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I am preparing for marathon and I feel the need to change my diet to prepare better for this event. What is your experience? Which changes did in your diet helped you most? What was hardest to give up?

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What is your diet currently like and what is prompting the change? I think you'll need to answer those questions before you can get meaningful assistance with diet changes. – Chuck Mar 7 at 22:04
Chuck's comment is spot on. Additional things to ask - where do you currently have problems? IE - do you fatigue early, do you cramp often, how is your hydration, is your weight what you would consider ideal for your running... – ngramsky Mar 8 at 5:51
@Chuck, on the other hand, if there is one diet good for marathon runners, why make this question about how to change Michaels current diet into it? Why not simply say what a good marathon runners diet looks like and what does it have to have? Im thinking "High protein intake, increased carbs on training days pre and post workout, lots of blablabla, avoid blabla" kind of answer, letting everyone tailor out the details themselves – K.L. Mar 8 at 9:09
@Michael Kimmig Also, youre asking a few personal, chatty questions there that dont really have one good answer, like "what was hardest to give up" or "what changes helped you most". Those kinds of questions arent exactly welcome at our site, since they are not very helpful, more like entertaining or motivating to read. Please read the "about" and FAQ pages of the site, to get a grasp of how a good question looks like. It will help you edit your question to a better one, so it can get better answers :) – K.L. Mar 8 at 9:11

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What does your current diet look like? What is your current marathon PR and what is leading you to think your diet may not have been quite right? You'll need to provide some insight into what you're currently eating before you can get any specific advice on what to change.

There are many resources on the web that offer suggested plans and they all generally fall into similar recommendations.

Marathon training burns a lot of carbs, how much you burn will differ based on your fitness level, experience, pace, and running economy. The general wisdom is that runners should be consuming a diet that is composed of between 65% and 70% carbohydrates. A typical marathon training diet is one that is around 65% carbohydrates,25% protein, and 10% fat.

Here are several links to articles that will say roughly the same thing and give varying approaches to building your diet plan. You'll need to figure out what works best for your body through trial and error.

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