Whole30 + Fueling for an Ultra

Tomorrow, Ben & I are running the Hawthorn Half Day 12-hour ultramarathon and I'll be on Day 17 of the Whole30. This... will be yet another experiment.

The Hawthorn Half Day is a race in Terre Haute, IN that's as long as you want it to be: you run for up to 12 hours, and the person who runs the farthest wins. I could essentially run for 1 hour, take a nap for the next 11, and the distance I cover in the 3.1-mile loop course will count toward my mileage. When there's 1 hour left, the field gets moved to the 1/2 mile course; you get credit for loops you finish completely. Respect to the guy who logged 1 mile at the 2012 HHD on crutches!

Don't worry - I'll fill you in on the rest of the days leading up to this point, but as I plan ahead for the race (there's a first time for everything - I usually wing it!), I'm putting some serious though on what I need to fuel for the ultra.

Whole30 and Running So Far
It's been about two weeks of the Whole30. I have NO idea what to expect in terms of how my running will be, because most of my runs have been pretty lackluster lately. I haven't felt abundantly fantastic, but I haven't felt terrible either -- which was one of my huge worries going into this. Overall, I've been feeling like it's taking me a bit more effort to do what I used to do on a heavy diet of processed foods... just waiting for the body to figure out how to use the fuel I'm giving it! It's hard to call how this race is going to go right now, because sometimes I can feel blah going into these things and then surprise myself when it's go time.

  

Meanwhile, we finally captured my best - ever - totally staged running photo on Whole30 Day 5 in Boulder [left]! Most of the time I look like I'm walking [right - NYC 2011]... yay for looking speedy!


Whole30 Fueling for the Ultramarathon - The plan
After picking the brains of two of my favorite Whole30 girls, here's what I'm thinking I'll pack and prepare in my cooler (not including the kitchen sink):

-Sweet-

• Ignite Naturals Reload energy gel - shout to Christy for letting me borrow some of her stash! This stuff is so popular they're still weeks on backorder.
• Sweet potatoes - pureed. Possibly mixed with applesauce/coconut milk (?), in a gel flask. I take it straight. 
• Apples/bananas - available at the aid stations every 5k. May bring my own.
• Apple juice
• Cashew nut butter
• Dried fruit - mangoes, figs, dates
• Baby food - confession: we started experimenting with this way before my Whole30 started. Gotta find one with the right not-too-watery consistency, and enough calories to last. 
• Endurolytes - Guess what I just discovered?? A container of Tic-Tacs is the PERFECT dispenser for Endurolytes*! You're welcome, Ben. :) *Darn it, Endurolytes are not kosher. Will try S!Caps or Elete if I can find it in town, coconut water if I'm in a pinch.
• Larabars and homemade "Larabars" - so many recipes (with Whole30 mods of course), so little time! I love love love the Key Lime Pie Larabar.

- Salty -

• Prosciutto
• Sweet potato, cut into chunks, and dipped into a container of salt. 
• Hard-boiled eggs
• Aidell's Chicken & Apple sausage - dare I? Food poisoning?

Recovery/Post-WO Food Plan

• Sweet potatoes + veggie omelette + Aidell's sausage
• Hard-boiled eggs
• Leftover spaghetti squash & homemade tomato/meat sauce - turned out sooo good!!!
• Bananas

Running Plan
My running plan for tomorrow's going to be pretty straightforward and simple - run, not too fast, and take breaks when I feel like it. Come with a good playlist. I won't be upset if I don't run for the whole 12 hours. I don't know a lot of about the course, besides that there are paved, grassy, and trail sections. Race starts at 7am and ends at 7pm, so think of me tomorrow. :) Here we go!

The Whole Thing with Food - Whole30 Kick Off

Remember that crazy time last year when we got into all that calorie-counting and trying to eat healthy?

Well, that didn't work. We went back to our regular "almost-a-pack-of-Oreos-in-a-sitting"-old habits.

[Shocker.]

