The Vegginator
Yours truly has a new nickname, and I’m not sure how I feel about it.
My company happens to be a Relay for Life sponsor, and to raise some final donations for this weekend’s walk, we organized a hot dog eating fundraiser. They secured Frank n Steins, a casual bar in downtown Orlando, to host the shenanigans, and I gleefully followed along with the planning…
Until my name – and new nickname – appeared on the promotional flyer.
Apparently, the rumor around the office is that the resident food blogger likes to eat. I’m not sure what led them to that conclusion…
Five minutes…3.75 veggie dogs…$1,000 for cancer research…
…and with that, we shall never speak of this again.
Or put pictures on Facebook.
I’m a lady, after all. I don’t shove weiners in my mouth for money and then plaster it all over the internet.
Moving right along.
I spent an hour or two enjoying the happy hour that followed before heading out to make dinner with some girlfriends. After going ham on the hot dogs, there wasn’t a ton of room in my stomach, but I still made room to sample the Vegginator-friendly goods 
{Salad of the gods: strawberries, blueberries, gorgonzola and pistachios}
{asparagus with basil pesto}
{deconstructed strawberry shortcake}
Just like that, it’s Friday. Here’s to the weekend!
Ever done an eating contest? Would you consider it?
Food Purchasing Practices: Price before Health or Taste before Price?
What the last food purchase you made?
For me, it was yesterday’s lunch – a Southwest veggie-packed salad from Eden’s.
I forked over six hard-earned bucks for a mountain of romaine topped with peppers, carrots, cheddar, olives and a bean/corn/cilantro salad. I was really in the mood for a spicy ranch dressing, so I improvised with equal parts home-style ranch and hot sauce.
Worth every penny – the combo of the ranch with hot sauce was genius!
As I was making a dent in the salad, I came across a recent study that surveyed the driving factors behind food purchases.
It was interesting to learn that 88 percent of respondents placed more value on the taste of the food before the price. Unsurprisingly, females and people with higher incomes were more likely to shell out more cash for food that tasted better, regardless of how much it cost.
Just over half of the participants were more concerned with the price of the food than the nutrition statistics. This group of people was on the opposite end of the scale from the taste-before-price group; men, younger consumers and people with lower educations were more likely to value price over health benefits.
When it came to the decision to purchase organics, never-married, full-time workers were most likely to buy the organically-grown foods.
Comparing the results of the study to my own personal food purchasing practices, I wasn’t surprised by the results. Ever since my family began giving me cash in college to put towards foods, I’ve had the same model for food-buying decisions:
I prefer to purchase foods that offer the most nutritional bang for my buck {i.e. spinach over iceberg lettuce or fresh sweet potatoes over bags of chips}. Certain foods are also worth the cost because of their ethical/environmentally friendly production or “unique” factor: to me, it’s worth it to me to shell extra for organic dairy, specialty vegetarian meats {like Field Roast} and free-range eggs from the local farm. People with special diets {vegan, gluten-free, etc} often have to allocate more money to the foods that fit their dietary or nutritional requirements.
Price does play a hefty role in the equation as well. I’m privileged to even have access to organic items, but I can’t always justify the splurge. Eating healthy doesn’t have to be expensive, but the tab can ring up quickly when you’re stocking your kitchen with pricey organics or fancy prepared foods. I try to stick to the dirty dozen for organics {or score any organics that are a weekly special at my local produce shop} and opt for conventional on other fruits and vegetables.
Ultimately, it’s about finding a price/nutrition/flavor balance that works for you and your budget. As a consumer, you have to decide what’s most important to you in your food economics and how you can accommodate your personal priorities.
What factors do you weigh when purchasing food? According to the study, which group would someone with your consumer characteristics fall into: taste before price or price before nutrition?
The Athlete’s Comparison Trap
Well hello, lover.
Fruity salads have been calling my name lately. As I’ve been eating more raw foods, I’ve been seeing my energy levels skyrocket! A high-raw diet isn’t in the cards for me, but I certainly have been enjoying the benefits of a few extra raw greens here and there.
This variation: strawberries, gorgonzola, chickpeas, broccoli and carrots, drizzled with a creamy ranch.
I need to start stocking my kitchen with more creative salad toppings – this Eden’s habit is getting a little out of control!
