Paleo divergence and a half-marathon

Sunday was a day of firsts.  I ran my first ever half marathon and followed it with my first non-paleo meal in 7 weeks.

The half marathon went well.  I finished in 2:15 which is a 10:22 min/mile.  That is 0:10 sec/mile faster than my stretch goal, so I'm pleased.  I'm also super sore today, but that's to be expected.  I've now got 8 weeks until my next half marathon and I just picked out my training plan.  Yay!

And then there was pizza.  Honestly, it tasted amazing.  I savored every bite AND I savored getting to eat at home, watching football and not having to cook or clean up anything.  I ordered a small pizza with spinach, mushrooms, onions and diced tomatoes and I ate almost all of it.  I figured I had the calories to spare after running 13.1 miles.  I was worried about what the crust was going to do to my gut and to my cravings, but my body has behaved well.  I did have some stomach discomfort last night as I was trying to sleep, but really, compared to my leg discomfort, it was barely noticeable!  This morning, I moved immediately back to paleo (I threw out the leftovers) and I feel fine.  I'm still sore of course, and I haven't had a 'movement' yet, but I don't think I'm any worse for the wear.  I didn't like the bloated feeling from eating the pizza, so I certainly don't want to make this a common occurrence, but really, it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be.  It looks like if I want to occasionally splurge on pizza (once I make my weight goal), then I think I can do it.

We'll see if this triggers any cravings in the next couple of days...

The Paleo Journey Continues

I can't believe that it's been a month since I last posted!  My, how time flies.

I've been eating following the paleo guidelines for a little over 6 weeks now.  I lost a ton of bloat in week one.  I stayed the same on the scale for weeks two and three but I was feeling so good, it didn't matter.  In week four, the scale started to move.  I'll do my week 6 weigh in on Friday, but based on a weight I saw a couple of days ago, I'm thinking I'm down more than 10 lbs since I started! Wow!

I'll also be taking my full list of measurements including body fat over the weekend, so it'll be interesting to compare.  I haven't measured any of those things since the end of my summer challenge which was also the end of my first paleo week.  I can't wait to see the difference.  I know there will be a difference because my clothes are all fitting differently on me.

What else am I noticing?

 I am sleeping better.  When I sleep, I'm sleeping soundly.  That's amazing to me.  I've always been a lousy sleeper, so knowing that I'm getting better at it is truly exciting.

I no longer worry about digestive issues when I run.  Ever.  It doesn't matter when I last had a 'movement' - it's just no longer an issue.  I go when its appropriate and when it's not, I don't.  Period.  (and also unreal based on my history!)

I'm thinking more clearly.  I don't forget stuff as much and I'm not in a constant state of panic that something important is going to slip my mind.  I'm seriously feeling like my brain is working as it should again.  I swear that for the last few years, I started feeling like my brain had reached 'full' and that I couldn't put any more info in there without deleting old info.  Now I know that's not the case!

My period was a piece of cake.  Typically, I have light flow nowadays, but I do often have other issues from zit flare-ups to cramps to digestive problems to sore breasts.  Not anymore.  Now, I've only had one period while on paleo so far, so it might have been a fluke, but we'll see.

Speaking of skin - mine looks fantastic.  No more zits.  None.  I swear that the bags under my eyes (with the exception of last weekend when I had a cold) are smaller too.  Of course, that could be merely from the better sleep.

I don't think about food anymore.  OK, let's be honest...I don't obsess about food anymore.  I swear, I feel 'normal'.  When it's time to eat, I don't care what it is as long as it's paleo.  I don't get cravings.  I don't think about food every second of every day.  I don't long to eat things I shouldn't.  I'm not even slightly tempted by non-paleo foods floating around the office.

Well, that's not entirely true.  I'm still having this obsession with pizza.  I'm not sure what to do about it, either.  I'm not a huge pizza person or anything but for some reason, pizza is the one non-paleo food that I keep thinking about that I cannot shake.  It doesn't help that I see about a billion ads for pizza everywhere I go or that I smell it often.  I'm either going to just have to splurge and eat pizza (and then suffer the consequences and hopefully get past the craving) or I'm going to have to make one of the paleo pizza recipes I've seen floating around and hope that it'll be good enough to kill the craving.  My guess is that eating the actual non-paleo pizza is the smarter move to truly kill this craving once and for all.  Maybe after my half-marathon on Sunday?

Adapting to Paleo

When I had previously attempted to eat paleo, it was not successful.  This time, it is.  I think there are two reasons for that.  The first is that when I set out to try it this time, my mindset was different from in the past.  I was not looking at it as 'all the things I couldn't eat'.  From the start, I framed my focus to be all the things I COULD eat.  Having multiple Paleo cookbooks out there is definitely helping.  Seeing the gorgeous meals in blazing color has really helped with motivation to continue to cook, experiment and try new things.

