Working on nutrition is so much harder than training.\u00a0 You can’t just go get motivated for an hour or four and knock it out and then relax.\u00a0 It’s not an offensive action.\u00a0 It’s that quiet, persistent task that never ends as life throws curveballs and challenges at you.\u00a0 It’s a constant defensive you have to have at the ready.\u00a0 Which makes it SO HARD to work on this stuff when you’re not 100% motivated.\u00a0 It’s easy to poke a hole in a weak defense… one moment of relaxation and you fall face down on a cake, it seems like.\u00a0 I gotta stay strong on this stuff.<\/p>\n However, it’s really cool how shining a flashlight on things can (at least start to) fix it.<\/p>\n Tracking my food daily made me realize how bad I was eating, even though I was mostly sticking to my bread\/rice\/pasta free diet, so I had convinced myself I was doing ok.\u00a0 Once I realized that, it wasn’t too hard to go back to a more balanced NORMAL.\u00a0 I’ve also thrown the RULES out the window and am back to guidelines and a little experimentation.<\/p>\n I’m finding that if I trust myself to eat more in the first half of the day, and make sure I treat myself right before, during, and after workouts, I don’t need a 1000 calorie dinner + snack and life is better overall most days.<\/p>\n I’m finding that maybe I’m going to vary up the things I’m eating and loosen up the embargo on some things I gave up last August.\u00a0 Yogurt has come back.\u00a0 I don’t know why I stopped eating it, but a little plain or greek yogurt mixed with PB powder and apples is a pretty awesome snack.\u00a0 Much more satisfying than just the apple.\u00a0 Same with dips.\u00a0 Hummus and tzatziki sauce rock my world with veggies.<\/p>\n Also, things I eliminated because of bloat and trying to limit carbs.\u00a0 Beans.\u00a0 Whole wheat tortillas\/bread.\u00a0 Rice and rice products.\u00a0 I do know I feel better not loading up with the stuff, but I’m shoving a lot of nuts and cheese and meat in my diet to fill those holes and that’s a LOT of calories (and it’s not that satisfying).\u00a0 I think a limited amount of these things back in my life will help the cause.<\/p>\n I’ve decided to bring back the possibility of these things in my day, but in smaller quantities.\u00a0 The back half of my week, I ate rice, bread, or wheat tortilla once a day.\u00a0 My stomach didn’t revolt, I didn’t feel super bloated, I felt fuller on less calories, and I didn’t die.\u00a0 I think LIMITING this stuff is better than trying to remove it completely (otherwise I do things like eat a double lettuce wrap cheese burger and french fries for a meal and feel virtuous that I didn’t eat grains).<\/p>\n A ~150 calorie snack IMMEDIATELY after killer endurance spin class helped me only eat a ~550 calorie dinner and be satisfied.\u00a0 Normally, I was going for a GIANT, 1000+ calorie plate of mostly junk food since I was so hungry.<\/p>\n Either way, I’m happy to say that I had a good, solid week last week where I:<\/p>\n 1. Tracked everything that went into my mouth.\u00a0 This actually definitely helped me make better choices some days knowing I had to own up to the total at the end of the day.<\/p>\n 2. Drank more water.\u00a0 I didn’t do as well at tracking it, but I found myself most days on bottle 4 or 5 at the end of the day and that’s pretty good.<\/p>\n 3. Weighed and logged it daily.<\/p>\n 4. Did better at identifying workouts where I needed to eat something right away instead of just trying to hang on for dinner.\u00a0 Even if my very next stop was food, that’s a delay of workout ending, stretching, showering, changing, transporting, and waiting for someone to either prepare my food or doing it myself, even if it’s just 5 mins on the microwave.\u00a0 So a small snack is useful even though I’m going “right” to a meal, it’s still usually on the order of 30+ minutes unless that workout ends at a location where my meal is waiting for me.<\/p>\n 5. I got close a few times but didn’t go off the rails.\u00a0 Counting calories really helps.\u00a0 It kept me from an extra slice of pizza, heck, and extra meal one day.\u00a0 Sometimes I just don’t know when to be done eating.\u00a0 I was able to keep the counts between about 1700-2200, while enduring just a LITTLE bit of hunger some days, nothing unmanageable.<\/p>\n My goal this week is to just do more of the same, and probably will be the week after too.\u00a0 My weight has stabilized around 180.x most days, and I’m hoping that the trend will continue downward, though I know it generally takes me 3 weeks to really respond to anything, so I won’t get <\/p>\n Training Thoughts:<\/strong><\/p>\n I definitely have some senioritis here.\u00a0 It definitely feels like the last few weeks of classes until I get summer vacation.\u00a0 I’m generally hitting the paces and efforts just fine, it was just a little hard to WANT it.\u00a0 If that makes any sense at all. \u00a0It’s about 10000% better than I was last year at this time, but it’s definitely reinforcing the fact that I need a break so I don’t spiral into the land of burnout, especially now that the HEAT IS ON.<\/p>\n Doing only short races this spring has been so so so so good.\u00a0 While I had planned on trying to maintain my marathon run base, throwing that out the window has been a good (at least short term) decision.\u00a0 It’s been just so fun to go out and put the gas on over a few miles and not worry about it.\u00a0 I definitely feel like a half marathon right now would be a bit of a stretch – doable but would feel long.\u00a0 I also feel like on the right day, I’d have a chance to crack open my 5k PR (8:30 pace) which I was nowhere close to earlier this year (you mean I have to run under 10 minute mile pace? that’s too faaaaaaaaaast…).\u00a0 It all goes in cycles.\u00a0 You can’t have it all at once.<\/p>\n I’m now at the point where it’s one week down, one to go (and then race week).\u00a0 Science says that you absolutely positively cannot absorb any endurance gains this close to racing, and since this is my last triathlon before summer vacation, everything goes into the “sharpening the stick” basket – bringing out the fitness I already have and readying myself for sprint race pace.\u00a0 Short fast sets in the water.\u00a0 Attacking it on the bike.\u00a0 All the run miles are either surrounding or are fast miles.\u00a0 The volume is pretty meager at 7 hours per week, but it ALLL counts, which is just as hard as 10-12 mostly easy.\u00a0 I like the spring being about getting faster.<\/p>\n And… just as good cycles go, I’m dreaming of the other thing.\u00a0 This weekend, I was lamenting that instead of a 90 minute ass kicking brick, I’d rather be doing something easy and longer.\u00a0 Just like the kind of efforts that I was getting super tired of doing in January and February and wanted to go faster.\u00a0 Just like the kind of efforts I will get back to in August.<\/p>\n Either way, I’ve still managed to maintain race enthusiasm this year, which is great.\u00a0 I’m excited for one last party at Pflugerville on June 21st, and then shutting it down for a while.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n![\"June8-2\"](\"http:\/\/adjustedreality.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/June8-2.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\ntoo<\/del> frustrated for a bit if nothing changes.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n