Nutrition is part of training too

I eat fairly healthy.  Although I do like chocolate chips on my oatmeal every morning.  And I do put 2-3 teaspoons of sugar in my coffee with cream in the morning.  I guess we can't leave out I always have to have something sweet to snack on in the evening after dinner.  But other than that I eat lots of veggies and oatmeal, good protein and stay well hydrated.

To get the engine to run at optimum performance, you need to put optimum fuel in the tank.  That's how it is for anything - even your body.  This week's key focus of training is my nutrition, doing a cleanse - changing the fuel - going from Premium to Super Premium, or maybe even bio-diesel clean fuel.  My goal is to go 5 days with 100% clean fuel.  Today is the beginning of day 3.

1st day - anyone can do something for a day, right?
​
At day 2 there were two things I learned; 1. Eating like this is hard work.  It takes dedication and discipline and a lot of planning and time to prepare all your food.  2. Hi, my name is Kimberly and I am a sugar addict...and I am going through withdraw.  By the end of day one I started to get a mild headache.  Waking up day two with the same headache was only the beginning.  Not being able to take anything for my headache because I am trying to get all that crap in my body out is what made it worse!  I had NO energy at all, and I wasn't in the best of mood.  Just thinking about doing my workout for the day exhausted me (so I didn't do it).  By the end of the second night, still with headache and feeling like crap, I started to reorganize my goals and thinking getting through 3 days would be my limit.

Day 3, today - I woke up feeling amazing!  No headache.  Lots of energy.  Slept like a baby, waking up without an alarm at 5:43.  Wow, maybe eating clean really does help.  I got up and made my fresh juice and steel cut oatmeal...which took an hour, but well worth the wait.  Then off to my workouts for the day.  Still felt good after working-out.  Followed by some more juice, protein, and dinner.
​
Some said I was stupid for doing this because I am an athlete and need more  fuel to train, but here are my arguments to that; 1.  First and foremost - I am still fueling my body.  I am in prep-season - time to get my body for the big training - it's part of my tune up.  I am not doing 20 mile runs and 100 mile bike rides, therefore I do not need 2500-4000 calories a day.  Besides, I am eating 2 full meals, 2 protein mixes and 2 juices a day.    2. My expectations are not to loose weight, but to eliminate processed foods, sugar and other crap from my diet.  I want my body to feel better and have more energy.  I want to become more aware of what I put in my body.
​

By doing this, I have become so much more aware of exactly what is going into my body.  It is funny how I have clients who write food logs and send it to me so I can see what they are putting into their body and before they even send me their log they tell me they didn't realize they were eating in such a way until after they wrote it down.  Same here.  I know I have a little advantage with a non-stop active lifestyle that goes seven days a week; but I want to be healthy too.  Before I moved in with my husband I ate so differently; but when two different worlds meet and you don't do any of the cooking or grocery shopping things change - and what changed was my eating.  Before, I never had desserts or chocolates.  I didn't eat dairy or drink that much coffee.  This cleanse is my battle to regain what better eating habits I once had.


I still miss my chocolate...and my coffee; and I can't say I would give either up completely, but I could cut back dramatically on both.  I would be doing this if I didn't want to make changes in the end.  It will be interesting to see what the final 2 days will be like!