THE TRIAL HALF WAY!
Thursday, June 4, 2009 at 12:18AM Halfway Through.
it is now day 19 of the trial, i would call that half way through....(30/2... yeah) time for a review of how i am feeling how the trial has been going and just some general observations of the past few weeks.
What was the point of all of this? The point was to see how diet really affects a triathlete. To see if diet really can help a typical age grouper that does triathlon for fun and uses the amount of training required to participate in the sport to justify his eating habits.
What did i change?
Stopped drinking coffee, this physically hurt for 5 days. i had caffein withdrawals and headaches all day long. this was strange considering i was only drinking 1 cup of coffee a day. however after 5 days i was fine, and after a week i was waking up without struggling to wake up. i was usually waking up before the alarm went off well rested and energized. where as before i would be groggy and it would take a solid 30 min to get my body going. The only times i have run into an instance where i want coffee is on a sunny sunday afternoon when i am walking around with friends, i miss having that cup of coffee in my hand.
Stopped drinking soda. this was fairly easy i would normally have 1 can of soda with lunch because we have a big fridge filled with it at work for free. i have not noticed any effects from giving up the soda. The only time i find myself craving it is after a long day working outside a nice ice cold Mt. Dew would hit the spot!
Stopped drinking alcohol, this is probably the hardest one. Not the hardest one because i need a drink but hardest one because everything i do socially usually involves drinking. Going to happy hour with friends or just wanting to sit outside at a resturant and enjoy the weather, you cant just sit there and drink water. It was to the point where i was almost willing to tell the waiter that i would be willing to pay 4 bucks a glass of water if i could just sit outside and chill.
Stopped going out to fast food. This has been good and easy except when you forget to make lunch. its hard to find a place to eat near the office that is not fast food if i forget to make my lunch the night before. what has made this the most difficult is the commercials on TV!! The food looks SOOO GOOOD!
I was talking to Christine Lynch from www.liveandeatbetter.com who is acting as my nutritionist aka making sure i don’t do anything stupid. She asked me half way through what i feel i would keep doing once the trial is over. i have given it some thought and i feel like i will keep most of it. as i said before i am tired of being a athlete that does triathlon so i can eat what ever i want. i would rather eat well so i can eat what ever i want. realistically i see myself drinking coffee roughly once a week, eating fast food 2 times a month, and drinking 1 night a week rather then 5 times a week.
So HOW HAS THIS WORKED? it has worked amazingly i feel a lot better and i have not really started training for my Half Ironman yet, that just started 2 days ago. so with diet change alone i have lost 10 pounds. Did you read that? 10 POUNDS! I think thats crazy! My training for the half Iron has just started and i am very excited to see all this extra energy i have translate into the workouts. I know for a fact that even in the past two days of training the trial has helped. i have spent all day out in the sun working on a survey crew and when i get home i still have energy to go do my workouts. Before i would have popped a beer and sat on the coach and grumbled about having a hard day at work and i don’t really need to train.
Very excited to see how the rest of the month goes. STAY TUNED!!
Reader Comments (3)
congrats on scaling back the alcohol. It's poison, ya know. 5 nights a week drinking? thats generally considered a problem. so good job, and keep it up.
also, just lookign at your last week of food i dont see alot of protein, and i dont hink i saw a single egg, and no fish. is that just an anomaly? reason i am askign is i found when i started my cleaner eating (around the same time you did) i neglected protein and probably took too few calories in overall. was eating good stuff but not enough of it. i think thats the flip side of healthy eating, maiking sure you add enough good stuff back into the mix to replace the shit.
again, kudos on the first half, and good luck with your training. which HIM are you doing?
Awesome post Bobby! You're doing so great with this. As I said the other night, I'm completely impressed that you've kept with it for so long. I honestly had my doubts for your ambitious goal. Now you've proven me wrong and I know you're gonna make it through to the end of The Trial.
As for Tom's comment about protein, you ARE getting enough. You're still eating meat and your other sources are sufficient. Another thing to keep in mind is that in order to be successful with your diet, you have to start by choosing your battles. You assess your jumping off point and always keep that in mind. You can't eat crappy then decide to be perfect starting the very next day. That's why diets fail, they're unrealistic and we're human. We aren't at the point in this experiment where we are looking to perfect your protein intake. Right now our focus is on the things you mentioned above, in this post, and you are already reaping the rewards, by taking one step at a time.
You're doing an amazing job and you are an INSPIRATION.
Love, Guru
Thanks for the comments guys, as for the protein intake, there is quite a lot of meat in the chili, and most of the time the salad has diced up chicken on it as well. trust me i love my protein have always eaten plenty of it :-)