When I reflect back on my formative years, it becomes clear that earlier versions of me made some pretty terrible judgment calls.
My 2006 self believed driving from Maine to Orlando overnight was a wise travel decision.
My 1995 self thought “party dude” Michelangelo would make the best Ninja Turtle husband.
My 1991 self dressed herself monochromatically, let her parents choose her haircut and thought it amusing to outfit her poor old dog in headgear.
My 2014 self would never do something like that.
Please call child services.
But while I generally think my current decision-making skills are more refined than those of my past identities, there’s one voice of reason I just keep coming back to: my November 2013 self.
My November 2013 self had just completed the New York City marathon, and despite all the excitement and success and adventure of the day, had walked away convinced she wouldn’t run a marathon in 2014.
“Take the year off,” she said as she limped down the finisher’s shoot. “Bask in a training-free summer,” she dictated as she collected her cape. “Return to the marathon circuit in 2015 refreshed and rejuvenated and ready to PR,” she commanded between mouthfuls of post-race poptarts, “and don’t take no for an answer.”
November 2013 Anne made a really good point. She knew this summer was going to be too busy to train well, she knew her knees needed a rest and she knew that not racing a marathon every year does not diminish one’s status as a runner. She made her friends and family promise not to let her run another marathon until the following calendar year, and she even managed to make it through the NYC marathon lottery process against all odds without throwing her hat in the ring.
November 2013 me knew a lot of things, but one thing she didn’t know was how racing her first spring 10K would leave her feeling strong and motivated, or how discovering her finisher’s shirt among her summer clothes would see her overcome with excitement, or how hearing everyone else plot out their marathon goals for the new year would have her itching to complete alongside them.
Current me didn’t know something either: how to hide her credit card number on race registration day.
Whoops. I guess I’m running a 2014 marathon after all.
What questionable judgement calls have you made today?
I spent years of my life searching for my perfect match. When I was younger, my stipulations were simple indeed — fun, amusing, low-maintenance – but as I’ve learned more about myself and my needs, my priorities have changed. I began looking for stability, support, durability – a partner who would be in it for the long haul. Once I knew what I wanted, I began asking friends for suggestions, putting myself out there and even tried looking online, as many in my generation are wont to do. But when it came down to it, I ended up finding my perfect fit the good old-fashioned way:
At a running shoe store.
Oh, you thought I was talking about Ben? Why ever would you think that?
When I first started running, I knew so little about shoes that I called them “sneakers” and was more interested in lace color than arch height. I bought shoes for excessive pronation off the rack because I liked the price, switched brands willy-nilly and even ran a half marathon in the same pair of Nike Fitsoles I’d worn at soccer practice three seasons straight. Undiscerning to say the least, I’m lucky I didn’t cross more finish lines with shin splints my first few months on the non-competitive circuit.
And then I met Asics Gel Neo 33s and finally understood the meaning of love. The sun shone brighter, the birds sang sweeter and my days of blistered heels and lost toenails were behind me. The shoes worked so well for my needs that I did what any sane runner would do: I went out and bought four more pairs.
And their purple cousin, Professor Plum, lives in Brooklyn.
Unfortunately, even four pairs cannot outlast two marathon training cycles and hundreds of miles in between, and when I went in August to add yet another pair to my footwear coffer, I was slammed with the devastating news: my dream shoes had been discontinued.
Asics had upgraded the model to a 2.0 version, and while the Paragon Sports clerk had promised me they’d be a seamless transition, I found myself sporting juicy blood blisters with every wear. (I could attach a photo here, but I’m kind.) So I regressed to my vintage models and pushed them far past the breaking point, with my second black pair clocking an unwise 497.1 miles – or the distance from Brooklyn to Raleigh, N.C.
Deep down in my heart, I knew it was time to start pushing my Asics into retirement, but I couldn’t bring myself to leave them, especially after all we’d been through. And then I got the perfect opportunity: my recent trip to Hong Kong.
I knew I wanted to pack running shoes for my two weeks overseas, but I also knew I’d want the suitcase space to transport home all the overpriced knickknacks purchased at the Temple Street Market. So I made the difficult decision to pack one of my oldest pairs with the intention of leaving them behind in my hotel room after their final use – in this case, hiking a mountain.
Not a shabby victory lap if you ask me.
As is the case in any long-term relationship, saying good-bye was difficult. But with 445.7 miles on at least two continents under their belt and a lifetime value of just 19 cents a mile, I think it’s fair to say that these bad boys had a very good run.
