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!

Join me: Pinterest Food Challenge

Wow - Week 3 of the nutrition overhaul was a big week!

I spent a good amount of the week seeking out new recipes. Just as I (re)discovered my "Eat This, Not That!" books last time, duh! I know there are recipes for low-calorie, wholesome, and (most important of all) delicious food out there. Ones that don't make you feel like you're eating diet food.

Enter the Pinterest {Food} Challenge!!!

Food Inspiration
I discovered Pinterest a little over a year ago, and have been pinning hundreds of images from the internet and from my daily blog reading.
Follow my boards! ...Especially if you like home decor. :)

 

I have two pinboards dedicated to:  Food (the good, bad, and delicious) and Clean Food. Clean eating - in my book - is a relatively low calorie meal and snacks.

You can follow my food pinboards specifically.

If you're not familiar, Pinterest is:
a) an online "scrap book" where you can save all of your favorite images and inspiration from anywhere on the internet
b) a better place to waste time than Facebook (in fact, it's where I found this awesome picture of a giant bunny I wanted to save - not Photoshopped. Boy has his own calendar!)
 c) a huge time suck. "Go to bed!"
d) annoyingly unending source of ideas
e) more addicting than hard drugs  - you've been warned.

But c'mon, eating these treats is so much better than drooling over digital images of them. And so... I bring you the Pinterest Challenge!! (cue dramatic echo)

Please join me. It's a challenge that's all about less pinning and more doing!

Get a piece of the action:


1) Get on Pinterest. (If you need an invite, send me your email address.)


2) Start pinning. Seek out healthy- or clean-food recipes.


3) Critical step: Turn your pin (recipe) into reality. Go make it!


4) Leave comment below with a link to the original pin and/or your own blog post about your challenge (or send me your photos). Tell me how it went!

So, can Pinterest really help you lose weight and eat healthy new foods?  Let's all get back together in a week and find out! I've already started with a few, and of the food I pinned and actually made (some with modifications), here are my reviews:

1. Centsational Girl's Southwest White Bean & Chicken Chili.

Pinned here.

One word: amazing. Take one look at the ingredient list and you'll see that it's a super-clean recipe, providing lots of belly-filling fiber and tasty chicken. I used red peppers and scallions for a little bit of color. It was really good. Not bad for a recipe she made up with random stuff she had laying around her house! You must make this.

2. Sweet Potato skins - a healthy take on your fats-o-plenty tater skins

Pinned here.

I didn't have all of the ingredients on hand (like bacon bits?), so I had to make do with what I had. That, and I cut the sweet potatoes WAY too thin, so this did not turn out well. In fact, I ended up taking the leftovers and blending them up into sweet potato pancakes. Although they didn't taste nearly as great as they look in this picture, I'm still willing to try it again - the bacon bits, in hindsight, were probably a critical ingredient, giving it that sweet-and-savory flavor.

3. Roasted Edamame

Pinned here.

Edamame is the perfect powerfood! Packed with protein and fiber, what could you possibly hate about edamame? You can even buy it pre-shelled, for you people who hate working for your food! Once again, I tweaked the recipe and it bombed. For some reason, I thought that this would be more of a snack food - more of a dried edamame. It wasn't. Also, I got a little too excited about the curry powder I just bought and sprinkled some on. Not recommended. Don't think I'll be trying this recipe again, even if I do follow it exactly.

Want to see what's at the top of my want-to-make list? It's these mini ham and quinoa cups by Iowa Girl Eats. Pinned here.

I can't wait to try this recipe! You could fill these little quinoa cups with anything- The possibilities are endless! [little happy dance]

So, get pinning, cooking, and commenting! The Pinterest {food} Challenge starts now!

Nutrition Overhaul Week 2: Out of the food rut

Week 2 was a test of wills!

On Saturday night (since the week starts on an odd day), we met with some friends for soup night, graciously hosted by the James & Erin Clark. Diet-wise, soup night turned out to be our cheat day, which was a good little break from the diet madness. Soup night was the first real test of willpower in a situation where we couldn't control - and didn't know - what was in the food. With his metabolism and having run that day, Ben was still able to maintain a reasonable number of calories, but I really didn't pay attention to what I ate besides quantity. We chose to bring a smaller-sized bowls, which helped limit portion sizes.

What is soup night? It's a small gathering where everyone brings a crock pot full of soup and a side or dessert. Spread it all out, and you have a wonderful variety of food in front of you. The soups & sides/desserts everyone brought were amazing!

