The bottom line is that I like food! I appreciate good food and when I’m training I can eat lots! I aim to eat a healthy balanced diet but I’m not manic about it. I’ve got a ‘thing’ for kettle chips and chocolate but moderate my intake (just!). My husband has a ‘thing’ for biscuits and I’ll often find him ferreting around the biscuit tin, shaking it like a maraca to see if it has recently been filled with digestives. About once every 30 days he’ll be rewarded with a pleasant ‘thunck, thunck’ from the tin, which indicates I have taken pity on him and filled it. From there they last about 12 hours and he has to wait another 30 days before it gets filled again! (Oink!)
I am expending about 2,500 extra calories a day at the moment and on my BIG training days I’m burning about 10,000 and that’s on top of what my body needs on a daily basis. Initially I’ll think “whoopee…..think of all the food I can eat” but I struggle a bit to balance the calorie intake/output and have to watch that I don’t get too light – there comes a point where the hard earned muscle disappears and I’ll loose strength. (My husband says this is the point I start getting corners!).
I read somewhere that you have a ‘fuelling window’ before and after exercise – put food in to provide the energy for the exercise and then stoke the fire with a little more fuel afterwards. My performance would suffer a bit with a pie and chips sitting like a brick in my stomach, so I stick to things that are easily burnt – fast fuel I suppose. My pre and post exercise food is bananas and bananas, bagels, potatoes, dried fruit and nuts, tuna, bananas, yoghurt, peanut butter, home made milk shakes (with bananas!) and muesli (although I have to watch that pre run!).
In between my training sessions I’ll chow down on homemade soups, in-season vegetables (either from our garden or the farmers market), steak, fish, beans, pasta and rice. I’ve been known to serve ‘made up vegetarian stew things’ too, which my kids will poke with a fork and ask suspiciously “What’s this stuff!” Sometimes these concoctions are just great and sometimes, to quote my kids “they suck!!” Waste not want not however, so we all just have to eat it….Ketchup helps! All this talk of food is making me peckish……..I wonder if there is anything in the biscuit tin?……I might just give it a shake or two and see…….