Diet Analysis

When I was off last week, I took the time to put everything I was eating into NutritionData to see what came out.

The main observations:

Calorie-wise, I am eating pretty much what I thought I was (slightly less even) but:

I eat a lot more carbs than I thought

I eat less protein than I thought

I don't eat enough fat

I'm consistently way under my RDA for Vitamin E, and iron, zinc and calcium are a little lower than I'd like.

Do I think this has anything to do with my current health niggles?

Probably.

My skin is really dry and I've had amenorrhea for over a year (two periods since I stopped taking the pill in December 2009) despite being within the normal weight range for my height. I quite like not having to deal with periods but for a woman of my age I should be at the peak of my fertility and if I'm not capable of getting pregnant at all (also kinda like this bit), then that's not a great indicator of my overall health, I'd say.

So, what's the plan?

I'd really rather not take a supplement, but I haven't ruled this out. Any opinions?

What I am going to do, is try eating 'primal'. I have been reading a lot about this, and when I stuck a sample Eimearified 'primal' eating day into nutrition data, it corrected my nutrient deficiencies. Fat was making up about half of my calories, and a quarter each of protein and carbs. It means three meals made up of generous quantities of leafy greens and colourful veg plus a protein source usually eggs, fish or quorn, cooking with more oil than I have been, snacking on nuts, seeds (especially those high in Vitamin E, i.e. almonds and sunflower seeds) and the odd bit of low sugar fruit (berries, citrus, and a banana post workout). For now I intend to keep eating some fermented/cultured dairy (yogurt, quark, goat cheese) even though it's not terribly 'primal' and the odd bit of legume in the form of socca and unsweetened soya milk. I've already spent this month cutting processed sugar out of my diet and now it's time to try moving grains out for more vegetables and nuts.

Sample meals:

Breakfast

Kale and bell pepper omelette, berries on the side, or

Fruit smoothie with hemp seeds or whey protein, or

Quorn and salad

Snacks

Almonds, sunflower seeds, walnuts, nut butter, pumpkin seeds, tahini, apple, pear, grapefruit, dried fruit, cocoa powder in yogurt

Post (intense) workout

Dried fruit, banana, piece of socca, glass of unsweetened soya milk, yogurt

Lunch/dinner

Big heap of veggies, salmon/quorn/homemade nut burger

Treats

Really dark chocolate, full fat yogurt, coconut, avocado pudding, glass of red wine

Tonight's dinner:

Collards, red pepper, garlic, two eggs, couple of slices of Quorn 'ham', hot sauce

And two treats...

Yes, my Gymboss timer arrived today!! So excited. Also, some quark, cocoa and berries.

In the spirit of self-analysis, I'm still super stressed. While exercise seems to help, training for this 10k is just feeding my stress, I get so fixated on the target. So when it's over, I'm going to switch to the fun of Bodyrock, weights, and a weekly sprint session and a weekly long SLOW run.

I'm also going to give up my pool membership in a bid to simplify my routine (and save a little bit of money for pampering treats like a nice bathbomb or a manicure).

Another stress reliever I want to bring back in my life is doing yoga for 15 minutes first thing, followed by my walk to work through the park. I'm hoping this will be an approach to exercise that brings me the stress relief I need- rather than increase my stress levels. I enjoy running, but I just can't train for a specific goal without pushing myself way too hard. I also need to get more sleep, so without further ado, I'm away to bed!

Pacing

Good afternoon!

We have been enjoying our day off. We've spent the time tidying the house and taking advantage of the time to make lots of nutritious food. We have been doing a little experimenting with our diets and we're tracking our intake (by putting everything into NutritionData at the end of the day) for a couple of days to check for any obvious deficiencies/excesses and then tweak accordingly. I'll post about the results, but so far my Vitamin E seems to come out rather low, and we're both eating more carbs than we though, even though we're trying to eat more protein.

Today's run was to determine MrPeskyRunner's pace for the 10k we're doing in April. We ran exactly 10k in 59:50 so he is hoping to maintain this and keep his time around an hour for the race on April 10. I am still aiming for sub-45; going on last year's results, this will probably mean I'll finish in the top 20 women! I only have two proper week's of training left, the week of the race I'm just going to do a bit of aquajogging. I'll probably run another 3 times this week and 3 times next week, with plenty of pacing work and two long slows.

Today's munches:

Breakfast- banana stuffed with PB, set yogurt with oat bran and cinnamon. + coffee, obvs.

Lunch- leftover brown rice with Quorn, spinach, pepper and a few olives, a spoonful of yogurt. I mixed it all up to eat. Mr PeskyRunner had extra rice, some mango chutney and a slice of bread with sunflower spread.

Afternoon snack: low fat plain yogurt, 1/2 cup raspberries, 1 T cocoa powder. So yummy! I love cocoa powder:D I only really started eating with without sweetener this month. I'm quite happy with sugar free eating and don't think it should be too hard to keep it quite occasional in my diet. I'm going to treat myself to a bucket of ice-cream if I finish in the top 20 women on April 10 though!

I'm away to do the last of the tidying, maybe some Bodyrock (although I don't know if I can be bothered with a second shower) and then fix dinner. I'm thinking socca pizza...

Snack face

So I got into smaller meals more frequently today, to an extent. I didn't fancy too much protein this morning and I wanted something warm so I went for runny oatmeal with a little plain yogurt, honey and cinnamon (no picture of that, I didn't have time and bowls of beige aren't exactly photogenic, especially before sunrise). I snacked on two apples with PB and cinnamon around 11.

For lunch I had an avocado and tomato sandwich with loads of lettuce which was good but I was still a little peckish, so I went for coffee and ended up eating a bit of cake, which wasn't great but I wasn't intending to do things perfectly straight away. It wasn't the indecent calorie count that was the worst- the sugar crash I got while walking home was (about 3 hours after the cake). I felt like I was walking through water and felt like I was going to pass out when I got in the door (my sight went grey and I went all wobbly although I came round after a wee sit down).

I didn't have the afternoon snack I had prepared because of the cake and I was really busy anyway. I had a small dinner of mustardy carrot potato mash baked in the oven topped with tomato slices and an egg.

Later I had my preprepared afternoon snack of cottage cheese, apple sweetened blackcurrant jam and homemade muesli for dessert. It was good but I think the cottage cheese is better with more acidic tasting fruit like raspberries or citrus fruit. My muesli is just rolled oats with tiny currants, dried blueberries, dried banana chips and flaked almonds.