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...

Healthy Baking and Craving Busters

Although I am doing a sugar free month, straight up sugar has no appeal to me, so sweets/candies aren't something I've tried to find a healthy solution for, I normally go for fruit or dried fruit when I need a 'kick'.

What I do love, though, is cake. Mmm, mm! Especially warm. The thing is, cake is basically sugar, other refined carbs and (usually saturated, or worse, trans) fat. The fat+refined carb combo is impossible to resist for a lot of people, and I am one of them! So when I want a treat, I want cake, but I want it healthy.

Here's what I've found:

• You won't miss sugar if there's plenty of flavour going on; think vanilla extract, citrus juices/zests, peppermint or other extracts, coffee, coconut, fruit, COCOA!
• You can add bulk and sweetness with fruit- notably apple and banana, but also coconut (as flour, or you can mill shredded stuff a bit finer, half way to homemade coconut butter), squash and sweet potato.
• 
• Nuts are a good sub for flour too- ground almonds or even other nuts. It's usually easier to chop the nuts up a bit first, then add to the food processor, unless you've got a Vitamix.
• Plenty of fibre will replace the satiety you would have got from the fat- oats, oat bran, nuts again, coconut, and any of the carby fruits or vegetables mentioned above (banana, sweet potato).
• Cocoa powder in baked goods is so rich and flavourful, I find when baked there's no real need for chocolate chips.
• Eggs and protein powder are another great way to add satiety and body to sugar free/refined carb free desserts.

Of course, if you have no time to bake, look no further than the humble banana when you are desperate for a fix:

Stuffed with PB, this simple combo constantly amazes me with its tastiness and craving quashing superpowers.

Banana softserve for ice-cream cravings (pink variety pictured, but I know other people have found it good with nut butter, coconut and cocoa)

What if you don't like banana?

A really lovely apple with PB or just straight up is a good way to hold off cravings.

If it has to be warm, a small bowl of oat bran or oatmeal is a great way to snack if you are peckish before bedtime, right Heather?

Not to everyone's tastes, but I find strained yogurt or cottage cheese a very filling and satisfying treat. Especially with a teaspoon of cocoa powder and/or a sliced banana.

And of course, last but not least, you can't beat a smoothie. Try adding guar and xanthan gums for a creamier drink.

Recipes to try:

Dainty Pig's Rice Cooker Chocolate Hazelnut Cake

Pure2Raw's Lemon Coconut Bars

A Spoonful of Sugar Free's Grain Free Bitter Chocolate Cake

I doubled the recipe as I had a whole sweet potato and two eggs to use, I add a teaspoon of orange extract.

Look at the lovely silky batter:

Before going into the oven:

After:

One little cake:

Chocolate Covered Katie's High Protein Chocolate Cake

Thyme Bombe's Raw Vegan Orange Pistachio Bars

Chiliflake's WILD Blueberry Chocolate Cake

Heather Eats Almond Butter's Compendium of Sugar Free Chocolate Delights

My low sugar rhubarb crumble (contains honey)

I am off today, woohoo! And again tomorrow for St Patrick's Day. I'm waiting for my dip station to be delivered then it's out into the lovely clear sunny day for a run.

I made 'nutella' for my oatbran this morning (1/2 cup chopped hazelnuts, 1 T coconut oil, 1/4 cup cocoa, splash of hazelnut liquer). Much better than the original, although it could have done with more coconut or hazelnut oil as it's a bit thick. But it has a wonderful intense flavour. Actually it was a bit rich for me, even at 9:30 in the morning. My boyfriend loved it on toast though:)

Honeypie oatmeal and sort of sugar fail

Today was my once a week honey extravaganza...ie a teaspoon on my porridge. To be honest I wouldn't have found this oatmeal any less tasty without it. I added a tablespoon of oatbran to my rolled oats today and had to add more water. For 1/2 cup of oats I got a lot more porridge than normal because of the oatbran. I feel like a won a prize! I topped the porridge with a banana, cinnamon, the honey and a big scoop of Fage 0% Greek yogurt. It's my new luxury treat, so thick and it tastes as indulgent as whipped cream. Plus it's real Greek yogurt, not Greek-style. I only wish it was organic!

