muscular at your lower preferred weight, it would presumably be easier to stay there than to get there.

When I switched from long sprints to distance running, I lost about 15 pounds over the course of the first 12 or 18 months. I didn’t diet and didn’t stop the beer and wine. I’m 6´1” (185cm) and ended up starting each racing season (March) at 156 and finishing at 152 (November). Training 50 miles (80 km) a week, about half good quality. That was true for several years until I gave up racing and simply ran and jogged for fun. I am now happy at 165 (75 kg). Although I eat less quantity than when I was racing, I don’t need as much food to burn. So I think that, if you get into a good training regimen you should be able to keep the weight off, once it is gone.

After an injury that took 2 years to resolve, I found myself 15 pounds heavier and ~20 pounds over training weight (158 lbs after injury vs. 138 at 5'10"). The excess weight caused arthritis (I was 41 years then and 44 now), so I had to diet just to get light enough to train. Putting myself on a diet for the first time was hard and required a lot of focus, with at least two hours a day of genuine hunger. It took ~7 months of this to hit 50+ miles a week and another 2 after that to hit 137 pounds. But once my mileage was up and goal weight attained, my diet was simple thereafter, with very little time spent hungry and just a few tricks needed to prevent overeating (weigh in every day, breakfast of just a yogurt or coffee, no desserts , no snacks between lunch and dinner, restaurant food no more than once a week on average, eliminate alcohol if weight is not maintained). The last two years, I let myself gain 5 pounds during my traditional December running break and lost it by May with no problem. For what it is worth, I made huge improvements, dropping my 5k from over 19 minutes three years ago to 16:27 this Fall. And I felt a lot healthier and a lot more like my usual self.

It's difficult to maintain race weight. Getting there initially is easier. It gets incrementally harder once you get close. The final stage may be slightly easier than maintaining, but not by much.

It is not recommended to maintain race weight year round or too long.

I mean the final stage may be slightly harder than maintaining.

Tim,

I don't know what your performance level is but I think your question really comes down to what you consider ideal weight. As I approached my 40th birthday I was overweight and out of shape and started working hard on getting back into shape. I'll spare you the details but I reached a point where I lost 50 pounds and was at a weight I considered ideal, I got just below 10% body fat, was running faster than I had at any point in my life, was lifting weights regularly at higher amounts than I had previously and all of my key health indicators (BP, Pulse, etc.) were all great.

The same is true today at 44 (I'm a little slower running but much stronger in terms of weight lifting) and I consider myself at an ideal weight (158-160 pounds and I am 5'10) for an active middle aged dad. My body fat is now closer to 11-12% and I still love to run and depending on the situation with COVID I hope to compete in about 15 to 20 races this year. I probably won't win any but I'm likely to be competitive for my age group. I run daily and lift weights 3-4 times a week but training while important is not the primary focus of my life my family is and I do it more for stress relief and to stay healthy than for any competitive advantage.

I can say that maintaining my weight with an active lifecycle is easier than losing weight. To lose weight one must consume fewer calories than they burn, to maintain you just need to equalize. For me the difference is a few glasses of wine and beer a week as well as not worrying if I have dessert or a pizza instead of salad etc. I would consider it my "natural" healthy weight and one that would probably be normal had I lived 50, 100 or even 200 years ago.

However, I am not an ideal weight for competitive running. I could still lose another 15 pounds and still have what is considered a healthy BMI and that would likely make me faster. some on this board might argue that I should lose 20 pounds but personally I think that would degrade my performance but that is a matter of opinion and debate.

So I think it comes down to what you feel is ideal weight. Is it one where you like the way you look, have lots of energy, have healthy blood pressure, cholesterol and other things, are competitive to the degree you want to be or does a ideal weight mean that you have reached the lowest weight at which medicine still considers you healthy and at which the experts say will help you run the fastest in the distance that you race. The latter is much harder to maintain b/c for many people it is not a "natural" weight to be at it is achieved only through high training rates and limiting caloric intake.

FWIW when I ran track in HS I would frequently gain 10-15 pounds over the fall and winter and come into March weighing 155 pounds and by the time late April rolled around would be at 140-142 simply b/c I was training much harder and competing. As others have stated it probably isn't healthy or reasonable to maintain a race weight year round but again it depends on what your goal is. I am fine racing at a weight that isn't as low as it could be b/c I'm not trying to make a team, win a specific event, or set a record. When I compete I do so for fun.

Caloric need:

Non runners: Around 2000-2500 kcal.

Runners with mpw 20-40: 2500-3000 kcal.

Runners with mpw 40-70: 3000-3500 kcal.

Runners with mpw 70-100: 3500-4000 kcal.

Runner with 70 mpw caloric need: 3500 kcal.

Runner with 70 mpw trying to lose weight healthy: 3000 kcal.

A runner with 70 mpw that wants to lose 5 lbs over 2 months must consume around 3000 kcal a day. This is completely attainable.

I know this is an anecdote but I believe it to be true to most; In november/decembre 2021 on 60 mpw, I lost 5 lbs on 3000 a day including candy in most weekends.