Nataliedee.com

Diet #1 -- a little refresher
I went into the whole deal about my concern with eating to run, and then we tried four weeks (here, here, here, and here) of quitting cold turkey and going straight to eating smart and eating better by counting calories. Overall, the month - intended to help us run faster by losing a few lbs and therefore carrying around less weight - was good enough, and it served its purpose of leaning us out a little. In other words, it was most definitely about weight loss. As an experiment. But, the downsides: I started smelling ammonia in my nose after workouts and runs. We were still pretty hungry after eating sometimes. We got sick of eating salads everyday. Oh, and it didn't last. No way I could keep that up... good riddance.

That month and our revelations were the tip of the iceberg for what I'm about to get into next.

Then this happened:
I was out on a group run a couple weeks ago with my friend, Ashley, and she told me she'd been eating differently since last November. Real, unprocessed foods. It was fascinating enough - I mean, we could all stand to eat clean. This we know. Then she told me she usually suffers awful seasonal allergies, and since she changed her eating habits, she hasn't had any allergies this season... and there have been times this year when it should have been really bad.

Could food really do all of this? Though I have two other friends who've been on this same eating plan for quite a while, this was the first time I had ever heard that this way of eating is NOT ABOUT WEIGHT LOSS. (Ben) Never dealing with allergies ever again? Now you have my attention.

source: afitmess.com

Ashley and her delicious instagram photos/hashtags led me to research more of this eating business, so I started by googling "Whole30." When I got to Whole9Life - the home of the Whole30 (the nutrition plan itself) - and found that everything I needed to know about it was right there (and free) on their website. It's not anything outrageous or left-field (i.e., eating a cookie diet), and seems pretty sound. I also verified - using Pinterest, of course, that there are good non-weird recipes out there.

What's the Whole30? Here's the 30-second elevator speech that sums it up perfectly in a few sentences from Whole9Life:

Source: whole9life

"We eat real food – meat, fish, eggs, vegetables, fruit, healthy oils, nuts and seeds. We choose foods that were raised, fed and grown naturally, and foods that are nutrient-dense, with lots of naturally occurring vitamins and minerals.

This is not a “diet” – we eat as much as we need to maintain strength, energy, activity levels and a healthy body weight. We aim for well-balanced nutrition, so we eat animals and a significant amount of plants.

Eating like this has helped us to look, feel, live and perform our best, and reduces our risk for a variety of lifestyle-related diseases and conditions."

Sounds easy enough. Sounds good enough! And sounds delicious!
After much more research, I was convinced to try it after reading blog posts by ultra runners who've said this way of eating real foods has been life-changing. (Which is probably why the Whole9 tagline is "Let Us Change Your Life"!)

   

I eat healthy enough. I'm fit enough. So why this? Why now?