Moroccan chickpea soup via Food Network

Here are a couple of my favorites from the night:

• sauerkraut soup from Rick
• chocolate dessert soup by James
• blueberry bars from Leslie
• de-licious fresh guacamole and vegan chickpea-spinach soup made by Shiva and Jenny
• Carman & Oscar brought a super good roasted red pepper soup
• Betsy made this I-might-have-to-park-myself-here-all-night good beer bread.
• there was a white chicken chili and broccoli cheddar soup , but I have no idea who made them! Jon/Jaylyn?

Want to see what else everyone brought to soup night? Here's the collection of recipes.

Verdict:
Soup night is FUN.

I half expected your typical run-of-the-mill soups to show up, but never did I imagine I would have my first experience eating beets (borscht) and had no idea that you could make a soup out of walnuts. The chickpea and spinach soup was so good, I thought about it every single day for over a week until I got the recipe and made it myself.

You'll enjoy soup night too... I promise, we will hold a Bartley a soup night this year!

-------------------------------------------
But wait, there's more:

We ate out at Bub's Burgers at the end of the week. But no Big Ugly burger challenge for us! If Ben's doing his calculations right, you can have an post-cooked 1/4-pound elk burger for under 200 calories if you nix the cheese and ketchup. Add about 150 calories for the bun and you're still out the door for <400 calories.

For those of you who know Ben, he likes to enjoy some burger with his ketchup, so while that's hard, Bub's seasons their burgers SO well that you really don't want to smother it with ketchup - it'll hide the taste! Elk tastes no different than beef, except it's much leaner -- and even leaner than bison. Now, you can't go to Bub's and not order the sweet potato waffle fries, so we split a large order in half between the two of us. I also cut my burger in half and take the other half home for a yummy snack later in the week. But we did good: for two people who also always order a gigantic (their only size) milkshake at Bub's, we've been foregoing... I usually leave in a state of hurt when I put down all of that food, so it's really not a loss. :)

Week 2 - Ben:
Having lost a few pounds now, Ben started adding more calories to his daily intake and being less stringent and restrictive on his foods. Since he got through the first week by eating virtually the same meal every day, it was a welcome change.

During the second week, also, Ben got sick and stayed sick all through the week. Better nutrition, vitamin C, and getting enough sleep were a big part of the focus during week 2.

His overall weight loss was roughly 4 pounds with each day averaging about 1100 calories in the negative.

[More on Ben soon, I need to get the full story from him]


Week 2 - Steph:
In general, my outlook was much better. You know the four (corny) stages of team development? Forming, storming, norming, performing? Week 1 was forming: getting onto the diet (forming), followed by frustration (storming). Week 2 was a week of Norming - some acceptance and the slow beginnings to a change in my habits. Performing is that future state where everything's just clicking along.... we're not quite there yet.
[Sidenote: is the fact that I'm making this connection a sign that I've been in the corporate world too long?]

I started measuring things (serving sizes) by eyeballing. I'm not so nuts that I keep a set of measuring cups and spoons in my purse, but I'm finding that eyeballing and estimating is a good way to keep from mindlessly eating lots of food.

Yep, still drinking a ton of water. I've been trying to keep a glass or bottle of water near me at all times. If I drink a bunch of water with my meal (because I usually don't need a beverage with my food), it helps me keep hydrated but also stay fuller throughout the day. Kind of obvious there, but it's good to get back to basics.

For me, because of the frustration of tracking every morsel during week 1, I mostly quit taking pictures of food and quit tracking every bite. Just as I'd feared, it was starting to become another thing to worry about; eating well/healthy can extend your lifespan, but the added stress can still kill ya! It's all about cost-benefit. :)

I started researching low-calorie recipes, too. The Women's Health Abs Diet includes a meal plan for 3 weeks worth of low-calorie meals and days totaling around 1,500 calories. The plan also walks through some exercises and workouts, so it's a complete package. Free to check out! I like the fact that the plan emphasizes that it doesn't have to take a long time to plan and cook to be healthy, so all of the meals/recipes it gives can be assembled and prepared in less than 10 minutes. However, some of the recipes on there are a little strange. For the extra 3 minutes that it might take to cook an egg in a skillet (over the microwave), I'll take my chances so I don't end up using that time to clean up splattered egg from inside the microwave.

