A Double 6-er. Ouch!
Monday, March 1, 2010 at 12:19PM I completed a mega-workout-weekend on a totally vegetarian diet and it was amazing. Two days of 6-hour workouts, back-to-back, and that's after doing a 5,000 meter swim and 6 mile run the day before (Friday).
I had to stop halfway through Saturday and pile on lots more calories than normal. There's day-to-day caloric intake and then there's caloric intake for crazy workout mode. I get grumpy and sleepy when I'm not taking in enough. I ate a pile of starchy salty goodies and took a short nap, then felt amazing and was back out the door.
Having stacked 6 hour days, I'm now in complete awe of how people like John Hirsch and Chrissie Wellington can do so ad nausem. The strategy is to stay in Zone 2 as much as possible, not overexerting, but you certainly feel it by the end of day two.
I thought for sure that I'd have plenty of time to do other stuff, but the time it takes to support a 6 hour workout day is far more than you'd think. There's the food, fixing flats, changing clothes, wretching...
On the leanness front, eating super healthy foods instead of bad ones continues to pay off. There's not much more fat to lose around here. I need to dig up a picture of me quite a few years ago where I look like the Pillsbury Dough Boy on roller blades and compare that to one I took this weekend. I weighed around 48 more lbs. then.
If you asked me to strap on a 40+ lb. weight belt and do this weekend's workouts, I'd have said no thanks. I'd have done it anyway, but I'd still be cursing no thanks as I went thudding down the street.
Eating healthy and not overeating is a habit that takes time. You see a little bit of payoff and that motivates you. You also begin to find and crave decent replacements for bad food splurges. Eventually, those become the norm and you lose the interest in the bad stuff. It's a great day worth celebrating when you actually prefer a salad over a milk shake.
Reader Comments (1)
Hey Brett, I'm finding us both in a similar situation. We're both doing a ton of zone 2 exercise and we've obviously trained our bodies to become more efficient at burning fat for fuel. Both of us are losing some weight (you more than I) and becoming much more lean. At some point, we're going to run low on body fat so we will need to be mindful to take in enough calories and of the right type so that we don't start to cannibalize muscle mass.
This is a part of the plant-based diet that I'm having to deal with now. I try to offset it by eating fatty vegetables like avocado and supplementing with protein in the form of quinoa and lentils.
How are you addressing these issues?