• Create a healthy relationship with food and adopt good habits.
  I eat to run, and run to eat, and it creates a never-ending cycle. I want to see it in a more positive way - food as fuel. I am also pretty bad about eating when I'm bored; I can eat healthy all day long, but when evening comes, I eat my dinner, and then I have a post-dinner snack/dessert, and then another one, and another one, and another one, and then maybe a jar of frosting for good measure.... not healthy.
• Kick the sugar, carbs, and junk food binges.
  It all started with a day when I sat down with a bag of chips, and next thing I knew, I'd finished just about the whole bag on my own. Same thing applies with cookies, dessert, candy, and lots of other junk food. It became a nightly ritual to sit down in front of the TV with a bag of pretzels & a bowl full of chocolate and eat it until I felt like I was going to explode. I usually have a bag of gummy worms, Twizzlers, or Sour Patch kids in the front seat when I'm on road trips for work. All of these habits = not normal!
• Food slump.
  It happened again. Same old, same old. I ran out of things to cook.... so I just stopped cooking and eating out of a box/bag. I'd love some inspiration and hope to try new things.
• Lactose intolerance.
  On top the bag-of-chips episode, a few weeks before I decided to jump in, I had a sudden onset of lactose intolerance. I usually have a 1/2 cup of skim milk with my cereal, or a little bit of greek yogurt every few days, and suddenly - for no apparent reason - my stomach couldn't even tolerate this little dairy*. It was almost unexplainable, like a switch had suddenly flipped.
  *Switching to organic milk was a huge help! 
• Allergies.
  I don't have allergies (that I'm aware of), but Ben's nearly always having some kind of allergic response, in varying degrees of severity... a condition he's had to manage his entire life. (Let him tell you about the allergy-free room he slept in as a kid - cot, blanket, pillow. That's it.) If I have good results from this experiment, this could be just as good to alleviate Ben's symptoms!
• Nutrients from food. I'm not against vitamin supplements, but I also like the idea of getting my nutrients from food. It seems they're best absorbed in the body like this vs. in pill form. I've always wanted to try, and the philosophy of eating this way (note: I will never call this a diet. It's not.) supports that.
• Other surprises
  I don't really know exactly how food affects me, so I can't wait to be surprised to find out how my body responds to changes in my eating habits. I'm not thinking this is a magic pill for everything that ails me, but I'd love to see if this encourages any improvement on these fronts:
• Acne
• Memory
• Extreme tiredness/food coma-ness
• Foggy feelings on runs
• Dry skin
• Plantar fasciitis
• Vitamin B12 deficiency & anemia
• Sleeping and waking up
• Better running!

nataliedee.com

Challenges and Concerns:

• Quitting cold turkey -- I've tried giving up snacking and sugar multiple times, and it never sticks. I have crazy sugar cravings and awful snacking habits, I'll admit it.
• I expect to be hungry -- Eating salads all the time last year left me so hungry, it was just up to me and my willpower not to keep eating despite that.
• Events and travel -- I'm on the road a lot, and I especially have a lot going on in the next 30 days (weddings, road trips, air travel, work travel....)
• The South Beach crash -- Have I told you about the time I tried South Beach? It was capital-H Horrible. Consistently feeling awful while running is such a defeating feeling and a blow to my confidence. I really don't want to set myself up to experience that- not even for a week!

What I like About the Whole30:

• Unlimited vegetables.
  Portion sizes are not a problem - you just eat until you're full.
• Sound nutritional principles.
  It's about choosing the right mix of food - protein, healthy fat, and vegetables. No elimination of important nutrients/food groups. In fact, it's all about getting nutrients from food and not forcing the body work too hard to get it.
• No weighing on the scale.
  In fact, it's prohibited! (Same with body fat measurements and the like) 
• This is not about weight loss.
  I may be overly critical of fad diets, especially because - in my short experience with South Beach - they never seem to stick long-term. This has the potential to be a sustainable one, because it focuses on the psychological (relationships with food) and the physiological (making you feel better by making good food choices). I really love that this has nothing to do with weight loss but overall health; for that reason, and to get started on the right foot, I will never call this a diet.
• Overall health.
  With my eating habits, I always wonder if I'm a skinny-fat-person... fit on the outside, not-100%-healthy on the inside. This could change that! And because there's no expectation to continue this forever and ever (an exit strategy is detailed in the plan), it seems sustainable. I like.
• Support, evidence, and information.
  Everything you need to know is available on their website, whole9life.com, but there's more technical information (which answers why food does these things to us) in the book, "It Starts With Food." The website also has forums, planned Whole30 start dates, daily emails and tips, and a community of people who've asked/experienced/completed the same thing.

So for the next 30 days, I'll be taking notes and telling you about this ultimate experiment**!

If you feel like it's time to hit the reset button on your eating habits, try this Whole30 Challenge with me! Start now. This instant. Click here for the details, a shopping list, and a meal planning template.

**I'm actually almost 2 weeks in, but just really slow to tell you about it! Go figure.

Perniciousness

I've been feeling really tired when I run. I've been meaning to write about this, and almost a full year later, this topic is becoming relevant again.

Sometime last year I started the every day is run day streak, where I ran every single day of the year. Well, I tried to. I didn't make it due to a RER injury, but did last all the way until the end of July. It didn't come without some struggles and health challenges.

