Stopped giving a s*** about nutrition because it stresses me out

yes. nutrition sucks.

Yikes123 wrote:

yes. nutrition sucks.

I'm detecting sarcasm so just wanted to say yeah maybe the title is a bit misleading. I'm not ruling out nutrition as an important part of training/overall lifestyle, but I find myself placing way too much focus on when/what my next meal will be that it becomes all I think about sometimes.

Eat food, mostly plants, not too much.

Yeah sounds really complicated.

Just don't eat a ton of overly processed foods, keep your intake of sweets and alcohol in moderation. You'll be fine.

Forget about calories (runners need the calories more than not imo) and just eat natural food. Lots of meat, nut butters, beans and fruits.

Simple.

Me too bro, for the better part of the last 7 years or so, I've been a health NAZI. But about last autumn I stopped carrying. Guess what? My running has improved. Turns out if you run high mileage, your body needs ice cream, pizza, lots of red meat, eggs, butter and candy. Who knew?

stopthemadnessman wrote:

Eat food, mostly plants, not too much.

Yeah sounds really complicated.

"Plant based" diet will make you scrawny fat. If you want to be buff and ripped, you need to eat lots of animal meat, especially red meat rich in sat fat.

I think your common sense about what you think is right is good enough.

Too many conflicting studies to worry about it.

whole foods plant based diet

I have researched nutrition a lot and have tried out many different dietary styles. Remember you eat food not calories, repeat you eat food not calories. Stop getting all worried about the numbers and percentages and just think what am I eating? See how eating certain foods makes you feel. Be mindful of what vitamins and minerals you may need and how they affect your body. I personally feel way better when I eat a lot of fruits and vegetables so I do that. I also eat some meat because it makes me feel full and I avoid eating a bunch of processed carbs because of it. If you have a strong understanding of nutrition and the self awareness to recognize how foods affect your body, you can make proper dietary choices without stressing yourself out too much. It's okay to eat some junk, just don't go crazy.

Exactly. Just steer away from the extremes, Canaday vegan apostole, and notorious lard moran YMMV.

Best runner I ever trained with macked cheeseburgers and fries like a fiend. Pretty much ate like sh*t at every meal. Never gained weight, ran at the elite level for many years. Many of you would recognize his name.

I so much as look at a cheeseburger and I gain a pound.

Go figure.

I posted this on the 50+ masters thread where diet has been a frequent topic:

Sunday morning my wife made an omelette with old fashion bacon, toast, jam and some blackberries. Oh, coffee and O.J. too. Not sure if it was that or the grilled chicken and mash potatoes for dinner. Anyway, after working a good portion of Saturday chopping a tree root with a pick ax I faced a tough Monday morning interval session. Eight miles of running and ran pretty well for 68.5 years old. Perhaps a better diet would yield superior results. Pretty sure that is not going to happen. I really love my running and a good Sunday omelette with a side of “the devine swine.”

“Who is that? Nutrition? I hate you nutrition!”

If you are eating the right diet, it is not stressful any more than proper training is "stressful". A bit of discipline is needed, just like you wouldn't do just random workouts with no guiding principles to fulfill your running potential. If you want to realize your health potential, your diet should be free of cravings and impulses, should provide consistent energy all day, it should leave you free from pain, injuries and inflammation, and make it effortless to maintain lean muscle mass, i.e less than 10% bodyfat for men. When the shirts come off in the summer it is easy to tell who has theses things figured out.

Just like with training methods, study what others are doing, try it yourself, and see if it works or not. And as with training, rather than being stuck in dogma ("x" miles/week, hit every split, etc), allow your diet to evolve based on your body's feedback. You may be very pleasantly surprised where you end up in a few years.

One thing is for sure, if you get all of your information from mainstream media, you will get the results that every one else is getting. Which, in my country anyway, is of a very low standard and personally unacceptable. Just take a look at pictures of random people in the U.S. from the 40s, 50s and '60s, compared to teh general public today. Something very wrong happened with food and diet in the '70s and the result is the Tsunami of obesity and health dysfunction we see today.

The mind and body as a system is very complex and dynamic, especially in the context of aging and performance. Nature doesn't care about your beliefs or good intentions. It's either evolve or die out. On the other hand, when it all comes together, the simplicity, freedom, power and ease is almost overwhelming to behold. You have become that rarest breed: the happy, healthy human animal.

Runners who act like minor things like nutrition, stretching, core, gear, etc are super important basically don't understand the sport. They are over compensating because they are not confident in their ability. They need an easily accomplished thing to fool themselves into thinking they are better and trying harder than they actually are.

There is a reason girl teams put so much emphasis on certain things. If you can be the best eater, the loudest cheerer, the longest stretcher, have the right outfit, show you care more than others than you will be a better athlete...makes perfect sense, right?

There will never be an alternative to putting in the work required to reach a certain level.

Another rant wrote:

Runners who act like minor things like nutrition, stretching, core, gear, etc are super important basically don't understand the sport. They are over compensating because they are not confident in their ability. They need an easily accomplished thing to fool themselves into thinking they are better and trying harder than they actually are.

There is a reason girl teams put so much emphasis on certain things. If you can be the best eater, the loudest cheerer, the longest stretcher, have the right outfit, show you care more than others than you will be a better athlete...makes perfect sense, right?

There will never be an alternative to putting in the work required to reach a certain level.

This. Stop being a pansy. Core, lifting, stretching, eating properly, sleeping enough, running form, trying to apply science to your training etc. Is all BS. Want to get good at running? It is simple. Just run a lot. Often 2-3 times a day. Race a lot. Do some kind of workout every so often(every 2-3 days, or so.). Bill Rodgers ran a 2:09 marathon without all the BS modern American elite men do. Toshihiko Seko and David Bedford, 200+ miles a week and lots of beer. Yet we hear pansies on here worrying about if one bear will kill them. Peter Snell drank Coke cola. Yet we have aneroxic people go crazy over that new York Times headline the other day here. You hear pansies on here worrying about the most minute BS. Just Stop. Just focus on running a lot and everything else doesn't really matter, if you are putting in your mileage.

Certain Foods are known to reduce stress. Amongst them are oatmeal, certain seeds, blueberries, yogurt, green leafy vegetables, etc.

It has to do with their unique micro-nutrients, how the regulate blood sugars, etc. You really owe it to yourself to find out, try them, and incorporate them in a healthy lifestyle!

Really, you're just one smoothie away from a better emotional response!

Don't you owe it to yourself and those you love?

THESE FOODS REDUCE STRESS! wrote:

Certain Foods are known to reduce stress. Amongst them are oatmeal, certain seeds, blueberries, yogurt, green leafy vegetables, etc.

It has to do with their unique micro-nutrients, how the regulate blood sugars, etc. You really owe it to yourself to find out, try them, and incorporate them in a healthy lifestyle!

Really, you're just one smoothie away from a better emotional response!

Don't you owe it to yourself and those you love?

That's all BS propaganda.