How do you find a balance between eating for performance and eating like a human being?

Thanks.

Someone Somewhere wrote:

I think you are suffering from OCD not an eating disorder/problem.Focusing on what and when you eat is making the problem worse,its making the obsession grow. You need to tackle the anxiety not your diet. You should get to the stage where it shouldn't be anxiety provoking if you eat something unhealthy.

I doubt Bekele. Dibaba ,solinsky or webb get stressed like this over food. Your anxiety has latched on to food to justify its existence.

Try ERP Therapy.

The line between OCD and EDs isn't always clear. You can have both and they can feed into each other. Some of it is OCD but some of it is very focused on weight, and there's the frequent weighing part (I've been awake for forty minutes and I've weighed myself twice already) and so on. But I can't break this all at once, I'm looking at smaller pieces.

Find a new sport. Running either feeds those prone to obsessivness or forces people into becoming obsessive freaks. For whatever reason this sport sure attracts them.

Get involved in hiking, or fishing, or golf, something else.

Have you tried mindfullness meditation to curb your anxiety and restlessness.

ED's and OCD are anxiety related.

Food is one of life's great pleasures, don't let your anxiety ruin it. It's not worth it.You need to step back and see how pointless and unimportant such stuff is in the greater scheme of things.Even as regards performance, training is the most important thing.Just have faith in your training and appetite, you'll find your natural ideal weight if your doing proper training.

Good luck

aquafina wrote:

Find a new sport. Running either feeds those prone to obsessivness or forces people into becoming obsessive freaks. For whatever reason this sport sure attracts them.

Get involved in hiking, or fishing, or golf, something else.

No way, never. I love this sport and for the most part it is a huge positive influence on my life. I just have a few things I need to work out as a flawed human being.

Meditate wrote:

Have you tried mindfullness meditation to curb your anxiety and restlessness.

ED's and OCD are anxiety related.

Food is one of life's great pleasures, don't let your anxiety ruin it. It's not worth it.You need to step back and see how pointless and unimportant such stuff is in the greater scheme of things.Even as regards performance, training is the most important thing.Just have faith in your training and appetite, you'll find your natural ideal weight if your doing proper training.

Good luck

Only once. It was awesome. I can get into it more. I'll talk to my personal trainer tomorrow, she is an elite runner who meditates regularly.

What aquafina said is probably the best advice on this thread. I can't help but see this ending badly.

This thread has slightly annoyed me to be honest, probably wrongly. It seems like you want to air it in public - I might be wrong on that and I apologise if so, but I don't think it's a good way of going about it. Why not ask some runners you train with or in real life instead of asking on letsrun? I surely don't think you'll get anything but a lot of conflicting advice and possibly get confused more.

As far as my advice goes, it's simple. Just try and eat normally. You're getting too caught up in the details.

I personally wouldn't advise sticking to set times - that's way too inflexible and it doesn't matter if something's at 2:58, 3:01 or 3:33. It doesn't matter.

Not my usual name for sure wrote:

This thread has slightly annoyed me to be honest, probably wrongly. It seems like you want to air it in public - I might be wrong on that and I apologise if so, but I don't think it's a good way of going about it. Why not ask some runners you train with or in real life instead of asking on letsrun? I surely don't think you'll get anything but a lot of conflicting advice and possibly get confused more.

I just wanted a diverse set of opinions. I'm also a really public person. I don't want this to be public, but I don't mind if it is, if it means getting answers that might help me move past it. I don't think it's anything to be ashamed of, it's just something I want to work on.

xenonscreams wrote:

imaginary wrote:

You know not to take iron and calcium at the same time, do you? Calcium inhibits iron absorption. Take them separately at different times.

Yeah, I know this. Thanks anyways.

But also I don't "take" heme iron, since heme iron necessarily implies that it comes from meat.

Anyways, this is part of what freaks me out about diet. Crap like this I have to plan around. I hate that half of LRC is encouraging my neurosis and the other half is telling me to just let loose. Where the hell are all of the people who have actually found the middle ground?

