Taste the Rainbow

Happy Happy Tuesday!!  Did I sound peppy enough to fool you?  No?  Well, I tried :-)



http://www.nataliedee.com/



 It's recovery week here in my little corner of the world, which means that I've come off of a 7 week build in training, and it's time to sit back and rest my body up a bit.  While I usually hate recovery week with a passion, this time around I'm gonna use it to re-look at my 2011 goals and firm up my race season (final decision about Ironman versus Marathon sub 4-ing to emerge) and to treat myself with a bit more respect.  How so?  Enter the 4th discipline of triathlon....you have your swimming, biking and running and....NUTRITION.

Yup, it's time to stop training with abandon and using it as an excuse to load myself up with yummy food crap.  True, it's delicious crap, but how to I expect my body to run well on it?  You got me.  Overall, I consider myself to be about 60/40 for healthy eating...I'm aiming for 80/20.  I do decently well in the fruits/veggies category, but I fall short on protein and love all carbs-even the wrong ones.  Do I have a plan of action?  Working on that one :-) 

Focusing on the positives....here are my top 5:

1.  I eat lots of produce-at least 3 servings of fruit and 5-7 of veggies each day.
2.  Most of my mainstay carbs are NOT refined:  whole wheat bread, oats, barley, brown rice, etc.
3.  I eat breakfast every day-oats and banana and almonds-a good mix of carbs, fat and protein.
4.  I eat every 2-3 hours to keep my energy even.
5.  I eat fish at least 2 times per week.

So, now for the flip side, here are my areas that need work:

1.  I eat breakfast way too late-sometimes not until 10am.
2.  I eat breakfast like a pauper, lunch like a queen, and dinner like a king.  And after dinner snacks like Bill Gates a bajillionaire.  This needs to get reversed, stat.
3.  I eat too many refined carbs after dinner.  It's like my healthy eating goes to crap after 8pm.
4.  I use formeldahyde equal in my coffee and sometimes in my cereal.  Yuck.
5.  I overeat trigger foods like peanut butter than are calorically dense.  Seriously.  Set me down with a jar and a spoon and I can eat half in one sitting.  Wow.

Looks like I have my work cut out for me!  While I am NOT seeking perfection, I would like to ideally get my body fat down a few percentage points (right now I am at 22% and would love to go under 20%) and get to a better racing weight by Musselman in July.  I intend to focus on 2-3 mini goals per week and, for my own accountability, report on the blog how I did :-)  It's all about baby steps!

Week One Goals (May 3rd-8th)

1.  Choose one after dinner snack.  If I am still hungry, I will have a hot drink or some seltzer to test out if it is hunger or boredom.

2.  Reaquaint myself with what a serving size looks like!

3.  Branch out a bit with fruits and veggies-I get stuck in a rut, especially with fruit. With growing season 'round the corner here in New York, it's time to taste the rainbow!  NO, not the skittles rainbow :-P

How do you treat your nutrition?  Is food  fuel for your lifestyle or do you treat it as an after thought?