Someone recently suggested I write about a typical day/ week and what that looks like. I thought it sounded fun but rather than do a whole week right now, I thought I'd throw in a day here and there as I build for Hawaii. I have some fun adventures planned for 2017 where I think a "week in the life" would be more interesting.
With my work schedule I work 4 longer days each week. I work Wednesday- Saturday, have Sunday off, then work Monday through Thursday and have 5 days off. That 2 week cycle repeats indefinitely. So here's my Monday July 11, a typical "work" day:
4:22 am: Alarm goes off.
Completely random time, I know, but 2 nights ago when I set my alarm I overshot 4:15 am and was too lazy/ tired to forward through the minutes again to hit my intended target. I've been awake for somewhere between 30-45 minutes. I often wake before my alarm goes off. Sometimes I can tell it's still the middle of the night and I am still sleepy, just woken up by my need to pee. Other times, like today, I can tell that I've finished my sleep cycle and it's time to get up. My alarm clock is covered because the light bothers me at night, so I lift the veil to reveal that it is, in fact, 4 am. I lay in bed resting until 4:22. I've gotten roughly 8 hours of sleep as I was in bed by 8 pm last night. 8 hours is my comfort zone. I would love 9-9.5 (THAT is in infrequent luxury!). Less than 8 multiple days in a week and I'm struggling big time.
4:22 am- 4:48 am: Getting ready for training.
On average if I am swimming or running it takes me 30 minutes to get out the door from the time I get up. If I am biking, it's more like 45 minutes. Sometimes an hour if I have to pack my car to drive somewhere to bike. Today, knowing I am a little behind my intended 4:15 am wake-up, I am spurred to pick up a few minutes. I'm driving to Lifetime Fitness for my workouts and then will be at work until 8 pm so I am packing for the whole day. I make my breakfast (a Van's GF waffle with Justin's Almond Butter) while packing my lunchbox and somehow managed to carry all 6 bags to the car in one load. I'm pulling out of the driveway at 4:48 am.
5:10 am: Death by Treadmill
First workout today is an hour progression run on the treadmill. Traffic was light in the pre-dawn drive and so I'm on the treadmill early which makes me happy and lowers my stress level a little. This particular workout is pretty tough for me so I like to have 10 minutes to just walk on the treadmill afterwards to cool down. I make it through the first 40 minutes listening to a podcast. As I crank up the pace the final time, I'm having a hard time processing the words and my body is protesting, my mind begging me to jump off the belt for a quick rest. Instead of giving in, I grab my iPod, which is conveniently preset to repeat my 3 favorite Eminem songs, and switch out my ear buds, all without breaking my stride. In my head I'm singing (rapping?) along with Eminem and the minutes tick by. At one hour, I slow the pace and walk, relieved to have survived. I drink a bottle of water with 2 scoops of Tailwind during my run. I don't always use electrolytes but I've been noticing lately with harder workouts that I'm more depleted and feel kinda crappy so I've been supplementing and it's helping a ton.
6:20 am: Shower number 1.
I have to go to a breakfast meeting in between my run and swim so I jump in the shower quick. I change into my suit and throw some run clothes over the top. I leave everything else in my locker knowing I'll be back in 2 hours to finish up.
6:30 am- 7 am: Drive to breakfast.
I make a quick stop at Cadence Running Company on my way to breakfast. I've got to pick up a stack of bills that are due, check my major accounts, and grab the files needed to get everything in order for the week. I'm last to arrive at breakfast (which is rare!) but it's just 7 am when I arrive.
7 am- 8:45 am: Downtown Chandler Cafe.
The doctors at my hospital meet once a month to discuss, well everything, so I won't bore you with details. Breakfast on my meal plan today was a breakfast sandwich with tomato, avocado, eggs, spinach. I made due with a Florentine Eggs Benedict, minus the hollandaise sauce and with fruit instead of potatoes. And coffee of course. Lots of coffee.
8:48 am: Drive back to Lifetime Fitness.
By 8:30 am, I'm looking at my watch and getting jumpy. At 8:45 things are wrapping up and I'm standing, ready to bolt out the door. Three minutes later, it appears as though we're finished and I book it out the door.
9:05 am: Swim.
I'm poolside just after 9 am and ready to jump in. After the run and the breakfast I'm feeling pretty lethargic. Today's 3k straight swim doesn't give my mind any distraction either. Sometimes intervals are easier to bust out than 45 minutes of just mindless swimming.