Since you already know that then it's easy. What I do is I almost always have milk (whole milk) along with my breakfast. That takes care of calcium and vit-D at the beginning of the day. Get iron in in other meals. It isn't that complicated.

I had iron deficiency before. And I know bone health is important for runners. That's about as far as extra miles I would go about paying attention to my diet. In general, a proper way to healthy eating is to consume everything, meat, fat, grains, veggies, fruit. Making delicious food (cooking) is fun. Obsession with food is not.

Last time I had my health checked (blood values, ferritin level, and vitamins, bone, etc. ), the numbers show I'm nearly, if not already, a perfect human being.

BTW, to lessen you confusion on this topic, please disregard what Not my usual name for sure wrote.

My ferritin was 11 after years of eating whatever I wanted. It was 51 recently. Awesome. But one of my qualms about eating normally has been a fear that it will drop again.

I try to get my calcium in during snacks and get my iron from meals, that way they're inherently timed separately. What I don't know is how strict I'm supposed to be with this. How often can I break that paradigm?

I honestly believe that it's possible to become less obsessive but still focus, I just need to figure out some strategies. I already did it with my running. My running schedule used to be a very strict thing. I had to run the number of miles my Google Calendar said and if something out of my control changed that (injury, illness) I would freak out. I'm not like that anymore. It took a while but I figured out how not to do that. I stick mostly to a running schedule but if I get the flu or get hurt I accept it and deal accordingly. So I think I can figure out how to do this with food too, slowly.

xenonscreams wrote:

My ferritin was 11 after years of eating whatever I wanted. It was 51 recently. Awesome. But one of my qualms about eating normally has been a fear that it will drop again.

I try to get my calcium in during snacks and get my iron from meals, that way they're inherently timed separately. What I don't know is how strict I'm supposed to be with this. How often can I break that paradigm?

So you've got your ferritin right and your bones (vit-D, bone density, etc) are healthy now. That means what you've been doing is working. What you need actually is 2 or 3 of these blood tests (past +current) to interpret/interpolate then extrapolate how much (loosely is good enough) you need to do to stay in the proper ranges. The interval between the tests may be a few months in the beginning. Then once or twice a year is good to see if you're off track. No need to worry. The numbers don't lie.

Good luck!

Try eating with other people. If you have a friend or two try having dinner with them like once every other week (preferably one of those friends that always runs late). Just anything that almost forces a switch in what or when you eat. Most people also.don't like going to eat at the same place all the time so let them pick the place, maybe even your meal. If you're able to have a schedule that strict it's probably because the rest of your day is on a really rigid schedule. The only eating rule I have is at that I won't eat or drink 2 hours before a run. Well I also don't eat things I don't enjoy.

i'm a girl hobby jogger and have gone through phases where i've been obsessed with diet.

that kind of went away when i realized there seemed to be no correlation between my weight, my diet, and my times but i still want to make sure i get all the right nutrients.

it sounds like you aren't restrictive in your food choices which is good. i found everything in moderation has kept the iron levels in check.

my days tend to be fairly routine. i eat cereal in the morning, coffee and nuts at around 10, lunch at 1:00 or so which consists of veggies and sour cream and ranch dip along with a leftover from dinner, nuts and/or yogurt in the afternoon, and a standard dinner.

i guess what i'm getting at is that if you know what you are going to eat that day, then can you just eat it when you feel like it?

You should be extremely aware of your diet. You're not being obsessive; don't base your circumstances on how the other 99% of American's eat.

The one mistake you're probably making is you're just not eating enough. Eat a ton of calories, but make them the correct foods, vary your diet constantly -- don't just eat salad and the same fruits every day. Don't diet, eat. Don't plan, just think.

I believe you're getting "eating like a human being" mixed up with "heating like an American". Don't let our eating habits over the past thirty years warp your mind into believing we (as humans) are ever supposed to eat this way.