Disclaimer: what you're about to read is my experience. I don't recommend or encourage self-diagnosing and self-treating, so if you think you're having a similar issue, go see a doctor!

During my run-every-day streak, I started heart rate training. Not in the classical sense of heart rate training, but according to this Maffetone Method that Ben described in our last post. In other words, we're building endurance and strength by conditioning the "aerobic engine," also known as the heart. Read: no runs over 80% of max heart rate. In doing so, it means the possibility of more miles because of lower intensity. I was easily running 40-, then 50-, then 70-, and 80-, (and even over 100!)-mile weeks and still feeling fresh!

Once I started consistently outrunning my previous lifetime maximum mileage PRs (anything over 50 miles), I started feeling really tired and run down. It was hard to get the energy to wake up and sit at my desk some days! Still, I assumed this was a nutrition issue. On advice from friends, I was clearly iron-deficient. I added iron supplements and started eating more red meat. I sucked down spinach like it was my job. I tried to get enough iron, but not iron poisoning!

I continued running, but as my high-iron weeks went on, I didn't feel better and my 80% pace kept getting slower and slower. My mile times were getting slower (we had been doing mile time trials). An issue of too much mileage? I took a few lower-mileage weeks. One day, I tried running a time trial on the track and didn't make it to a mile before I had to stop. I was really winded, I couldn't catch my breath, and felt like I'd just completed a marathon (In reality, my watch indicated .7 miles). This was starting to become a trend-- I couldn't make it more than a half mile without feeling completely fatigued. My legs just couldn't go. I felt so defeated.

Finally, I saw my friendly neighborhood doctor (a friend of ours!) and she recommended a blood test to get to the root of the problem. Eeek! 

Of course, it took forever and a half to fill up all of the SIX vials of blood (::shudder::). I didn't look, either. I'm actually feeling a little sick to my stomach just thinking about this experience. ::shudder:: (again) Let's move on.

Fast forward a few days...

Results? Surprises.

Iron levels? Just fine.

Just about everything else? Mostly fine. Except...

145 pg/ml might have put me into a possibly-ok range, but at 81 pg/ml, that's still considered over 50% below normal levels by this guide.

And:

See you that? It's not low... it's panic low.

My red blood cell, hemoglobin, and hematocrit levels were really low. Not being an expert of these (besides knowing that they all made me really TIRED!), I did some googling and thought I'd share these definitions from the Mayo Clinic:

Red blood cells, or erythrocytes (uh-RITH-ro-sites), transport oxygen throughout your body. 

• RBC: Red Blood Cell count. 
• HGB: Hemoglobin levels. Hemoglobin is a protein in your red blood cells that carries oxygen to your body's organs and tissues and transports carbon dioxide from your organs and tissues back to your lungs.
• HCT: Hematocrit. The proportion of your total blood volume that is composed of red blood cells. A hematocrit (Hct) test indicates whether you have too few or too many red blood cells — conditions that can occur as the result of certain diseases.

All of these things tied up vitamin B12 deficiency (pernicious) anemia with a bow! No wonder eating all that spinach never helped... there are several kinds of anemia, but iron deficiency anemia happens to be the most common and well-known.

In hindsight, I experienced a few of the symptoms of this particular type of anemia, affirmative in bold:

• Fatigue
• Shortness of breath
• Dizziness
• Pale or yellowish skin
• Swollen tongue that may appear dark red
• Weight loss
• Diarrhea
• Numbness or tingling in your hands and feet
• Muscle weakness
• Irritability
• Unsteady movements
• Mental confusion or forgetfulness

It's interesting because I'm not sure how long I've been deficient  - it may be that I've had some degree of this (or symptoms) for a while and they didn't become so apparent until I started running more. In the months leading up to the blood test, I started noticing that I'd black out/lose vision every time I stood up from sitting -- I just dismissed it as my blood pressure being temporarily wonky, thinking nothing more of it. And I certainly don't doubt forgetfulness/mental confusion has been an issue... haha, it always is.

