Saturday Check In

As I imagined, going back to work was CRAZY and my whole picture thing went a little haywire.  I'm happy to report that I still counted my calories.  But as I've mentioned before, when I'm counting calories, I tend to focus more on quantity than on quality.  Then yesterday, I was inspired by Swim Bike Mom's Eight to Great challenge.  Starting August 5, she is challenging herself and followers to eat clean and train hard.  The plan she is following is Whole30, which I looked into, but since I'm mostly vegetarian, it really didn't look doable for me.

But, I know I can clean up my diet.  I've been reading Food over Medicine, which discusses the major health benefits from a low-fat vegan/plant based diet.  This type of eating is not new to me.  About 10 years ago I did a lot of reading on this lifestyle and tried it out for a bit, but it was difficult for me to sustain at that point in my life.  

I think that there are some really good things that I can take away from this lifestyle:

1.  Dairy - if you've noticed, my diet tends to be heavy in dairy.  

2.  Fat - even with some low-fat dairy, a high percentage of my calories tend to come from fat.

3.  Processed foods - whole foods tend to be more of a condiment/garnish for me, rather than the majority of what I eat.

So...

I committed to "Eight to Great" with Swim Bike Mom.  Here is my commitment:

I didn't want to use the word "eliminate" because I think that sets me up to fail.  

I'm going to dust off all my old vegan cookbooks, and have some fun.  

Oh, and I have to work on an actual training plan.  For the last half (and currently) my training plan involves a Sunday long run, and I've got those on the calendar so that my mileage gets back up to 13 two weeks before my race.  The other part of my training plan involves 4-5 other runs throughout the week, so that my total miles are in the 20-25 miles per week range.  Not much of a "plan" I know.  So I'm going to work on putting an actual plan together.

Yesterday, for "girl day" with my daughter, I tried to stick to clean food choices as well, having a cup of low-fat Garden Vegetable soup at Panera Bread for lunch, and a cheese-less veggie pizza for dinner.

I'll keep you posted on my journey!