Do you have a hard time putting your running shoes out to pasture?
Not quite a novice but by no means an expert, I clock in at around “mid-level” when it comes to many things in life.
Spanish skills? Mid-level. Cooking skills? Mid-level. Spooning skills? Mid-level, unlike my niece, who is apparently a big-spoon connoisseur.
Uh, have you heard of knocking?
The label “mid-level” is particularly apt when describing my running abilities. While I’ve only once placed in a timed running event, I consistently finish in the front half of the pack, earning me a rightful spot as a self-deemed intermediate athlete.
So when my colleagues and friends in Hong Kong kept suggesting I run on idyllic Bowen Road in an area of town called the mid-levels, it only seemed too perfect a fit to be true.
Ace of Base knows what’s up.
Turns out, mid-levels didn’t mean what I thought it meant. Turns out, mid-levels in this context means midway up … a mountain. And we’re not talking Harlem Hill-grade incline. We’re talking Victoria Peak, this 1,811 foot-tall precipice you can see from the 27th floor of my temporary office building.
The view in the other direction: snacks.
Fortunately, I didn’t fully realize how long or steep a climb it was until I was already part way up, so I stubbornly plowed through slope after slope until finally — when I was huffing and puffing and about to turn back — I came upon the most glorious sight imaginable: the miraculously flat Bowen Road etched into the side of the incline. I caught my breath, thanked Buddha, and went for one of the most beautiful runs I’ve ever done in my entire life.
Photo courtesy of http://www.joggingroutes.org/, since running with my iPhone is the only thing that sounds worse to me than watching Monuments Men again.
After I ran the paved trail beginning to end, I made my way back down the mountain even slower than I went up in fear of plunging to my imminent death, and when I hit sea level, I kissed the earth and deemed myself excused from all hill work for the rest of the month. Of course, I’m no mid-level glutton for punishment, so I changed my stripes come Sunday and opted to climb 3,064-foot Lantau Peak in the New Territories instead.
I swear I’m on top of a cloudy mountain here, not posing in front of a white backdrop.
Was it tough? You bet. Given the choice to do it again, would I opt to sleep in and rest my weary legs instead of taking a three-hour uphill hike?
Not for all the rice in China — only half of which I’ve consumed in my first nine days on ground.
Have you ever accidentally done a much harder workout than you intended?
If you’ve seen as many movies as I have, you’ve probably come to the conclusion that time travel always works out for everyone.
Want to father future resistance leader John Connor? Find his mama in 1984. Want to save a hippogriff and your godfather to boot? Use your time turner with a friend. Want to smooch deceased heartthrob Keanu Reeves hours after he’s been smushed to smithereens in a city bus lane? Rent his lake house, write him love letters and try not to think too hard about the fact that this devastatingly flawed plotline violates every established rule of the space-time continuum. Luckily, everyone’s good-looking.
Oh whoops, and spoiler alert above. My bad.
But you know what time travel isn’t very good at? Helping you stay fit.
How do I know about time travel, you ask? Because I’m writing this on Saturday afternoon, and it’s arriving in your inbox on Friday night. Bam. Time travel.
That, or I’m on the other side of the international dateline for the next two weeks. You be the judge.
When I signed on to work out of the Hong Kong office for a fortnight this month, I envisioned returning stateside the epitome of health.
I’ll run in the evenings! I thought as I packed up my Asics. I’ll catch-up on shut eye! I dreamed as a boarded the plane. I’ll detox my diet! I imagined as buckled my seatbelt, reclined my chair and prepared watch six feature-length films.
What I didn’t prepare for was being fed six feature-length meals before touching down in Asia. Let’s just say that I had to request a seatbelt extension somewhere over the Arctic Circle.
And the eating hasn’t slowed since. With a corporate expense account and no kitchen to cook in, I’ve been dining out three times a day in China’s culinary capital, and I have the waistline to prove it. On top of all the noodles and pork buns a girl for ask for, my office is also stocked full of just as many snacks as its New York equivalent, and my curious mind has had to try them all.
Like these M&Ms, for example. They’re in a different shape packaging than I’m used to! Maybe they taste different! Science demands I try them! (They are exactly like the U.S. version, turns out, but I still ran the experiment eight times to be sure.)
