Tag Archives: healthy eating

Looking to the Fridge for a Runners Staple

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Food is a vital part of having enough strength to run, and Spinach is one of the best foods for runners to consume on a regular basis. While protein bars are easy while running out the door, taking the time to cook up a good recipe with spinach can improve your running performance. Low in calories and high in vitamins, it is one of the most nutritious foods to consume. Because cooking concentrates nutrients and fiber, a serving of cooked spinach gives you even more bang for your buck than a serving of raw.

Spinach is high in iron, vitamin C, lipoic acid (which aids the regeneration of Vitamin C and E), and calcium.

If you’re nervous about implementing this food into your diet, try is recipes listed below; a warm soup for a fall evening, spinach dip for movie night, and spinach/strawberry salad for a nutritious lunch.

Just click on the photo for a delicious recipe!

Spinach, Chicken and Rice soup

Hot Spinach and Artichoke Dip

Strawberry Spinach Salad

Starving yourself.

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As I spent my whole weekend in the freezer of Starbucks studying, I overheard a lady talking about her little tummy and how she “starves herself and it still won’t go away”. I wanted to hug her and tell her that she needs to eat regularly, a good breakfast, and run (or she can walk. We won’t judge), and she would be a lot more likely to lose the couple pounds she was wishing away.

So why is it bad to starve yourself to lose weight? Let me count the ways:

  • Lower metabolism level (which means your body will just hold onto the fat for dear life, scared you’ll never eat again!)
  • Loss of energy
  • Loss of appetite through to De-hydration

Instead of skipping meals, it’s recommended that you eat 5 small meals throughout the day. Or grazing all day on apples, carrots and healthy snacks. Always have a filled water bottle within reach to continue to flush out toxins. You might feel bloated initially, but eventually the water will run through your system, and you’ll feel so much more energized!

If you do starve yourself to lose weight, when you finally do start eating again, that weight will pile back on.
I’ve included a good list of metabolism boosting foods so you are able to eat and lose weight at the same time!

  • Blueberries- High in antioxidant
  • Almonds- healthy macronutrients and calories
  • Salmon- high in protein, and a unique type of health-promoting fat, the omega-3 essential fatty acid.
  • Spinach- provide more nutrients than any other food
  • Turkey- provides almost half of the recommended daily allowance of folic acid, good source of vitamins B, B1, B6, zinc and potassium.
  • Oatmeal- boring plain old oatmeal, high in fiber
  • Green Tea- also high in antioxidant
  • Water- Keeps our body functioning well.

If we’re eating good, balanced meals, we’re more likely to kick that run in the butt! What’s your tips for getting the nutrients you need?

Do you drink Soda? Things you should know….

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Embed the image below on your site: Source: InsuranceQuotes.org

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One of the biggest hindrances in weight management is our relationship with soda. My husband hasn’t had soda in almost 10 years, and doesn’t miss it at all (I’ve had it in mixed punch)! So, for this Foodie Friday, I … Continue reading →

Anniversary Weekend Getaway

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Beautiful photo taken by Poema by Anne on our last camp-out!

This weekend my husband and I went camping to celebrate our one year anniversary! We went back to Crab Tree Falls Camp ground and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves! We cooked every meal over the fire, slept in a two man hiking tent, may have gotten rained out, and over the weekend I hiked a cumulative of 15 miles. Being a runner, that doesn’t sound like a lot, but this Crab Tree Falls hike is steep. And I proceeded to run most of the way down (if it was safe to do so). It was an extremely hazy weekend, so the view was magnificent and breathtaking.
After I returned from the hike Saturday morning, Tyler had spent the morning fishing and smoking his awesome cigar. We were on the way back up to the falls to check out the view from the bottom when thunder hit, and we raced back to our campsite to put all of our stuff away so it wouldn’t be ruined by the rain!

Tyler proceeded to build the most awesome thing over our fire in order to try protect it from the rain, and it worked great for about an hour, but the rain was just tooo hard and even the coals at the bottom were out by the time the rain stopped. And our tent that we borrowed just couldn’t handle that amount of rain, so our bedding was wet! So we decided to head home to sleep in the dry soft bed and ended up sleeping straight for TWELVE HOURS. I guess we were more tired than we thought!

The next day we hiked for over 10 miles in First Landing State Park, which was amazing. The trails that we took were right next to the bay, so occasionally we’d come out to a clearing of the ocean. It was so refreshing, and I’m so sore I can hardly move! It was a great weekend and totally worth all the pain I feel today <3

Balancing the Diet with Working Out

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Lets face it, I’d much rather run for an hour every day than care about what I eat… am I alone in that? But when I come home and eat a bunch of crap, I don’t feel like getting up in the morning for my run. Or doing it when I get home from work.Keep away from junk food

In general, I feel gross when I eat great for a while and then eat not so great. I was recently asked how to stick to a diet in order to supplement a really disciplined workout routine. This girl was wondering how to have the same discipline in the kitchen as she does in the gym.

My words to her: You are doing great in the gym! You’ve built amazing discipline to be there when planned, work out to the max, and sweat through every thing you’re wearing! The problem isn’t discipline, it’s that you haven’t put as much thought into your meals as you have your workouts. Once you’re doing well with your workouts, add on healthy meal planning.

