How do you eat healthy? I don’t know how to answer that question, at least, not for me. I had a pretty lousy holiday season, full of foods that were not, by any stretch of the imagination, healthy. When I sprained my ankle and subsequently had to lay off marathon training, I fell into a spiral of bad eating habits. I’d eat clean for two days, and then I’d fall victim to tortilla chips or queso or some junk food that was kicking around the house.
I had no plan and no direction with my eating habits.
Fortunately, my CrossFit box offered a special: three months of unlimited CrossFit, plus nutrition counseling and meal planning. I signed up. I’ve been on the meal plan for one week, as of Tuesday. The idea behind the current meal plan is to regulate my metabolism. At this stage, I’m eating a lot of lean protein, veggies, healthy carbs, and a little healthy fat. My lunch life is a salad bowl.
I realized that I have deeper motives than just eating healthy, by the way. In my experience, the aforementioned poor eating habits are the precursor to truly disordered eating. If I didn’t start now, I knew I would slowly start descending into binging and restricting. That pattern would leave me weak and unable to perform. My goals for this year include lifting heavier and running faster, and poor nutrition would derail those goals.
With that in mind, as much as I miss tacos and Twizzlers, I know this is the right decision for me. Aesthetically, I don’t expect much to change; I don’t need to lose weight. What I need to do is put on lean muscle, and that may not affect my aesthetics much. Where I expect to see change is in the box and on the road.
In short, the question isn’t how do you eat healthy? but why do you eat healthy? I want to get back to the point where I have a guaranteed qualifying half marathon time for Houston. I want to enter CrossFit competitions. Most importantly, I want to be full of energy. So far, after just a week, I’ve noticed that a psoriasis patch under my eye has cleared up significantly. I take it as a sign of good things to come.