Fueling

I'll be the first to admit it, I have HORRID eating habits.  I don't fuel...I get busy, I forget to eat.  That simple.  I've literally gone 4 days without eating a single thing before...I realized it when I stood up from my desk and nearly passed out from a headrush.  A coworker asked when I'd eaten last and as I sat there thinking through it, I realized it had been 4 days.  Now, that was a total out of the ordinary case...but it does show that I am ridiculous sometimes.  Most of the time my days look more like this - wake up, head to work, work through lunch, around 1 or 2 start feeling light headed or weak so grab some candy for a quick blood sugar rush, go back to work, head home, take care of kids/house/etc, cook dinner, eat something healthy/reasonable portion, clean up from dinner, workout on one side of dinner or the other, and somewhere in there find myself feeling really weak or tired or hungry so grab straight up candy or high calorie junk level out.  Some of my favorite go-to's are cherryheads, cherry laffy taffy, twizzlers, or - if I'm feeling chocolate - milkway, milk duds, twix.  Overall my calorie intake stays on an even keel, typically around 1400-1800 daily though I never actually count them...but just because I eat so little and then grab such high calorie stuff when needed.  this is not fueling.  My blood sugar is up and down and my body just fights to have the calories it needs to burn through my workouts.  So, this week, as I was fighting the blahs, I also decided to fight one of my worst habits and to try and get my eating under control so it was conscious fueling.  I spent a few hours grocery shopping then washing and prepping fruits and veggies as well as grilling chicken breast, boiling eggs, making brown rice, steel cut oats, and inca red quinoa on Monday.  Then I put together measured and portioned meals, planning for breakfast, morning snack, lunch, afternoon snack, and dinner and including a protien, some carbs, and a little fat for each meal.  Yes folks, I was back to my Clean Eating habits...how I prefer to fuel, I just get lazy. 

Tuesday I felt ridiculously bloated...I haven't eaten that much food in a single day in a long time.  I was totally expecting to have gained weight by midweek but actually found the scale was slightly dropping.  My energy levels were better throughout the day as well.  No more sugar rush/crash.  All of this is stuff I know, but there's a major difference in knowing and doing.  That said, the lack of sugar was also starting to get to me....yes, I'm apparently addicted to sugar in addition to being addicted to running.  By thursday I had such a splitting headache that just wouldn't go away that I broke down and had a dark chocolate hazelnut crisp (I don't know dark chocolate or hazelnut, but it was sugar and somebody had it at work).  The headache subsided.  I decided I'd be better off not going cold turkey and perhaps just limiting my sugar intake.  Friday I had another of these little crisp things and found it actually wasn't that bad.  The trick here is going to be ensuring that throughout the weekend I continue to fuel and keep my sugar down instead of getting busy and forgetting to eat and then hitting high sugar stuff for a quick rush to burn through. 

So, goals for the weekend, fuel properly and fight the blahs to feel amazing...last weekend without a race.  :)