Secondly, I intentionally set out to expand my horizons.  By this, I mean that when I eliminate grains, legumes and sugar from my diet, I don't just drop them and keep eating what I was eating before.  I know quite a few 'healthy' eaters who tried to go paleo by just dropping the necessary foods.  That left them eating low fat, and nothing but lean meats and some boring veggies.  Who can live like that long term? I knew that when I dropped a big portion of my daily calories,  I would need to replace those things with calories from acceptable sources (and maybe I am better about this now that I'm training to be an endurance athlete - something I was not doing in the past).  No, I don't need to eat grains or legumes.  But I do need to eat fat and tons of veggies and I'm learning to like things I would NEVER have eaten before.  Things like bacon and whole raw milk and unsweetened homemade yogurt and iced tea without sweetener.  I'm learning to use a little oil on my salads and in my cooking - something I shied away from before.  And I'm learning that when I keep myself satisfied this way, I'm not craving crap, bread or sugar.  I'm giving my body what it needs, so it doesn't need to 'beg' me for the things it shouldn't have.

I also didn't want to go paleo by trying to force my old recipes into a paleo alternative of their former selves.  That goes against the idea of embracing a whole new way of looking at food.  That said, I was peeling sweet potatoes for roasting last night when I remembered a recipe I used to make from the Victory Garden Cookbook (from the 70's).  There were these sweet potato squares (a snack cake) that we both really liked that were chock full of healthy items.  I remembered the recipe scared me a little at the time, because it was very fat heavy.  I pulled it out and lo and behold, it's easily adaptable to paleo!  I even laughed at my notes from the last time I'd made it - I'd cut out the fat by removing the oil and the nuts and I'd subbed Splenda for some of the sugar (and reduced the whole quantity of it).   Time for a different type of makeover...

To make it paleo - I used pastured butter for the oil (though coconut oil would work fine, too), I replaced the 1 cup of flour with 1/4 cup of hazelnut meal, 1/4 cup of coconut flour and 1/2 cup of almond meal.  Then in place of the 1 cup of sugar, I went with 1/3 cup of raw local honey.

The cake turned out great, but I think that the next time, I might try cutting the honey down to 1/4 cup and adding a bit of coconut oil for the lost moisture.  The bars were perfectly moist, but they were a bit crumbly and a tad too sweet for me now (did I just type that??).

So, without further ado, here is the altered recipe that is pictured above (original from the Victory Garden Cookbook by Marian Morash):

Sweet Potato Squares

1/4 cup of coconut flour
1/2 cup of almond flour/meal
1/4 cup of hazelnut flour/meal
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp cinnamon
4 Tbs pastured butter (or coconut oil)
1/3 cup raw local honey
1 egg
2 medium apples (peeled and shredded)
1/2 lb sweet potato (peeled and shredded)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup chopped nuts

Preheat oven to 350F.  Mix flours, salt, soda and spices in a small bowl and set aside.  Cream together butter and honey; beat in egg.  Stir apples, sweet potatoes and vanilla into the butter mixture.    Add dry ingredients to the mixture and mix well.  Stir in nuts.  Spread into a greased 11x7 baking dish.  Bake for 40 - 45 minutes.  Cool before cutting into squares.

Time - or a lack of it

While I am thoroughly enjoying paleo nutrition, I am not enjoying the extra work.  It's kind of a catch-22 actually.   I do like that eating paleo forces us to eat at home more often, that it keeps my husband from eating a lot of junk (he works from home and used to satisfy his boredom with crappy foods), and that it makes me feel GREAT.  I don't like that in order to eat from home more often, I have to cook (and clean) more often.  I also have to plan ahead to have things ready to pack for lunch every day as well.  It's beginning to stress me out a bit because I've actually sacrificed workouts in order to cook or clean and this is NOT a benefit.  The last little piece is that because we are new to this, I don't know where to find all the essentials yet, so getting the ingredients we often need requires multiple trips to multiple stores to find the things we need (like coconut oil or raw almonds).

My guess is that with time and experience, we will get better at this.  I'm hoping to create a system of managing the fresh food in the fastest and easiest way possible.  I also need more paleo cookbooks so that I can just leave a recipe and ingredients for my husband and he can cook it while I workout.  As we find recipes we like, I also hope to build up an arsenal of good 'make ahead' meals that I can prep over the weekends for use during the week.  In fact, I should do a little research and see if there is such a cookbook out there for this exact type of meal.