Solution?

Get more B12.

I was told to get some sub-lingual vitamin B12, 2500 mcg, and take it daily. (It's the kind that melts under your tongue, not the pill version). As any dietitian will tell you, it's better to get your vitamins from food, but my levels were so low we needed a jump-start with supplements. Turns out there are very few foods I eat that are on the list of foods containing the most B12! Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) is 2.4 micrograms daily. [Ps- I won't die with regret if I never catch, roast, and eat a squirrel.]

I was fortunate that the B12 supplements worked. If it wasn't absorbed well enough or if my body couldn't process it properly, the only other alternative would have been B12 shots. Yeah - shots! The horror!

Oh, and did you know? B12 is the active ingredient in a lot of energy drinks. It's the ingredient that gets you feeling amped!! So if your B12 levels are normal and you ingest 2,500 micrograms, I've heard you'll feel like you drank 3 cups of coffee. (Perhaps a way to get your caffeine-free energy boost? The internet said high doses of B12 are considered safe so it must be true.)

Red blood cells usually take 3 months to fully regenerate and replenish, so these supplements were the short-term treatment. Getting B12 in my food was a part of the long-term treatment plan. Things eventually got back to normal, and I felt better after 1 week, 2 weeks, a month, and better after 2 months, and 3 months later I was completely fine and feeling strong!

Like a total goof, I quit taking the B12 supplements, thinking that I was probably getting enough (I mean, I only need 2.4 micrograms a day!) by eating fortified cereal and occasionally seafood. I'm not sure if that's the case, because - a full year later - I feel like I'm experiencing the same symptoms, all over again. Same shortness of breath, same extremely fatigued feeling. I'm really glad to catch it early this time around.

Back on the B12 train!

Nutrition Overhaul: Week 4

Week 4 concluded the big nutrition overhaul month, and we have both definitely learned a lot in the past 30 days. Ultimately, this experiment led to multiple discoveries, which are so basic but we obviously forgot:

Have a plan

Basically, I know what I'm going to be eating for the day. This doesn't mean we can't go out to eat (because let's face it, our restaurant/entertainment budget has increased with our grocery bill); I know what food is going in and can somewhat plan my food intake to offset it. The same thing applies for exercise -- if I'm running a bazillion miles in the morning, then I have to make sure to refuel. In the past few weeks, I may have gone a little overboard with the restricting, which presumably led to the freaky ammonia smell in my nose after I run or exercise.

Traveling is seriously rough. 

It may have been kind of weird, but I had to plan ahead to bring healthy snacks with me when I was on the road. I ended up traveling to Peoria, IL, Kalamazoo to Port Huron, MI (views of Canada, you guys!), and Chicago. Coming next: Boston, Columbus, and who knows where else!

Sometimes it SEEMS like I'm driving this much!

Eating enough and well on trips is an art I have not yet perfected. 

A day or two before the trip, I sometimes make what I call my "power muffins," bite-sized 50-calorie/oil-free chocolate chip banana bread mini-muffins, which travel well and hold me over in emergencies. I started experimenting with little bite-sized quiches, but haven't invented a recipe that's worth repeating yet.

Let's not forget - hotel breakfasts are the worst!!! Sometimes it's an all-you-can-eat buffet, but you leave feeling half nauseous, lethargic, and full of grease. Other times, it becomes a battle in the decision between a cheese danish and a bearclaw. Not ideal.

As a "Marriott person," I really like Springhill Suites. The breakfasts at Marriott hotels are usually consistent across brands, and I like that so I know what to expect. Navigating around hotel breakfasts that vary is like playing MacGuyver: what can you make with the few things you've got in front of you? At Springhill, I toast an English muffin, add some of the eggs, and top with salsa or a sprinkle of the delicious egg seasoning they usually have on-hand. If I'm really hungry, I add a slice of sausage. Add a small glass of OJ and I'm good to go!