Speaking of low-calorie recipes... as I've mentioned before, my curiosity and interest in diet & nutrition isn't really a new trend. As I was going through the kitchen, I remembered that my mom had given me a number of "Eat This, Not That" books the last few Christmases. You need to read these books!! Unlike the WH Abs Diet, the foods on here taste good and won't get you funny looks when you pull one of these meals out for lunch. I also have a version of this series of books that covers eating out -- the restaurant survival guide. Since so many restaurant and fast-food meals seem to be stealth calorie bombs, it's good to have the book as a reference in the center console in my car in case I'm going somewhere new and need to choose a meal that's less than 1.58 billion calories. Only $10 or $11 at Costco = worth the investment!

Cook This, Not That!  Yummy and GENIUS meal ideas.
Check out the page on all the quick things you can make with a $5 Kroger rotisserie chicken!

(Above) - I made this chicken salad sandwich with a couple of tweaks. It's Chicken Salad Sandwich with Curry & Raisins, except I don't like curry and I don't like raisins. I switched it out for grapes and a little bit of cumin. The Boston Market version is 800+ calories and mine, if I had made it according to this book, would have been 400. The thing was, it was really good. I had to stop myself from eating loads more, but not because I was restricting. It was because it felt full! Very suspicious: this stuff didn't have the feel of "diet food" in a good way.

I'm now itching to buy the latest book, "Eat This, Not That - Supermarket Survival Guide," which helps identify some foods that, although they look the same, are very nutritionally different.

Having a copy would be like having a Rachel (RD) in a book! A few weeks ago, she was telling me about how she was teaching her roommate to shop for healthy foods and read ingredient labels. Two examples she gave were 1) Peanuts and 2) Ice cream. For peanuts, even though they may be plain non-salted dry-roasted peanuts, some manufacturers will roast them in salt, needlessly adding to their sodium content. So, lesson learned: look for as few ingredients as possible! The same applies for ice cream: there are so many fillers and artificial ingredients in some ice cream brands, it can't possibly be good for you. But, read the ingredient list on a carton of Breyers and you'll see three ingredients: milk, cream, sugar. Much better. If you can't pronounce it, walk away.

On the running front, unfortunately, nothing spectacular all week. I just felt tired and pulled a 55-mile week, a big achievement, since I typically get injured as I break the 50-mile plane. A 10-mile pace run was scheduled for Saturday. Ben's advice for pace runs is to eat your typical pre-race meal on the night prior to a pace run because you treat the pace run like a race. We ate some whole wheat pasta with ground turkey meat sauce that night, the first real carbs I felt like I'd had in a while (breaking the salad-for-dinner routine). The run went BETTER than expected! (link works if you're logged into R2W) I felt great! So great that I was completely and utterly wiped out for the rest of the day. The run was definitely something to be proud of.

Meanwhile, I read some McMillan articles about refueling & recovery, some tips which stuck with me. Maybe the info here will help you, too! Greg McMillan writes about the proper mix and timing of nutrition and eating for best recovery. It turns out that Endurox R4 is that perfect 4:1 ratio of carbs to protein, best within 30 minutes of a workout. On days where I'm feeling especially pooped I'll down a scoop of Endurox and water right after I'm done running. Bonus: it doesn't taste bad if you're using the fruit punch flavor. Dare I say I enjoy it?

Outcome: I lost 2 pounds, bringing me to 111.4 lbs, and I think I lost some chub! The most important and notable result is that I'm slowly shifting my mindset. I'm not saying that my views of food are completely and 100% fixed and that I'm not tempted to eat all the Oreos in our pantry in one sitting. I'm just keeping calories in the back of my mind when I eat. Not obsessively, but it never used to get a second thought -- that's how I would be led to overeat.

All in all, good changes after only 2 weeks. Onward and upward!

Nutrition Overhaul Week 1: Pictures of food

Week 1
Yep, 2-3 weeks later, I'm definitely writing this a little late. Did you miss the first post? I described why Ben and I jumped into this diet idea and finally found some explanation for my skewed perceptions of eating and food.

Here's what the first week was like.

Reading/Food for Thought

via

I read a great post from another blogger called "Run. Eat. Don't Repeat." about eating - and running - and eating - and running. It was really eye-opening! The blogger outlines a few simple rules, including:

• Stop using exercise as punishment. In other words, exercise for your personal enjoyment, not because you need to earn your calories.
• Eating is neither good nor bad. You're not a bad person for eating a piece of cake, but you're not a good person because you ate a salad. It's neither.