My only other complaint about Paleo is that today's world has tied it to Crossfit.  I've now had three people mention this to me.  One found out that I was eating paleo and immediately noted "but you don't do Crossfit!".  Another found out and asked if I had plans to start Crossfit.  And a third said that I was the first person they had ever met who wanted to eat paleo but wasn't a Crossfit-er.  OK people - you do realize that The Paleo Diet and Neatherthin were both written and published before anyone had given the concept of multi-functional cross training the marketed name 'Crossfit', right? ;-)

A Few Good Meals

The paleo nutrition adventure is still going well.  I've been now eating this way (with a few random non-paleo meals in the first few days) for almost 3 weeks now.  I haven't lost any more weight, but I also haven't been that consistent about my workouts either.

I ordered a book called Everyday Paleo mostly for the recipes, but it does have quite a bit of non-nutrition information in it as well.  For now, I'm more concerned with new recipes so I haven't even read the rest of the book.  Our first meal from it was a salmon that was 'baked' on the grill with a bunch of fresh herbs.  It was AMAZING!  It was juicy, tender and completely delicious!  I cannot believe what a difference cooking wild salmon in foil makes for the juiciness factor.  Live and learn.

The second recipe we tried from the book was a pumpkin/beef casserole.  I don't know why, but the photo just drew me in and typically, I'm not a casserole fan.  I think it reminded me of mousaka (which I do like).  Anyway, we made it last night with only one slight alteration.  I didn't use fresh pumpkin - I used the canned version since I had a can already open from a smoothie experiment.  It was delicious!!

The recipe serves 4, but if it reheats well (which I assume it will), I may try doubling it next time to have more leftovers for freezing.  The nice thing about the dish was that it was chock full of spinach, basil, onions and pumpkin...(plus grass fed ground beef), so I didn't need to make any side dishes.  Great for a night when time is short!

Paleo

While I'm still not sure I actually want to keep this blog up to date, I do kind of want to record my experiences as I transition to Paleo nutrition.

As a recap - I spent the summer racing races, training sporadically, travelling a lot for work and generally maintaining my weight even though I still have more to lose.  About two weeks ago, I was getting entirely too puffy and out of control (too much travel and restaurant foods!) so I decided to 'go Paleo'.  I've attempted this previously but was not able to stick with it.  Back then, all I could think about was the things I could no longer eat.  This time, I'm trying to avoid that line of thinking.  But I'm getting ahead of myself...  So two weeks ago, I started to eat Paleo.  This means, using the diet our paleolithic ancestors ate as a guideline for being as healthy as humanly possible.  The three biggest 'modern western diet' items to remove are sugar, grains and legumes.  All of them.  Typically, dairy is also removed but given the health benefits of raw, unprocessed milk from grass fed cows (or even better, goats!), I am keeping dairy in my diet. Dairy from our own goats...not dairy from the grocery store.  Additionally, most Paleo followers will shun potatoes.  I will be eating sweet potatoes as fuel for long workouts (I am still trying to be an endurance athlete here!) and the occasional white potato if it's from our garden.  What we will eat are tons of fresh fruits and veggies, grass-fed or wild meats, and nuts and seeds.  While it sounds restrictive, it's really not.  What I am considering using this blog for is to record how I feel as I progress on this journey AND to post some of the meals we are eating.  I think it'll serve as a good reminder for myself when I inevitably get 'whiney' about not being able to eat scones or hummus anymore. ;-)  I've purchases a few paleo cookbooks and the plethora of wonderful things to eat is truly mind-boggling!

On August 18th, I made this decision and on the 19th began implementing it.  I did not start out super strict predominantly because we had a lot of non-paleo food in the house that I didn't really want to waste.  My first few days were about 85-90% paleo with usually one partially non-paleo meal or item thrown in.  As time went on, I ate less and less non-paleo food.  After my first week (where I lost 5 lbs of bloat!), I convinced my husband to join me.  He's now been eating predominantly paleo for about a week as well.

Paleo requires a bit more planning ahead than I've been doing recently, but really, that's a good thing. We've gotten very lazy and have been eating out or eating crap entirely too much anyway.  What I don't know is how I'm going to manage my fall travel schedule, but we'll cross that bridge when I come to it.  For now, this is going very well.  I feel good.  Well, until today anyway.  Today I'm dragging ass.  There are two probable causes - the first is that its TTOM. Figures.  The second is that I've heard that two weeks into this, people start to feel sluggish and tired and then then kind of break through it and start feeling really good.  I hope that's true!  Lastly, it's possible that I just need sleep, but really - it's only Wednesday and I've been getting pretty good sleep this week so I don't think that's it.

