Running: the new junk food ?

The Tetbury Striders prepare for the weekly fartlek session.

A well known journalist recently commented that there is a modern trend for articles with headlines to which the response is simply “No”. A fine example of this was a recent piece entitled “Does running make you fat ?”

So, who can say that they haven’t been absorbed by the spectacle of Paula Radcliffe wobbling her 20 stone carcass over 26.2 miles, inevitably trailed by a trio of Kenyans with their instantly recognisable Telly Tubby silhouettes.

Probably best not to try this experiment: don’t eat for a week and run 5 miles a day. Measure how obese you become as a result.

Headlines like that deserve a facetious response, particularly since the phrase “It’s not running that makes you fat, it’s eating”, emerges part way through the article. It will have a similar effect to a piece last year casting doubt on the quoted mineral content of vegetables: people read a headline that panders to the desire to take the easy way out and give up something beneficial as a result.

There were other objectionable points in the article; not many people can fit in 3-4 hours exercise a week (presumably because the national average of 11 hours a week TV viewing makes looking after your health impossible), the stress hormone cortisol – released over long duration exercise – leads to abdominal fat (this is unproven and very debatable).

Thankfully there was more depth to the article and some good points. It highlighted the approach that people who take up exercise often have, feeling virtuous for running they overcompensate with a heavily calorific reward: “I’ve run a mile, I can eat a cake”. As I’ve written before, in the chip shop around the corner from the Coach House clients can undo in minutes what it’s taken me (well, them, really) an hour to achieve.

The amount of calories burned, especially by women (being generally less muscled than men) , is often less than you think. And clients’ diet diaries reveal people usually eat more than they think.

Another point is that many runners, especially if training for longer distances like half and full marathons, use a slow and steady pace that minimises calorie burn, encourages muscle loss (which decreases metabolism) and increases the chance of injury. As I’ve mentioned before, interval training (periods of hard work and subsequent recovery, repeatedly) should feature in all runners’ programmes. (See the hill interval session here for an example)

The fact that there are different types of important exercise is also mentioned. Resistance training, or lifting weight (including that of your own body), is something we are all meant to do. Because you exercise aerobically via running doesn’t exclude you from that resistance work, in the same way that washing your car isn’t the same as servicing it.

Obsessed as we are with weight loss we tend to overlook that exercise is not specifically about changing your body composition. That’s mean to be a side effect. We exercise to maintain our bodies, to lead healthier, longer, more able lives.

There is a truism that weight loss is 80% diet. What this article did was highlight that, reinforcing the fitness cliché that “you can’t out-train a crappy diet”. What it doesn’t imply is that you might as well not run.

Running does not make you fat.

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