After giving birth to Makenzie, I discovered one of the best things ever. Food is not the enemy! In fact, my body told me EAT if you want to get in the shape you hope to achieve. And as I grew deeper in my faith and recognized my body as something of value, I began to see the importance of respecting it and fueling it adequately. I finally chose to listen to my body after years of following crazy food rules and ended up in the best shape of my life. I took that same approach post-Braedon and, wouldn’t you know, I made the same sort of progress and feel pretty dang good if I do say so myself. Eat well. Have energy. Live well. Get a healthy, strong, FIT body. Don’t mind if I do!

It always saddens me when I hear about diet plans with recommended calorie intakes of 1200 calories. I truly believe its possible for a healthy individual with no metabolic issues to lose weight eating more than that. I hope to display that you can certainly eat enough food to fuel your body well, feel satiated, and still make progress.

I certainly don’t post all of my eats on a daily basis, so for today’s What I Ate Wednesday post I wanted to give a rundown of ALL my typical daily meals and how they add up. I even broke out the Eat Smart Precision food scale I received at the Fitbloggin conference to get accurate counts for you all. I ate as I normally do, but simply measured the portions I typically use. The scale made measuring for the day easy and accurate since I could choose to measure in grams. Note: If you measure things, always use grams. You get more food. Reason enough for me!

Oh, flashbacks to competition prep days! It’s been a long time since I’ve measured things besides the occasional check on portion sizes or for recipe purposes. And it’s certainly been forever since I have measured things like raisins! Nevertheless, I wanted to get an accurate depiction, so here we are. Besides - calories beware. You don’t scare me!

Pre-Workout:

Banana = ~ 110 calories

Breakfast:

• 1/2 cup rolled oats cooked in water
• 4 large strawberries diced
• handful of raisins (ended up at 26 grams)
• big blob of peanut butter (ended up at 29 grams)
• splash of unsweetened vanilla almond breeze to reach the right consistency + almond milk in my iced coffee (~ 1/2 cup)
• sprinkle of brown sugar for sweetener (~ 1 tsp?)

Grand Total = 467 calories

Lunch:

• flat out wrap
• sliced deli ham – 4 oz
• 1 garlic herb laughing cow wedge
• mustard
• handful of spinach
• thick slice of tomato
• 2/3 of a mango
• 2 large carrots chopped into sticks
• 2 tablespoons Sabra Roasted Pine Nut hummus

Grand Total = 432 calories

Afternoon Snack:

• whole wheat English muffin
• spread of peanut butter on each slice (equaled 14 grams)
• spread of “just fruit” strawberry jam on each slice (equaled 12 grams)
• 6 oz container vanilla Chobani yogurt
• handful Kashi Honey Sunshine cereal (equaled 22 grams)

Grand Total = 448 calories

Dinner:

• 3/4 cup cooked whole wheat penne pasta
• chopped cherry tomatoes
• diced zucchini
• diced mushrooms
• chopped artichoke hearts
• chopped black olives
• 1 oz feta cheese
• 1.5 tbsp Ken’s Northern Italian dressing

Grand Total (estimate on this one because I got so sick of measuring): 450 calories

Dessert:

• Private Collection cookie ice-cream sandwich while finishing up The Bachelorette

Total = 240 calories

In total, I ate 2147 calories on a typical day of meals. I haven’t changed my eating habits from when I made progress on my Body After Baby journey. I usually eat a good deal more than this on weekends as I consumer more “treats” and have a hunger monster at work every Saturday after my long runs. Sure, every body is different. However, I know in light of certain diets, it can appear that we need to eat less less less. From my personal experience, I find the opposite. My body will only reach the places it has when I give it what it needs. And I want to show the value in eating enough. Enough is different for each body…but why not push the limits to get the most quality fuel you can to it? Eating is fun. Enough with the starvation!

• Do you ever track your food at all?
• Because I’m curious – your thoughts on The Bachelorette if you watched!

This morning I had a rude awakening. I got myself all prepped and ready to head out for my run and decided to look at my training plan on the way out the door. Wait! I had apparently looked at the wrong week before, because I thought this week called for my recovery week (no long run and no speed/tempo run). Yet, there on the calendar – 5 mile tempo run: warm-up 1 mile, 3 miles @ 8:30 pace, cool down 1 mile. Recovery week = next week. C’est la “le training plan”.

My past two experiences with tempo runs have certainly taught me a couple of things:

• don’t choose a super hilly course
• I need to learn how to pace myself and not go from super fast to relaxed pace over and over again

I took those two lessons to the street running pathway and cranked out my tempo run for today. I’m still a work in progress but I hit the tempo pace a lot closer and steadier than my previous tries.

• Mile 1 = 9:47
• Mile 2 = 8:37
• Mile 3 = 8:25
• Mile 4 = 8:29
• Mile 5 = 9:24

Right now, I think pacing provides my biggest challenge with running, and especially within my training plan from Smart Coach. I strive to listen to my body, but my body will feel great going at a fast 7:45 pace…for about two minutes. Then, I listen to my body, and slow down to a 9:45 pace instead. I highly doubt that is the most productive way to run. 😉

While I really enjoyed running my 10K race without a Garmin, I did end up with some energy walls to push through at the end. I managed, and ended up with a great race time, but would like to get pacing a little more under control before future races so I can give a race all I have, without reaching that “my tank is EMPTY!!!!” feeling only 2/3 of the way in.

Coco from the blog Running With Perseverance has recently discussed pacing for training and races and it got me thinking about the same things. Smart Coach gives me paces with each run based on my 10K race time. I always shoot for the fast paces given in the speed and tempo runs, usually hit the ~ 10:00 min/mile pace on the treadmill once/week, but then just go with what feels good on my other two runs of the week. I consistently end up running my second short run of the week and my weekly long run at least 30 seconds faster than the recommended average paces.

Wait! Are they saying I should go slower than what I can handle comfortably? Do I need to make myself run these runs slower? Even though those runs feel comfortable, do I need to take it back in order to aid against injury? How can I follow these suggested 10:00 min/mile long run paces my entire training and then suddenly manage the 8:14 average pace the plan proposes for my half marathon? Side note: I laugh over that because I would die with happiness managing an average pace a minute higher than that for 13+ miles! But that’s besides the point. The point of all this rambling? I just don’t get the pacing and if/what I should change about how I currently approach it.

Okay – enough running chat! Time for deliciousness!

I topped myself in my little smoothie world today. Well, almost. We are out of spinach, which would have only made this smoothie better, but today’s creation certainly left me mmmmmming more than the usual mix.

Earlier in the week, I froze one banana and half a fresh mango with visions of a summer delight smoothie. I added those to 1 cup vanilla almond milk, 1/4 cup light coconut milk, and 1/2 scoop Power GY vanilla protein powder. Wait! Can’t forget the pinch of xanthan gum! Made my smoothie too thick to drink…

Okay. I could drink it but wait! Dunking is more fun.

And isn’t macadamia nut some sort of tropical flavor friend? My lunabar snack yesterday had me hankering for another today…because NO I did NOT really feel bad or embarrassed over my meals yesterday. Sorry the sarcasm didn’t come across so well! Back to today, though.

Best. Snack. Ever! Or this week. Depending on how dramatic I feel. Regardless, it’s delicious and you should give your own blender the satisfaction of making one. And your own mouth the satisfaction of tasting one.

• Runners – how closely do you pay attention to pacing? Is there something to this slow pacing thing?
• Yummy Food Lovers – Are you a tropical flavor lover? What do you think of when you think of tropical flavors?
• FFF Spotted: Check out a post covering some of my favorite healthy snacks on the Power GY site!