Posts Tagged ‘nutrition’

OK, I’ll admit it. I still eat too much. However, I am eating better. In these first two months of the year I have cut back on many foods I absolutely love, ate a lot more fruit and gone back to ordering veggies instead of fries the few times I have eaten out.

But last week when the scale seemed stuck again, I took a long hard look at my diet and knew what I had to do: cut out the bread. Every meal on Friday, which is my “cheat” day anyway, had bread in it. I know what some people will already say — you just have to eat less of it and eat the right kind. It’s not that simple. I grew up in the South where, guess what? Families eat and eat and eat and eat bread of all kinds.

When I was in college, a northern friend pointed out to me that when I ate I had a fork in one hand and bread in the other to scoop the food onto the fork. Then I looked around — so did everyone else in my life. It seems lately to fulfill my hunger I go for bread. At work if I get hungry, it’s very easy for me to grab a sandwich instead of opting for the apple I brought.

While I’m content that I have lost some weight, I know I can do better with my eating. The changes I have made are working a little bit, but I really think getting rid of bread will go a long way.

This does not mean that others around me have to stop eating bread. (Mom, I know you’re reading this …) Six years ago when I lost weight, I completely cut out things like cake. People felt bad for eating “that stuff” around me. It didn’t faze me. I know this first week may be a bit tough, but once I get through it I’ll be OK. I already had to avoid the temptation of a biscuit tonight. Normally I would have had two.

My overall goal is to lose weight slowly, but I really, really want to get back into the 180s before race day on March 21. Like I mentioned before, my first goal is to get back to 189.9 and then set another goal. Like with my running, this is a huge overarching goal for this year and beyond. I’m not planning to void bread out of my diet forever, but I need to learn how to get back into control of things. Taking it out completely for a while with an occasional “cheat” is a step that just works for me.

I remember a few years ago having some issues with you stomach. But I learned my lessons about what not to eat the night before a run or a few hours before a run and I straightened up. Now I’ll have to add Dickey’s Barbecue Pit to that list. I love the $1 sandwiches on Mondays (a January/February special), but it looks like I’ll have to void them out of my diet.

Besides, when I look back on my week last week and what I ate, that meal stands out to me as the worst meal I had (I did get beans instead of fries). I have to stop meals like that, and writing about it will help …

Maybe THIS will make you give it up …

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-F4t8zL6F0c&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x006699&color2=0x54abd6]

… I don’t know what to tell you if that isn’t convincing enough.

I hate the word “diet.” Better yet I hate adjectives that go along with diet – low-carb, South Beach, Atkins, Taco Bell. So let me put this out there – I’m not going on a diet. That implies that at some point in time I change my eating habits and go back to eating what I want once I get to a certain weight. That doesn’t work. However, in order to lose weight, my portions and calorie intake have to change for a certain amount of time for the pounds to come off. Exercise alone will not work.

I’m not happy with my weight. On Jan. 1 the scale read 5 pounds more than a year ago. While I had plans in my head to lose weight, those extra few pounds put those plans into motion. For me, it means going back to what I did six years ago to lose 40 pounds – I have to be strict about what I put in my body for a few months. Otherwise I’ll keep eating the same old bad stuff. While I’ll continue running, my weight will otherwise not shift more than 5 pounds. Now that I’ve gone through several years of training for races and seeing what my body can do, I feel ready for this challenge of losing weight and training at the same time.

While it’s easy to eat what I want during the higher mileage weeks of training, this time around is different. I shouldn’t weigh more than 190 pounds, but I can’t seem to get under than number. In fact, I want to get to 180 pounds and then stay in the 180-185 range. Not 185-190 …and certainly not 190-195, which I’ve been in for quite some time.

So to start this process of losing weight I am making changes that worked for me back then. You can call it a diet if you want, but to me it’s a lifestyle change. This time around it’s a matter of returning to the lifestyle of eating that was working just fine a few years ago, but I’ve let a lot slip, obviously. So today I create my “no” list, and I create “cheat” Fridays. This means I have certain foods that I will not eat, and on Fridays I will let myself enjoy SOME of them. Even Bob on “The Biggest Loser” has said that it’s important to let yourself indulge once a week. I’d go crazy if I didn’t. And at some point once I get to where I want to be, it’ll be normal for me to not eat certain foods so often. I think that’s the problem with me right now – I let foods like pizza and french fries become a “normal” food in recent months. And candy shouldn’t be a regular thing.

So here is what is on my “no” list right now with some explanation.

