Life: Recharged

I think it’s important to talk about the bad days. There’s 365 days, 8,760 hours, 525,600 minutes (shoutout to anyone who just started singing Seasons of Love), and 31,536,000 seconds in one year. We are not perfect. Life, in general, is not perfect. Some of those days, hours, minutes, seconds—they might not be so great. The bad moments themselves are not so important, but it’s how you get through them… how you pick yourself up and move forward—THAT is what is crucial.

A few weeks ago, I felt myself falling into a lull. I was tired. Fatigued. My legs felt like lead more often than not. My workouts were royally sucking… and as much as I tried to tell myself I wasn’t going to let it get to me, it did.  As I’ve said before, not every workout is going to be perfect or feel great. But this seemed to be perpetual. Overall, my performance was just bad. Running 1 minute slower splits than usual felt hard.  I was cutting some of my long runs short, midway through. The weights in the gym felt SO heavy. I panicked: Am I going backwards instead of forwards? and that was something I couldn’t afford during this training season. This is BOSTON. This is what you’ve been waiting for. I kept thinking to myself, I eat healthy foods, I workout daily, I sleep at night. What’s wrong with this picture? What am I missing?

One Saturday afternoon, after a particularly terrible training run that left me with a dismal outlook for the rest of training, things shifted. The Orangetheory Fitness Studio that I’ve been going to was hosting an event put on by Jennifer Brunelli, owner of Sports RDpro and sports RD for the Carolina Panthers. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I’m super interested in food and the science behind how it fuels the body. I decided, rather last minute, that I would go. She spoke a lot about nutrition goals; particularly energy management. Energy. Management. When she first said those words, I was all ears. She mentioned symptoms like “tired, fatigue, crash”. This was me! I wanted to stand up and scream it from the rooftops. YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT ME! This could not have come at a better time.

Jennifer focused on blood sugar control, and how it’s the key to any fitness goals. I’ve always been a 4-6 meal a day person—but she made me stop and think. WHAT am I eating? WHEN am I eating it? She made several key points that I was double and triple underlining in my notes – my indication of importance. Lesson #1: NEVER go to the gym without food.  Of all people, I am one of the biggest offenders of this. 5:00 or 6:00am workouts… I would always go on an empty stomach. I don’t like eating as soon as my eyes open, and am rarely hungry that early in the morning. But, if you really think about it, it makes total sense. That last time I ate could have been 8, 10, or 12 hours earlier. I spent this time sleeping. If you tried to go that long during the day without eating, how many of you would survive? I know I wouldn’t be able to. If you work that hard that early in the morning with nothing in your body, what are you really doing to it? She worded it brilliantly; it’s like credit card debt. When you wake up in the morning, your energy level is at it’s lowest, but the demand is at it’s peak. If your body is already demanding energy from food and you go and workout, you are spending more than you have!

Lesson #2: CARBS. I’ve never been afraid of carbs. I took all the science classes in school; I even took Kinesiology. I know we need carbohydrates for energy/fuel. I know that when I am putting my body through 26.2 miles of rigor, impact after impact, I need carbs. However, Jennifer made me think about my carbohydrate intake. In the height of training season, I run anywhere from 30-50 miles per week. Thinking back, I realized how much I subconsciously deprive myself of the carbs I really need for sustaining my long runs.  It is all about timing, which was the piece I was missing. Have a preworkout—whether a morning workout or an afternoon workout, and make it a carb. Applesauce packets. Apples. Hummus and pretzels, etc.

Lesson #3: Anytime you have a piece of your day with more than 3 hours between meals, put a snack in it. This was just a little something that I needed to be reminded of. I would sit at work, stomach growling, but force myself to hold off until my “scheduled lunch time” at 1:00pm. This was always because if I ate lunch too early, I was starving by 2pm and ready for my “afternoon snack”. Then I would still have to make it to 5pm at work, and then workout, in which case I’d be hungry again and couldn’t eat dinner until around 8pm. This was a perfect example of the wrong way to handle energy management. It goes back to blood sugar control. Eating every few hours will help to save you from those afternoon “crashes”. Keeping your energy level balanced will help you make it through the day. Don’t wait until your energy level is “negative” before you start to refuel. It may be too late!

Jennifer had such great things to say. I cannot express how happy I am that I decided to go to her event; I took a ton of notes and left feeling like I had figured it out. I needed to shift gears, to focus on fuel--carbs in particular. This would lead to blood sugar control, which would lead to more sustained energy, and hopefully, better performance. So, the question is…did it work?

Two weeks later

Over the last few weeks, I’ve revamped my nutrition plan. I did three MINOR but MAJOR things. 1. I ate every 2 hours. I built in designated mid-morning snacks, mid-afternoon snacks, and preworkout snacks. I mapped out each day. I actually brought a notebook to work with me. 5:30 am – preworkout. 8am – breakfast. 10:30am – mid-morning snack. 1pm – lunch. 3pm – mid-afternoon snack, etc. The key to this was to eat frequently enough that I never reached the point of AH I’M STARVING, OMG I AM GOING TO EAT EVERYTHING IN SIGHT. To be honest, I was getting home after the gym and doing exactly that while trying to cook my dinner because I was SO hungry.  (Tips: if you’re one that tends to get distracted from eating (I don’t understand how that’s possible, but I know some of you out there are), set an alarm on your phone. It sounds silly, but it’s a great way to keep yourself on track)). 2. I never even dared to set foot into the gym or onto the pavement without having eaten a preworkout—mornings meant a 5:30am applesauce packet on the drive (even if I wasn’t hungry) and afternoons meant a 5pm one on the drive. 3. FOCUSED. ON. CARBS. I kissed those unintentional low carb days goodbye. I changed my mindset to What am I doing today? What am I doing tomorrow? What do I need to fuel me for this workout? I practice this religiously the week leading up to a race, so why don’t I do it during training? I didn’t have an answer. That was unacceptable.

My results? Increased energy during my workouts; much more than the last few weeks. I felt so much less fatigued both during and after my workouts. I did my longest run since my marathon 7 months ago, and although I was beat by the end of it, my pace was SPOT ON. I bounced back so quickly, and my body recovered from the mileage much faster than it had been. My legs felt lighter. I was moving towards heavier weights again. I started reaching new speed PRs on the treadmill. I felt like I could run even FASTER than the machine would allow.

In Summary: I attribute each and every result that I’ve seen to the changes in my nutrition. I learned so much from that 90 minute session; things that I thought about, but didn’t actually do. I could have given up during that lull. I could have stayed frustrated, stayed discouraged. I could have thrown in the towel and just attributed it to weakness. Rather than giving up, I made a change. A few changes. SIMPLE changes. We only get one body, one life. The time to take care of it is now. Give your body what it NEEDS. I promise you will see and feel a difference.