Nutrition Overhaul Week 3: I smell ammonia.

Diet and Progress on the Scale

This week, I felt hungry a lot. I call it "snacky." You know that feeling that you're already full, but you just can't quit eating for some reason? Like that. I tried SO hard not to eat everything under the sun, but I just couldn't do it.

I was a food failure this week. Mucho food. I used every bit of willpower that I had to limit my (popcorn) habit. I can easily finish one packet of popcorn in a sitting, but this time, I only ate half, saving the rest for later. Small victories, you guys! Small victories! I made a healthy swap for popcorn on the leaner-lighter side now by using popcorn seasoning on plain popcorn. Try it - Kernel Seasons White Cheddar is my favorite, but Target makes a generic that's just as good. I'm drooling just thinking about stuffing my face with some more white cheddar popcorn...

In other randomness, we started noticing our grocery bills were on track to DOUBLE from $300/month to almost $600. Previously, we might've made one trip to the grocery store every 2 weeks. Now, we're there at least once, usually twice, each week. The cart looks so much different too! It's filled with produce - salad greens, peppers, sprouts, mushrooms, carrots, and tons of fruit. I have also been cooking more with the healthy and slimmed-down recipes I've found on Pinterest. Next week, I'll try break down our typical grocery list. If you have ideas on how to eat better and save money, please share!!

On the scale, I put back on the weight I'd dropped in the last few weeks, plus some - making 113.4 my lowest of the week but hovering closer to a 114.5-ish average. Duh - I need to start actually recording these numbers rather than guessing/trying to remember poorly.

Outlook: disappointed (in my lack of willpower). Not surprised at the results. Mostly bummed. Next week is a new week, and despite not seeing the numbers I wanted to, I'm really excited to be out of my food rut.

On the Running Front

Meanwhile, I've been smelling ammonia in the back of my nose when I take a deep breath, after every run. For a while, I thought it was partially because I was going cuckoo and partially because it was just my nose playing tricks on me in the cold. After weeks of this happening, I finally Googled it for a completely scientific explanation. :)

It's NH3, yo! Chem 121 = second.worst*.college.class.ever.

*Electrical Engineering 300 wins the award for worst college class ever. 

Ammonia ranks as a 3 on the NFPA hazard diamond. High number (out of 4) = more dangerous. This is why there's cause for concern.

Quiz question: what's the name on the document on which
you can find all the relevant info about a chemical?

It's kind of crazy. Some people reported similar symptoms so severe that their sweat smelled like ammonia. Have you heard of this before? I finally found an official explanation on the Runner's World UK website(as opposed to randoms posting stuff on internet message boards). A few excerpts that help explain the madness:

• Ammonia comes from the breakdown of amino acids (the building blocks of proteins) within the body.
• The nitrogen is a waste product that needs to be excreted by the body....If there is too much nitrogen for your kidneys to deal with, it will be excreted as ammonia in your sweat.
• Many people mistakenly believe ammonia sweat means that their protein intake is not high enough.
• If your sweat smells of ammonia don’t compensate by adding more protein (amino acids) to your diet
• Instead fuel your muscles and brain with what it prefers as an energy supply: carbohydrates.
• Try having a low glycemic index carbohydrate, such as an apple, before your run and during prolonged exercise drink sports drinks to fuel your body and prevent amino acids being burned as energy.
• The body needs carbohydrate to burn fat so don’t think that providing some carbs before running is going to eliminate the fat burning process.

—Jane Newman, Sports Physiotherapist and Ultra Runner

According to this same article, the ammonia smell is a "common" issue with runners, so if this has happened to you, I want to know! You can read the full text here. Basically, it sounds like I need to take in more carbs, a message consistent with almost every professional and non-professional response I've seen to this problem. Some message board peeps wrote that this might or might not mean that the ammonia-smelling perp is burning muscle, but I can't find any reliable sources that can verify or refute that part.

This week, I was running tired. Like, really tired. Being an eager beaver, I decided that I'd handled a couple of 50-mile weeks well, with no unusual injuries or aches and pains, so I chose to keep on pushing. I aimed for 60 miles, starting off the week on Monday with a completely stuipd 14-mile "easy" day. Problem with that? It felt easy at the time, but I paid for it ALLWEEK LONG. Have you ever woken up and felt like you did a track workout the day before? I started every morning that week with my legs feeling exactly that, regardless of what I ran.... all because I started off too high on the week. Despite that, most of my runs felt pretty strong, and my running pace and times were good.

I started using a heart rate monitor for the first time on a late-week 9-mile run. I have yet to learn more about it, but in talking with Ben, an ideal easy/recovery pace is around 70-75% of max, which was killer to maintain on that day. I question it, though, because I've been having issues with the HR monitor in general. I have a brand spankin' new Garmin 610 with heart rate, and on every run, it shows my heart rate well above 90% for the first 6 minutes of the run. I tried moistening the sensors with water before putting it on, but it never fails -- I don't get any accurate readings until about 6.5 minutes into every run. At first, I thought, "That makes sense. I have always needed to warm up at a pace WAY slower than everyone else, and this heart rate data just supports that because I have to work so hard when I start!" I was secretly disappointed to learn that Garmin says this is a recognized problem and that they're working on a software fix for this.

Toward the end of the week, I checked my training log and realized that, just by running mostly by my normal routine, I was easily on target for 65 miles. But you know me: push, push, push... I dragged doing it, but I did it! The most notable day was the last day, a 9-mile run from home + 5k loop at the IUXC course and back, which was total hell. I finished. It wasn't pretty, but I finished. I wouldn't have done 9 miles that day if I hadn't known or been trying to hit a mileage milestone, either. My previous high was probably something like 55 miles. That week, I sprinkled in a track workout and a set of 8 (?) x 800m repeats in addition to the other easy and group runs. Guess what? After all that time and work, it became THE 70 MILE WEEK!

Oooooh fame -- I made the top 20 list!!

So there you have it.... a summary of week 3. I'm hoping to persuade Ben to write his own post, because he has so many good and exciting diet revelations to share with you.

And don't forget the Pinterest Challenge.... find a good healthy recipe and make it/share it!