* French fries: this includes all variations of french fries. This means sweet potato fries, cheese fries and Chick-fil-A fries. I have voided fries before, only to say that sweet potato fries were OK and that the word “cheese” made it different. My hope is that if I limit them to once a month, if that, that they’ll become good again. Now they just taste like they tasted when I was a teen – normal and bland.

* Some pizza: this is a touchy subject because I have “carb-loaded” with pizza before. And pizza is a perfectly fine food when made right. So the time has come to actually eat pizza that has some nutritional value to it. So pizzas with toppings such as regular pepperoni and sausage are out. Frozen pizzas are out. For this “no” item, it’s more of a matter of what can I do to make this a “yes,” and the simple answer is to change how I eat pizza. And the easiest way to make it healthy is to make it at home. That doesn’t mean taking it out of a Tombstone box and turning the oven on – it means putting some effort into making the crust, adding healthier toppings, eating a salad while it’s cooking and not dipping it in ranch dressing.

* Ice cream: the fact that I don’t regularly eat ice cream makes this a special “no” food. This is a “no” item that doesn’t make the cut on “cheat” Fridays. I will treat ice cream like I have in the past few years – I’ll eat it after my next race.

* Cookies: when looking back over the past couple of months at what I’ve eaten, this may be my problem. Cookies are so easy to eat. One cookie is fine. Two may be OK. But not two in the morning and two at the end of the day. That’s what the holidays will do to you I guess.

* Candy: I sit next to 25-cent Peanut M&M’s and Reese Pieces dispensers. You figure that one out as to why candy is on this list.

* Soft drinks: Soft drinks, including diet, are “no” items. They’re just bad and do nothing for me anyway.

And that’s it really. Other than the things on this list, I have to get my portions under control. I feel like I eat relatively healthy as it is — I just eat too much of everything.

My plan for now is to have a weigh-in day once a week, on Fridays. I think Fridays are good since it’s my cheat day — if I’ve had a good week, I won’t feel so bad eating something that I wouldn’t normally eat. If it’s been a bad week, cheat day probably won’t mean anything.

And now that I’ve put this out there, I feel like I can hold myself more accountable. It’s up to me to blog about my weight and nutrition issues, but it’s also up to you my fellow readers, family and friends to remind me about it. Otherwise it becomes a non-issue and not a big deal. But this a big deal to me, so thanks for your help in advance.

While it’s not the way I count a week, I have run 20 miles in the past seven days. Twenty or more miles in a seven-day span hasn’t happened since mid-March. I’m not a big fan of a big spike in miles from week to week, so by the time Sunday rolls around it’ll all balance itself out for the past couple of weeks, but I am actually quite happy to have so many running miles in this first week of July. Tomorrow will be a much-needed cross training day as I hope to go to the gym for the first time in a month.

* * *

As promised, I’d like to give a weekly update on my nutrition efforts to make changes this month. Last week is was soft drinks and restaurant french fries; this week it’ll be ice cream. Not that I eat a lot of ice cream, but a two-month break from it will be refreshing. Just like last summer, this does not mean I’ll give up frozen yogurt especially since I enjoy making smoothies at this time of year.

As far as the first week’s changes are concerned, the soft drink thing wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I’ve given in to some sweet tea from Sheetz this week, but being completely off soft drinks for a week has made a difference in the way I feel. I never knew that even just one a day would make me feel so bad, even if they were just diet.

* * *

In another nutrition-related note, my wife and I started a garden this year and we’re starting to see results. She picked some beans today and there are a couple of cucumbers almost ready to be picked. Pretty soon we’ll have some lettuce and peppers. By late summer we hope to have some pumpkins — hopefully good enough to use at Halloween! With even some small success this year, I’m looking forward to doing something bigger next year. It’s less grass I’d have to mow.

With this being American Health Month, my employer partnered with one of the local hospitals to provide a free heart health assessment, complete with a cholesterol, glucose and blood pressure check. It’s been about five years since I’ve had much of that checked, so I was a bit nervous today with what my numbers might be. While the past few months have been fine with exercise, I admittedly haven’t been the best eater.

However, it turns out that things are going OK. My blood pressue is perfect. Hell, I was afraid being at work might make it spike. My bad cholesterol numbers are just fine — well below 200. My good cholesterol, though, isn’t so great. The nurse attributed that most likely to my diet and genetics since I’m getting plenty of exercise. I also have good news in that my glucose numbers are fine. And, lastly, my BMI is just a tad high, which I knew without having to be told. The nurse told me that it’s nothing to worry about with my active lifestyle.

When I was talking to the nurse about what I do and how the past few months have been with a baby, I started sounding like someone I don’t like — I was listing a bunch of excuses for bad eating and not staying on track with exercising last year with injuries. Sure I couldn’t run as much as I wanted, but I didn’t join the gym until October.

