I haven’t been particularly “touched” by nutrition in a long time. But I keep getting bombarded by marathons. Given that I advocate an adequate approach to nutrition and try to do something healthy, I can’t get past it. I have a few complaints.

Marathons are a short-term story.
They don’t teach how to improve eating behaviour long term. Changing eating behaviour takes time and working with a specific person. It’s not easy to break through that wall of toxic nutritional beliefs when it’s been “hammered in” from every iron for years that sugar is absolutely evil and that starch automatically deposits on the butt. And often this process takes MONTHS of work with a person.

Template menus
Marathons don’t teach you how to plan your own diet in the future. Stupidly, a template is given out. But we are all different. Preferences and individual food tolerance, convenient meal frequencies, different height/weight, type and amount of physical activity, and therefore different BMR requirements.

And what happens after a marathon is over, when one is left without the illusion that one is supposedly being looked after? For many people it is a return of old kilos, also with a reserve (yo-yo effect). How do you go on after finishing a marathon? Run to the next one, where no one will work with you individually in the same way?

And if you have been called to an event, and you just actively marathon? Do you need to bring your own food? Or come up with an excuse not to go anywhere? Otherwise the whole system will break down. Welcome to orthorexia. Can I tell you who you have to thank for that?

Very low-calorie.
Marathons “come in” for people who are blatantly overweight as well as slim girls who have a daily calorie intake of 1600 kcal. Hence, the patterns of 1300-1400 kcal. After all, if a person with obesity will successfully lose weight on 1600 kcal, then “inchworms” on such caloric intake will not get anything.

Therefore 1300 kcal is for sure that everyone will lose weight. And if more petite on 1300 kcal will lose, for example, 400-500 grams per week, then the person with obesity will lose 1.5 kg. In general, it doesn’t matter who came to the marathon, the important thing is that they came.

A marathon is nothing
PP bloggers, if you are running marathons and reading this, then know this: you are doing utter rubbish. You’re doing good for your wallet, but not so good for the people who walk in your marathons. And if you’ve ever run a marathon a la “21 Days Without Sugar” or “A Month Without Sugar”, it’s a stigma on you. You will burn and burn in a red-hot cauldron for what you do to people.

Giving up sugar completely for any period of time does not solve ANYTHING. It is a pointless action that does more harm than good. So a person will give up added sugar for 3 weeks, so what? It is also not a fact that he will not eat it from foods that are disguised as “PP foods”, because these same foods may contain sugar. And what to do next, after this nonsense is over? After all, people have their lives ahead of them. Many people just after such marathons lose themselves to sweets and cannot stop. In fact, such marathons only once again strengthen the TOXIC, harmful belief that sugar is not allowed in any quantity.

Benefits for the organisers.
To quote my trainer, FPA expert Oleg Tern: “It is funny that the common name for weight-loss programs has been chosen as “marathon” for some reason, although in fact, it is obvious that it is a “sprint”. It is like you strain yourself and run the first couple of hundred metres or a couple of kilometres in a month. And for the other 40 kilometres did you have any energy and energy left? No, but we’ll have a rest, regain our strength and run again… the first couple of kilometres. And the main thing is not to win, but to take part. Especially for the organisers.

Not in the eye, but in the eye. Especially about participation and organizers. Personally for me, running a marathon is an indicator of low qualifications as a nutritionist. Marathon-bloggers, you play Butyrka instead of Beatles and try to convince him that this is music too. At the same time you yourself listen to chanson, i.e. you do not understand shit, but you teach people how they should eat. Pardon me, but you yourself are to blame for the fact that many adequate professionals simply do not perceive you.

And given that the vast majority of marathons are run by bloggers with no special education or at least good nutrition certification, the concept of “expert” hardly applies to these people at all.

It’s a shame about the people who run these marathons. Because they are stupidly participating in the masses. I personally know people who regularly “enter” marathons before a birthday or holiday trip. Then they put the weight back on, and then they enter another marathon. And this vicious cycle goes on for years.