Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Clean Eating...for the most part

Over the last month I've referenced my changing eating patterns but haven't really told you much. So here's what happened. 

Once upon a time a girl was super annoyed that heradathon training runs weren't going well. She wasn't nourishing herself properly, she wasn't losing muh weight despite ALL the miles and in general, she just wasn't feeling good. Yucky--if you're age 5 or under.

(Ok--this writing in the third person thing is annoying me.)

Around the same time I read a post from probably my favorite blogger. She'd recently hired a nutritionist. Like a REAL one that is pretty expensive and everything. She also trains for endurance events, so I was immediately intrigued at whether or not there was anything I might be able to learn about fueling myself enough to train for and run a marathon, but possibly lose weight, too. What I did NOT do was go out and hire a nutritionist...I'm simply not rolling like that!

She'd posted a picture of just a portion of one day's menu, which read something like this:

Breakfast:
1/4 c. steel cut oats (cook them, duh)
1/8 c. craisins or raisins
1 egg + 3 egg whites

Morning snack:
Protein shake mixed in water (her mix is one she'd raved about before)
1 c. Pineapple
8 plain almonds

Lunch:
4 oz. fish or chicken
1/2 c. brown rice
1 c. broccoli

Afternoon snack: not shown
Dinner: not shown

From reading her blog, I learned that her afternoon snack was similar to the morning, and dinner was either another 4 ounces of chicken or fish, and more veggies and sometimes another 1/2 cup of brown rice. She often just has a really huge salad.

I longed for her entire menu, but this was something to start from, right? So for the first week I stuck to this religiously! Breakfast was HUGE. And like she described for her, I was so full in the evenings that I had no desire for snacking relentlessly into the evening. During the second week  I stared substituting different kinds fruits. On nights before long runs I have pasta but would be sure to measure it out so that I could easily track it with my fitbit app. Now after 4 weeks, I've eased up a bit--still sticking to the main principles, but maybe eating less for breakfast, and then having a hardboiled egg a little later in the morning. I haven't been having my smoothies as much, but then instead I'll just make it an ounce of almonds.

On weekends, especially when I've had a long run, I allow myself to eat more broadly. It's what helps me keep my sanity for the week. And it's working!

After four weeks I'm down 8.5 pounds. That's not bad considering how so many say it's hard to lose weight at the height of marathon training, since there is such a careful balance needed to support your body running all those miles. Or whatever. Anyway, I'm happy with that and I'll keep going. Also, I just feel better for not eating all that junk.

Except the occasional smoked Italian beef nachos from Chester's BBQ truck in Champaign. BB, how are we gonna get those to me post-marathon in Chicago and NYC?!?! 😥


P.S. The oatmeal thing. This was a huge hurdle for me. I'm not a huge fan of oatmeal unless it's loaded with sugar, like the Quaker Oats maple brown sugar kinds, or you may recall my once defending McDonald's breakfast oatmeal. (Read the comments in that post. Yikes!) Anyway, back to 2014. The first day I had it, I gagged, but managed to get most of it down. Each morning that week I gagged a little less. Somewhere around 10 days in, I actually started looking forward to it! Go figure! Look who's eating grown up food!

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