9:55 am: Shower number 2.
Workouts done for the day. I pack up my crap and head to work a little early. I will have time to get my bills from Cadence organized and paid before I start my work day.
11 am- 8 pm: Work.
I'll be honest, I'm just not in a great mood today. My allergies have been bad the last few days and I don't feel great. I'm tired and I hate working closing shift because I'm normally asleep by 8 pm. I feel pretty useless in general past about 4 pm, but we all share duties and I'm lucky enough to have only one closing shift for every 2 weeks. Tonight is cat night, so I'm looking forward to seeing only cats in the last few hours. The morning is gone, and the afternoon seems to drag.
Things I eat during this time frame:
Greek yogurt with kiwi, raspberries, and granola.
Banana and a hard boiled egg.
Big-Ass Salad with spinach, romaine, lentils, quinoa, avocado, hard boiled egg and a drizzle of evoo. I forgot my tomatoes at home. My salad could have used them.
Apple with almond butter.
2 bites of a cinnamon roll left over from our breakfast meeting.
Sushi roll (something with spicy tuna) delivered by one of my colleagues.
8 pm: Drive home.
Some nights I'm so tired I don't remember driving home. I used to use my drive home to visualize my upcoming race. I did that for 6 months straight leading up to IMAZ 2014 and when race day arrived I executed the race without even thinking. I had rehearsed it so many times in my head that everything was routine. It was pretty amazing to me. Last year I was too stressed out and couldn't focus so there was no visualization practice. If nothing else, it was a nice routine to destress after my day, and I always think about restarting.
8:20 pm: Getting ready for bed.
The hubs is sitting outside when I pull into the driveway. He helps me unload the car. I unpack my lunch boxes while drinking a Nocturne shake. It's late and I don't want to fix dinner, I just want to go to bed. So the nighttime shake gives me a little calories boost so I don't wake up starving in the middle of the night (you know this feeling from after Ironman, right?). Plus it has tryptophan in it which helps me fall asleep without my usual de-stress time in the evening. I can't do benadryl or melatonin, so this is a nice alternative when I don't want to lie awake for an hour thinking about work. I'm asleep before 9 pm.
Showing posts with label meal planning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label meal planning. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 12, 2016
Wednesday, March 30, 2016
Food for Thought: Finding Aloha in Meal Planning
You've probably heard the phrase "you can't out-train a poor diet." Well, I have a confession. I've been the poster child for "poor diet" for the last couple of years.
Here are the facts:
1. I love to cook. Love. There is nothing better than taking a bunch of ingredients and making something fantastic to feed to family and friends. Food is love, after all. I used to spend hours poring over cookbooks looking for something new to try. At least one new recipe each week. Sometimes more. Not everything I made was great. Not everything I made was edible. But everything I tried was an adventure.
2. I haven't seen my kitchen in... well, years. (sad face). I am often gone from my house by 430 am, arriving home sometime around 7 pm, and fall into bed by 8 pm. That gives me roughly 60 minutes to eat, unwind, and get my shit together for the following day (rinsing water bottles, laundry (ha! j/k), bags packed, etc). Sadly, my schedule had gotten so out of hand that I was literally eating from a drive-thru two meals a day, and then eating a bowl of cereal for dinner at night. Snacking on anything I could get my hands on in the break room in between meals. Totally not kidding. And totally not cool. So not cool.
3. I have had conflicting feelings about how and what I eat. I love the idea of a plant based diet but in practice, right now, it feels overwhelming, and condescending. I know, right? How can food be condescending? Several years ago I committed myself to eating plant based (vegan) for 30 days. I was very strict for this 30 days and you know what? I felt fantastic. (This was also back when I had time to cook). I told people I wasn't doing it for "political" reasons, I just wanted to see how my health might change by eating plant based. After that 30 days, I followed a "less religious" plant based diet. Meaning I wasn't "that guy" when I went to eat with family or friends. I didn't turn down an invitation to a holiday meal with friends. And I didn't beat myself up if I ate a piece of bacon or sushi.
Somewhere along the way, I stopped having time to prepare food and so I was driving through Taco Bell for a bean burrito, cause there's no meat in that. Or grabbing a veggie pizza from the place down the street. We joked about how much pizza I was consuming, but it truly was 5-6 times a week. Often 3 meals in a row. Ultimately, my brain tied my lack of being vegan and my poor diet together, and I stressed about it even more. I felt horrible because I was eating crappy food. And even more horrible because sometimes it was In N Out Burger. *gasp* The horror of it all!