Fortunately, the time difference has had one minor benefit on my health — the jetlag had me awake at 3 a.m. two times last week, allowing me to squeeze in a workout at my hotel’s 24-hour fitness center before rolling into the office at 5:45 a.m. Also, I start each morning eating an Asian pear — or are they just called pears here? — bringing my daily fruit/vegetable intake to a whopping count of one.
At least I’m not the only one eating out this week.
No, she’s not here with me. She tweeted this.
But while my first week here has been particularly indulgent, I’m intending to turn a corner tomorrow. After a week in the concrete jungle that is Central Hong Kong, I’m looking forward to escaping the city for a day of hiking with my colleagues on Lantau Island, home of the big Buddha. Hopefully seeing his giant, bronze belly will remind me that while there’s nothing wrong with a little food tourism, it’s probably best not to look like him when I land stateside in the near future — or, as we time travelers call it, the near past.
Religion can be a complicated thing, at worst justifying discrimination and genocide, and at best, making it socially acceptable to dip your crackers in wine before noon.
A semi-lapsed Episcopalian thriving in the heathen’s paradise that is New York City, I don’t practice my faith much outside of Christmas with the family and muttering “Jesus Christ” at every tourist on Lex, and I’m certainly not as consistent about bowing my head for grace as my most pious niece, Keira.
Please bless this kibble and bring me a bunny rabbit as a friend who I probably won’t eat but might by mistake. Amen.
But there is one season of the Christian year that I do tend to observe, well, religiously, and that’s Lent.
For those of you who don’t painstakingly count down the hours until Cadbury Crème Egg season like the rest of us, Lent’s a 40-day period in the Christian liturgical calendar reserved for prayer, penance and self-denial. It’s a ball of solemnity and fun, let me tell you.
Many people practice Lent by giving up something for the entire six-week period, like chocolate or meat or chocolate-covered meat, which, honestly, I think we should eat more of as a society.
But as my general policy – in fitness and in life – is against the unsustainable practice of outright denial, I prefer to stay mindful of the season by instead adding something to my daily routine for 40 straight days. I’d originally hoped it would be another running streak, but with two weeks of Hong Kong travel ahead for me – including two 16.5 hours flights bookmarking either side –40 days of running isn’t realistically in the cards.
So instead this Lenten season, I’m vowing to plank for one minute every single day between now and Easter. I realize strengthening my core muscles may not have been what Jesus and friends had in mind when they wrote the rule book, but it’s something that’s important to me and my health, so I don’t think they’d mind.
More importantly, the stronger my stomach is come April 20, the faster I can stuff it with crème eggs, and we all know that’s the real end game here.
What are you giving up – or taking up – this Lenten season?
They say you miss 100 percent of the shots you never take, but as someone who gave up taking shots after her 27th birthday, I can assure you that this aging body isn’t missing them one little bit.
Oh, it’s a sports idiom? I see. Carry on then.
When it comes to athletic feats, Wayne Gretzky had it right: there’s no way you’ll thrive on the rink or field or track or pool if you don’t at least show up and try. It’s not rocket science:
Unless you consistently go to yoga class, you aren’t going to be able to touch your toes. (Oh, you can already touch your toes? Show off.)
Unless you go to Sochi, you aren’t going to win gold.
Unless you lift weights, you aren’t going to build muscle, tone down and eat a delicious lunch to boot.
… and one … and two ….
It’s with that idea in mind that I chose to sign up for the Sleepy Hollow Half Marathon next month. After a sedentary winter and the imminent loss of my best pacer to his homeland, I knew the odds of my PRing at the March 22 event were slim indeed, but the chance of PRing while sleeping late that Saturday morning were far worse.
I pegged my PRing odds at 5%, my placing odds at 10% and my drinking Bloody Marys odds with my boyfriend and his mama post-race at an optimistic 98%. I learned the race course, did my speed work, resumed my double digit long runs and prepared to at least give it the old college try when it came time to compete in my first long race of the new year.
I was ready. … And then I learned I’ll be traveling for work that weekend, and my odds of absolutely everything plummeted to a disappointing zero. They say eighty percent of success is showing up, but I don’t think I can count this absent performance as a 20 percent win.
Luckily, easing the pain is the fact that I’m not missing this race for Pittsburg. Work travel destination? Hong Kong, which is boasting a high of 77 degrees this fine February afternoon. Don’t mind if I do, you subtropical climate, you.
