A series of weekly updates on my plans, how they are going, what’s working, what’s changed, and what I’m loving right now.
My year is starting on New Year’s week. It’s always a bit of a twilight week, where you can’t keep your days straight, your sleep schedule gets thrown off, you go into reflective mode, and you tend to make big plans with overly lofty aspirational goals. It’s a time where I renew my hopes and dreams, allow myself to imagine what if, and start making decisions about how I want to turn potential in to action. In week 1 my plans solidified into two focus areas: Meals and Training.
I knew that I had not eaten the most healthy over the holidays and I’d let my families preferences and needs fill my pantry with things I’d be better off avoiding. I also knew that if I wanted to make the fitness gains I wanted, I was going to have to overhaul my diet to increase my protein, get my carbs from better sources, and ensure I was covering all my micronutrients.
The easiest way for me to ensure I meet my meal goals while working and coming home to tired to cook much and getting up early to work out was to go back to meal prepping. There are lots of great plans on the web for all different types of meal preps but needing a dairy-free high protein plan leaves me with quite a few less choices.
Most high protein plans get you there by taking a clean diet and boosting the protein with the addition of cheese, whey, cottage cheese, high protein yogurts and milks. All things I can’t eat and while the equivalent dairy-free versions taste just fine, they are almost completely without the protein that was the reason for adding them in in the first place. While I can certainly do the math and seek my own alternatives, that defeated the point of making things easy by using a pre-calculated plan. So an easier option is to limit my search to Vegan meal preps plans.
I’ve eaten Vegan on and off for the last several years. For one thing, it makes it easier to be sure aid won’t get any dairy, especially when eating out. Vegan or lactose-free menu labels make it simple to order without interrogating the server about the ingredient list. I also find a plant-based diet increases my consumption of vegetables and minimizes hear burn and reflux symptoms when compared to eating a meat-centric diet. I understand and respect those who eat vegan or vegetarian out of concern for the animals and the environment but that’s not why I do it. I still eat eggs, seafood, white and red meat, just not in large quantities and not usually as my first choice
Going back to meal prep as my go-to method of getting food on the table, it takes a fair amount of planning and preparation up front but pays off as the week progresses. This week I tried out a meal plan from the Vegan Gym that had several similar bases and 3 different sauce profiles that you mixed and matched to keep things fresh every day. It worked out fairly good for me in that I stayed compliant with my meal goals every day, I didn’t eat out or order in at all myself (though I still had to do it for some family who were not eating vegan), I didn’t feel hungry or tempted and I felt filed for my workouts.
For training, I’m prioritizing running as I’ve signed up for a half marathon in 17 weeks but I also know I need to start rebuilding strength and mobility and get in the habit of fueling before, during and after workouts. I might not be doing much now but as I build my running endurance, I’m also going to be introducing cycling and swimming as cross-training and will be ending up tired and sore if I’m not fueling right.
I’d set a goal to at least do a 5K race on New Year’s and ended up doing two, one in the morning and another in the afternoon. since it’s been a while since I’ve raced, I wasn’t sure how slow I was or how the distance would feel when I wasn’t just running by myself. It was cold but I surprised myself by not only doing my best (still slow) pace in the first race but then beating it by several minutes in the second race.
This gave me confidence that I’d be able to start my half marathon training plan and also that I’d be able to try a 10k race in the near future.
I fit in 2 other runs this week for a weekly mileage of 14.1 miles and 4 other strength, yoga, and mobility workouts. I set a goal to try out a bunch of different programs to see what I liked, what I needed, and what I would stick with. Still haven’t found the ONE but FitOn videos are a great resource that allow me to easily search for just what I need and I’ll probably make use of them more as my training program goes on.
Right now, I’m loving experimenting with different flavors and ingredients. I’m also leaning into learning and reading more. There is an endless resource of personal journey blogs and professional advice videos online. YouTube is full of “here is how I did it” accounts of Ironman preparation, half-marathon training, and workout advice. Take all of it with a grain of salt but the tips can help you visualize what it will be like for you and the inspiration can help motivate you through the tough times. To balance out the urge to buy all the things that can often go with triathlon I also started reading No Baggage by Clara Bentsen that explores the fear and joys of minimalist travel.
Hope your goals are off to a good start!