I would still go grocery shopping once a week. And out of guilt and a feeling of obligation I would buy fruits and vegetables which inevitably got thrown out at the end of their life span- untouched. I felt worse wasting food and throwing so much away. The smell of rotting produce in my fridge shamed me every time I reached inside.
I tried a couple of meal delivery services. What I found was that the portion sizes were much smaller than I would normally consume and sometimes I just didn't like the food that was delivered. Some people can choke down something they don't like because it's good for them or they paid for it. This is not me. So this wasn't a realistic long term solution for me.
During my training for Arizona, I listened to a podcast during which my coach talked about her transition to a plant based diet. She said that she did it abruptly and her training did suffer the effects of "trial and error" because it wasn't necessarily the healthy plant based diet that she follows now. In the podcast she speculated that for someone to switch to a vegan diet there would be an adjustment period, potentially up to a couple of years, while said person was figuring out how to eat the right amount and types of nutrients. When I heard this it was kind of an epiphany. I had been putting a lot of pressure on myself and this helped me to realize that what I was feeling was probably pretty normal. At that time I started to think about other options for cleaning up my diet.
I had already decided I needed to address my diet last fall as the next step in the process of #findingkona when I qualified for Hawaii in November. At that time I had nailed down my race nutrition strategy but my daily diet was still a disaster. A friend of mine had worked with a dietitian last year during her preparation for Kona and gave me a referral. I held off on contacting her because she is not based in Arizona and everything would be done online or via phone consult, and I wasn't sure how this would work.
I sat down with a couple of nutritionists locally last fall to talk about what I needed. I got a similar response from each which was something along the lines of, I don't write meal plans, I am going to teach you how to eat properly. *sigh* I know how to eat healthy. I just don't do it because I lack time to plan to eat healthy. I almost signed on because my preference in life is to support local. But in the end, I went with what was going to be best for me and I called Katie of OWN Nutrition.
Over the course of a couple phone calls and email correspondence I gave her my deal breakers. I don't have time to "cook". I want someone to tell me exactly what to eat (and when?!) and it needs to be assembly only. And I don't eat poultry. Ever. I breathed a sigh of relief when Katie was excited to help me and encouraged me in the process. She assured me that after a few months, I WOULD learn what my body needed, but for now she would handle the thinking part of it.
My first meal plan arrived in my inbox. 7 days, with detailed meals and snacks. A shopping list (hallelujah!). "Recipes" for any meals that required some assembly. And a handout on portion sizes. OK, I admit, I didn't print out the portion sizes handout.
My first trip to the grocery store was a little bit overwhelming. I was still learning and hadn't yet compiled a concise list so I was running back and forth between different departments as I read down my list for the week. I have since learned and now spend 10 minutes making a list for produce, meat, frozen goods, dry goods, etc. Now I can be in and out in 30 minutes.
Week 1 I had something on my plan called the "side salad". When I set out to prep my side salad I was shocked to find it was anything but a "side"! 4-5 cups of greens (spinach, arugula and romaine), with tomatoes, almonds, and protein (some days this was salmon, others it was beans and quinoa).
Most of my assembly is done on Sundays and Thursdays when I have an hour in the evening to prepare meals. I prepackage my lunch and dinner for the week, including all snacks. Once or twice a week I'll throw all my protein on the grill. I'll have a big salmon filet going on one burner, and a couple of filets on another. And my husband (who is not following my meal plan) let's me grill up some pork or chicken for him along with a big batch of quinoa once a week so that he's not scrambling for healthy options either. And every once in a while, he'll eye something that I'm eating and offer to share it with me. Among our favorite is an avocado-tomato-cilantro salad (with protein of choice on top!) It has been no trouble at all to transition to this meal plan.
I'm past the 30 day mark now and I'm as happy as the day I hired Hillary to coach me. I have eaten more vegetables in the last month than I have in the last 2 years combined. I have more energy. More stable energy-- no spiking and bottoming out in the middle of the day. I have been trying things I've never made before. Pork carnitas in a crock pot for example. Everything is super simple, but tasty and satisfying.
