I love to eat!!! And I love to eat just about all kinds of food. My favorite is something someone else (preferably someone who can cook) is making and then cleaning up after. Fried food, grilled food, well anything really but boiled. Food isn’t meant to be boiled. That’s just wrong. Trust me, there is always a better way. Well, except for maybe pasta. This love of eating can be a very bad combination for someone who is trying to work out so hard. Someone like me for instance. I have read that people sometimes gain weight when preparing for an event. I know, it’s probably muscle, but I am trying to be realistic. Let’s face it, I am a chubba wubba staring football season in the face. (THANK GOD!!!!!)
This abstinence I’ve been practicing will have a real challenge when the Eagles are on and I start thinking…hmmmm, beer! nachos, beer bread and garlic dip! So, when I was walking around starving yesterday, all day, I was grouchy and worried and HUNGRY!!!! No matter what I ate yesterday, I just continued to feel hunger. And yes, I drank water.
I only remember one other time feeling that way. The time we first did the Art Museum Loop on our bikes. We went first thing in the morning and did about 9.5 miles. Yesterday I did a little over ten and had the same experience. But I have done ten or longer and not spent the day hungry. So, WHAT???? The hunger carried over to this morning, which caused me to eat a banana before I went out running (costing me around 100 calories before I was even out of bed twenty minutes!) but even so, my run felt sluggish and harder then I would have liked. It took me much longer to feel a rhythm and at no point did I feel as though I was ready to push past my goal of running for two minutes straight. Okay, I did do one four and half minute stretch, but I felt deeply sorry for myself the whole way. Instead of thinking “Just get to the stop sign, just get to the stop sign.” the litany in my head was, “wtf! wtf!” only I don’t think in letters. It felt as though my legs were huge tree trunks I was trying to force forward. On hills I practically walked while panting and called it a jog. I also committed the heinous sin of stopping at the bottom of a hill, before I reached the top with two seconds left before I hit the two minute mark. But since I was pretty sure I was going to decorate my neighbor’s yard, I thought maybe I should keep it to one spot instead of, you know, a continuous spray. But I didn’t.
It did give me something to think about while I was slowly dying out there in the heat. Why the change? What could possibly make one day so much harder then the day before. Thursday’s run was awesome!!!! I felt like a rock star. So what happened? This is what I think. I have been trying to vary my diet with healthy, or at least mostly healthy food. I have also been trying to really up the Omega 3’s in my diet. One way I do this is by adding flax seed to oatmeal. Yesterday, that is what I had for breakfast. Since I have two packets that means eight grams of protein. And no real fat. Compare this with my other go to breakfasts: an egg with spinach and cheese on an english muffin or peanut butter and banana on whole wheat bread. The first has upwards of twenty three grams of protein and the peanut butter and banana have at least sixteen grams of protein. Also, they both have some fat in them. I’m not a dietician but I think this is the big difference. In fact, as I write this, I have just finished my egg, spinach and cheese and I already feel better.
So even though I did go further then I went before by two hundredths of a mile (yeah, I’m counting that!) and amazingly I did it one minute faster, I wasn’t feeling great. Although, thinking about it now, even though I felt as though I was going to die, I guess I didn’t.
Hot Flash 