Kind of random, but this is so awesome I have to share: Courtyard by Marriott now has an EXCELLENT breakfast menu (although one that's not free, unlike the others) that lists the calories next to the menu item, a la Panera. LIKE! Talk about making decisions so much easier.

photo: blogs.marriott.com

...I have so much more to write about traveling, staying healthy, and exercising. That may have to come in another post.

Vehicle safety aside, I usually have to eat while I drive, or I don't get to eat at all. Bringing finger foods is the only way!! I really like Fiber One Oats & Chocolate bars, Smokehouse Almonds, and this new snack mix from Target's Archer Farms brand that is extremely addicting. It's oats and cocoa baked together to form clusters, with chocolate chips, almond slices, and little chunks of pomegranate  mixed in. I'm warning you - this stuff is like crack! I can't remember what it's called (and it's not labeled as 'Crack'), but you'll find it in the trail mix aisle in a package that looks like this:


Here's a sampling of some other relatively travel-friendly foods I like to bring with me:

My already-running-late-but-need-to-eat meal: peanut butter & banana.

Left to right - enchilada (good only until lunchtime), frosted mini wheats, grapes, pear, water.

First energy gel ever made that you don't need to choke down.
It contains bits of fruit

My favorite dietitian friend, Rachel, also recommended oatmeal as a good to-go snack - just put it in a container after you make it in the morning and eat it on the road. It's room temperature, but still keeps you full and balanced.  I mixed mine with berries, greek yogurt, and a little honey. Not something you want to leave in the car all day.

I eat when I feel hungry. 

And I TRY stopping when I feel full. If I'm feeling "snacky," I have to ask myself if I'm actually hungry. Or, maybe I'm thirsty. This trick usually works, but not always. This is definitely the hardest part of the nutrition overhaul, as I predicted.

Sometimes, if I walk away for a few minutes and distract myself with something else (on Pinterest, perhaps?) I can resist the urge. A couple of times, I brushed my teeth and flossed if I felt like I had to have candy - lots of it. If I spend time brushing and flossing, and then need to do it again after eating again, that's usually enough to stop my lazy self from eating more Sour Patch Kids. :) Hooray for dental health!

I'm embarrassed to confess that I haven't been living by this rule lately, because portion control is closely tied in with this. It's even more challenging when eating out - so keeping an eye on quantity, even if it's healthy food, is something I still have yet to conquer.

More recipes! 

The best thing about the project was getting out of the food rut, thanks to the internet.
A couple of fun fitness-food blogs via Pinterest and Google I follow daily now:

• Iowa Girl Eats is an awesome blog by a Midwest girl who's not only a runner (respect!), but a lover of delicious and usually-healthy food!
  
  She takes existing recipes and adapts them so they're slimmed down, or will share recipes she's developed on her own. She also publishes recipes that are so good, full-fat and all, that you have to try. No hard-to-find or weird ingredients, just good taste and lots of nutrients. So, you need to go visit her blog right now. I've been following along for the past few weeks and have seen her share recipes that look and sound so good that I want to drop everything I'm doing and run to the grocery store. Grapefruit mojitos, buffalo chicken quinoa mac and cheese, or the superfood salad with lemon vinaigrette. Yum.
  
• Run, Eat, Repeat is a blog written by Monica, a super quirky personal trainer (and runner!) in   California.
  
  She says all the crazy things we only think about in our heads - and then writes them in her blog. :) She posts multiple times a day, and takes photos of the creative-and-sometimes-weird food concoctions she makes up. Other times, she talks about her run; she's a fellow Garmin lover. Most of all, she's hilarious. I have literally LOL'ed while reading her blog, so go there now!
  
  

Food is fuel.

The ammonia thing might've been what did it for me, but I've always held to the mantra, "Garbage in, garbage out." The cleaner and fresher your food, the better you'll feel. I still have candy and dessert, but sometimes I just feel like BLEH when the sugar crash starts to hit. Taking that further, balancing carbs + protein + vegetables has been working well. Check out Greg McMillan's article on the best foods & drinks to consume to optimize recovery from a (hard) run... I always feel great the next day when I drink Endurox R4 within 30 minutes of a workout. It works! Bonus: The more concentrated you make it, the better the fruit punch flavor tastes.