And the best part is, I don't find myself craving sugar all the time. I find myself content with what I've eaten, and when I do get hungry, instead of ravaging the junk food pile at work or at home I find myself looking for something more satisfying. Yogurt and berries is a big favorite. Apples with peanut butter. Trail mix (homemade!). I'm not a dietitian, but from my observation my diet is chock full of vegetables, protein and good fats. Lots of fats. I think moving away from 95% carbs has helped a lot in the reduction of cravings and blood sugar spikes.
Once a week I have a phone consultation with Katie. And if I email or text her with a question I usually hear back within a couple of hours. She has helped me to realize that being ravenous on Monday means that I'm not fueling and re-fueling on Sunday appropriately after my long day. We made a few adjustments and I no longer wake up hungry, and Monday is just like every other day of the week-- steady energy intake and output. It is nothing short of amazing!
I think someday I would like to try moving more permanently to a plant based diet, but for now, I am eating healthy and feeling great. Even my stress level has improved dramatically. I don't know if it's all the good fats allowing my brain to function appropriately, or just the fact that I'm not eating drive thru meals 10 times a week. I still eat pizza. Just not every day. And I still eat sweets. Just not every day. I'm eating slower and finding pleasure in food again.
Food is love, and I'm definitely on the road to being happier with myself and how I'm treating myself. And this move is central to my theme of #findingaloha in 2016. Love my food, love myself.
Here are the facts:
1. I love to cook. Love. There is nothing better than taking a bunch of ingredients and making something fantastic to feed to family and friends. Food is love, after all. I used to spend hours poring over cookbooks looking for something new to try. At least one new recipe each week. Sometimes more. Not everything I made was great. Not everything I made was edible. But everything I tried was an adventure.
2. I haven't seen my kitchen in... well, years. (sad face). I am often gone from my house by 430 am, arriving home sometime around 7 pm, and fall into bed by 8 pm. That gives me roughly 60 minutes to eat, unwind, and get my shit together for the following day (rinsing water bottles, laundry (ha! j/k), bags packed, etc). Sadly, my schedule had gotten so out of hand that I was literally eating from a drive-thru two meals a day, and then eating a bowl of cereal for dinner at night. Snacking on anything I could get my hands on in the break room in between meals. Totally not kidding. And totally not cool. So not cool.
3. I have had conflicting feelings about how and what I eat. I love the idea of a plant based diet but in practice, right now, it feels overwhelming, and condescending. I know, right? How can food be condescending? Several years ago I committed myself to eating plant based (vegan) for 30 days. I was very strict for this 30 days and you know what? I felt fantastic. (This was also back when I had time to cook). I told people I wasn't doing it for "political" reasons, I just wanted to see how my health might change by eating plant based. After that 30 days, I followed a "less religious" plant based diet. Meaning I wasn't "that guy" when I went to eat with family or friends. I didn't turn down an invitation to a holiday meal with friends. And I didn't beat myself up if I ate a piece of bacon or sushi.
Somewhere along the way, I stopped having time to prepare food and so I was driving through Taco Bell for a bean burrito, cause there's no meat in that. Or grabbing a veggie pizza from the place down the street. We joked about how much pizza I was consuming, but it truly was 5-6 times a week. Often 3 meals in a row. Ultimately, my brain tied my lack of being vegan and my poor diet together, and I stressed about it even more. I felt horrible because I was eating crappy food. And even more horrible because sometimes it was In N Out Burger. *gasp* The horror of it all!
I would still go grocery shopping once a week. And out of guilt and a feeling of obligation I would buy fruits and vegetables which inevitably got thrown out at the end of their life span- untouched. I felt worse wasting food and throwing so much away. The smell of rotting produce in my fridge shamed me every time I reached inside.
I tried a couple of meal delivery services. What I found was that the portion sizes were much smaller than I would normally consume and sometimes I just didn't like the food that was delivered. Some people can choke down something they don't like because it's good for them or they paid for it. This is not me. So this wasn't a realistic long term solution for me.
During my training for Arizona, I listened to a podcast during which my coach talked about her transition to a plant based diet. She said that she did it abruptly and her training did suffer the effects of "trial and error" because it wasn't necessarily the healthy plant based diet that she follows now. In the podcast she speculated that for someone to switch to a vegan diet there would be an adjustment period, potentially up to a couple of years, while said person was figuring out how to eat the right amount and types of nutrients. When I heard this it was kind of an epiphany. I had been putting a lot of pressure on myself and this helped me to realize that what I was feeling was probably pretty normal. At that time I started to think about other options for cleaning up my diet.
