A word about my diet

Today I literally cleaned out my refrigerator and my kitchen. While on the bike yesterday, I was thinking about my training over the last 5-6 months, and the things that I need to do better over the course of the next 6 months leading up to the race. The list is long. But the two most important areas that I need to start working on is my diet and my run. I'll talk about my run training in another post.

As my base fitness seems to be coming together, I was thinking that it makes no sense to sabotage all my work because of a bad diet; and if I am honest with myself, my diet has been pretty bad. If I want to reach my goal and run as fast as I want, I need to drop weight. And I think fueling myself better my have an attendant benefit of increasing recovery time and allowing me to have better workouts (especially re the run).

Yet I also don't want to lose strength and power. So I think that by starting now and gradually losing weight--rather than suddenly before the race--I'll not only be able to maintain my strength and power but will hopefully improve on it at a lighter weight. I don't want to be at my race weight until the week of the race, but I also think I should start losing some weight now.

I went to the grocery store today and this is what I bought: oranges, peaches, mango, grapes, apricot, blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, raspberries, pears, bananas, avocado, spinach, mushrooms, carrots, grape tomatoes, egg whites, vanilla nonfat frozen yogurt, cottage cheese, nonfat milk, Kashi Go Lean cereal, turkey, and chicken.

I think that I'll be able to stick to a healthier diet if I make it as routine as possible, much like training, so that I don't have to think too much about it. Every day, I plan to eat a fairly large breakfast including egg whites, cereal and milk. And for dinner, I plan to eat turkey, chicken, fish, or spaghetti, as well as salad. I'll eat fruits, vegetables, salads, cottage cheese etc. in between, and hopefully won't need much else. Having said that, I still won't deprive myself of any cravings (within reason) just yet (I typically tend to want some chocolate as least once a day).

I'm sure there are healthier diets out there, as I have read some people suggest for example, staying away from dairy --which is not possible for me as I love milk and cereal--and sticking to the darker colored fruits such as all berries. However, if I am going to start eating more fruits and vegetables, I am going to start by eating the ones I like.