As an example, here is what I ate yesterday:

B: smoothie made with spinach, protein powder, blackberries, 1/2 banana and goats milk.  coffee with goats milk.
L: Big salad of spinach & baby greens with cukes, sliced almonds and home-made feta.  Topped with tuna and raspberry viniagrette.
D: eggs scrambled with onions and zucchini and topped with pico de gallo.

Snacks were a few mixed nuts, one date, two plums (of our trees!) and an apple.

Doesn't sound too bad, does it?  Lets see how I feel in a few days...

To blog, or not to blog

I've been struggling a bit with whether or not to keep this blog. I have another blog where I write about our small farm and the happenings there, but I don't really have any place where I write about my tri training or my quest for leanness. This is why I started this blog. The problem is that I go through phases where time is so incredibly limited that even though I feel like blogging, I can't find time. And then I have times like this where while I should be doing something else, I feel the need to blog to express my current frustration.

About 14 months ago, I began training for my first triathlon. I started at about 175 lbs and today I'm sitting around 152 lbs. I'd like to be closer to 130 lbs. I just can't seem to motivate myself recently. I'm still doing a decent job of getting in my running (which was my winter goal - increase my running frequency and miles) but I'm not doing much more than that. I swim about once a week and am still doing ok there as well. Cycling? Hardly. I actually rode last Saturday for the first time in AGES and found it was not only kind of hard, but that I was really sore the next day! And I really wanted to get in some good weight training in this 'off-season' and I haven't done any of that at all. Nutritionally, I'm floundering.

I have no idea what my problem is. I'm feeling an alarming lack of motivation. Luckily (?), it extends to work and other areas as well which leads me to believe that it's not related to health/fitness but more to the current state of my hormones. Ugh.

My original plan was to run until it was time to start an oly training plan (my first Olympic tri will be the end of June and that will be my 'A' race for this year). I was looking at using the 20-week plan, but the running volume is kind of low and I really don't want to lower my run volume (since my run is so weak). So what I think I might do is switch to a 16-week version. This will start with slightly higer run volumes AND, it'll give me 4 extra weeks to work on my weight training. So my goals going foward will be 1 - 2 swims per week, keep on my running schedule and focus on weight training until 16 weeks out from the Oly. I think that puts me at mid-March for begining the formal training plan which should allow some good progress on the weight training (counting on some muscle-memory here!). That should also give me plenty of volume completed before my first tri of the season which will be May 7th (Canby Gator Grinder).

So there you have it, my new plan in print. Weight training rotation, every other day running and weekly swims until 16-weeks out from my Oly tri. Now, lets put this into action...

Recap of 2010

I cannot believe that I did NO posting on this blog from April 2010 (before my first tri) until now. That's a lot of happenings that didn't get recorded!

So as a quick recap:

I did the Canby Gator Grinder sprint tri as my first tri. I ended up dead center for my age group. I felt good about an 11 min swim, a decent bike, and a pretty slow run. I'm looking forward to improving on all the times in 2011.

My second tri was the Blue Lake Sprint in early June. This was my first open water swim. It didn't go well. I'd only worn my wetsuit once prior to the race and due to a newly formed tiny tear, didn't pull it on all the way. It was choking me. That, combined with the racing HR from the start of my second race and I almost had a panic attack. Plus, 880y looks REALLY long in a lake! AND I had the sun in my eyes for the first part and couldn't see. I ended up side-stroking almost the entire swim! The bike went ok and the run was my usual plod. I did sign up for the Athena class (women > 150lbs) so even with a lousy swim, I still ended up with a second place medal!

After that, I did a LOT more open water swim practice and felt much, much better by the time my next race rolled around. I did a practice tri at Hagg Lake put on by Athlete's Lounge in mid-July that was fun. The trail run was really cool even though I felt like I was tripping over my feet. I did ok, but it wasn't an official event.

Then I raced the Mid-Summer Sprint Tri at Blue Lake on August 1st. This was almost the identical course to the Blue Lake tri earlier in the year. The only difference was that the bike was extended to be 17 miles to make the whole race a 19.2 mile race as part of Amica's tri series. I did MUCH better on the swim, was slightly faster on the bike and the run. Yay, me! I did not race it as Athena though as I had planned to not qualify by then (even though I still did).

My last event of the summer was the Crater Lake Century. My husband and I drove to Crater Lake on the third weekend in August and it was a wonderful event. Great support, great ride, great weather and we had so much fun. I *think* we are going to try and do this ride again in 2011.

All in all, I'd say that 2010 was a pretty damn successful first triathlon season for me. :-)