100 questions

After I wrote the Lush VS Lean post, I have gotten a LOT of questions about what I eat, how to find a nutritionist, Brooke and if she's single, and no I'm sorry ladies, but she's mine and I'm not sharing.

Where did you find this wonderful woman and how much does she cost?  So here's the skinny on what I did...  I found Brooke through a health access in my health insurance company.  They always want people to be healthy, so a lot of health insurance companies offer Nutrition Counseling, Smoking Cessation Counseling, Fitness Counseling ... but y'all don't need that, you people have me to get you motivated to get out the door...  It happened that I lucked into a highly educated woman with a nutrition background who has a masters and a bunch 'o other qualities that make her a GBA nutritionist.

"Please sir... may I have s'more?"

I would recommend this as a strategy for finding a free Nutritionist.



What did she tell you to eat?  More like, how did she tell me not to eat.  We started with me joining Spark People.  This way, I could track my calories, fat, carb, protein, & iron.  This wasn't so I could lose weight.  This was so we could see what was going in.  A mega slashing of calories isn't going to result in great running, so we had to be really strategic, and she wanted to see first before we did anything rash.  So the first month was about research and development.  We made a SMART goal with the object being, 1. Sweet Item Per Week.  Do I follow it all the time now?  No.  It was a goal to get started more than my new lifestyle change.

She never said, "eat this, this and this", she said, "so, you're an athlete?  Huh.  Do athletes really eat a hotdog every week?  no.  They might eat hotdogs once every other month.  Think about that before you are tempted to put something inappropriate to your life goals in your mouth."   We used hotdogs as 'the bad food', because it was June and there was a cook-out a day going on for a while.  Margaritas have also been called out by my BFF Brooke before too.

I think constant reminding of athletic prowess is a bit extreme, but it was helpful for me.

How many calories did she tell you to eat?  She didn't, exactly.  We picked a number together.  It was too low once the miles started to pick up and we had to adjust, and we've adjusted again, and I will be adjusting this week too.  She did tell me HOW to eat the calories I was eating.  I will break it down for you.  I'm using 1600 as my number.

First we broke the calories down into 4 pieces.  100, 500, 500, 500.

The 100 is to be consumed before my morning workout.  On rest days, I don't get it.

Then we took it down again.
pre-w  100
b'fast   400
snack  100
lunch   500
snack   100
dinner  400

The 100 calorie snack is often 1/2 piece of fruit and a cheese stick.  I don't actually eat anything that's pre-packaged into a 100 calorie "snack".

Note that for me lunch is the largest meal?  Brooke is wise.  I learned pretty fast by looking at SparkPeople in that first month, that I was a habitual lunch skipper.  Then I ate way too much trying to make it back up, and was never satisfied, oh, and my nutrition was a fail with missing vitamins & random junk like that.

Hopefully this helps a little for those of you who wanted to know details.  Mostly what Brooke does for me is remind me that I'm mentally strong, to not be lazy in this area of my training, etc.

~savor the run~