So, the end of the story is pretty much what I already knew - lose about 10 pounds and I’ll be a healthy machine for many years to come.

Hello portion and lifestyle change that I made five years ago … nice to see you again.

7 seconds - that’s how much time I shaved off my mile “test” this month. When I stopped the watch and read 7:48, I was almost disappointed. It’s not an all-out mile, but I really felt like I had gone a lot faster. Maybe I just wanted it to be faster. In the big picture though, 7 seconds is pretty good. It’s an improvement, yet there’s a lot to work on.

Following the mile test, I decided to add a couple quarter-mile intervals on my way home. The first, which was fairly flat, was in 1:39 — my fastest quarter mile so far this summer. I was pleased, considering that it was coming after the mile. My second quarter mile, which started on a slight incline, was a little slower in 1:51. By that time I think I was just too tired. After all, I actually didn’t plan on doing this until tomorrow, my usual speed day. The weather, though, was absolutely gorgeous this morning — mid-60s, low humidity. It just felt right. Tomorrow morning’s weather is supposed to be the same, if not a little bit cooler, so I may extend my miles just a bit.

On the nutrition side of things this week, I am having my final chain-brand pizza tonight. For whatever reason, I was craving some greasy mess from Papa John’s, so I decided this week would be a good week to have it for the last time for a while. I likely won’t give up pizza altogether — my wife and I enjoy making it at home every once in a while. Homemade, or very close to homemade, pizza is much better. Plus we are much healthier with the ingredients. But for one final night, I’m digging into some unhealthy, but tasty Papa John’s. In the past, I’ve been known to dig into pizza a couple of days before a race, but this summer I’m going to approach it a little differently.

Lastly, I’ve created yet another blog. This one is devoted to my Dave Matthews Band experiences. Click here to go to it, or go to dmbforever41.blogspot.com.

Workout since last post
July 1: Walk - 1.5; Run - 3.7

Ignoring what might have happened on my birthday, my quest with giving up ice cream and french fries has gone well. This week comes something completely different — it’s all about the drink. No, I’m not giving up beer just yet — although that’ll come eventually for a short duration. Instead, I’m opting to give up soft drinks — diet and regular.

I’m not really a big soft drink drinker. I’ll have a Coke Zero or Diet Pepsi every once in a while. By no means am I addicted. In fact, I’m always shocked at how caffeine gets me going — I drink coffee only once or twice a year. The challenge with this comes when visiting family or heading out to a summer party. I’m not really tempted by it — it’s just convenient to grab a glass and pour. Mix in some Captain Morgan rum and it’s even better.

Living in the south, I won’t give up sweet tea — a man has to have some kind of pick-me-up every so often. There’s just something about soft drinks, though, that disgust me sometimes and this is one of those weeks in which I’m ready to say “no more” for quite a while.

Workout since last post
June 26: Walk - 1.3; Bike - 5.1

One of my favorite foods has to be french fries. Better yet, pour some cheese and bacon over them and I’m set. Well, last week’s lifestyle change was going to be no french fries until after my half marathon, but without even thinking I dug into some when a group of people ordered from Five Guys. Then the next day I had some with my barbecue sandwich.

So now that the vacation has come and gone, it’s time to eliminate french fries once and for all until after Aug. 31. It’ll be harder that the ice cream commitment I gave two weeks ago, but I’ll survive. I’ve done it before.

To make it a little easier, here’s a look at the calories in some french fries according to calorieking.com. I won’t even get into the fat that’s in these things:
* McDonald’s medium (4 oz.): 382
* Wendy’s medium (5 oz.): 424
* Burger King medium (4.1 oz.): 359

Workout since last post
June 19: Walk - 1.8; Bike - 4.1; Weights; 60 setups on Bosu ball

No ice cream for three months? No problem. For the first week of lifestyle changes, I’ve decided to give up ice cream until Aug. 31, among other things that see my lips for a while. While ice cream doesn’t seem like too big of a deal, it’s kind of tough thinking about giving up cold treats in the heat of the summer. What also makes it tough is having both a Bruster’s and a Cold Stone within a couple of miles of my house.

There are several alternatives though, such as frozen fruit bars. Plus, the off brands of those are much cheaper than ice cream. I’ll survive not having ice cream easily, but others will likely find it odd when they’re around me. Oh well …

Workouts since last post
June 3: Walk - 1.3; Bike - 5.2; Weights - 3 sets with bench press; Plank - 1:12
June 4: Walk - 0.5; Run - 4