The Athlete’s Comparison Trap
As a fledgling runner, I’ve been struggling with a lot of insecurity about my athletic ability. I’ve chronicled it a bit here, here and here, but it’s something that continues to bother me every time I lace up my sneakers or think about my upcoming Memorial Day 8k.
Just like insecurity with your body or appearance, insecurity with your athletic ability isn’t something that magically disappears. Whatever your sport may be, it becomes part of your identity. If you feel as though you don’t measure up, it’s a lot to process and quite the emotional – and sometimes physical – blow.
Athletes are driven by numbers. We love tracking miles, splits, minutes, reps, sets and any other measurable figure we can get our hands on. It’s awesome for measuring our own progress, but it also lends itself far too well to comparison.
Get a group of runners together, and naturally, PR’s start flying. When you hear numbers that seem to get progressively lower and lower than yours, it’s easy to feel tinges of inadequacy. It can delude you into dismissing your own efforts and feeling “unworthy” of calling yourself an athlete.
I deflate a bit when I hear other runners talking about completing full marathons at a pace that I can’t even maintain for a 5k. Over time, it eats at me, makes me doubt my own abilities and replaces the joy I get from running with anxiety about my performance. Is it worth it? Not in the slightest. Especially when I know that what I’m comparing myself to is something that simply isn’t realistic for me at this point in my running journey.
Part of digging your way out of the comparison trap is realizing that in time, you’ll be where you want to be. It may not be next week, and it may seem impossible, but if you’re willing to work like a manic, it’ll happen. It takes an insane level of mental commitment, and you may need several fires lit under your ass, but it can happen.
The other part is realizing that running isn’t everything. If it makes up a huge percentage of what you think about and what you hope to be, it’s not an easy realization. At the end of my life, though, I want to be remembered as more than just a runner. I want to have a marathon under my belt before I kick it (and some days I think that it could be a marathon that would kill me), but there are far more important things I’d rather be remembered for. If someone were to remember anything about me and running, I’d rather it be that I had a passion for it – not that I dragged myself through each run kicking and screaming.
Do you struggle with the athlete’s comparison trap?
How Much Happiness are you Cheating Yourself Out Of?
Yesterday was one of the easiest Mondays of all time. Work felt more like eight minutes than eight hours – all of my article assignments were about yoga and alternative medicine, and I was totally in my element.
I didn’t feel like breaking for a regimented lunch, so instead I just snacked on a spread throughout the day.
I’ve really been loving Heini’s cheeses, made from hormone-free milk sourced from Amish farms. The flavors are downright gourmet – the unique Amish Bermuda Onion cheese absolutely rocks in omlettes and faux-meat rollups!
How Much Happiness are You Cheating Yourself Out Of?
All afternoon, I stared down a mantra on my Lululemon lunch bag.
“The pursuit of happiness is the source of all unhappiness.”
I agree with a lot of their inspirational sayings, but the more I thought about it, the more this one registered as a big fat “no” for me.
If you wanted a new career, would you wait for the phone to ring with a job offer? If you wanted a new place to live, would you stay in your apartment until your dream home magically built itself around you? If you want to feel happier, why not pursue it?
You get one life to fill up with as many experiences as you can. In the real world, you have to fill it with nitty-gritty day to day stuff and squeeze in crazy monkey adventures where you can. Realistically, every day isn’t designed to be ZOMG AMAZING, but should that be any reason that we can’t be blissfully happy at the end of them? If we aren’t looking for the tiny, seemingly irrelevant things that actually make our lives rich and satisfying, aren’t we cheating ourselves out of insane amounts of happiness?
Pursuing and looking for happiness: is it really the source of all unhappiness?
Eating Healthy with Family
Hello from the tail end of a family visit!
Please tell me that some of your families are as food-oriented as mine. Maybe it’s because mine is Italian and my grandmother feels happiest when she’s providing food for us, but there was hardly a second this weekend that I wasn’t either eating or being offered food.
Luckily my grandmother is a fabulous cook and my grandfather has excellent taste in restaurants!
The visit started out with a Saturday lunch at Mykonos – a family favorite Greek restaurant. The eggplant medley was completely vegan and came with a rockin’ veggie-packed starter salad:
The main dish was hands down the star of the show. The plate was packed with huge portions of nearly every Greek vegetable imaginable {tomatoes, spinach, peppers, onions, mushrooms, onions and eggplant} and served on a bed of yellow rice and lettuce.
