High Octane.

So, just a little while back I wrote about how I started a new training program and how I felt like a total "newbie" to the world of working out again. How everyday was a learning curve, how hard I can be pushed, learning new limits to my endurance and learning again what it's like to be SORE...EVERYday! And just like I mentioned the other day... I think it has been VERY beneficial to me to have a new, fresh perspective on what it's like to be NEW to working out again.
Well, THIS weekend I discovered another NEW. I have been in a small town in the great state of New York for the past 4 or 5 days and found myself forced out of my normal patterns and habits. there WAS no Whole Foods market to go get my daily lunch salad from, there was no refrigerator in my hotel room in which to keep my usual stash of healthy foods. There wasn't even a coffee maker in the room to get my day started right, but that's not the point of this particular post... i'm just throwing that in there to try and garner a little sympathy from some of you.
No, the point of this entry is to let you know that I fell off the wagon...BIG time! I started out with the best of intentions, but it very quickly spiraled into an uncontrollable and apparently unstoppable quest to see HOW much I could eat in four days! So, not only was I eating food that I was not used to eating, I found myself eating large portions of it and very often! Here is what I learned from this experience. I DIDN'T FEEL GOOD! The WHOLE time I felt miserable. I felt heavy and sluggish and slow. I kept thinking about how some people eat like this...ALL the time. That THIS was NORMAL to some people. We really ARE what we eat. I KNOW there are folks out there that that are more concerned with what grade of gasoline they put in their car than they are about what they eat. Does that make ANY sense!?!?! The food you put in your body is the FUEL for your body. We are AMAZING machines and for us to try to operate them by fueling them with whatever kind of junk and crap we can find and get our hands on is doing us an enORmous injustice.
I think this has been an important lesson for me to stumble upon just a few days after writing about cleaning up your diet. I encourage you to not only clean up your diet and pay attention to what you are eating... I want you to ALSO start paying attention to how you FEEL when you eat certain things. How does your body react to eating a cleaner, less processed diet of lean proteins and fresh fruits and vegetables? How does it FEEL without greasy, fried food? I GUARANTEE you there is a HUGE difference. I just experienced a poor diet again and I can't tell you just HOW grateful I was to be having my salad for dinner last night...not to mention how much better I feel today as a result of it.
S.