Nutrition

As we get ready to start the new year and end the holidays, I always think about ways to improve my diet.  Now that I am 40, I find diet makes a HUGE difference on recovery from training.  When I was 25, I could live on Taco Bell and donuts and still train big miles.  Now, I can still train big, it just requires a focus on nutrition.  

There are a zillion approaches to sports nutrition out there.  I have played around with probably at least a billion of them.  What I have found works best for me is to eat real food.  By this I mean food that does not have an ingredient list.  Things that don't require being packaged.   

The biggest thing I have learned to apply this properly is to have a large intake of raw vegetables.  By this I mean focusing on the leafy greens (think spinach!) and things like red and green peppers.   I do eat cabbage and celery from time to time mostly out of lack of any other of the above veggies to eat.  So now matter what else I eat, I start every meal with a lot of the above veggies.  I give credit to Dr Clyde Wilson for getting me straight on this path.  I find I have a lot of energy, rarely get hungry, and eat smaller portions.   

So what I am suggesting is to eat any of the above vegetables raw with every meal.  Don't worry so much about changing other elements of your meal at this point.  Just focus on huge raw veggie intake.  You will probably notice you start to clean up the rest of your diet electively after you take this step.  That said, I still love dessert (some know it is a fondness for cake! ).  The key is to eat the veggies as well. I also suggest drinking a big glass of water (approx 20 oz) with every meal to make digestion of the veggies a little easier.   

Remember, this is about life changes.  Take small and deliberate steps now.  The big changes come from small steps involving action!!!

Feel free to post your experiences from the New Year New Path plan under the comments section of my blog www.ultrawalz.blogspot.com