According to the brain of TriJackal, our habits are the determining ‘make or break’ of athletic success. I am more convinced of this than of any other multimillion dollar ‘success is guaranteed’ plan to be found ANYWHERE.
Why would I start this writing with such a bold statement? Easy! Because it is the truth. We get fit and we get unfit. We get thin and we get fat again. We live healthy lifestyles only to go unhealthy again. We don’t drink and then one day we go and get dumb drunk! Being human, I have been a part of this lifestyle and therefore I am at a point in my life where I have to use my homo sapien DNA advantage and start changing things!
In my personal opinion the biggest weak point we have as humans are eating. We always know the correct answer, but rarely make the right choices! Stop going on and an over drugs, cigarettes, alcohol, etc. Look around us and see how unhealthy people have eaten themselves. Overweight children are bound to turn to beer just to have that moment of ‘fitting in’ and feeling good. It was the overeating that makes them look really unattractive between friends and therefore the binging starts. My point? If those parents have had GOOD habits cemented into their lifestyles at home then our communities could have been so different!
We should not speak of diet. We should just be eating healthy naturally. We should not be mentioning that we will start training again, but it should just be part of our daily, healthy routine. We must not live for the day that we can shove a pizza down our throats. We always feel bad afterwards and then we walk around with this feeling of guilt. This ‘I am craving for a bag of fried chips’ is the signal for the rebirth of a bad habit.
If you need eg. 9000kj daily to maintain a healthy body weight, why would you swop 3000 of those healthy kilojoules for deep fried crap? Why swop a healthy orange and plum for a 1000kj chocolate bar filled with unhealthy preservatives? I think it is down to bad habits. Previously I had no clue as to how many calories I could eat per day to maintain or lose body weight. I usually just checked the fat content and if it was low I would indulge. And indulging is bad! When you stop training the bad habits continue! All this indulging would constantly keep me 3 or 4 kg’s above my ideal racing weight. But, when I read on Johan Stemmet’s (www.tristemmet.blogspot.com) blog that he is now doing calorie counting on the foods he eat, I decided for once to try it too. Man did this change my life! It is easy and almost all foods are labelled with kj, etc. info.
I am feeling good. I am putting healthy kj’s down my throat and not bad ones. I can eat 7500kj a day and be healthy OR I can shove 7500kj down my throat and be hospitalised within a month! Weird hey! Do not eat the burger just because you have calculated that you can fit it into your daily kj intake. You are harming your body. Especially us Ironman/endurance athletes. Our bodies are under stress and we are treating them like abusive owners. No to bad fats. No to bad sugars. No to bad habits. That is what we deserve.
I will appreciate your feedback on this as this was quite a revelation to me over the past two or so weeks.
In the mean time be strong and live hard!!
TriJackal
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6 comments:
J
I agree with you. I think a lot has to do with the way you are being brought up. As you say, if parents live unhealthy, children grow up being unhealthy as their parents. The old thing about our children doing things we do.
The calorie counting is hard work but I see it as another discipline of Ironman, I guess if you can keep track of your calories for some time you will learn how do eat healthy and at the right ratio without checking labels all the time.
I think because one has been living and eating that way your whole life it is difficult changing your mindset to a 100% healthy one and not partly healthy lifestyle.
As soon as one can change your mindset it will be much easier
J
I strongly agree. I am also tranning for the IM at the moment and my bigest set back is my eating habits. Calorie counting sounds like a great idea but how do I know how much calories do I need per day?
Great post, well articulated. I never looked at the healthy eating consistently as being so much more important than having beer once in a while. I'm going to try to work towards the ideal you set out. Again, great post.
Great post, well articulated. I never looked at the healthy eating consistently as being so much more important than having beer once in a while. I'm going to try to work towards the ideal you set out. Again, great post.
Hey Gottfried, you can visit websites like http://nutrition.about.com/library/bl_nutrition_guide_men.htm to help you calculate. If I weigh around 80kg then I would need eg 8500kj per day to maintain my weight. Every time you train you add your workout kj to this eg 8500 + 2000(spent on a run) = 10500 to maintain weight. You need to burn 32200kj to lose 1kg. Now you can do the math. If you want to chuck 2kg before a race in two months, you must eat (32200 / 62 = 519)519kj per day less than 10500 to get rid of the 2k's.
Good luck!
Jq
Johan and Bryan, this is my new 'good' habit outlook. It just makes sense. Have a look at how straight forward this lady puts it and it is total logic! www.bunklers.com
All the best with your challenges!
Jq
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