Carb load mode

...in which I (almost) bite off more than I can chew

I love food, as anybody that's ever had the misfortune to sit with me as I masticate my way through a meal can tell you. It's one of the reasons I chose Slimming World when I decided to lose weight; any diet that tries to severely restrict what I eat would be doomed to failure.

So the "carb loading" phase of marathon training, in which you load the body with carbs for 2 - 3 days in order to ensure you have the fuel reserves to run 26 miles, ought to be easy. I mean, it's just eating, right? How hard can it be?

In fact I'm finding it heavy going; 90 - 95% of the calories I need to eat for these 3 days apparently need to come from carbs, and I need to eat around 570g of carbs per day (based on 8g of carbs per kg bodyweight). That doesn't sound like a lot, until you start looking at how many carbs are actually in food; a tin of baked beans has about 52g, a baked potato has about 50, a banana has 30.

100g of cooked pasta has around 75g of carbs in, but even I would struggle to eat enough pasta (about 750g) in a day to get up to the required carbs, so a lot of stuff that I don't usually eat at all has been consumed in the last 2 days.

I actually sat down and worked out how many carbs I needed, and did a plan for 3 days. (I think I may have too much time on my hands). It basically consists of 3 carb-heavy meals and 3 snacks per day, and by the afternoon snack I am already feeling quite full; by the evening snack (2 bagels with jam) I'm generally so stuffed that it's a major effort to finish it. (That said, my previous life as a human eating machine has stood me in good stead).

Anyway, that's obviously a bit of a first world problem. I'm not really whining (or at least not trying to!) but it's interesting that a bit of the training that you'd expect to be pleasurable (or at least more fun than running 20+ miles) is actually a lot harder than it sounds.

Oh yes, here's the marathon countdown. Now that's a scary picture...