Happy Feet: Picking The Right Marathon-Training Food
In my experience, while runners run a lot, they also eat a lot. Unfortunately the amount of miles we run don't necessarily cancel out the calories we eat. I still have to be careful to watch what I put in my body when I'm working out regularly to maintain a healthy diet.
I generally go grocery shopping once a week. When I was writing out my list on Monday, I challenged myself to find new foods to incorporate into my diet that are healthy but will also keep me feeling full and energized throughout the day.
Finding the foods that are easy to prepare and fill me up has been a work in progress. This week I added more fruit, more greens and some variations on chocolate to my list.
For breakfast, I have been loving my re-vamped oatmeal recipe. Normally, I just heat up instant oatmeal for breakfast, but looking for ways to change it up I came across this oatmeal recipe from French Women Don’t Get Fat.
I still can have my oatmeal, but by adding fruit and peanut butter into the recipe, I don’t feel like I am counting down until lunch.
To make it, I put a banana and blueberries in my blender and run it until they are smooth. I then stir that into my cooked oatmeal and add a spoonful of peanut butter to the mixture. I microwave it all up for another 15 seconds and it's ready to eat. I’ve tried regular peanut butter and almond butter in this so far. I prefer it with almond butter, but both taste great.
Another thing I put in my cart this week was kale. So many people have been waxing poetic about this super-food that I felt like I should give it a chance. My results have been mixed. I was going to buy Kale chips from the supermarket, but when I saw that a small package was $8, I decided to make my own kale chips, instead.
I bought a package of raw kale and baked the leaves on a tray with a little olive oil and sea salt for 30 minutes in the oven set to 350 degrees. While the “chips” tasted good, they were not substantial. I felt like I was eating air and wanted another snack when I was done, so I probably won't make those again.
I also tried making a kale salad for lunch. This was really good. While the kale tasted a little bitter, I barely noticed it. I spruced up the salad with cranberries, turkey and shelled edamame and really enjoyed it.
My last kale creation was my favorite. I made sweet potato kale soup, using this recipe from Cookie and Kate as inspiration. I altered the recipe slightly because I didn’t include the red Thai curry paste and I substituted carrots for the red pepper and quinoa for faro because I had those items in the house. Overall, I really enjoyed this recipe and I was really glad I got to make it because it was a little chilly this week. Unlike the salad, where I was a little put off by the slightly bitter taste of the kale, in the soup the taste really complemented the sweetness of the potatoes.
I try not to buy too much dessert, but when I’m studying or working on homework at night I generally crave something sweet. While dark chocolate would be ideal, I generally don’t buy it because it’s hard for me to limit myself to one or two pieces. Instead, I tried buying items this week that I know I can stop after eating a serving size. In my cart I put Breyers slow-churned mint chocolate chip ice cream. It's half the fat of normal ice cream and the combination of mint and chocolate generally does the trick. I also bought hot chocolate. If I'm studying at night and want something sweet, but don't want to eat a snack, I combine half a cup of coffee with half a cup of hot chocolate. The last thing I bought was pretzel M&Ms. The salty-sweet taste is really satisfying and as long as I don't leave the bag in my room, I have been able to eat a handful and go back to what I'm doing, rather than want to finish the package.
What kind of foods do you like to eat when you're training?