Nutrition

Nutrition is a fundamental part of a triathletes success. It makes all the difference in the world in your performance level during training and events. I never realized that until I started making changes to my diet and nutrition during training the last few months. I have seen a big change in the way I perform and the way I look. It has been amazing to see the widespread affects diet has. Keena has been teaching us a lot about being healthier and optimizing our performance through the things we eat. She sends out weekly emails informing us about how sugar affects us, why we need to be drinking 96 oz of water or more a day, how protein is important in recovery, the difference between good fats and bad fats, how to use carbohydrates to our benefit and many other things. I am thankful she shares her knowledge with us and is motivating us weekly to be better. One of the things she does is covers a topic and then issues a challenge for the week related to that topic. I am happy to say that because of her challenge to eliminate sugar from our diets for just one week, I have been able to break my sugar addiction. I have been free from the chains of sugar for over a month now. I have had a couple slip ups here and there since the end of October, but when I did eat sugary foods, they were no longer satisfying. I don't enjoy them anymore and sugar is actually pretty revolting. Another thing that has been helpful is I have been tracking my food intake and it has been eye opening. It helps me to have a different perspective about what I am eating. Instead of mindless eating, I am now engaging in mindful eating. It feels so empowering to feel conscious of what I am putting in my body. I know I am making a choice every time I eat something, and I feel happy that I have enough self control to make each choice a good choice. I remember two years ago sitting at Leatherby's ice cream shop with some family friends and eating a mint chocolate chip shake. I asked my friend Kayla what she does to look so good. She was really skinny and had a lot of muscle definition. I really wanted to look like her. I have never forgotten her response. She said while pointing at my icecream "I can't eat any of that." I remember how amazed at her willpower I was and how impossible for me that seemed. 2 years later that mindset doesn't seem impossible it is now my reality. Tracking my diet and conciously choosing what I eat makes it really easy to turn down the ice cream and the cookies and the donuts. I think about how I crappy I will feel afterwords and having to add that in to my food journal. Then I think about how it will make me go over on my daily caloric intake and I won't even feel full or satisfied. I think how my exercise will have been for nothing and I can easily say no. I don't even want those empty calories anymore. So that has been another huge life change for me. Green smoothies is another lifestyle change that Keena has taught us to make. You can get all your servings of fruits and vegetables all in one drink. I find I now crave a green smoothie and prefer that to ice cream of frozen yogurt. I try to have one every day. There are so many benefits to them. I love them! The last thing I want to blog about related to nutrition is my goal to lose weight this holiday season. I want to be down to my pre-pregnancy weight by Christmas! The holidays are typically a time when everyone gains an extra 10-15 pounds. I want my weight to go the opposite direction. I leaned this month that the average American eats about 4500 calories just at thanksgiving dinner alone. I never realized till now what a glutenous holiday thanksgiving was. I decided that I wanted this year to be different. I got up at 5am and went to the Timp tri club 2 hour thanksgiving day bike in. Then I headed over to the Legacy center Turkey Jam and did 45 min of boot camp and 45 min of cadio kickboxing. I calculated that I burned about 2000 calories that morning. Then we went up to Sundance for our Thanksgiving feast. They had a huge buffet of gourmet food. I decided that I didn't want all my hard work for the morning to go to waste. Instead of eating my empty carbs first like I always do at thanksgiving, I filled up on the fruits and vegetables. I ate half a plate of green beans followed by half a plate of fruit, followed by half a plate of salad. I drank orange juice and water instead of soda and then had 2 servings of stuffing. I had one piece of turkey, and then was pretty full. I wasn't able to eat more than a few bites of mashed potatos. I didn't even want any pie but forced down a few bites. My most favorite pie in the world(pumpkin) didn't even taste good anymore. It was not appealing! I felt really proud of myself for making a better choice this year. The rest of my family felt really stuffed and complained of eating too much and feeling crappy. I however did not feel that way at all. The best part was when I got on the scale the next day I had managed to lose another 5 pounds from the previous week. That was the best feeling ever! So yeah I am motivated to keep going. I know can reach my goal and I am going to do it! I feel so much better already. So far since having the baby 6 months ago I have lost 25 pounds and I only have 15 more to go. I will keep updating my progress.