Tag Archives: saturday

Where’s the beef?

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24

Yay for the weekend!

After sleeping in until around 9am this morning, Andrew and I got up to go on a little 5k training run to get ready for the Turkey Trot coming up this week! I definitely know I can do it, but he had never ran more than 3 miles before so he was looking to just finish strong.

We saw the cutest baby ducklings about half way through our run. I just had to stop and take a picture, but the momma duck started quacking at me so we got away quick after I snapped the photo.

It was really sticky and humid out since it rained pretty hard last night, so the run was a little tough.. but we finished! Andrew was so proud of himself. He has always hated running, so this is huge for him.

After chugging some water, I got to work on breakfast.

Broccoli and cheese omelet, topped with Siracha of course. With coffee and toast.

I’m feeling pretty good today after a solid nights sleep, a good run and a big breakfast.. but for some reason this week I was feeling very fatigued and just “off”.

I’ve actually been feeling like this for a few weeks now, and I initially thought it was the time change. But I’ve been getting a decent amount of sleep every night, and waking up hasn’t been an issue for me. Then I started thinking about other factors and realized that even though I’ve been eating balanced meals, my red meat consumption has declined quite a bit in the past month or so for a number of reasons.

This leads me to believe that my iron levels are low. I don’t think I’m anemic, because I have never had issues with anemia in the past, but I do know that fluctuating from your normal levels of specific nutrients can cause physical changes in your body. And iron is one of those sensitive nutrients. I do still get iron from other sources since I eat spinach almost daily, but I used to eat some type of red meat a few times a week, and now I hardly eat it at all.

So I could either start taking a multi that has iron or I could just eat more red meat. Normally I would just say more red meat because I’m a believer in eating whole foods for the nutrients you need rather than getting it from artificial sources, but the cost of beef is going to skyrocket soon. Why? Think of all the drought we had here in the US this past summer. All of the corn and grass that normally feeds our cows was in very little supply. And you can figure out the rest…

Anyway, this whole debacle has caused me to rethink the way I eat. Maybe I should just totally stop eating red meat? I don’t think I would truly miss it.

What do you think? Do you eat red meat?

Off Week

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11

The past week… well…

  • chocolate ice cream was a daily thing
  • I only worked out once
  • Halloween candy became snacks
  • sleep was weird and interrupted
  • blogging was hard to do

But it’s okay though, because everyone has those weeks.

I’m just going to chalk it up to an off week and let it be. I could blame it on transitioning to a new schedule because of my rotation but I’m not going to do that. Over the years I’ve learned that blaming a bad week on something sets it up to be recurrent.

The thing is, when we put so much pressure on ourselves to always make healthy choices, the time comes when we slip up and then we burden ourselves with regret. Living a healthy lifestyle is not always being perfect.. it’s being conscious of our choices but going with the ebb and flow and taking things for what they are.

I’ve noticed a lot around the “healthy living” blog world that when someone has an off day, or an off week, they typically do one of two things.. 1) feel guilty about it and back off from sharing until things are back “on track” or 2) focus too much on what they did wrong or what could be wrong and wear themselves out by trying to find a reason or something to blame. Nobody’s perfect.

Instead of focusing on what went wrong, it’s important to look forward at what can go right. It’s also important to find the good under all circumstances. For instance, despite everything this past week that was “off”, I still ate a salad every single day for lunch. Free cafeteria food with a giant salad bar was like heaven for me so I piled my plate high with spring mix and all kinds of toppings.

The best part is? I get free lunch for the next two months so, more than likely, I’ll get to have as many salads as my heart desires. More marinated mushrooms, please.

Anyway, the main point I’m trying to make is that we should all stop blaming ourselves and outside sources for what’s going wrong in our lives and start looking at the positives. I’m just going to keep eating salads everyday and hope that Andrew finishes all the chocolate ice cream and Halloween candy before I get a chance to, and try to get in a few long runs next week. Oh, and blog about everything.

What do you do about an off week?