Tuesday, May 21, 2013

May 13-19: The Week I Became a Pile of Blubber



I gained 10 pounds last week.

Since nobody seems to believe that this is physically possible, I’m going to repeat that with some more specificity: the morning of Thursday, 5/16, I weighed exactly 10 pounds more than I did the morning of Thursday, 5/9.

Now that we’ve established that this is a real thing, and not just me whining about being fat without hard data to back it up, I’m going to explain some other things.

  • No, this isn’t just temporary weight gain, since it hasn’t come back down since last Thursday.
  • There wasn’t any kind of “ZOMG I went to New Orleans and drank until my liver exploded and ate all the beignets for a weekend and haven’t worked out for a month.” Quite the opposite. More like “No sugar in any form, an incredibly strict diet, and I came home from an almost 4-hour brick workout and ate plain chicken and broccoli. YUM.”
  • Before you say “it’s probably all muscle!” please remember that women can gain MAYBE ¾ pound of muscle in A MONTH, and that requires focused training and diet modifications to do so. Oh, and P.S., distance running is catabolic, meaning that it breaks down muscle tissue, rather than building it up.
  • I do acknowledge some of it is probably water. Still, given how tight my diet has been, I have no clue as to WHY I would be retaining so much water.
  • Regardless of the source of it, gaining 10 pounds in a short amount of time is extremely uncomfortable. If you gain 10 pounds gradually, your skin slowly stretches, your muscles and joints adapt to the extra weight as it accumulates, and you don’t experience too much of a drastic shock. But if you put it on in a week? Your body flat out can’t handle it, your skin feels like it might bust open at any minute, and attempting any kind of physical activity is painful because you’re suddenly carrying more weight without any extra strength.


And why does this matter? Well, I have this little race coming up in 89 days, and it involves a bike course with this elevation profile.




Last weekend, I’d already noticed that I couldn’t manage my power effectively on hills because of my weight, so with the extra 10 pounds I was carrying for a super-hilly 53 mile ride THIS weekend made it even more obvious. There wasn’t any ignoring this – I watched my normal power numbers roll by while my speed plummeted and everybody and their brother passed me, all because I was suddenly carrying all this extra weight.

And as I watched my perfectly-reasonable power numbers suddenly become inadequate, a group of happily spinning women on bikes sped past me, gleefully chatting about the awesome climbing they were going to do, which made me want to stand up and yell “TRY DOING THAT WHEN YOU’RE A FATASS LIKE ME.”

It probably didn’t help that everybody else on the ride was happy and full of cookies from the rest stops while I ate about 75 calories worth of sweet potato puree over 3.5 hours of biking and drank some water to ignore everything I was missing out on because I can’t eat any grains, sugar, fruit, or, really, much of anything besides super-lean protein, vegetables, and a small amount of extra fat from coconut and seeds.

At this point, I have to wonder if I’m putting myself at a ridiculous risk of injury by trying to bike steep hills, or run at all, given how heavy I got in a matter of days. There’s no way I could bike 112 very hilly miles and then run a marathon at this weight, yet I have absolutely no idea of what to cut out of my diet at this point. I suppose I could go for, say, 3 egg whites instead of 5 for breakfast, but I don’t even know if THAT would stop the runaway weight gain.

Yes, I’ve seen a doctor about this. Several doctors. They don’t have any definitive answers, or solutions to offer besides taking some thyroid hormone to “see if it helps.” In the meantime, I have a limited and sparse diet, and my weight keeps climbing. Not exactly a good combination 12 weeks out from a hilly ironman race, which leaves me very seriously contemplating pulling out of Ironman Mont Tremblant. It’s just not enough time to either improve my muscular strength or get my weight back down, especially not after this bonus 10 pounds that appeared out of nowhere.

Anyway, like I said, this massive, sudden weight gain came while I was still training. Right?

Monday: Rest day.

Tuesday: 75 minutes on the bike trainer, including a 45 minute section at endurance power (158W), in the morning, followed by 4300 yards of swimming with DCRP masters in the evening.

Wednesday: 5 miles of treadmill speedwork– 600 (2:52), 1000 (4:53), 2200 (10:39) – and 45 minutes of strength training in the morning.

Thursday: 2500 yards of easy swimming in the morning to test out my new goggles, then 6.5 miles of painful lunchtime running where I felt every extra ounce I’d put on in the past week with every single footstrike. Oh, and it was windy. Perfect.

Friday: 7000 meters of swimming in the morning, which is almost exactly 4.4 miles – the distance of next month’s Chesapeake Bay swim. Done as 2500m (41:13), 2000m (33:11), 1500m (25:20), 1000m (17:03). Totaled to less than 2 hours, though the bay swim will take quite a bit longer because of currents and the like. That’s OK. In the evening, 45 minutes of strength training with tons of core/plank work.

Saturday: 53 miles of sad biking through the hills of West Virginia at 15.1 mph.

Sunday: 10 mile long run at a 9:28 average, which was a little slow because 1. I’m heavy and 2. I was up in Columbia, land of hills, to watch somebody finish his first triathlon ever.