Get out of your own head: forge, eat a ton of the correct foods, have good "food awareness" and run like an damn animal.

xenonscreams wrote:

I just wanted a diverse set of opinions. I'm also a really public person. I don't want this to be public, but I don't mind if it is, if it means getting answers that might help me move past it. I don't think it's anything to be ashamed of, it's just something I want to work on.

ok, fair enough. i'm sorry for what i said. maybe i misunderstood. look, i'm just concerned you might be getting yourself into a mess here. it isn't a good path to go down, getting obsessive about running and eating. just a whole lot of misery, of missed opportunities, not a lot of fun, and some bad memories to look back on. take a good hard look at how things are and how you want them to be. i'm concerned that when you ate what you wanted your iron dropped that low. that doesn't seem right - were you avoiding certain foods or maybe you don't like certain foods, i don't know. i've had experience of what you're going through, so if you want to email me offlist let me know and i'll drop my email address in. good luck with it all, either way :)

grizz from the training thread wrote:

It just isn't so crucial as to necessitate harsh, complicated rules. It should follow common guidelines-

My "usual" day of eating when I'm healthy and fit (coming back from an injury right now, so I'm eating much less):

Two eggs, three pieces of bacon,

Lunch- burrito or leftovers from dinner

Post-run- dinner, which is my big meal of the day. .

pork chop ...

a good piece of very rare steak....

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If you are eating 2 eggs 3 slices of bacon, a burrito with meat, AND pork chop or steak every day, and using butter as your fat, you are getting a fair amount saturated fat and cholesterol, probably too much. Don't let the Atkins/Taubes/Paleo crowd convince you otherwise, but your "template" is not the healthiest by any means. I am not saying you can never eat eggs or bacon or read meat, but have that be your diet every day, you are risking some CVD in the long term. Exercise and eating lots of fruits and veggies alleviates some of that risk for sure, but not all of it. These are simply facts. Trading your eggs and bacon for whole grain oatmeal with raisins, walnuts and non-fat milk would give you the same protein but much lower cholesterol and much lower sat fat (but including healthy unsat fats). Swapping out some of your pork/steak for chicken breast/very lean turkey and/or Tofu would also be a good idea. Just some FYI's.

As you said: Good luck.

The thing is that I don't really enjoy eating healthy foods. I mean, it's OK, and I can do it, but when I go by what I feel like eating, I feel like eating hot pockets and ice cream sundaes and bacon cheeseburgers and french fries and wings and cookies. In high school I used to have four cookies every night in bed. So eating whatever I want means eating like crap. I know people who crave healthy foods inherently. That's not me, ever. I wish it were; that would make things a lot easier!

I don't want to sacrifice your privacy since this is a really public place and you seem less public. If you want to find me off of LetsRun you can do that easily, and if you think you have help to offer I'm more than willing to listen elsewhere. But it's 100% up to you.

Interesting. Now that i think about it, I used to not like healthy foods either. in fact i worked in a sweets shop for a good chunk of my college days.

that completely reversed after around 15 years of slowly eating more and more healthy stuff. i'm trying to think about where it started but i think it came down to being hungry all the time and wanting to lose weight at the same time. i started changing stuff like my cereal.

i would eat like 1/2 a box of frosted mini wheats or cheerios but when i went to kashi go lean crunch and i would eat less and wasn't hungry an hour after eating them. then i started eating some sort of glazed nuts instead of cookies cause they filled me up. i used to be into the low fat foods but found i was just eating more of it.

then the gluten free fad came along. i never got into it but i have found that when i replace sourdough bread at dinner with just more meat and potatoes, i'm more satisfied.

so i've slowly gravitated to more healthy eating. but, i don't sweat the small stuff. i'll mix whipping cream with milk for my coffee and have eggs cooked in butter with potatoes for breakfast.

Semen contains many important vitamins and minerals. Just throwing that out there.