And heck, if I really want to aim for a PR in March, I could always try my luck in an athletic event on another continent. This one, in particular, has caught my eye. Odds of beating my speedy 10K PR? Low. Odds of completing my first ever Asian road race? 100%. That is, if I show up.
I’m good at a lot of things (read: coloring, banter, modesty) but I’m aware there exist some gaping holes in my education as a citizen of the world. I never learned state capitals, for example, or to swim the butterfly. I never learned to ski or to patiently cook rice. I never learned to do a pull-up or French braid my own hair or befriend a household cat unscathed, and if you’ve ever seen me with a jar of peanut butter, it’s clear I never learned it doesn’t expire if I don’t consume all 16 ounces it in one fell swoop.
I mean, I’ve heard rumors the cap screws back on, but I’d hate to risk it.
But of all the things I never learned in my 28 years, there’s one deficiency that’s particularly clear: I never learned how to properly relax.
Sure, I can binge watch Top Chef marathons with the best of them, but you can bet your weight in Padmas I’ll be multitasking all elimination challenge long, whether that’s cooking myself or cleaning the apartment or stretching my tight legs after the morning’s long run (just kidding on that last one, clearly.) I’ll also spend all 60 minutes feeling terribly guilty I’m inside in front of the TV and not out doing something tangibly productive as I strive to squeeze every last ounce of ouput out of the day.
I could try to blame my constant need to be productive on my adopted city that never sleeps, but the truth is, I’ve been afflicted with an inability to unwind for as long as I can remember. A Saturday morning with no plans? I immediately call up a friend for brunch. An empty calendar on Friday night? Tick off another Oscar contender. A Sunday afternoon in Baltimore? Play a rousing game of “hide the chew toy” with my clever niece. I usually win.
You’ll never find this one.
My inability to simply unplug and relax is part of who I am, and normally, I don’t mind so much, as it ensures I’m getting the most efficient use out of every single waking moment.
But after another week of long hours and ramped up mileage, I entered the recent three-day weekend aching to do something I’ve never successfully done before: absolutely nothing.
And I succeeded. Kind of.
Even though I had vowed to take it easy, I still managed to squeeze in a 10-mile training run during a snow storm, two lunches with friends in far-flung boroughs, a yoga class, a dinner party and a home-cooked Valentine’s Day meal, complete with homemade flourless chocolate cake and country wheat bread.
Don’t let Hallmark tell you otherwise. Carbs = the most romantic Valentine’s Day gift.
I realize it doesn’t necessarily sound like I successfully did “nothing” all weekend long, but at least in my distorted opinion, it felt pretty indulgent indeed. Why, you ask? Because I also slept in all three days, lazily read my whole book club book, watched two feature-length movies and took off two entire days from my fitness routine.
I know I’m never going to be stellar at decompressing, but like most things in life — from nutrition to running to rationing JIF — maybe this is another area in my life I can improve with consistency, effort and good ol’ practice. “Practicing” relaxation may not sound that relaxing to a seasoned recliner, but for this wind-up toy on the go, I’d say it’s a (step-free) step in the right direction.
If you turned on the TV yesterday, you were probably bombarded with news reports touting a new study published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine that shows Americans are eating entirely too much sugar.
If you didn’t turn on the TV yesterday, $5 says you either don’t have a TV or the opposable thumbs to turn it on.
Full disclosure: I’m reusing this photo. Also full disclosure: don’t feed Keira after midnight.
According to the report, which was the headline feature on every 24-hour news station during my morning workout, a whopping 71.4 percent of U.S. adults get more than the recommended 10 percent of their daily calories from added sugars in foods and drinks. And surprise surprise, an elevated sugar intake is closely correlated with cardiovascular disease and, you guessed it, death. You know it always ends in something sexy like death or celebrity rehab if the top journalists in the world are using their unparalleled access to the American public to broadcast it on repeat.
As I watched identical news segments about the report on NBC and CBS while I searched in vain and irony for the channel airing Cupcake Wars, I couldn’t help but disregard the warning as something that doesn’t really apply to me. I don’t drink sugary sodas. I don’t keep Oreos in the house. I only add Splenda to my oatmeal and soda water to my vodka, and I couldn’t even tell you the last time I purchased a candy bar. Stolen one from a child? That’s another story.
I don’t even drink fancy, sugar-laden coffee drinks. A regular cup of joe with almond milk, or maybe the occasional skim latte, is plenty for me. Sure, this fat-free latte from the Upper East Side may be the sweetest thing you’ve ever seen, but it’s still cloyingly, adorably sugar-free.
