Nutrition: Cause I'm a Nutritionist (not)

I've been thinking about food.

I do this a lot, of course. I love food. I don't discriminate. I like kale and I like Little Debbie's. I like Twinkies and I like soy nuts.
You know.

I like it all.

I began exercise many a year ago so I could eat food and not hate myself and my body for it. It worked. I ran. I ate. I ran. I ate. And I could eat pizza, beer, the occasional piece of cake, the occasional Devil Dog, and I didn't pay for it in rolls and guilt.

Then I actually began to like running. Then I began to love running. Then I started getting serious about my running. And I stopped thinking about how running allowed me to eat, and started thinking about how food could help me run farther. and faster. and better. This was quite a major switch in thinking for me.

I still eat pizza and drink the occasional beer. I don't usually eat a Little Debbie or a Devil Dog, but I do eat cake and brownies and chocolate pudding. I don't eat these things everyday, but I eat them. And I wonder, how do this fact affect my running, swimming and biking? Will everything go to hell in a handbasket (what does that expression even mean?) if I make no rules for myself around the ingestion and digestion of all food?

Don't get me wrong. I eat well. I know most people believe they eat well, but I really think I eat well most of the time. I get at least seven servings of vegetables and several servings of fruit a day. I eat lean protein and Greek yogurt and lowfat cottage cheese and seeds and almonds and tofu. I avoid refined starches and sugars. Whatever. You get the drift. The reason I bring this up, though, is because people who are very serious about triathlon talk about nutrition so much. You'd think that people training for Ironman would be able to let go a little--allow themselves indulgences given that they burn thousands of calories in a day. But they don't. Serious triathletes think about what they put in their mouths to the point of obsession.

I realize that this is because food is fuel, and you want premium fuel to run the engine well. However, sometimes I wonder if it is thought about so much that it takes the joy out of an otherwise pleasurable thing. I have friends who allow themselves so little when they train. They can have the gels, and the sports and recovery drinks, and much of the food they eat is delicious. But there are really strict rules as to what is okay. I can't seem to abide by such rules. I want to compete well. I do sacrifice in many ways. But to give up pizza, or handful of my daughter's honey nut Cherrio's, or to stop putting real sugar in my coffee. Is that too far?

I think quite a bit about the psychology of sport. Sometimes I wonder whether the sacrifices we make fuel us to greatness because we are aware of the sacrifices, and we believe these sacrifices will fuel us to greatness. Having a chunk of chocolate brownie each day probably won't negatively affect performance, but the denial of it--will that sacrifice move the athlete to the belief she will succeed--and so she does? Karen Smyers, I read in an issue of Triathlete several months back, drinks a beer the night before every race. She didn't perform well in one triathlon, and she believes (likely jokingly) that her lack of a beer the night before was the reason she did not do well.  What do we make of that?

Before I race I always have peanut butter and banana. This works for me usually. Lately, though, I've noted that peanut butter has been given the shaft. It's asinine to eat it before a race because you won't digest it quickly, and it will linger in your belly and cause digestive problems.
But it doesn't cause me digestive problems. That's the thing. The reason I like peanut butter is because if I have some the morning of the race, I don't have a blood sugar spike that leaves me feeling hungry later on--usually within an hour of the race start. The fat in the peanut butter satiates me; it makes me feel full, but not heavy. And if the recent research is true, it doesn't much matter what I eat hours before I race, or even whether I eat all (though I find this hard to believe). So what's the problem here? If peanut butter is so wrong, then why are so many of us able to eat pre-race and race successfully?

This isn't what I intended to write about. I meant to write about how I feel like a pill popper these days. I recently read an article on Vitamin D, and decided that I needed to take it on a daily basis. Combine this with the Omega Three fatty acid pills I take, and the Iron, and the spirulina--. It adds up. I meant to write about how easy it easy to miss key nutients, like Vitamin D, when we aren't careful.

But maybe we are all too careful. Maybe we take it all a bit too seirously. Maybe that brownie won't cause me to gain two pounds overnight and ruin next week's race effort. Maybe our non-triathlete friends and neighbors are right to think we are crazy and don't know how to enjoy life.

Or maybe that is just what those people who don't care to compete at the highest level think.

I honestly don't know.