Someone asked me today what my diet is while training for the marathon. She asked me this right after I'd finished scarfing three loaded potato skins and was moving on to the first of many fried chicken wings dipped in ranch dressing. This was in between beer number one and beer number two.
Since my grandparents are probably reading this, I should clarify that I don't drink two beers every day. I assure you, usually it's either much more or much less.
Anyway, as I told my friend when I'd wiped the grease off my face, my "diet" while training has been the same "diet" I've been trying to stick to for three years: "clean." My friend John and I defined "clean eating" a couple weeks ago as "basic common sense." Common sense eating includes lots of whole grains and lean meats and fruit, with as many vegetables as possible. Avoid fried foods and processed foods, and choose water over every other beverage.
Of course, I'm not immune from the charms of a bar menu, as demonstrated in the opening paragraph. But indulgent gluttony aside, clean eating is actually pretty simple in concept. If it comes pre-made or in a box, or the ingredient list is more than a few items long, don't eat it. But as I started reading fitness magazine articles and recipe blogs and food
labels, I realized that eating less of the processed foods that made up
the bulk of my youth and college diet -- pizza, mac n cheese, bread,
cereal, things in boxes -- meant that I'd be really hungry if I didn't
start eating more filling fibers. I needed to replace the loss of my old
diet with something new.
This meant vegetables. For me, this was the central challenge of permanent diet change, since I've always nurtured an extreme distaste for anything green. Lettuce, broccoli, bean sprouts, spinach -- from birth to my early twenties, I wouldn't deign to taste it, it looked so gross.
I've always liked peas, which are green, but my liking may have something
to do with the pat of butter I serve with it...
The answer at first was things I liked already -- peas, potatoes, and corn, supplemented with lots of fruit. My first vegetable experiment was cooked carrots, which I doused in sour cream (and still do to this day). After four successful recipe completions, I decided they were not only edible, but desirable. This was huge.
Over the course of a few years, I moved on to mushrooms, then cooked onions (I still haven't come around to raw onions), then spinach and broccoli and sweet potatoes. There were failed experiments too -- turnips and kale are too earthy, and there is no form of raw tomato that doesn't make me cringe.
But persistence paid off. As I worked new things into my diet, they become not a chore, but an opportunity for delicious variety. As I learned to rotate, my diet stabilized, and I whittled my grocery list down to about 40 items -- mostly from the produce, meat and diary aisles -- that I swap in and out as the seasons change.
Here are the things I buy most, off the top of my head:
- Fruit: Bananas, cantaloupe, berries, grapes
- Vegetables: Spinach, carrots, onions, sweet potatoes, mushrooms, zucchini, squash, corn, asparagus
- Dairy: Greek yogurt, skim milk, nonfat cottage cheese, goat cheese, fresh mozzarella, low fat butter, low fat sour cream
- Eggs
- Meat: Turkey (ground or deli), chicken (raw or rotisserie), fish and shrimp (frozen), steak (I'm from Iowa, this is a given)
- Whole grain bread, English muffins, and cereal
- Pantry: Baked beans, veggie broth, peanut butter, Nutella, jam, espresso, Truvia, an array of spices and baking products
- Gatorade products (G1 gels and G2 chews and fluids)
- In-shell pistachios
- Popcorn (air popper = great investment)
- Hummus
- Guilty pleasures: Alcohol, baguette, Coca-Cola and chocolate*
*I do not apologize for these, not even a little.
I still hate tomatoes, sprouts and cauliflower, and a bunch of other things. My diet is far from perfect; a few meals a week are eaten out, and I never leave the grocery store without one thing I don't need -- Tuna Helper, ice cream, Doritos. Sometimes I go to the movies just to eat movie theater popcorn loaded in fake butter solution. We're all human.
But forcing a new good thing (in my case, a vegetable) into my diet about four times a year for more than three years -- while simultaneously exercising my ass off, counting calories, attempting "gluten-free" months, and basically spending a lot of time thinking about food -- has led to a greater bulk of my diet being...well, conscious healthy choices! And that seems like a good thing, especially because now I'm less crazy; I'm no longer needing to count calories, because now I can look at a food and make an educated guess as to its caloric content; and I've emerged with an understanding that spinach and Snickers can coexist in my diet peacefully. The trick is to set the balance, the clutch-gas pressure that keeps the car rolling forward without stalling.
And it probably needn't be pointed out that distance running helps immensely by burning more "oops" calories than even I can keep up with.
I know there's more in there...I can smell it...