In my mind, the “Americans eat too much sugar” story is a story about a different kind of America than the one I live in: the kind of America that supports Duck Dynasty, thinks Gushers are a vegetable and pours Mountain Dew over its Fruit Loops.
Given my daily kale intake and infrequent donut consumption, I figured there was no way that TV segment on elevated sugar intake was meant for health-conscious, cookie-avoiding, water-swigging viewers like me.
But I thought I’d check my daily food log on myfitnesspal just in case. You know, in order to celebrate my superior nutritional choices and give myself a good ol’ pat on the corn-syrup-less back.
And what do you know?
My daily sugar intake exceeds the recommended amount at least twofold, and most days, by much, much more.
Why yes, I do get a lot of fiber. Eat your heart out, boys.
I have to step back and apologize here, Mountain Dew enthusiasts. Here I was acting all high and mighty given my soda-free lifestyle, when really, I’ve been bathing in the sweet stuff just like the rest of you.
At first glance, I couldn’t figure out how it was possible I’m taking in 70 to 100 grams of sugar on average every day vs. the recommended 30 to 50 grams for my body and lifestyle. On Tuesday, a day in which I cooked all my meals myself and limited my caloric intake to 1,400, when it came to sugar, I somehow managed to throw back a whopping 149 grams. A spoon full of sugar helps more sugary things go down, apparently.
To be fair, a large percentage of my sugar consumption is tied to fresh fruits and whole grains and low-fat dairy — the “natural” kind of sugar that isn’t the scary added stuff the study was warning about. Also, I may have indulged in the free office snack room Tuesday with a bag of 100-calorie fudge stripe cookies, pushing my counts over the top.
But beyond that, it seems added sugars are still sneaking into my diet with me none the wiser. Take, for example, by daily fruit-on-the-bottom Chobani fat-free yogurt. I eat it for the high protein and low calorie count, but I finally took a second to read the sugar section of the nutrition label, and its 16 grams – or about half what I’m supposed to eat in an entire day – vs. 4 grams for plain. The single-serving coconut waters I drink after a particularly hard workout? Another 16 grams. I never beat Number Munchers, but I can see how this adds up.
The truth is, I think I do eat healthier than 80 percent of Americans, and I’m not really sure I’m willing to give up my last few indulgences in an effort to further curb my sugar intake. But I’m hoping at least keeping sugar on the brain as I make culinary decisions should help me be a little more mindful of my problem.
In fact, in four short months, my homegirl Kat and I will be gearing up once more for the Governor’s Ball music festival, and while I’m generally down for helping out my neighbors, when Andre 3000 asks me to lend him some sugar, I’m think I’m going to have to politely decline.
Is sugar something you eat in moderation? What are your tricks for keeping your intake down, especially when the easy things to cut out like soda and poptarts and sugar cubes are already long gone?
Since retiring my XL lounge-pants three years ago and committing myself to the sport of running, I’ve run 37 road races, two sub-4:00 marathons, thousands of miles and nearly out of goldendoodle photos to populate this blog.
Just kidding. I’ll never run out of those.
I wouldn’t call myself a running expert, per se — I only claim expertise in such indisputable areas as Upper East Side bagel shops and Cory and Topanga’s teenage love — but I would go so far as to claim that when it comes to running, I am no longer a mere novice.
Why, then, is it every single time I begin training for a long-distance running event, I choose to download and follow one of online coach Hal Higdon’s novice training plans, rather than one of his more advanced workout regimes?
Because I’m a scaredy cat, that’s why. And that’s the worst kind of cat, which — believe me — is a designation this dog-lover doesn’t award lightly.
I’ve been following Hal’s online training programs for years, starting three years ago to the month with his novice 5K training plan, which had me jogging less than five miles a week as I learned the basic mechanics of putting one foot in front of the other. I finished that eight-week plan with a base level of fitness and immediately dove into Hal’s novice 10-mile training plan with the goal of running the entire 2011 Broad Street Run without stopping once.
As many of you know, that race ignited my passion for racing, and two short months later, I found myself doing the previously unimaginably and downloading Hal’s novice half marathon training schedule in anticipation of my first ever 13.1 mile event. Fast forward a year, and I was using his novice marathon program to prepare for the Marine Corps event.
