If you've been following along for the past few weeks, you know that I signed up for a running program with a local hospital which included a 30 minute consult with a dietitian. Our appointment was first thing on Monday.
To tell the truth, I'd kinda been thinking about seeing a dietitian since Kristina blogged about it. I weigh about 10 pounds more than I would like. Last year I put a dent in that but I also started running a ton more which makes me EAT ALL THE TIME. For the longest time I was able to maintain the loss, but in the past two months the scale started going north of 140 again. It's not so much about the weight as it is that I'm ravenously hungry all of the time, and the only thing that helps is to eat...a lot...of stuff that doesn't make me feel great. The only doubt that I had about the appointment is that 30 minutes is barely long enough to say hi, so what on earth were we going to get done in that time?
A lot as it turns out. But man did we both talk fast....
She got my height and weight (5'5", 140) and asked me about my goals for the visit (see above). She asked how I felt about my weight, and I told her that though losing weight isn't my top priority in life, I could sure do without the extra 10 pounds.
She asked me to talk her through a typical day of eating, specifically that day. I told her...well you can see it all below. She asked me questions about how I prepared certain foods and estimates of portion size. She asked how I track my eating and I showed her the small notebook that I carry around in my purse (I didn't say "birchwoodpie dot blogspot dot com")
Her take: she thinks my vegetable intake is good (something I never expected to hear anyone let alone a dietitian to say to me), but she doesn't hear much talk about fruit or grain. She doesn't believe that I eat enough in the morning which leads to a blood sugar drop by lunch that I just can't catch up with. She gave me a bunch of handouts and talked through some food choices - she doesn't like red meat and pork, she's big on soy.
Her recommendations/what was going on in my head/what we discussed:
- Eat more in the morning.
- Dear God, how am I supposed to eat more? I get hungry in the afternoon, what on earth is eating in the morning going to do except boost my food intake even more?
- I didn't share my thoughts on this with her.
- Eat between 1600-1800 calories a day for a goal weight loss of one pound a week. 130-134 is a good target.
- Um, that's what I've been trying to do for the past year, did she not hear me say that I run 30 miles a week? A heavy duty running day is going to be a thousand calories over that easy. But it sure would be sweet to get down to the low 30's.
- I told her that I did not see this as being realistic. She said to try it - if it doesn't work, email her and we'll figure something else out. "My intention is not to starve you."
- Use MyFitnessPal to track my intake and figure out where I fall calorie and nutrient wise. She can't tell from our conversation if I eat enough protein, calcium, or iron.
- Ok, this is just dumb. I've used MFP before, I think it's great if you're logging a Big Mac and large fry, but it's not practical if you cook 99.9% of your food at home.
- She challenged me to try it, why can't I just scan the barcodes as I'm cooking? I told her I would try it, maybe it's gotten easier since the last time I tried it.
- I headed into work, and felt oh so tired as I usually do in the mornings. Not hungry...tired...so...hmm what would happen if I ate a Clif bar? Darned if I didn't stop being tired all of a sudden. I had lunch and did not make moves to eat everything in the office in the afternoon. I repeated this pattern every day.
- I very skeptically installed MFP....whoa. I don't remember how many years ago I last used it, but man is it better. It took a bit of time to set up the recipes for some of my most common meals but it wasn't that bad.
- It was fairly easy to eat 1,700-1,900 calories most days. I mean it was kind of a pain but it also wasn't that bad. The exceptions were Wednesday (date night ==>dessert & wine, no regrets and no plans to change that) and Saturday (deliberately ate a lot because I had a race the next day ==>wow I felt so tired, I will not be doing this again for a while).
- What MFP has to say about my diet after 7 straight days:
- Avg 2,100 cals/day, net average after exercise is 1,650 (it's linked to my Garmin).
- I kill it on fiber, potassium, vitamins A&C.
- I'm a bit shy on calcium and way shy on iron.
- Macro wise, 46% carb, 38% fat, 16% protein. The dietitian and MFP both say 50-30-20 is the target.
- P.S. I did not weigh myself this weekend because I planned to eat up for a race, but I will share next week.
- I'm now on board. I don't believe that I'll be able to sustain 1,600 to 1,800 calories but if I could just get to 2,000 I think I'll lose weight, it doesn't have to be a pound a week. I don't see using MFP for the rest of my life but I'm on a 7 day streak and I'll keep using it for the short term - if it helps great, if it becomes tedious I'll stop.
Breakfasts
Monday & Friday: breakfast potatoes, salsa, avocado, and eggs.
Tuesday & Thursday: breakfast burritos
Wednesday: avocado toast
Saturday: Trader Joe's Honey Crunch n' Oats. I wasn't running that day so I just wanted a lil' something. I was so hungry after I ate this, so back to what that dietitian was saying...
Sunday: pre-race peanut butter & honey toast.