Even though this was the first time I’d ordered the eggplant medley, it’s hands down one of my favorite restaurant dishes of all time!
Other delectable eats provided by the family included:
It’s easy to find myself waddling around the house by the last day of my visit, but this Mother’s Day was distinctly less gut-busting than other vacations with the family. I ate as mindfully as possible– enjoying reasonable servings of my favorite dishes and skipping over the “meh” foods that didn’t exactly appeal to me. Between mindful eating and a long Saturday morning run, I headed home feeling like I hadn’t completely gone off the health wagon on the trip .
Some of my other favorite tricks for staying healthy with the family:
- Don’t be afraid to ask for modifications. Want to skip the cheese or opt for a meatless dish? Family is usually understanding enough to modify.
- Offer to prepare a healthy meal. My grandma was grateful to have Mother’s Day dinner covered, and my grandpa actually loved the sesame tofu stir fry I whipped up for the group.
- Don’t feel obligated to eat all the food offered. If I said yes to every edible my mother tried to give me, I’d have been simultaneously eating Oreos, pretzel sticks, smoothies and buttered toast. Just because it’s available to you doesn’t mean you have to eat it!
- On that same note, let the access to someone else’s pantry make you more adventurous. I enjoyed plenty of honeydew and Nutella over the trip – two foods I realized I love but rarely purchase on my own grocery runs!
How do you stay healthy when visiting family?
A Life with Fingerprints All Over It
I’ve been living a Talbot’s version of a life. It’s been bland and uninspired. It’s been as devoid of personality and flair as a rumpled pair of chinos and a pastel cable-knit.
When I stepped outside yesterday to pick up my lunch, I stood outside for a minute, just soaking up the setting to my day, seeing the courtyard in a new light.
When I first moved to Orlando, I was infatuated with the city. I got crazy tourist eyes every time I went somewhere. I was itching to settle in to this fantastic new place where I could assemble my life any which way I wanted.
Somewhere along the line, I busted my give-a-damn. I just wanted to get through the days – much less put any effort into living them.
My life stopped being distinctly mine. It turned into this vague amalgamation of oatmeal and Netflix and planners and rent checks and even I didn’t find it interesting. Any of you who have been reading this blog for any amount of time {my condolences} would be lying if you said you found anything I wrote in 2011 remotely entertaining.
There hasn’t been heart. There haven’t been fingerprints.
I want my life to add up to something.
I want it to be so smudged with my grubby fingerprints that every minute of it is unmistakably mine.
I want it to be big.
I want it to be a life that couldn’t happen to anyone else.
10-20-30 Training
It must be a full moon – I’m identifying with Ricky Bobby.
You and I both, friend.
Most runners use drills like Fartleks and Yasso 800’s to increase their speed. I personally do high intensity intervals of 1:30 to 30, but a new study published in the May 2012 issue of the Journal of Applied Physiology offers up a new method: 10-20-30 Training.
The study focused on 18 moderately trained runners who were divided into two groups: a high intensity training group and a control group.
The high intensity training group spent a week doing the 10-20-30 training. For their workouts, the training group completed 30 seconds of easy paced running, 20 seconds of moderately paced running and 10 seconds of sprinting. These intervals were repeated continuously for five minutes and broken up by two minute recovery intervals; runners completed three to four cycles per training session.
After a week of daily 10-20-30 intervals, the training group increased their V02-max (amount of oxygen their bodies can process during exercise) by 4 percent and shaved an average of 46 seconds off their 5k time.
As an added bonus, the group who completed the speedwork also experienced a drop in systolic blood pressure and total/LDL cholesterol, while the control group showed no changes.
10-20-30 Running Workout
As I push to improve my pace, I’ll definitely be incorporating speedwork once per week. Since I’d like to keep things as uncomplicated as possible, I’m a big fan of this time-based method (as opposed to methods that require measuring out 800 meters, etc). I’ll be implementing this into my weekly running schedule, using the following workout.
Repeat the following cycle for five minutes:
| Low intensity (30 percent effort) | 30 seconds |
| Moderate intensity (60 percent effort) | 20 seconds |
| High intensity (90 percent effort) | 10 seconds |
Recover for two minutes; repeat for three to four cycles.
Ever tried a 10-20-30 running plan for speedwork? Have you successfully used any speedwork plans to improve your running pace?
Second
Wait, what?