I didn't picture any more food today, but I had a coffee at my favourite coffee shop with some buttered toast- I resisted the lovely looking jam they brought me. I had some prawns on rye crackers as a late lunch/snack as I didn't want a full belly for my afternoon workout (an hour of weights, resistance stuff, squats, high knees, skipping and 20 min on the elliptical). I was pretty hungry in the evening so I had ugly looking pestoey tomato scrambled egg for supper, followed by a delicious but equally ugly bowl of peach slices heated up with 2 squares of baking chocolate and topped with a drizzle of cream. Yum! I then heated my little brother some rice pudding and mixed some strawberry jam in for him but he didn't like it, so I ended up eating it rather than bining it- yeah I ate sugar, and I didn't enjoy it. It probably didn't help that I'd already eaten dessert. Anyway I'm not too bothered as food wasn't wasted, and the jam sugar will fuel my long run tomorrow. After that, and not being terribly excited about the honey, I think I'm just going to continue the no sugar challenge with no weekly honey treat figured in- like tonight, I might find myself eating it unplanned, although I intend to avoid it.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend! I am so excited for my long run tomorrow. I hope the weather will be nice:)

Sugar Free is Everywhere- First Day

NB: This is the last post with the blog address as http://trieatingplants.blogspot.com. Please change your links/address in your blog reader to http://peskyrunner.blogspot.com. Thanks!

It was kind of freaky when I opened my Google Reader this evening and lots of people have been blogging about low sugar/sugar free eating!

Here are links to some of the blog posts I read:

HEAB on low sugar eating- Heather is my favourite low sugar bloggers, her recipes are so simple, yet so delcious and unique!

Making Food and Other Stuff on a no sugar week every month- I think this is a great idea and once this month is over I think a month a week of absolutely no sugar (maybe just fresh/frozen berries and banana but no dried fruit) and then low sugar the rest of the time would be a good way to go.

Ashley's March Detoxish- not specifically low sugar but cutting down on it for a while.

Before I started on my sugar free month, I had dessert last night after food shopping; a mini apple and berry pie with plain yogurt. Not very sugary, but there was some sugar in the fruit and the pastry.

My first day went well- I took my breakfast of no sugar muesli, banana, berries and unsweetened soya milk into work and waited until I was properly hungry to eat it.

Later on I had another banana and for lunch I had some delicious rainbow coleslaw (red cabbage, white cabbage, carrots, red pepper, homemade tofu mayo, mustard and hot sauce):

Coleslaw with mixed leaves, a little chopped up Quorn and blue goat cheese.

Later on I had a 0% Greek yogurt (Fage) with one of these bars chopped in:

They're made with apricots, sultanas, apple juice concentrate, sunflower oil and oats...and nothing else.

For dinner I had a Quorn escalope with more coleslaw and a taste of Eamonn's pasta.

While I did eat quite a bit of fruit today, for the first day I think I haven't done too bad. Most of the sugar in my diet is consumed after dinner when I'm looking for some comfort. I thought heat would be a good sub for heat, and I took some inspiration from HEAB and made oat bran with cocoa and a spoonful of natural peanut butter melted in.

Delish! I couldn't really taste the cocoa powder much, but the pb made it a very satisfying evening snack. A bit of TMI, I am a bit constipated at the moment (work is really stressful!) so having oat bran in the evenings should hopefully help a bit with that too.

I have been finding when work gets really stressful I get pain in my left upper abdomen that feels like the same pain as I had in the early stages of my pancreatitis bout last year. For that reason, I skipped my aquajogging workout today and got into my pyjamas when I got home, and didn't do any cooking tonight (hence the breaded Quorn and already made coleslaw). I will post tomorrow about it, and I won't run unless the pain is completely gone.

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