Getting In Touch With My Inner Caveman

After listening to this podcast:

http://trailrunnernation.com/2012/04/aerobic-vs-anaerobic/

I decided to incorporate more of the paleo aspects into my diet and work on reducing refined sugars and flours.  I want to make myself more efficient as a runner and increasing my aerobic capacity will help do that.  For me it was a bit of a paradigm shift to think about increasing aerobic capacity not just in terms of exercise, but also in terms of diet and stress factors in my life.  Reducing carbs in my diet from refined sugars and flours will help on the diet end of things.  I won't be a pure caveman, but I will be working some of the ideas into my daily life.

Something else I need to do is slow down my long, slow distance run a little.  I've been running them a bit too fast which takes me into an anaerobic state which is exactly where I don't want to be.  I want to become a lean, mean, fat burning machine.

Reducing stressors in my life will be more difficult.  We all have work to get done, kids to take care of, places to go, deadlines to meet, etc.  The best I can do is try to manage it better so things don't stress me out.

So, what does a plate look like for me?  Last night for dinner was stir fried chicken and vegetables.  We went out for Chinese to celebrate Mother's Day.  I avoided the rice, eggroll and crab rangoon.  Lunch today was a cheese omelette and some beef jerky.  Breakfast was my normal steel cut oats with a banana.  Not paleo, but I like my oats.  I just want to get away from a diet dominated by carbs.  I also won't be taking any Gu or Gatorade with me.  Just water.  Dinner tonight will be fish and steamed vegetables.  No rice, pasta or potatoes.

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Checking back after today's 13 miler.  Dinner ended up being tuna + avocado with steamed veggies.  Yum.  Run went OK other than around mile 10 my legs just didn't want to go anymore.  I kept going, slowly, and by mile 12 the feeling passed and I was OK again.  Weird.  I think it's directly related to downing a Gu at mile 6.5.  The Gu spiked my sugar, then the sugar crashed, then normalized.  I'll try the long run next week without the Gu and see what happens.

It's still too early to say if I feel any different with reduced carbs.  In a couple of weeks hopefully I'll have some meaningful observations.  For now all I can say is that everything I want is high in refined sugars.  I'm sure that feeling will pass with time and then ice cream, pizza, etc will truly be the once in awhile treat it's supposed to be.