Food is my Fuel

Written 1st January 2010
I’ve been reading a lot about the structure of food and how it can add or subtract from my efforts to be fit....

-For a start, I need to lose the spare tyre around my middle- what’s the point of wishing for a faster, lighter bike if I’m carry an unnecessary extra 10kgs with me?
- Endurance Athletes who don’t pay attention to correctly fuelling their body- at the correct time -will ‘bonk’ and will have to stop. A self induced defeat!
- It’s well known we eat lots of bad foods that cause unnecessary health problems such as diabetes, energy spikes, unhealthy chemicals in our body etc etc.
- The excesses of our modern society are not good for our bodies, or our environment. And it is unneccesary – we don’t need that much food, or even that sort of food.

So I have been researching by reading lots of good books and articles on diet and eating habits. I found the blogs of ‘The Holistic Guru’ and ‘Zen and the Art of Triathlon’ to be the most thought–provoking. They have convinced me to change my eating style - I now live by the Spartan Creed of ‘Small and Raw’. This means I eat ‘as close to the food source as possible’. It means lots of fruit, veges, legumes, natural sources such as fish meat etc, and almost no processed foods including starch ( bread, rice, pasta). It also means I now limit my alcohol- in fact, at the moment I am totally alcohol free.

This is basically a Paleo Diet (ie Caveman)- That is, if you can’t pick it off a tree or kill it, don’t eat it. if you're interested, check out the above mentioned blogs for more details.

Here’s my rules for eating –

1. Food is fuel – what I eat today, I exercise with tomorrow. No empty kJs
2. Portion size is critical – keep it small and regular. Eat small amounts throughout the day. No big meals -ever!
3. Small and Raw – I get most of my carbs from veges, fruit, nuts. Protein from meat, fish, mushrooms etc.
4. A Paleo diet- i.e. what my cave-dwelling ancestors ate- eat ‘close to the source’
5. Monitor / record what I eat- keep a detailed track of what goes into my body and when. Learn by reviewing the data. Look for continuous improvements in ‘Raw and Small’
6. No processed sugar- severely limit, or stop, alcohol, soft drinks, cakes, biscuits, processed breads etc

At the moment I am trying to lose the 10 useless kilos I am carrying so my daily goals is 8,500kJ per day, with a strong dose of active exercise to provide negative energy requirement for the day. Here’s my daily targets for the 8,500kJs – 80g max of Protein, 300gs of good carbs, 80g max of fat, 35g Fibre.

I’ll let you know how it goes. Thanks to the Holistic Guru(http://www.holisticguru.blogspot.com) and Brett at Zen Tri (http://www.zentriathlon.com) for the inspiration.
More later, journey on!

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