I’m not a “foodie” but I sure love to eat.\u00a0 A lot.\u00a0 Often.\u00a0 I found, though, that the more I exercise – marathon training in particular – the better I am getting at making healthier choices, limiting “cheats” (focus on limiting, not eliminating….) and planning my nutrition instead of eating randomly.\u00a0\u00a0 (oh my goodness, having actually committed that to writing I can now check that one off my list! Yeah!)<\/p>\n
Except…it goes both ways.\u00a0 Over indulging in food and drink is never a good thing – we ALL know that.\u00a0 But neither is “under” indulging.\u00a0 So this morning I woke up and puttered around the house, drank lots of water and enjoyed a cup of coffee with a smidge more sugar than usual (not agave, not Splenda…the real deal:\u00a0 white pure cane goodness).\u00a0\u00a0 I wasn’t enthusiastic about my Sunday training run – but I knew I wouldn’t be happy unless I had it under my belt.\u00a0 So after logging into Mapmyrun.com I mapped a 13 mile course.\u00a0 I stared at the monitor and made a deal with myself – after a hard and long run the day before, I decided to go “easy”…and I deleted the course and re-mapped a 10 miler.\u00a0 Sneakers, stretchy pants, mismatched T shirt and Ishuffle and off I went.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I cursed at the course\u00a0 I selected;\u00a0 several long stretches had no sidewalks so I was running slowly and cautiously on the shoulder and clearly my hips are wider than I imagined ‘cuz those cars seemed very close<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0 I felt kinda lousy…my breathing was fine but my legs felt like bricks…not a real motivating run, I promise you.<\/p>\n 91 minutes later I ran into the driveway, (a bit slower than previous runs, but I struggled through every mile)\u00a0 past my dogs who wanted to go for a run (!) and straight to the sink.\u00a0 I drank several tall glasses of water before I took a quick shower and got on with my day.\u00a0 I had a lot to do and little time to do it.\u00a0 Fast forward:\u00a0 it was almost 5 pm before I ate anything at all.\u00a0 Gee, wonder why my energy level was super low?\u00a0 I can’t lie, I was aware of the calorie deficit throughout the day and thought that maybe…just maybe….the scale would finally budge.\u00a0\u00a0 But all I wanted to do was take a nap.\u00a0 Fortunately for me the leftovers from the previous\u00a0 night were conveniently located in the frig, and I enjoyed a small serving of eggplant rollatini with about a cup of pasta and sauce.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But still…not enough…and I know better.\u00a0 We have to feed ourselves with healthy good food…<\/p>\n So, Food and Think: and remember, maybe an apple a day is the right idea after all!<\/p>\n The first step to improving any and all aspects of your health is eating right. This doesn’t have to be a challenging endeavor. Yes, there are many diets to choose from but remember the most important thing you need to do for yourself is eat. Don’t think that if you skip a meal you’re doing your bodies a favor; thinking cutting back on the intake will give you a jump start on leading a healthy life.<\/p>\n What may seem like a short cut to weight loss or feeling fit is actually a quick way to gaining more fat, losing energy and basically ruining yourself and body<\/strong>. From skipping meals the body assumes you’re unable to find a reasonable source of nourishment so it begins to store fats as a safety precaution thinking you’ve fallen on hard times and will need those fats as a backup source of energy. From this you can become flabby because you will lose weight but only from the depletion of your muscle mass. This occurs because your body needs water as well as nutrients and both can be found in muscles.<\/p>\n Your body will try to preserve the remaining proteins and metabolize the fat in the form of acetoacetic acid, or ketone bodies<\/strong>. This process of using ketone bodies is called ketosis. From ketosis you can experience the following: a stale taste in your mouth, nausea, fatigue, constipation, lowered blood pressure, elevated uric acid levels (kidney disease and gout), and in regards to pregnant women, fetal harm\/stillbirth. You don’t have to stuff your face at every meal, but make sure you do eat. If you feel you’ve eaten too heavy at breakfast, have a light lunch, too heavy at lunch have a light supper. After you get in the routine of not skipping meals, don’t forget to make wise food choices and stay active.<\/p>\n An apple, having no fat, cholesterol, or sodium, is a healthy food choice<\/strong>. Easy to carry and great anytime, they contain small amounts of potassium which support heart health\u00a0and help maintain healthy\u00a0blood pressure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The first step to improving any and all aspects of your health is eating right. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10,15,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-diet-diva","category-goals-and-motivation","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6ZZxW-9u","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/hnetalk.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/hnetalk.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/hnetalk.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hnetalk.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hnetalk.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/hnetalk.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/hnetalk.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hnetalk.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hnetalk.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}