When it came time to train for the New York City marathon the following year, it felt somewhat disingenuous following the same novice marathon plan again, since I already had one marathon under my belt from using that identical training schedule. So I mentally prepared myself to leave the comfort of novicity behind, went online, clicked on Hal’s library of marathon plans — and found that he’d added a second-tier notice plan to the offerings. “A slight step upwards in difficulty from Novice 1,” the description read. “It is designed for people with some background as a runner.” The Novice 2 marathon plan still offered me two rest days and less than 35 miles a week on my feet, plus the familiarity and security of a novice plan. Done and done.
But as you already know, even though I followed the schedule nearly to a T, I still crossed the finish line in New York some seven minutes slower than my marathon PR. I know a whole host of outside factors can dictate a race pace, from the elevation (hilly) to the weather (cool) to how many times your eyes well up with emotion along the race course (I plead the fifth), but I couldn’t help wondering deep down inside if my plateaued fitness had anything to do with the fact that I was still training as a novice, despite my growing experience.
Proof I ran the marathon. Also proof I didn’t buy the $80 marathon foto.
So when I recently signed up for this March’s Sleepy Hollow Half Marathon, I decided to step out of my comfort zone once and for all and put the novice training plans behind me. With that aim, I’ve opted to follow Hal’s intermediate half-marathon training program, intended for “individuals who have left their novice roots behind and who want to improve their performances.” The description of its target audience might as well have had my headshot posted next to it: “You should be capable of running 30 to 60 minutes a day, five to seven days a week, have competed in at least a few 5-K and 10-K races, if not a marathon, and at least be willing to consider the possibility that some speedwork might help you improve. Better yet if your name is Anne and you love Zac Efron films. Also, don’t forget to pick up your dry cleaning.”
Ugh. Speedwork. I prefer to pretend that word doesn’t exist, much like cockroaches and the Kardashians. Running hard and fast outside of a racing environment is never fun, but my real apprehension when it came to the intermediate schedule had to do with the letter X.
As in, my schedule read “8 x 400 5-K pace,” and that terrified me. What the hell does an X mean in a workout? I associate Xs with dreadful things, like X-rays and Vin Diesel’s American action XXX and the totally unnecessary Goldfish cracker remake, “Goldfish® Flavor Blasted® Xtreme Cheddar.” No, thank you, Pepperidge Farm. The regular blasting of cheddar was just fine.
But leisurely jogs in the park does not a competitive runner make, so I finally went online to ask the running community what “8 x 400 5-K pace” meant. Turns out (as most of you may already know), that means running 400 meters (i.e. a quarterish mile) at your 5K race pace (for me, 7:30ish) eight times, with a slow jog or cool down in between each repetition. Ok, I guess I didn’t really need to look that up, but I was secretly hoping the internet would tell me it was something significantly lazier, like eating 8 packs of 400 donuts while sitting cross-legged. No such luck.
So yesterday morning, I dragged myself out of bed, went to the gym, cranked the treadmill up to a blistering pace … and surprisingly enjoyed myself. Maybe it was the House Hunters International marathon on the gym TVs distracting me, but I actually found myself smiling every time I hit a rhythm at that faster pace. I haven’t pushed myself hard in entirely too long a time, and while I don’t pretend I could run an entire 5K at my “5K pace” at this specific juncture, knowing I have it in me for even 400 meters at a time is still an accomplishment indeed.
In most of life’s situations, when it comes to choosing between real or unreal, reality wins out. In today’s 24-hour reporting cycle, for example, the most successful news is real time. One of the best things about your late 20s is knowing who your real friends are and taking real (i.e. non-megabus) transportation up the Eastern seaboard. People buy real estate, watch Real Housewives and use the real unemployment rate to discuss the state of the economy. And let’s not forget soccer. There’s a reason everyone loves Real Madrid. (Spanish jokes!)
But for all the time we spend pursuing authenticity in our friendships and love lives and day-to-day existence, there’s one major component of many of our lives where we don’t strive for reality – our food.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m not about to go on some healthy-eating rampage or try to convince you to make your own yogurt. Heck, just today, my boyfriend and I shared a family-sized box of knock-off cheez-its and called it lunch. For years, I thought the word “organic” was little more than a punchline, and even now, some of the violent opposition to genetically-modified agriculture can come off sounding a bit like a Portlandia spoof.
But at the same time, in the years since I’ve cleaned up my diet and started thinking more critically about my nutrition choices, it’s become glaringly obvious that much of our food intake has gotten far more complex and unnatural than it ever needed to be.
