Sugar withdrawal!!!

Ring in the New Year... I'm counting calories. At nearly 5'6" tall and somewhere between 128 and 130 pounds, I'm probably not considered overweight; however, I am 'soft' looking. For all of the exercise that I do, I would 'think' that I should carry around a little less body fat. Then again, my diet (er, former diet) has always been a mixture of good and bad. I'm one of those athletes who pretty much says, "Oh I burned 1000 calories today, I can eat whatever I want." Well, now that I'm in counting mode, I'm finding that 1000 calories adds up REALLY quickly.

I won't go into the details of my sugar addiction, but let's just say that it is probably worse than the average 'Joe'. No, I don't drink regular soda... but well... okay, I will eat brownie mix straight out of the box (cake mix too). I use about 6 to 8 tsp. of sugar in my coffee/tea every morning. When a box mix isn't available, I'll make my own brownie powder using cocoa, sugar, milk and vanilla. Gagging, yet? I could go on. Sugar addiction? Oh, yes! Carbs... another killer. We need them to fuel us for our training, but my over-indulgence in cereal (straight out of the box) has probably lead to most of my surplus calorie days. Protein... well, he has basically been the kid in class who never gets noticed. All of my cereal indulgence ends up creating a protein deficit on many days.

The thing is... I've known that I how I eat is WRONG, but I've never really been motivated to fix it. Now that I have successfully managed a year of training and races, it feels like it's time to add the diet component to all of this.

So, I'm knocking out sugar. Not a complete knock-out, but no more brownie mix or sugary cereals. Right now I'm using Splenda in my coffee/tea, but I may resort to a 1/2 Splenda- 1/2 sugar scenario in the future. The Splenda just tastes like crap. Or, with a blessing, I'll get used to it. I'm trying to focus on whole grains, veggies and fruits for carbs (instead of cereals and wheat thins) and I've seriously upped my protein intake. Right now, my diet is pretty much balancing out to a 45:30:25 ratio at the end of the day. A longer training day like today (30 miles on the bike followed by a 2 mile brick run) has me even higher on the carbs... as it should be.

I'm trying not to look at this as a "diet" or as a "New Year's resolution" as I don't consider it to be either. For me, it's more like another component of my training: training my body to look at food as fuel.

Training Notes

This is my third Sunday of doing a long outdoor bike ride. Hallelujah! I see a habit in the making. The first Sunday was a 40 mile ride, last Sunday was a 20 mile "hard" ride followed by a 5K brick and today was a 30 mile easy ride followed by a 2 mile brick. Next weekend will probably just be another 40 miler. I'm already starting to see some HR changes. Sweet progress!

This Tuesday I visit Naples Cyclery for my bike fit (or for a new bike). I'm hoping it's a positive experience. I'm really tired of being the only person who's uncomfy on their bike.

The River, Roots and Ruts trail run is only 2 weeks away. I'm excited! I hope that I can stay injury free until then. Right now I have a pain on the top/side of my left foot where the toe meets the actual 'foot' (like where a bunion would form). It doesn't hurt to run and it's difficult for me to discern a sore spot when I manually press on it; however, there's definite pain there and I feel it when I walk now and then. Weird. I hope it doesn't manifest into something bad.