Tag Archives: food

Taking It Easy

I’m always on the go. It’s the kind of person I am. I think that’s why, once I finally started, I took to exercise so well. It was something to do, something else to keep me busy. I’m the kind of person that usually enjoys having a calendar full of plans—with a few random days to let unfold as they will.

So now that I exercise regularly, it’s hard to take a break. But I haven’t been feeling well lately. Almost everything I eat bothers my stomach lately. (I might have celiac—I’m waiting for more testing.) This really stresses me out, because I have no idea what to eat. Sometimes a certain meal will be just fine, and sometimes the same meal will have me feeling sick for hours. Last weekend when I was in Chicago, I still ate some gluten and dairy—but I felt mostly fine all weekend.

This week, I’ve been going back and forth about giving up gluten before hearing whether I have celiac or not. Technically, you’re not supposed to totally give it up before you’re tested, so that they can see how it’s affecting you. But I’ve been wanting to see if giving it up makes me feel any better. It doesn’t seem like giving it up has made me feel any better. 

I was supposed to run with Ashley and Katie this morning, but I decided last night to bail and see if sleeping in and giving my stomach a rest would help. I haven’t decided if it will do me better to just bag my run for this week (or just today? and do it tomorrow?) and rest, or if I should give it a try later if I’m feeling okay.

The hardest part about facing this potential celiac diagnosis is the lack of control. For the year-ish that I was trying to lose weight, I ate a fairly restrictive diet. It worked. Once I started trying to maintain my weight, I was excited to not have to limit certain foods any more—just limiting the non-healthy foods to once in a while. I know that if I do have celiac, I will feel better giving up gluten-containing foods, and that it’s relatively common and relatively easy to deal with, but it still won’t be easy.

So I had a bagel for breakfast. While I still can. And a banana and a diet Snapple. I need to balance listening to my body’s needs for rest and the food it needs with living my life.

NYC Summer Streets

This morning, I woke up for a training session with Joel. Per usual, he kicked my ass. We did a lot of lower body work and then he had me jump rope for a few minutes.

Jump roping is one of those things that doesn’t sound so hard until you do it for a few minutes straight. Your heart rate goes through the roof! (I wasn’t wearing my heart rate monitor, but I did feel my heart trying to jump out of my chest. So there’s that.) 

I had half a Kardea bar before my workout and half after. Kardea bars—which were sent to me by the company for review (they asked on Twitter if anyone wanted to review and I jumped at the chance…as did a bunch of other bloggers)—are pretty similar in taste and ingredients to my newfound love, Larabars, but their shtick is that they market them for cholesterol management. After doing a radio interview and  eating the second half of the bar, I jumped on my bike for a 14-mile ride. 

I love New York for a variety of reasons, but one of them is all the fun stuff there is to do—much of it for free. Today, the city closed down Park Ave. so that cyclists and runners could ride and run through the city. The path on the West Side Highway is great, but it is PACKED on the weekends, which makes biking difficult. I’m not so much a fan of the East River path. So a devoted path for runners/cyclists through the city was pretty cool.

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I rode from my apartment in the Financial District all the way up to 59th Street and back—about 14 miles! There were all kinds of rest stops along the way with bike repair services and water, etc. I stopped around 24th Street to check out some of the tents. I was a little lightheaded when I got off my bike—my breakfast wasn’t really enough fuel for two workouts, but I was afraid of my stomach bothering me. When I saw an Odwalla tent, I made a beeline for one of these Vitamin C smoothies. With 320 calories and 60g of sugar for one bottle, I wouldn’t ordinarily have one of these, but long workouts require more fuel.

When I got back, I hit up the farmer’s market and bought a bunch of food. (Finally, right?) I made a Pump-esque bowl with:

  • spinach
  • 1/2 sweet potato
  • bok choy 
  • grape tomatoes
  • a chicken patty
  • brown rice
  • guacamole

Sort of a lot of ingredients for me, but the longest cooking time was for the sweet potato, which I microwaved while walking Bailey. The brown rice and chicken patty were also microwaved, and the spinach and bok choy took about a minute to sautee with a bit of coconut butter. An easy, healthy lunch.