After all of that carrying on about the Run for Life Four Miler, I still finished second in my age group? With an pace that wasn’t the 17 minutes per mile it felt like it took me?
How the fresh hell did that happen?
I suppose it happened because as much as I feel like I need to preface all of my efforts with “I know it’s slow, but it’s fast for me”…I’ve put a lot of personal effort into training. I’ve pushed myself and I’m continuing to do so. I’m no Kara Goucher, but a little work, a little luck and a little age group pool came together and handed me my first competitive finish for a road race.
{Celebratory apple crumble cheesecake}
The sad part is that I let my perfectionism got the best of me. I cheated myself out of the satisfaction that would have come with receiving the competitive medal at the awards ceremony. So I’m no 6 minute miler – that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t deserve to feel proud!
We’re always our own biggest critics, no?
Even in areas where we still have light years of room to improve, we still need to grant ourselves the permission to enjoy the benefits of all the work we’ve put in that got us to exactly where we are. Who we are right now – no matter how much we’d like to change in the future – is the result of the work we’ve done our entire lives, and there’s no sense discounting it.
It’s good to be second!
Run for Life Four Miler Recap
Hello friends! Things are tough to get back in order after a holiday weekend, no? Hopefully everyone had a safe Cinco and transitioned back as smoothly as possible.
Before beginning the salsa-smothered festivities, I kicked off my weekend with a healthier event – the Run for Life four miler. The race had been in the back of my mind for weeks, but I waited until the morning of the event to fully commit.
Note to self: bad idea. The race was so well organized that I had high hopes heading in to it, but my body refused to cooperate. Once my stomach started arguing with my Clif bar and my quads started feeling like lead, my mind dropped out of the race as well. The only thing that keep me going after the first mile checkpoint was knowing how cranky a DNF would make me.
After what seemed like five hours of running, I rounded the final corner. After briefly eyeing up the remaining quarter mile stretch, I realized I could partially redeem my performance and overtake the other two females ahead of me. I’m not entirely sure how it was humanly possible, but I managed to cross the finish several steps in front of the other two ladies.
Even with the last-minute overtaking, I still was plagued with disappointment after I’d caught my breath. My {unofficial} finish of 41:58 was a solid two minutes more than I was shooting for, and despite the flat course, I felt like my body had been through an entire marathon. I skipped right over the post-race activities and requested a face-stuffing stop as quickly as possible.
One of the big qualms I’ve had about racing is that my competitive personality would get the best of me and turn me into a sore loser.
It’s never been an issue of being bitter against the winners of the race – the men and women on the course have worked their behinds off to run as well as they do and I’m incredibly happy for them – but I’m also incredibly hard on myself when I don’t earn the results I want.
I wholeheartedly believe that there’s pride to be had any time you really push yourself and work for something you want – but it’s also tough to be proud of yourself when you feel like you could have given a bit more, run a bit smarter and pushed a bit harder. I understand that not every race can be a PR, but it’s tough to walk away with your chin up when you under-perform.
How do you deal with sub-par performance? Are you able to be proud of “just a finish”, or do you also have to cope with a nagging sense of disappointment after missing a time goal?
Clawing
I don’t believe in the term “slow runner.”
If you run five minute miles, you’re a runner. If you jog 14 minute miles, you’re a runner. If you run, then walk, then run again, as long as you’re running towards the finish line, you’re a runner – no quantifiers necessary.
The awesome part is that no matter how “slow” of a runner you feel like right now, you always have room to grow. The trick is not getting hung up on where you are but deciding to do whatever it takes to get where you want to be.
Five months ago, I was proud as hell of finishing 3.1 miles on the treadmill in 35 minutes.
May 14th, I raced my first 5k in 30:55.
Last night, I clocked the same distance in 28:20.
Without accounting for the difference between treadmill running and pavement running, I’ve shaved two and a half minutes off my 5k time – and I’ve had to claw my way through every step.
I’ll straight up say it – it sucked.
Huffing and puffing at a pace that many other runners can maintain effortlessly isn’t fun. HULKSMASHING the treadmill stop button the second it clicks over to your final goal isn’t fun. Panting like Stevie from Malcolm in the Middle after you finish a set of intervals isn’t fun.
But when you start seeing progress, you don’t care about what it took you to get there. You just want to keep pushing to see how much further you can go. You appreciate the fact that you had to claw your way to where you are and you start looking for new places to dig in.
