Recently a friend referenced my blog while running. They claimed to have enjoyed reading it but requested that I might discuss my diet or share recipes in addition to the race reports and honest rants. I filed the idea but I was convinced I had little to offer on the subject of nutrition. Last Saturday evening, after Holiday Lake, I reflected on my fueling during the course of the race. While a somewhat success, I had chosen to eat a GU every forty minutes and stuck to it, I decided I could still use further improving. But more importantly, while consuming a Dominoes' cheese pizza single-handedly that evening, I began to think about fuel and nutrition outside of racing or race day. So here it goes, in an effort to please my reader, I divulge my 'diet' and gain the superlative unhealthiest runner in town.
I am an ovo-lacto vegetarian, have been for nearly seventeen years. This means I do not consume meat, fish, or poultry but that I eat eggs and dairy products. Sounds healthy enough, right? Except that I am a terrible vegetarian. What started as part of a teenage girl's mission to save the world has everything to do with the way I feel about eating meat and has little to nothing to do with being healthy. I crave processed, white foods. Breads, rice, ranch dressing, pizza, while yes every day please. Macaroni and cheese. Gooey cinnamon rolls coupled with an afternoon cup of coffee steeped with commercial creamer is my ideal snack. Two cups of Fruit Loops and a diet coke right before bed. Green plants and colorful fruits, while beautiful, seem as safe from me as the meat I choose not to eat.
You see I started my third lifetime attempt at 'running' just after giving birth to baby number three in September 2009 to join my husband's quest for adventure, which at the time was focused on adventure racing. It was also to lose baby weight without having to drastically change my eating habits, because I love to eat and always felt so restricted when having to 'diet'. And I believe, if memory serves, all prior weight-loss attempts had been met with initial loss followed by eventual overall gain.
In the beginning running a quarter mile was an impressive feat. But as the miles came more easily and the pounds began to drop off I became further committed to running. Running was having an overall effect on me that I found pleasing. To help balance my new running habit I began making my own low-sodium broth and soups, I cut back on sugar and started baking more homemade breads. I ended up gaining my own thirst for adventure and losing sixty pounds.
As the miles continued to increase and the weight kept coming off I started to worry I was losing too much weight. Then I caught strep throat and dropped down, in my mind, below my lowest desired weight. In the weeks that followed I started eating more donuts, more often, I stopped making homemade broth and I went back to my favorite white, overly processed foods. For the last three years, save for being pregnant, I have weighed within a five pound range that I'm comfortable with. However, a quick glance at my 'diet', which consists all too heavily of coffee, diet soda, bagels and banana bread and I know I need a little change.
But you see we're not going to call it dieting or else you will be lose me within hours. No, we're going to have to sell it to this ultra-signup fanatic as part of training. And it can't be too drastic, this Fruit Loop craving competitor is going to need small baby steps in order to commit. So on Sunday, to jumpstart this initiative, I decided I wanted more green in my life, so far this week I've eaten a salad several days, albeit with Ranch Dressing (remember baby steps). I even ate a dozen or so carrots in between. This, consuming more real food, vegetables and fruits, will be challenge number one.
I am hopeful that the improved eating habits that I aim to slowly incorporate will have a positive effect on the way that I feel, but I'll be honest I'm hoping for it to have some greater, far more reaching effects. I am hoping to eat a balanced enough diet that aids in the building of more muscle strength and maybe to help avoid injury, something I feel all too prone to at the moment. Instead of fueling just for the race, I will strive to keep fueling for every day, every run at the forefront of my mind.
Hydration will be the bigger problem for me I imagine. Cherry Coke Zero is my vice. Sometimes I eat just so that I can enjoy the diet soda that accompanies it. Then there's coffee. Coffee over the past several years as I struggled to overcome my dislike for the early morning run has started to challenge the soda pop addiction. I am smart enough to know that water is better for me, but am I smart enough to care? At the moment, it would appear, the answer is no. Last week before Holiday Lake, Chelsie sent me daily reminders to drink water. If she hadn't sent me those texts, I would not likely have drank an ounce before the race. I'm too much of a hedonist I suppose. I encourage my children to drink water, grimace at the thought they might one day like soft drinks. I supply water for my dinner guests and group runs, but allow it to nourish and fulfill my own body, instant and constant battle met. This, introducing my system to water on a more regular basis and not just during and immediately following running, will be challenge number two.
I do not like to blame others, we are for the most part a product of our choices. But the thought remains that we are also a product of our upbringing. I survived high school, quite literally at times I'm afraid, through my consumption of Rice-a-Roni, Fruit Loops and Pepsi. I lived with my father, and while I whole-heartedly believe he did the best he could, he struggled financially and he didn't support my well-meaning move to vegetarianism for several years. The taste for ring-shaped, colorful cereal pieces is ingrained within my poor, unrounded taste buds. This, the shift from a life of processed foods to a more balanced whole food approach, will be challenge number three.
Your taste buds are supposed to tell your brain whether or not to swallow something, aid in the decision of whether or not what you've put in your mouth is 'good'. They are designed to keep us alive and yet they are influenced by your brain and what you've been trained to think is good, healthy or bad. However, my sister has told me and a google search confirmed, that taste buds go through life cycles and die away and thus can be changed throughout your life. I am going to use this insight to help commit to small baby steps for two or three weeks at a time in the hopes that the focus attempts become more permanent, positive habits.
Will I give up diet coke? Not likely. Just being honest. Will I forsake a lifetime addiction to Fruit Loops? Possibly, but ultimately the goal, as I see it, is to drink more water and eat more wholesome foods will continuing to keep the words restricted, diet and forbidden separate from my eating. Besides, I still haven't found the Dunkin Donuts on Liberty's campus...
Am I really just a lost cause?
-Alexis
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