I read a quote on a nutritionist's blog recently: You're not a dog. Stop rewarding yourself with food. Find something else you enjoy to use as a reward. It relates to what I just described above, but it was an interesting - and blunt - way to explain it. Easier said than done, writer!

Ben

How did Ben eat before?

Previously, breakfast would consist of a few bowls of cereal (like Cinnamon Chex or Wheaties Fuel). Lunch would be a euro sandwich, a the hangover burger from the Bakehouse, leftover chili, or nothing at all. Dinner was usually something that I would make, like tomato spinach soup & tortellini, beef stew with brown rice, or chili and whole wheat pasta. Eating out on weekends, Ben would order two entrees to make sure he left the place feeling full, or we'd pre-game with an appetizer. Dessert might be a huge bowl of ice cream (about 1/3 to half of the half-gallon container in one sitting) or a row of oreos.

Ben's now been averaging a calorie deficit of at least 1,500 per day and eating salads. Lots of salads. The new mantra is quality over quantity, which obviously wasn't the case before. Here's the breakdown, totaling about 1,500 calories per day:

• Breakfast is usually an 2 egg-white turkey omelette and piece of toast (200 cal), with a Slim-Rite meal replacement shake mix made with milk (200 cal).
• As a snack - an apple (75 cal). For lunch, he makes a greek yogurt parfait with Bakehouse granola and some frozen berries (450 cal). 
• The second snack would be a fruit juice mix + chia seeds (100 cal). 
• Dinner is - you guessed it - a salad. Spinach, carrots, red bell pepper, cottage cheese, and some kind of protein (turkey, fish, etc.) at 350-400 calories. Hold the dressing.
• If he felt that dessert was necessary, he's make another Slim-Rite chocolate shake with milk (200 cal).

On the new diet, after every meal, he tracks every calorie in a spreadsheet to make sure he's negative on the day. He spent the earlier part of the week studying every single label (which made for a long trip to Kroger) and used measuring cups to make sure that no calorie slipped by him without his knowledge. He made conscious decisions to swap out certain types of foods for other close, healthier substitutes (egg whites instead of eggs, lean meat vs. lunchmeat) Because he was now eating better quality food, he never felt hungry. We confirmed this with Rachel Noirot, our dietician friend, who says that the high amounts of protein in Ben's new diet are probably doing the trick.

As you saw, Ben's total daily calorie intake sat around 1,500 calories. Just by the pure act of living and breathing (metabolism), he burns ~2,500 per day... the equivalent of two pounds lost in one week. Combine this with running, which burns ~100 calories/mile, 35 miles per week = 3,500 calories = one more pound lost.

Ben did get sick a little over a week into the new diet, though I'm not certain if the two were related; surely it takes your immune system some extra energy to fight off a cold!

Runs still feel great. Ben broke 5 minutes in a mile time trial, and true to the spreadsheet predictor, he gained 2 seconds per pound per mile of weight lost. Having lost 4-5 pounds, he was 10 seconds faster than he expected, so good results from this experiment.

By the end of the week, Ben lost around 4 pounds, down from 149-151 to 145-147 pounds!

The routine is still new, but week 1 brought great success!

Steph

I cut down my portion sizes and took pictures of everything I ate, like you see below. Here's a sampling of what I ate during the week. (Um, yeah, blueberries were on sale.). 

  

     

  

  

History of dieting: I was on South Beach once before as moral support for someone else who was trying it, but I lasted 3 days. Cauliflower mashed potatoes (fake mashed potatoes made with cauliflower as a substitute for potatoes) were nasty. This was during a time when I was running between 8-17 miles/day on the treadmill, and when I went on this diet, I couldn't even make it a half mile without having severe fatigue issues. How I feel on my runs are a good test of staying power and sustainability of a new diet, for sure.

This time around, I cut out all cheese except cottage cheese (still rarely), started putting Greek yogurt in almost everything, ate a ton of chicken, and attempted to replace desserts with fruit. Even though you see things like rice, cereal, and oatmeal in the photos above, I didn't actually have a ton of these types of carbs. For salads, I found this amazing lime dressing from Newman's (which I dilute with vinegar) that actually makes me want to eat more salad after I'm done! 

Many of these foods are things that are regularly on the grocery list and foods I would typically choose to eat anyway - maybe prepared differently, but they're certainly not foreign. I definitely eat similarly to this already when I'm not restricting. Just less and with more grains.