I overcame my pricey 2-box-per-week cereal habit and started looking more carefully at how I was starting my days. I'd get hungry about 2 hours after breakfast, but once I added some kind of protein (peanut butter, greek yogurt, eggs), I didn't feel the urge to snack when 9 or 10am rolled around.

Like I mentioned earlier, our grocery bills nearly doubled. Now, we eat lots more salads, fish, fruit, and fresh produce. Frozen vegetables are still fair game. We definitely follow the typical runner's grocery list.... Because we always run into one of you at Kroger, you'll see our cart loaded with some of these things:

• Bell peppers
• Salad greens & spinach
• Carrots
• Broccoli sprouts (omg! My new obsession... I could eat this stuff all day, every day!!! More nutrients and longer shelf life than alfalfa sprouts!)
• Egg beaters
• Cottage cheese
• Salsa
• Tortilla chips
• Ground turkey 93/7 lean
• Ragu pasta sauce
• Whole what pasta
• Multi-grain bread (I know it's not as healthy, but the taste is totally worth the trade-off)
• Grapes, apples, bananas
• Tofu
• Frozen fruit berry medley
• Potatoes - sweet and russet
• Meal replacement drinks - an addition to a meal for when Ben's really hungry or wants something chocolatey-sweet but healthyish
• Kale - my other new discovery!
• Ciltantro (I eat cilantro pretty much daily in some way)
• Avocadoes
• Rotisserie chicken
• Chickpeas
• Oats
• Honey

The most notable things that disappeared from our grocery list (or were purchased in drastically reduced quantities):

• Oreos & cookies. Funny story, we used to buy so many Oreos so often that Kroger started sending us coupons for free packages. That should've been a sign.
• Cheese (besides cottage)
• Goldfish & snack crackers
• Ice cream in mass quantities

Number crunching. 

I succumbed. I gave in. I started counting calories... and it wasn't the worst thing in the world. Since I've fallen off the wagon a bit since week 4 actually ended, I may get back on. It's not about the number and calories themselves, but mostly about being conscious of how much junk I'm actually eating - and how quickly that adds up throughout the day. I use an app (available on Android & iPhone) called LoseIt! Highly recommend over any of the others that I tried. It allows you to track exercise, calories, add recipes (I can save recipes with my own concoctions), favorite/recent items, restaurant foods (because I eat at Chipotle and Panera when I'm on the road, and they're all in there!) and best of all: you can scan a food's barcode to enter it into your log.... no more typing and searching! I even found Bakehouse granola nutrition data available on LoseIt.
You can see all of your stats and track everything on your phone and/or on the loseit.com. Convinced yet?

Looking at an overview of the day usually let me know how I was doing and helped me figure out foods that left me full or were just calorie-bombs with no benefit. With the weigh-in function, it was also to see which foods (::cough:: Chipotle ::cough::) were really high in salt. 

We took this calorie-counting practice and found alternatives for the things that we wanted. As an example, a 2,000 calorie serving of ice cream wouldn't really cut it for the day. Best discovery ever: Dream DeLite at Jiffy Treat, which is a water-based soft-serve ice cream that tastes exactly like its heavier counterpart. 8 calories per ounce, compared to 25 calories per ounce, and you won't taste the difference. Artificial ingredients, you say? I checked - it looks pretty clean! It's pro-biotic and does not aggravate your stomach if you're lactose intolerant... and you can get it in flavors! A usual cyclone at Jiffy Treet (comparable to a Blizzard at DQ) would cost me only 100 calories in frozen yogurt + whatever mix ins. This makes dessert about 200 calories, 200-300 calories less than the original version. Yum.

How about you guys? Anyone trying any new eating habits? Have you found any good low-cal same-taste food substitutes?

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 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.