Lunches
Monday: Chrissy Teigan's actual drunken noodles
Tuesday & Friday: veggie burrito
Wednesday: baked ziti and a salad
Thursday: big ol salad with tofu from work catering
Saturday & Sunday: snacks
Dinners
Monday (family meal): leftover palooza. We had 5 mini meatloaves in the freezer, and the leftover pickings from Saturday were 2 twice baked potatoes, and a portobella cap...now just divide that by 3 people....
- Hubs and stepson #2 each had a twice baked potato and two meatloaves.
- I had a meatloaf and the portobella with a quick microwave baked sweet potato.
Tuesday (family meal): Costco chicken skewers, veg, cilantro lime rice from the freezer, and avocado. The backstory on the avocado is that hubs and stepson #2 both eat guac regularly, but plain avocado falls outside of their comfort zones. Stepson #2 declined, but hubs was feeling adventurous and agreed to try it ==> he was a happy man.
Wednesday (date night): Chicken parm aka hubs favorite meal in the world aka the easiest meal in the world to cook especially in the air fryer aka the meal that everyone in our house eats without complaint and I really need to make it more often.
Thursday (fend for yourself night): a concoction of an air fried flounder filet, cilantro lime rice, Costco stir fry veggies, avocado, sushi ginger, and a bit of dressing and crunchies from an Asian salad kit. Yum.
Friday (family night out): hit up a friend's graduation par-tay. Fried chicken (for the menfolk, I can't stand it) and buffalo mac & cheese (yum, need to make at home ASAP).
Saturday (family birthday party): Headed over to one of the SIL's for a cousin's bday. Chicken, jojos, pizza. And cake.
Sunday: sweet potato with light butter and garlic powder, Costco's Asian cashew crunch mix, Costco chicken skewers, and half an avocado's worth of guac.
Trader Joe's Haul Deets
- Regular groceries: Greek yogurt, apples, cocoa powder, sun butter, chocolate brownie Clif bars (main dietary staple of stepson #2, TJ's sells 12 packs), and a handful of Clif bars of assorted flavors for me. Lately Clif bars have moved up on my snack list.
- TJ's specific staples: Smashin' Smores, This Fig Walks into a Bar
- New stuff to try: Honey Crunch n' Oats cereal, Carrots of Many Colors (eh, they taste like sawdust but the kids have been munching on them so it was a very worthwhile one time purchase), TJ's sunscreen (no we will not be eating this...TJ's does sell other things besides food).
- Stuff that I didn't buy because they didn't have it: energy bar bites (really hope they haven't discontinued these), and white Jasmine rice...I hope they were just out of it, there was plenty of brown rice on the shelves. I've been buying this since my first trip to TJ's (2005...it was $2.99 then and it's $2.99 now).
26.4 miles of running total. It's week 1 of 10 of this speed plan, adapted for Sunday's 10k. I started the week with a super awkward double Garmin situation...I set up the workouts on the F35 and used the F305 to track my speed. The F35 doesn't show speed when it's in workout mode and the F305 is just too darn complicated to set up workouts on (yes I tried).
Monday: 4 miles with 5 x 30 seconds speed/1 min recover. Weights at lunch.
Tuesday: 5 miles with 5 x 3 minutes speed/3 minutes recover.
Wednesday: normally a rest day, but I did 3 miles because (1) the plan called for a short run and (2) I had a new to me Garmin to try out. Yes it's nice to sleep in a bit on Wednesdays but this run felt good. Weights at lunch.
Thursday: 5 miles with 4 x 5 minutes speed/2 min recover. Or YASS THANK U GARMIN F235...I told my watch to tell me what to do and how fast to do it and it worked like a dream. No guesswork.
Friday: 3 miles with 5 x 10 second sprint/1 min recover...this one was easy enough to do in my head. Weights at lunch (pats self on back for 2nd consecutive week of 3x weight training).
Saturday: off to rest up for 10k.
Sunday: 10k...yeah it did not go well. Maybe the change in my training, maybe the cutback in calories (though I ate plenty on Saturday), maybe it was the hot weather (my nemesis) but I was ready to throw in the towel after mile 2. I also think the psychology of a bad half marathon and the expectation of a PR played a role. Question for the folks: when a race goes badly, do you stay in or drop out? I stayed, but I wonder if it would have been better to just call it a day. All I can say is that it wasn't my slowest 10k. I'll take a minute to lick my wounds and I'll get back at it.
On a positive note, I've figured out what people mean when they talk about the Running Community. I saw so many people wearing the shirts from the 10 mile race and recognized a bunch of people from the half marathon. (P.S. every time I have a conversation with someone who ran that day, they keep increasing the temperature. At first everyone said it was 85, last week someone said it was 87, this morning someone said 88...can I get a 90? Look it was Too Hot by any measure but the inflation is funny and I really appreciate it).
Watching
Eh, not much. Nibbling at some Married at First Sight.
Reading
Necessary People by Anna Pitoniak
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