Women can take care of themselves as athletes without feeling guilty. While marathon training, you need to fuel your body adequately, add distance slowly, obtain the best shoes, stretch regularly, sleep enough and put training as both urgent and important in your priorities. Often I hear weight loss as another goal. If marathoning were a great weight loss program, all marathoners would be skinny. Watch a marathon from 2 hours to 8 hours and note that there are marathoners of all ages, weights and sizes.
Some marathoners lose weight, some gain weight as they gain muscle mass and some stay the same.
The clothes often fit differently, however. Simultaneous marathon training and dieting is not a good idea. Often it leads to injury rather than weight loss. The leader in charity running and walking is the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society's Team in Training Program which raised over 50 million dollars in 1999 for research and patient aid. The program offers a coach and training program, help in fund raising, training runs and walks, team meetings plus marathon entry, transportation and hotel for marathon weekend.