Eating for Fitness: Key Nutrition & Recovery Smoothie

I recently ran my first marathon, and training for that taught me an awful lot about food and eating! I originally started this blog as a way to share recipes I was using when trying to get back into shape and lose some weight. In the almost two years since I launched my blog my priorities have definitely changed! I was hoping to get in good enough shape to have a decent 5k time, and here I am a year and a half later running what my husband calls crazy-person distances.

One thing I had to begin to adapt to when running longer distances was actually eating a lot more food. Initially I continued tracking my daily intakes, just to make sure I still wasn't over eating, but the more I ran the more I realized I still needed to track what I was eating, but for a completely different reason. I found I wasn't eating enough food on days where I put in 2 or more workouts, or was out running for 3 to 4 hours.

Any time you're exercising nutrition is incredibly important, especially when you're pushing your body to extremes such as with running a marathon or training for one. I often found when I would get home from a really long run I had very little appetite, despite the fact that I know I've burned upwards of 2000 calories. It becomes a bit of a battle with myself, the logic part of the brain saying "EAT!!!" and the other part wanting nothing to do with it. What I've found to be helpful is having a recovery smoothie. This way I can help replenish electrolytes, and fluids as well as get in some calories quickly. It almost like tricking yourself into eating.

There are a ton of commercial "recovery drinks" available, many are full of artificial sugar, artificial colours, flavours and ingredients no one can pronounce. Why not go natural and fill your body with natural replenishers instead? It might take a bit more prep work, but in the end its worth it in my mind!

A few things to consider about your post-workout replenishing:

1) You need salt (aka electrolytes)! So many health conscious people avoid salt and try to do low sodium products (I know I'm one of them!) but this is one time not to skip. Salt doesn't just mean table salt (sodium), but other essential minerals like potassium, calcium and magnesium. All of these electrolytes work together in your body and are all lost through sweat.

• bananas
• kiwi
• cherries
• beans

2) You need sugar! Maybe skip the refined white sugar, but there are plenty of ways to get good sugars in! Fruit is high in natural unrefined sugars, like fructose, which is easy for your body to absorb and gives your body relatively quick energy. Sugar is stored in our muscles as glycogen, but when exercise is lengthy or strenuous, our bodies use up our glycogen stores. Eating some sugars (the healthy kind!) right after a workout helps our bodies to replenish these stores so our muscles don't fatigue as much and so we're ready to go for next time!

• berries
• citrus
• pineapple
• sweet potato/pumpkin
• fruits with pits (apricot, peach, plum, mango)

3) You need protein! Protein is a great way to get in some longer term energy and to help our muscles build. Sore muscles are actually a sign of teeny-tiny micro damage to our muscles (don't worry, this is how they grow!) and they need proteins (and amino acids) to repair themselves. Protein doesn't mean you have to go out and buy whey protein powder or puree a steak, it just means being creative about where you find your sources of protein! Your body also uses minerals like iron to help absorb protein & make muscles grow.

• greens (spinach, kale)
• yogourt & whey (the liquid part on top of yogourt)
• nuts (or almond milk)
• chickpeas

4) You need fluid! Right after a workout your body is probably dehydrated. Very few people actually drink enough fluid during exercise to account for what is lost. But don't dismay, you don't have to stay dehydrated! Sugar & electrolytes will help your body absorb fluid more readily, so make sure your smoothie has some ice or juice or liquid too!

• coconut 
• milk (chocolate, soy, almond)
• whey (from homemade yogourt)

Diet Foods

It's the new year, which makes it the time if year that people are trying their hearts out to keep to their New Years resolutions. I too am working in getting back to healthy (I'm fairly certain I are my own weight in gingerbread cookies over the holidays). I know that over the holidays I didn't run as much as I should have, and I definitely are too much on several occasions and I also had wine way more often than I normally do. 

A super common "trick" that first time dieters, or people who are unfamiliar with nutrition tend to do is eat a lot of "diet food". The 100 calorie snack packs, fat free yogourt, tons if products marked "light". Some of those products are okay, some are terrible. The problem with simply trying to switch to diet food, is that it doesn't really involve changing how you feel about food and health, it's simply a crutch. 

One of the biggest problems with diet food is that despite being sugar free, they actually precipitate our desire for more. Diet foods (like yogourt, granola bars, juices, soda) are full of artificial sweeteners, which actually make us crave sugar more. Artificial sweeteners simply fool our taste buds, not our brains into satisfying a sugar craving. When the body naturally has sugar, dopamine (the reward hormone) gets released from the pleasure centre in the brain. When people stick to diet foods, the body continues to build up a craving for sugars, which makes the craving more intense and makes people more likely to succumb to a larger craving. A happy medium is the have natural sugars (like fresh fruits) in moderation. Top plain yogourt with fresh fruit instead of opting for diet yogourt and you'll be better off! 

Happy New Year!

Happy New Years! I hope that this coming year brings health and most of all happiness to everyone! 2013 has been an incredible year for me! I went back to school, started running more seriously, and managed to find time to eat even healthier this year! 2013 was a year about maintaining lifestyle changes and focusing on what was important to me and my family! I'm excited for what 2014 will bring, including a bunch of running races (including my very first FULL marathon), graduating from school and continuing to focus on a healthy, happy me!

New Years often brings a slew of resolutions, many of which people fail to stick with. I found a few studies that said less than 10% of people actually stick with their resolutions! And to be honest, it isn't surprising. Waiting until the new year to put into action plans you've been meaning to get around to is a terrible way to do things. Why not just start the day you decide you want to make a change? I've been trying to convince a few friends of mine to join November Project  (which I'll explain shortly) with me, and they have all said "I'll think about it in the new year, that's when I'm going to focus on losing weight". Well, why not just start today?

The problem with waiting until you make a New Years Resolution is two fold. Firstly, you're putting something off until an arbitrary date, hoping it will bring you more success, and secondly you're wasting valuable time waiting until the next year to begin. What I like to do rather than wait, and create a resolution, is keep an ongoing bucket list

All of that being said, if you made New Years Resolutions this year, stick with them! Be part of that 8% that keeps their goals! See my post from last year about setting SMART Goals to help get you started and keep you on track! Figure out what works for you and what keeps you motivated. A goal should be about yourself, not about others, and not about comparing yourself to others.

One more tidbit...rather than setting a New Years Resolution, consider a 2014 "Bucket List". I usually keep one each year, and add to it when I find a new goal I want to achieve. I find this to be a more fluid way of keeping track of my goals!

Lets see what an amazing year 2014 can be!