So a few weeks ago I had a little scare. A little chink in the health armor. Not huge or life threatening, but enough to say some things needed to change. Mostly my eating habits. Those habits have been bad for a long time. I am not one to say that we need to deprive ourselves. It is fun to eat crap on occasion and really enjoy it. I have been on a feeding frenzy since the marathon in October. There has been no deprivation. As much as I really do think that I know about health and fitness, I do some stuff that isn't that smart. I have wanted for a long time to get to a certain weight and musculature to see how my body would perform. I could not bring myself to get dedicated enough to start the process. Along the way, I got somewhat frustrated in my inability to get back to my pre-marathon fitness level. Bottom line is that I guess I just didn't want it badly enough. I started looking at how much I actually ate. What kind of foods I was eating and how much salt and sugar I ingest. It was a lot. I was fooling myself by saying that I exercised enough to deserve and be able to eat that much. Then, of course we hear that muscle weighs more than fat. I lift a fair amount, so did that mean I had very heavy muscles? Were my love handles not really lard, but extra muscle just waiting in reserve? And was my double chin there to help me chew through a tree in a pinch? I'm going to say no. I know that no matter what I do, that I will not look the way I would really like to. I know that I will never be as fast as I once was or would like to be. I'm not even sure if that is really important. But, if my health is in jeopardy at all, then that is another story.
The best results I have had in my adult life was last year. Eating wise, I would eat pretty decently during the week and have one blowout day. On the blowout day, I would eat most anything I wanted. In addition, I exercised in a efficient manner. That meant lots of speed and power workouts. Lots of kettlebells. Tobata workouts. Step training with pushups, sit-ups and sprints. These were short yet intense workouts that were over in maybe 30 minutes. My days of going to the gym for an hour or hour and a half and fooling myself into thinking I was working out were over. You know those workouts...mostly sitting and waiting for someone to get off a machine. My long runs were at a good pace and I stuck to a decent schedule with all that. They say that with the correct workouts and eating plan, your body in time starts to get really efficient in burning fat. I found that to be true. I was amazed last year to find that my running got so much better and the pr's came almost every race. Then after the marathon, I had the knee thing. Then the eating escalated. Then some minor depression and pity party issues.
I decided two weeks ago to go cold turkey on most of the stuff I eat. I don't need it. I was eating for some kind of comfort. That comfort is a temporary thing. I needed to look at food in a different way. This is what I came up with. When I was a kid, food was just a necessary part of the day. My parents fed me three nutritious meals a day. Food was not a focus of the day. In the last number of years, I thought of food all the time. We only need so much to sustain ourselves. I'm calling my new plan, The Eat Like I'm Living in the 70's Again Plan. This is where our parents fed us and then told us to get the hell out of the house and do something. I also try to look at my exercise in the same manner. It can be hard, but it is fun. When we were kids, we just ran. We went out and rode our bikes. We did stuff. I don't want to look at everything like I am in training. That is why I stray from a plan a lot. I need to keep it fresh and interesting. Same with my eating. I don't have a specific plan and I don't really feel like I am missing anything. I'm eating til I am satisfied which has taken a bit of time to get used to because I have often eaten until I feel disgusted. I've often wondered what shape I would have been had I not had an extremely active job on top of the exercise.
To conclude this mess, this is where my head is. I do not want to be on medication. I do not want operations. I do not want to depend on anything but myself. If absolutely necessary, I will of course go the traditional route. If I can change a few things to make my life and health better, that is what I'm going to do.
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