A couple changes from my normal eating routine:

- salads for dinner (previously a stir-fry, whole-wheat pasta w/ marinara, soup)

- no bread, no cheese

- much smaller portions: 1 serving according to the box/can/etc. (previously something like 2-3 servings)

- less refined sugar (previously dessert would consist of 2-3 cups of ice cream or 6 oreos + milk. Using honey  as a sweetener.)

- drank water instead of eating when I was hungry (previously ate when I was hungry)

- limited or no snacking (previously snacked multiple times daily, post-lunch and post-dinner)

Outcome?

This diet made me mad/frustrated/stressed out.

I felt noticeably worse while running. I felt tired and like I was out of energy.

I didn't lose any weight. Actually, I gained weight. When I weighed in at 113.4 on the first day of the diet (same time - every morning), that was my lowest recorded weight of the week; I fluctuated between 113.8 and 116-something pounds each day that week but never hit that first-day 113.4.

I felt like I wanted to eat most of the time. I felt like I was counting down the minutes until I could get my next food fix. Feeling hungry - yet, my calorie deficit was 1,000+ calories less than Ben was taking in. In other words, he was 1,500 calories negative and not-hungry, while I was eating more calories while being 300-500 calories negative and was hungry!!

For something that was causing so much anxiety and stress, I saw zero results in my running and on the scale, so yes (being the non-patient person that I can be) - I was frustrated! I wasn't looking to suddenly break a 4-minute mile or lose 25 pounds in a week, but any kind of positive sign (seriously - a tenth of a pound! or one strong run day!) would have helped me be more positive about continuing this change.

End of week 1: not so much success. 

Heavy Stuff

It started a few weeks ago. Ben found a near-scientific calculator that shows you your best possible mile, 5k, half marathon, marathon, etc. race time based on outdoor temperature, body weight, and your current PR in any distance.

Are you familiar with the McMillan pace calculator? You give this calculator your best time, and it tells you with eerie accuracy how you could be performing at other distances given this level of fitness. Since I can't remember what best times I've run for any of these other distances, let's take my Bayshore Marathon as an example...

It also shows you the paces to be keeping for different types of workouts to get the maximum benefit. Me? I don't really get that interested in training geekery, times, or paces -  to a fault. Ben? He lives for these things. (yay numbers!)

ANYWAY...

Ben stumbled across a calculator that incorporates Jack Daniels Training Tables (similar to McMillan) and other elements that I mentioned - namely, body weight. Check this out. The numbers are more blah blah blah, but I definitely appreciate the Excel dorkery that went into this spreadsheet! It was created by not by a hotshot coach, but some guy who was just interested obsessed with running and numbers (sound familiar?), acknowledging that training's not the only variable in achieving running performance.

Anyway, the important part Ben took out of this spreasheety goodness was this:
For Ben...

For Steph...

...I could be running a 3:06:15 marathon if all of my training remained the same and I lost 7 pounds!
...Ben could be running a 16:28 5k if he lost 9 pounds!

What a huge revelation-- and we are all about working smarter, not harder!

Losing weight is so much easier on paper.
We're already a few weeks into this different way of eating, but I'm writing the next part of this blog post with our original perspectives from weeks ago.

By reading this, I hope you don't take this experiment as being for the primary sake of self-image, but instead for running! What if we could be better/more efficient/faster without changing anything else but food and still be healthy?

Ben's take
Ben...

• is at his heaviest weight ever and doesn't want age or slowing metabolism to catch up with him.
• has ignored nutrition, but eats mostly healthy foods. Mostly.
• loves numbers and enjoys tracking food, just like tracking training, finances, and other things.
• has to get a better understanding of portion control and how many calories are in [namethisfood]. It's just a matter of studying labels and learning what's good and what's not to get a handle on dieting and nutrition. Right now, when it comes to food, quantity rules. It's the only way to feel full.
• wants to know if he'll be as fast as he used to be when he weighed less.
• wants to lose lose the fat-face. (below. It only happens when he fake-smiles for a picture... we're our own worst critics!)

My take
This is kind of hard to put down in writing. Here's me giving it a go.

