The Good Food Challenge

Note: The pictures in this post are from today's ride and have nothing to do with the post itself. ;-)

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Showing of my turtle jersey.

If you are an athlete, I am sure, people say that to you in the office:

"Take another donut, you'll run that off in no time!"

If you are an athlete, I am sure that at one point you thought to yourself:

"I am training for 10 hours a week, heck, I am going to have an extra piece of that birthday cake and maybe some ice cream on my way home!"

Last weekend, I was at a party and there was a huge spread of food and I went bananas on the buffet. At one point I got stopped by one of the hosts saying: "Chips AND a beer! What is going on?" and then the other host chimed in: "She'll run 30 miles tomorrow, don't worry!"

Truth is, I eat a lot. Truth is also, I eat fairly decent when it comes to the quality of my food. And also, when I was in the middle of Mitchell training, I could get away with a lot, only because I was working out so much. Well, I am not in Mitchell training anymore and over the last couple of weeks, this mindset of "I restricted myself so much (which I really didn't) while I was in full blown training, I deserve XYZ now!" settled in and my waistline... Oh well.

Maybe two weeks ago, I started logging my food again. This time, I do it in Training Peaks, the software that my coach uses to schedule my training and where I log my actual training. She gave me the first round of feedback the other day and basically suggested more protein and more raw fruits and veggies on top of what I was already doing.

An old barn.

With this in the back of my head, I am giving myself a "Good Food Challenge" this week. I am not trying to do this for a whole month, but just for this one week. I don't believe in restriction, but moderation mostly. Still, I want to do a whole week of clean eating, to reboot my eating habits and also because this week is just so perfect and doable. The conditions (my lunch buddy is on vacation, our weekend trip fell through, I am not racing) just seemed to line up perfectly.

It looked like rain the whole time.

This is what I will be shooting for:

• plenty of raw fruits and vegetables
• try to keep a 40-30-30 nutrition ratio (40% proteins, 30% healthy fats and 30% carbs)
• no chocolate (other than what's in the larabars), beer, popcorn, ice cream etc

I am not going to publish my before and after weight, because the weight on a scale is a crapshoot to start with. Also, it's more about better habits and I expect the weightloss to eventually follow. But I will give an account of my eats for this weeks... All of it... Yikes! ;-)

My start and end point.