Food for Fuel – Complacency and stress – a double whammy!

Returning from the Isle of Wight to my weigh in was a surprisingly relaxed affair, despite the daily magnum 🤷‍♀️ and no significant weight gained. Now I can’t decide if I am disappointed or slightly pleased and starting to question how committed I am to gaining weight. It’s a tough question as I do like being slim, but not too thin, but hate feeling fat so much (even if I’m not) that I wonder if that is undermining this valuable process.

Unfortunately I didn’t get long to think about this as I was hit by a large dollop of family related stress the next day and while some of us eat when this happens, I soon realised I go the other way – I can control food easier than emotions so did just that meaning I didn’t eat enough. I’m never sure if it’s a form of self punishment alongside control, but very aware of the adverse impacts of this and it’s something I need to be conscious of as I move forward, especially into the imminent final three weeks of race preparation!

As the week progressed, and it’s been a tough one training wise, the end of a three week block with a reasonable level of intensity in my sessions, I realised I wasn’t feeling quite as good as I had been. Tired at this stage is normal for me, but reflection also highlighted that I had become very complacent about snacks and lunch – breakfast and evening meals were still planned, but I was ‘skipping’ the snacks and my lunch had ceased to be as well planned and healthy. As I write this we are heading to Wales for a week, so I plan to hit (wallop is more appropriate) the reset button on this as I want to arrive at Outlaw X well trained, rested and fuelled. This also pushed me into making the breakfast bars recipe from my nutritionist and with a bit of tweaking they are delicious! Made two trays last night, came down to catch my son red handed with one ‘hanging’ out of his mouth – my husband had warned me 🤣🤣

Two meals out this week has also tested me and led to a not uncommon conversation with two good friends about the emotions we attach to food, especially ‘good vs bad’ and ‘I’ll start tomorrow, so this chocolate bar is ok’ followed by the self ‘hate’ when said chocolate is devoured (usually in one short sitting!). It is incredibly hard to be kind to ourselves and I wonder if food is just another excuse to be ‘mean’. How many of us would accept friends who are unkind to us regularly, yet accept it from ourselves far too often (how we look, what we eat, how we performed)? As a teacher (ok ex teacher now I’m ‘funemployed’) I’ve spent so much time telling students to be kind to themselves, time to take a dose of my own medicine………and find a long term way of rationalising my fear of being ‘fat’, suspect this may take a long time 😢

On a positive note – lovely long run today (2 hours) with no toilet issues, they are still there for some interval run sessions, but it felt great to run with no distress 😎

Adaptation week next week so less intensity, and time to get back onto the snacks and lunch with purpose………