• I think it'd be awesome to run faster without changing my training.
• I wouldn't miss the belly "chub" that I picked up from bad eating/drinking habits in college and never quite lost or changed. I used to weigh 105 in high school, as much as 120-125 in college (photo evidence - looking back at photos, I did not have room to hide these few pounds), and somehow creeped up as high as 115 in recent times.
• My body mass index, BMI, is 20.7 - that puts me in the "healthy" range.
• I have a skewed perception of food (I hate when people say "unhealthy relationship with food" - like, are we dating?!), going on probably 10 years now. I eat when I'm bored. I eat when I accomplish something (Just finished watching a tv show? Finished writing this report at work? Time to eat.). I sneak food often. When I watch tv, I have to will myself to keep my butt in the seat while I count down the minutes until I can run into the kitchen to eat something new. Just finished a run? Now I can eat more!
• I feel like I lack willpower when it comes to food. Some days, it's really hard to stop once I get started (constant need to snack, even if I'm full). Plus, I'm like a dog: if I see food, I get hungry/I want to eat.
• I am a mini-binger. That means eating tons and tons and tons, even when I'm not hungry. I doubt that it's a full-on eating disorder binge, but certainly a less-extreme version of it. Always followed by feeling really bad about it and/or promising myself I'll make up for it later (on the run). When we met, Ben was really impressed that I could keep up with him, eating as much as he ate. Knowing now that he can polish off a row of Oreos in a sitting, that should've been a sign.
• I feel like manically counting calories is extremely stressful (type A personality failure - shouldn't I enjoy tracking every single calorie if I'm so type A?), so am hesitant to add that additional anxiety in my everyday life. Carefully regulating and controlling calories like this seems like a form of deprivation, causing more stress. I enjoy food. Does this mean I have to give up everything I love and enjoy?? Does this mean no more eating out with friends and family??

Taking all these things into account, I don't have one, but might already be predisposed to an eating disorder.  It seems best defined in this article that I shared on Facebook this week. It's called disordered eating; the article describes true details of my own thoughts and habits that I had never consciously realized before. More about it and me...

What is disordered eating? 

Well, an eating disorder is (technically a disease) in which a person is controlling their food intake in ways to deal with underlying emotional issues, like depression, anxiety, stress, etc.

Disordered eating, on the other hand, is described as "less-severe abnormal behaviors: eliminating food groups from your diet; regularly replacing meals with energy bars or coffee drinks; excessive weighing and calorie-counting; and tacking on extra miles as punishment for, say a cheeseburger the night before. Often, the regimen includes compulsive exercising like hitting the bike after an 18-miler."

I even fit into the demographic. Disordered eating is much more common in female runners vs. male runners. The article even references a study that estimates that as much as 75% of women between ages 25 and 45 could practice disordered eating. Even further, it's relatively common in female college athletes, saying that the more competitive a person is (either with themselves or with others), the more prone he/she is to disordered eating. Part of this relates to body image too: "...In surveys of collegiate athletes, some 55 percent of women tell researchers they experience pressure (both external and self-imposed) to achieve a certain weight, and 43 percent say they're "terrified" of becoming too heavy.... Men who compete in sports where body shape and size are important also are at higher risk for disordered eating." The later part of the article describes a Boston University runner (a sub-4-minute miler!) who practiced disordered eating with great weight-loss success, which later led him to anorexia. As you can see, disordered eating seems to be the gateway drug to a much more dangerous practice. I highly recommend you read the article, "Running on Empty," in its entirety.

Interesting, yes? I don't know how many times I told myself I'd run an extra few miles to work off something I ate. Or felt bad about what I just ate and kicked myself for not having the willpower to stop when I knew I should've stopped. I'm guessing that another sign of disordered eating is a fixation on diet, nutrition, and food in general (or is it just me?). I've gotten to know so many people over the years who seemed to be obsessed with talking about what they ate that day, or how little they ate that day. Yeah, definitely me (except for the eating little part). I scrutinize labels, hunt for recipes, and study every article I read about nutrition. At the end of the day, for me, it's not a matter of knowledge or understanding of my own diet and nutrition; I know what I need to do, but just don't. I can't.

What Next
Ultimately, reading the article on disordered eating made me really excited, because it was finally explaining what I didn't understand for - well, forever. So, I know I have some issues to work out, and just like the vicious running-until-I-get-injured cycle I seem to follow every season, I can't expect a different result if I keep doing the same thing over and over again.

In different ways, change is necessary and Ben, and it's going to take some trial and error to get there.

Next steps? I guess we're about to go head-first into this "diet thing" and see if it gets us back on track.