You Are What You Eat (and drink)

Remember when you were like three years old and you snuck into the candy jar and overate until your tummy ached and you were miserable, thus learning the lesson that too much junk food isn't good for you?  Yeah well, guess who apparently never learned that lesson...

 

Christmas day was an exercise in over-indulgence.  Literally.  The only exercise I got was putting food and drink in my mouth and chewing.  If chewing burned calories, I might have woken up in great shape this morning.  Instead, I woke up feeling like this:

 

 

And I had five miles in front of me.  I was in no mood.  The run was a struggle from start to finish.  I swear, as I was shuffling along, images of all of the food I ate and the drinks I drank (and drank and drank and drank) would pop into my head and I would feel like ducking behind a tree.  Let me give you a snapshot of what yesterday looked like for me.

 

-mimosas

-cinnamon pop-tart

-cinnamon rolls (yeah, that's two breakfasts.  You counted correctly.)

-chocolate covered candies, pretzels, caramels, and pecans

-white wine

-roast

-peppermint bark

-red wine

-red wine

-RED WINE

 

Now, I'm not normally a big proponent of obsessing over trying to eat clean.  And, I definitely don't believe in self-shaming over a day of indulgent eating.  Feeling guilty about a meal (or whatever you would call yesterday), in my mind, is a waste of time and energy.  I believe in eating a generally balanced diet (and by balanced I do mean slightly heavy on desserts) and trying to eat as much "real" food as possible.  I also believe in enjoying food of all types because life is short and sometimes binging on a bag of cookies really does help. 

 

But here's the deal, when it comes to running, you really do get out of it what you put into it.  You can't expect your body to perform at a high standard when you've not given it any of the proper fuel.   As good as all of the food and drink was yesterday, it was just as BAD for my run today.  Please don't mistake this blog entry as some sort of guilty conscience spill.  I'm okay with what happened yesterday.  I absolutely enjoyed every bit of Christmas indulgence.  One bad run isn't the end of the world.  In fact, it's nothing in the long run.  But, it was a good reminder that you get what you give and you are what you eat.  Meaning I was a sweaty ball of chocolate covered cinnamon red wine running down the trail today!