The Winds of Change

So a lot of stuff going on in The Fat Runner household...

We're cross-training ourselves into shape. Hopefully a nice shape. As far as shapes go, round doesn't seem to agree with my running. The biggest change by far though, has been nutritional. A complete 180 degree turn in that area and so far, our kitchen makeover has proven to be for the better. We have severely cut back on fast food and other processed stuff and the effects are already being felt.

Chicken Sausage Frittata

 My wife started feeling funny about two days after we started. I've been thinking of a word to describe what she was feeling and the best I could come up with was malaise. A general feeling of malaise. She felt weak, with no real desire to do much. I thought at first that it was the onset on a cold or something like that. Then, she told me "I feel like I need to eat candy or something sweet." Well, she didn't need to say anything else after that. She was going through withdrawal. A natural side effect of eating home cooked meals instead of processed is that you consume a lot less sugar. Sure enough, a couple of days later she was feeling great and I'm kind of surprised about how great actually. She is also doing P90X3 and she wakes up every morning charging to do it. Amazing how we get used to things and let them take over.

Then there's me. After a week of eating as clean as I have in a very long time, I was faced with the situation I was kind of dreading. I was on the road, no lunch from home and hungry. I had to eat something so after much pondering I settled for a Mexican food place and had some tacos. I went heavy on the salad and went for chicken instead of beef trying to at least minimize the damage. An hour later I was regretting that decision. I had to get to the bathroom. Bad. The tacos were really not agreeing with me or my stomach. I've never had any problems with eating fast food. Believe me. But after only a week of better nutrition my body just said "Hey! What happened here? You were throwing in the good stuff!"

Panko breaded Tilapia, asparagus and rice with beans

And it's not like we have been lacking flavor-wise. I love to cook so I took this opportunity to revamp our diet as a challenge. Chicken Marsala, Mexican Tostadas, Open-faced Bacon and Egg Sandwiches... it has all been made at home with healthy recipes and it has all been good. Of course, I've had to manage my time a little better to be able to cook. My wife is taking care of dinners (and subsequent lunch for me the next day) while I do breakfasts and try to keep it interesting on the weekends. Not only are we feeling great but the cut on fast food, as I mentioned in the beginning, has been severe, which is a good thing. Where we were doing 13-15 meals eating out, the average these past two weeks has been about 3-4. Not bad right?