I had already decided I needed to address my diet last fall as the next step in the process of #findingkona when I qualified for Hawaii in November. At that time I had nailed down my race nutrition strategy but my daily diet was still a disaster. A friend of mine had worked with a dietitian last year during her preparation for Kona and gave me a referral. I held off on contacting her because she is not based in Arizona and everything would be done online or via phone consult, and I wasn't sure how this would work.
I sat down with a couple of nutritionists locally last fall to talk about what I needed. I got a similar response from each which was something along the lines of, I don't write meal plans, I am going to teach you how to eat properly. *sigh* I know how to eat healthy. I just don't do it because I lack time to plan to eat healthy. I almost signed on because my preference in life is to support local. But in the end, I went with what was going to be best for me and I called Katie of OWN Nutrition.
Over the course of a couple phone calls and email correspondence I gave her my deal breakers. I don't have time to "cook". I want someone to tell me exactly what to eat (and when?!) and it needs to be assembly only. And I don't eat poultry. Ever. I breathed a sigh of relief when Katie was excited to help me and encouraged me in the process. She assured me that after a few months, I WOULD learn what my body needed, but for now she would handle the thinking part of it.
 |
| Boiled eggs: 10 min prep. A week's worth of snacks. |
My first meal plan arrived in my inbox. 7 days, with detailed meals and snacks. A shopping list (hallelujah!). "Recipes" for any meals that required some assembly. And a handout on portion sizes. OK, I admit, I didn't print out the portion sizes handout.
My first trip to the grocery store was a little bit overwhelming. I was still learning and hadn't yet compiled a concise list so I was running back and forth between different departments as I read down my list for the week. I have since learned and now spend 10 minutes making a list for produce, meat, frozen goods, dry goods, etc. Now I can be in and out in 30 minutes.
Week 1 I had something on my plan called the "side salad". When I set out to prep my side salad I was shocked to find it was anything but a "side"! 4-5 cups of greens (spinach, arugula and romaine), with tomatoes, almonds, and protein (some days this was salmon, others it was beans and quinoa).
 |
| Peppers and zucchini wrapped in strip steak with sauteed spinach. |
Most of my assembly is done on Sundays and Thursdays when I have an hour in the evening to prepare meals. I prepackage my lunch and dinner for the week, including all snacks. Once or twice a week I'll throw all my protein on the grill. I'll have a big salmon filet going on one burner, and a couple of filets on another. And my husband (who is not following my meal plan) let's me grill up some pork or chicken for him along with a big batch of quinoa once a week so that he's not scrambling for healthy options either. And every once in a while, he'll eye something that I'm eating and offer to share it with me. Among our favorite is an avocado-tomato-cilantro salad (with protein of choice on top!) It has been no trouble at all to transition to this meal plan.
I'm past the 30 day mark now and I'm as happy as the day I hired Hillary to coach me. I have eaten more vegetables in the last month than I have in the last 2 years combined. I have more energy. More stable energy-- no spiking and bottoming out in the middle of the day. I have been trying things I've never made before. Pork carnitas in a crock pot for example. Everything is super simple, but tasty and satisfying.
 |
| Carnitas!! In the crock pot!! Prep time: 10 minutes. *Boom* |
 |
| Big ol' salad! This is my mainstay! |
Once a week I have a phone consultation with Katie. And if I email or text her with a question I usually hear back within a couple of hours. She has helped me to realize that being ravenous on Monday means that I'm not fueling and re-fueling on Sunday appropriately after my long day. We made a few adjustments and I no longer wake up hungry, and Monday is just like every other day of the week-- steady energy intake and output. It is nothing short of amazing!
I think someday I would like to try moving more permanently to a plant based diet, but for now, I am eating healthy and feeling great. Even my stress level has improved dramatically. I don't know if it's all the good fats allowing my brain to function appropriately, or just the fact that I'm not eating drive thru meals 10 times a week. I still eat pizza. Just not every day. And I still eat sweets. Just not every day. I'm eating slower and finding pleasure in food again.
Food is love, and I'm definitely on the road to being happier with myself and how I'm treating myself. And this move is central to my theme of #findingaloha in 2016. Love my food, love myself.
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