This is actually one of the things that I do when I run. I’m on the road, endorphins are high, and I’m more likely to plan healthy, filling meals. I plan my grocery list (the hard part is getting it down on paper) and my meals for the day/weekend.

Just in case anyone out there is thinking that I’m a Nazi, I bought these super yummy awesome chocolate mint marshmallows for our camping trip this weekend… My justification is as follows: We are roasting these little guys instead of having s’mores. Which is healthier… right? (This was not justified while on a run).

Awesome yummy instead of s’mores marshmallows

Happy 4th of July AND Goal Setting.

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Happy 4th of July to all my blogger/running friends! I hope you had an amazing break from life and were able to enjoy some serious BBQ and fireworks. We had a great BBQ with tons of food and it was so tempting to eat the the Strawberry Creme Pie because it had white chocolate (?!) in it! OMG. Heavenly.

Amazing 4th of July Pie by Shelby

Back to trying to eat healthy.

I think July is a great time to look back on the year and consider what we’ve accomplished.

Here are a few things that I did; and never thought I could:

If you set goals, you are more likely to achieve what you want, and do even more than you ever thought possible! This can be setting a goal to run a half marathon, or doing a couple in a year. Choose a goal and soon you’ll be crushing your half-marathon, setting a new PR, increasing endurance knowing you are being challenged and growing.


Tips in Goal Setting

Create a Plan.
I usually set a goal for the month for mileage for running, how many times I want to lift weights, and recently (with the gorgeous weather and awful parking situation at the beach) I’ve been adding bike mileage. When I’m training for a race, I have a strict run schedule that I have mapped out in my daily planner, and this forces me to plan around my runs. Typically my long runs are on the weekend, but that’s just because I work full-time. Do whatever day works best for you! I’m careful to add mileage slowly to avoid injury, and to be extremely consistent so I’m building on my past runs.

Join a Run Club.
I have a group of girls that I run trails or on the beach with. Mostly for motivation, but also for safety. We have a flexible schedule, and don’t make it out every week (mostly because I plan them and my schedule isn’t consistent) but they constantly push me… I’m so thankful for my running girls!
Here’s a list of free run clubs & classes in the Virginia Beach Area.

Mix it Up.
When it’s over 100F, I can’t run outside. I can hardly do it in 80F weather (remember, I grew up in Canada?). So I use a treadmill. Or run at 5:30am. Or run on the sand/water at the beach. It really depends what I can do. But I’m constantly switching up my runs. Get some hill training in. Cross training. Biking. Hiking. Speed training. I love getting out of town because there are so many great trails to explore!

While exploring LuluLemons website, I found this awesome little Goal Setting worksheet. There are more to life than running and health goals, and this little worksheet is great about combing all your goals to holistic health!

What are your goals?

Back from Vacation!

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Just came back from the best vacation ever! Tyler’s family is much more relaxed on vacation than my family was, so it was an adjustment… and I had to FORCE myself to slow down! We didn’t even have Internet.  Even though it was more relaxed than what my family does, we still did a lot of stuff, and kayaking was one of them! We went twice last week, and I got stuck a couple times because the water was so low- AND I almost died getting stuck over a water fall with rocks jutting out at the bottom! Don’t worry; we only had class 1 rapids on the first two miles, and the rest was pretty calm. :)

Since we were nestled in the mountains in the middle of nowhere, there were plenty of hills to train on. Not that I’m actually training for anything right now, but I can pretend. :)   I was seriously sore every day that I ran. I did a couple four-mile runs, but on those mountain trails, it felt like twice that! It was so awesome to run on such gorgeous trails.Williamsburg Run for the Dream

I did terrible on not eating sugar during our trip, and I’m going to have to pay for it for a couple days. So back to the strict diet from here on in! :) How are your summer fitness goals coming along? What do you find the hardest to maintain during the warmer months?

Eating Healthier

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As a runner, it’s so easy to think “It’s OK, I’m going to run today” and proceed to eat whatever I want. Which is pretty often ice cream, chocolate, brownies… and then I make myself sick. And is not definitely not healthy.

Another Mother Runner

OR it’s the OTHER extreme, and I eat tons when I really don’t need to be eating all that. One of my new years resolutions was to eat more veggies (which is hard to do with such a busy schedule), and I’ve been able to incorporate them into my daily routine, but I want to set higher goals than that (no, I’m not starting the Paleo diet… yet).

Cutting out white flour and sugar is about as lofty of the goals that I’ll setting this summer, while trying to run in the summer heat!
I’m in Virginia, and SERIOUSLY this humility is worse than usual (since  I’d really know what usual is since this is my second May here!).

There are a few really important things to include in your diet is you are a woman running. The first and foremost thing you should be worrying about is your iron levels (this is the one I struggle with the most). This is vital in transporting oxygen through your bloodstream, as well as providing a key building block of muscle tissue. One thing I found interesting is that caffeinated products will counteract with your iron intake… so wait a couple hours after eating or taking your iron supplement.

The next important dietary need is calcium, (you know, all that stress on your bones in running). If you don’t drink milk, purchase calcium added products (soy dream, rice milk, orange juice).

Can’t believe I’m saying this, but the third most important thing to include is FAT, from nuts, olive oil, seeds, and avocado but stay away from saturated fats (which mainly come from animal products. ewww).

Notice the lack of white flour and sugar in this list? Yup. Need to cut those out!

Awesome list of foods adapted from Running For Fitness