Take, for example, a loaf of bread. When made from scratch, bread requires little more than flour, yeast, water and salt. Now go to your kitchen and check out the ingredients list on your store-bought loaf. Even if it’s boasting buzzwords like “whole wheat” or “multigrain,” odds are good the ingredient list is dozens of items long, and some of the additions – from corn syrup to soybean oil – don’t sound like necessary add-ons at all. Despite what every locally-sourced menu in Brooklyn might lead you to believe, the vast majority of the food that passes through our lips is complicated and processed and anything but simple.
And this is especially the case in the lucrative world of so-called healthy items. When I was trying to lose 30 pounds in 2011, I remember I stocked my drawers full of 90-calorie Special K cereal bars because, well, that’s what the commercials told me to do. I’d inhale one every morning and another every afternoon, and while I’d successfully keep my calorie count under the 1,500 goal I was targeting, I was never, ever satiated.
The more I learned about nutrition, the more I began to understand why. Sure, the bars were low-cal and tasty, but they had virtually no protein or fiber, and the ingredient list was longer than a Saturday night wait at the Meatball Shop:
CEREAL (RICE, WHOLE GRAIN WHEAT, SUGAR, WHEAT BRAN, SOLUBLE WHEAT FIBER, SALT, MALT FLAVORING, MALTODEXTRIN, THIAMIN MONONITRATE [VITAMIN B1], RIBOFLAVIN [VITAMIN B2]), CORN SYRUP, SOLUBLE CORN FIBER, FRUCTOSE, STRAWBERRY FLAVORED FRUIT PIECES (SUGAR, CRANBERRIES, CITRIC ACID, NATURAL STRAWBERRY FLAVOR WITH OTHER NATURAL FLAVORS, ELDERBERRY JUICE CONCENTRATE FOR COLOR, SUNFLOWER OIL), SUGAR, VEGETABLE OIL (SOYBEAN AND PALM OIL WITH TBHQ FOR FRESHNESS, PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED PALM KERNEL OIL)†, MALTODEXTRIN, CONTAINS TWO PERCENT OR LESS OF DEXTROSE, SORBITOL, GLYCERIN, NONFAT DRY MILK, NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL STRAWBERRY FLAVOR, SOY LECITHIN, SALT, NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR, NIACINAMIDE, COLOR ADDED, PYRIDOXINE HYDROCHLORIDE (VITAMIN B6), BHT (PRESERVATIVE). †LESS THAN 0.5g TRANS FAT PER SERVING
I soon realized that for nearly the same number of calories, I could have a string cheese (7 grams protein, four ingredients) and a handful of cherry tomatoes (lots of fiber, just one ingredient), simplifying my diet and leaving me feeling full. With that realization, I started swapping out increasingly more processed “health” foods for fresh fruit, roasted nuts and “clean eating” choices, and by that summer, I was out of a size 14 and training for my first half marathon.
Clean eating has been a goal of mine in the three years since, but between my long working hours and the hundreds of delivery options on every New York City block, it’s easy to let home cooking and other good habits go by the wayside. And it certainly doesn’t help that my office stocks its free-food pantries with all the processed deliciousness a hungry employee could ask for.
Fruit snacks. Neither fruit nor snacks. Discuss.
But January is about recommitting yourself to the things that are important to you — and about changing your stance on snow from amused to infuriated — so I’m vowing here to recommit myself to clean eating, at least when the option is available.
And I’m going to brag here for a second. I got off to a pretty good start last week. On Monday night, I roasted my own chicken.
No big deal.
The following night, I simmered the bones to make a homemade stock.
Mildly big deal.
The night after that, I used the stock to make homemade Brussels sprout risotto.
Big F-ing deal.
And then I ate aforementioned box of cheez-its for lunch today and undid a week’s worth of toxic-free eating. But what the heck. Cheez-its are delicious.
The truth is, I know I’m not always going to choose the “real” food option, especially with Cadbury Crème Egg season so fast approaching, and at least a good portion of the time, I’m still going to choose convenience over health. But at least trying to keep these goals in mind in the months ahead might help me choose the fresh fruit over the crab chips during my next trek to the office kitchen. Hell, even if we go best out of three, I’ll still be moving in the right direction. (And, as much as it pains me to admit as a Baltimore native, away from the crab chips is probably the right direction.)
Riled Up Runner 