What I eat *Intro*

What I eat is a vast topic. I’ve procrastinated over covering it for precisely that reason. I’m still learning and making adjustments to find the optimal diet. What I eat now is quite different to what I ate this time last year, the year before that and the year before that…So that also makes it tricky to offer solid concrete advice. It’s more “at this time, with the information I have, this is what I think…”

It’s not only what I eat that has changed, but when I eat it. Some foods can be better consumed at different times of the day.

How much I eat of different foods is also evolving. The ratios between carbohydrate, fats and protein and how much you need of each. I have never weighed or measured my food- and I don’t think I ever will. I’m talking rough calculations.

I’ve been taking photographs of my food for over a year now. Sometimes just pride in an awesome looking plateful! And sometimes I think it was a great meal idea that I’d like to pass on.

Why have I been changing my diet so frequently?

Good question, and these are my answers.;

1. Runners bottom! I could not go for a simple 30 minute run without having to route it via a bathroom. This was particularly true of afternoon runs. No pun intended:)
2. Bloating.
3. Increase performance
4. Injury prevention
5. Health

I have been able to change my diet quite radically because my husband is often the change instigator. We are both triathletes and both looking for the same results out of what we eat. Importantly we are both willing  and open to change. I understand that some couples and families will not have everyone wanting to eat the same and this would make changes much more difficult, but still not impossible.

I gave up my favorite fruit for 18 months because I thought it was the right thing to do. That was a sacrifice I was willing to make. However neither of us are saints! There have been times when we’ve been less conscious of what we’ve put in our mouths and it really did come back to bite us:) Thank goodness we’ve found evidence to support coffee drinking and dark chocolate consumption! What we have been is always willing to try anything that we’ve researched that sounds like a positive change. We both agree that we don’t know it all, so we’re still learning, adapting and refining our diets as we go.

In the coming posts my aim is to share with you some of the diets that we’ve tried and their impacts- good and bad. I’ll also do something with my library of meals! I can also recommend some reading you can do to understand the role food plays in terms of injury prevention and boosting performance.

The most important thing that I have learnt from all of this is that just because everyone else is eating it- it doesn’t mean it’s good for you! Conventional wisdom may be too inextricably tied up in the food industry to really give you the best information out there. Very sad, but true.

And even though I often think of food in terms of fuel, of course it’s much more than that. It’s a social thing, and there are often times when you really should be flexible so that you can enjoy life and not be a pain in the butt! Food is one of life’s simple pleasures, and herein lies the beauty of the 90/10 rule.

Charlotte