(I didn’t mention to him until AFTER he registered that this is one of the hardest Olympic-distance races out there. I’m good like that.)

19 comments:

  1. Sorry to hear this, maybe you are not getting enough calories, I have read more than once, if you dont enough calories, your body is starving and goes into surival mode and stores every little calorie as fat.

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  2. OK, take a deep breath and relax. I know how you feel, back in 2008 I gained nearly 25 pounds over a span of two months and I was positively miserable. Uncomfortable, hated myself, etc. I couldn't lose weight until 2011, and by that point, I had done three Ironmans (IM Lou x 2, Kona once), so I see no reason why you can't do IMMT. At this point, I'm down 20 of the 25 and working with The Core Diet to get rid of the rest. Hope you are able to get this straightened out!!!

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    1. I've heard really good things about The Core Diet! I need to research it a bit more, but I'm definitely interested in following it myself.

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  3. That bike profile just made me really nervous. Ugh.

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  4. Two thoughts --

    1. Are you on any meds? I am tapering off an SSRI and weight seems to be falling off. I imagine this will stop in a few days, but it's amazing how meds can mess you up without realizing it.

    2. My sophomore roommate in college was always dieting/exercising heavily, then she came to my house for Thanksgiving, ate normally for three days, and went back to school literally five pounds lighter. Not sure how many calories you are consuming, but maybe try upping it a bit?

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    1. I haven't been on any medications for over a year, and just started on T3 (active thyroid hormone) last Tuesday. One of the side effects is...weight loss. Fail.

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  5. 2 things.

    1. that profile is HUGELY misrepresentative of the the hills. I will send you my garmin file for the actual ride. The first two 'steep' hills on that elevation profile are more like steady long climbs.

    2. My long run on Sunday morning of a FLAT course was an average over 1 minute slower than yours. Most of my long runs last year were in the 10:-- range. My advice (easy to give via the internet)? Stop obsessing about numbers and try to enjoy the training again!

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    1. OMG Thank you.....Its true, Its just alot of ups and downs

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  6. I honestly can't even imagine. I have no credentials to ever give you advice in this but I do hope for all the best. I know you say you can't bike or run at that weight but I do have faith that you could. You are THE MOST badass athlete I know (and I wouldn't say that if I truly did not mean it). You will make it through this.

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  7. eugh, i wish you weren't still dealing with this :( and while i don't have any advice for you, i know you will persevere and get through it. that bike profile is scary... but i'm a wimp when it comes to hills. i blame my hips ;)

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    1. Meant to add a congrats to Jason! Yay for getting friends excited about the s/b/r :)

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  8. Dude, that SUCKS. I don't know what to say except hormones suck. A lot. Have you tried seeing a naturopath or some non-conventional medicine? Not that it has some magical solutions, but I'm sure you feel like you're running out of options. (((hugs)))

    Also, I get tired just reading your training recaps.

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    1. I'm seeing a holistic practitioner, they have some new ideas of what to try...and of course at this point, I've been dealing with this stuff in some way for almost two years and I have no patience. I want it to work NOW.

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  9. Victoria, I'm sorry you're still struggling with this.

    Given all the doctors you've seen and the fact that you've been eating well with regard to nutrition AND extremely low calorie, yet you are still gaining, I keep coming back to the overtraining/adrenal fatigue equation.

    Have you read about Geoff Roes (elite ultrarunner)? He underwent every test under the sun, and after 6+ months finally realized that's what his issue was: http://akrunning.blogspot.com/2012/12/serious-stuff.html

    I hope whatever it is, you find answers.

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  10. Ugh that is seriously terrible, I'm so sorry. I'm not going to play armchair internet doctor, but I hope the real ones can find some answers for you soon. I say take a day off training and have a full day marathon of an awesome tv show. That's my medical advice.

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  11. Thinking about you girl...I have no wisdom, only the best thoughts. I hope you can do IMMT-you've worked so hard and deserve it. Tell medical science to hurry up and figure it out, dammit!

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  12. This sounds absolutely awful! But the good news is , you still are able to train (and holy crap swim like a champ) and I definitely think you can do the race! And if makes you feel better, it was rare for me to have a training ride with an avg. over 15 mph during IMCdA training... and my long runs the day after long rides were usually high 9s/low 10s at best. I know you're not comparing against anyone else, just yourself, so it's frustrating to not see the results you want with the work you are putting in though. I hope things get better and I will be rooting for you on race day!

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  13. I'm so sorry! The unknown aspect is the worst--it took me 6 months of similar symptoms and telling my doctor that something was not right for them to even try me on synthroid...and actually, all of the symptoms kicked in while I was training for my IM too. I can tell you, the synthroid really helped and my thyroid numbers are normal-ish now and my weight has stabilized and I've stopped being so completely exhausted all of the time.

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  14. Just a crazy thought but are you allergic to any of the things you ate in that week? Maybe your body built a response to it and since you aren't consuming a ton of calories it is holding onto it? Yes, I am grasping at straws here but I can't for the life of me think of why your body would hold onto this weight over two weeks later.

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