Lightweight Eats

A year ago, I was in a very different place than I am now.

In January, Dan and I got married!

In May, I gave up coaching to start training full time.

In August, I left Piquant Prose behind and moved the blog to my own domain name.

In November, we moved from an apartment into a house, and I started working.

I hope the new year brings as much joy and as many wonderful developments as this one has. Every year, my life has gotten better and brighter.

Rowing has a very strange race and training calendar. Because we have two seasons, we have racing scheduled for most of the year. At the elite level, we race 4-6km in the late fall season and race 2km in the late spring and summer.

The 2000m distance is the primary race distance and is the focus of our season. As such, the end of summer marks the end of our training year.

In the fall, we try to focus on longer training and building our training base while also preparing for the fall racing season. This is the most awkward season--do you focus long-term on preparing for spring or do you do the work that will best prepare you for fall racing?

Once the fall season ends, training shifts focus to volume work. This is the season of epic workouts: two to three hour bike rides and 10-mile runs.

There is nothing quite like slogging through two hours on the bike at heart rate 130. Fortunately, I've learned some tricks to help pass the time! I'm a huge fan of watching movies on my computer, chatting with friends and even doing work online from the bike seat.

Epic runs are a bit harder to manage. I hate carrying water with me, so I get super thirsty. I also inevitably have to use the restroom, which severely restricts my list of possible routes. I listen to music, enjoy the scenery and spend time thinking. Sometimes, I menu plan or figure out what I'll eat when I get back. Now, I can also check my heart rate or my mileage.

Soups are easy. They are much less about precision and more about tasting, simmering and using up the things in your fridge that are starting to wilt anyways.

My father-in-law's birthday is the day after Christmas. Needless to say, celebrations are usually muted, and definitely don't call for a cake the day after feasting. Instead, we decided to make a healthy, satisfying soup that had a lot of his favorite things.

We have tons of leftover that will make great lunches for the rest of the week.

I didn't take any photos because, frankly, lentil soup is not very photogenic. I also prefer to eat my food when it's hot.

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Curry Cauliflower Lentil Soup

4 stalks celery
3 carrots
0.5 onion
1 head cauliflower
3 cups black or green lentils
curry powder (about 2T)
cumin seeds (about 2t)
water or veggie broth

1. Dice/chop the first four ingredients and saute in oil until softened.
2. Add the lentils and spices and stir to coat. Cook for a minute, or until the spices become fragrant.
3. Add enough water/broth to cover the veggies. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer for 45 minutes or until the lentils are softened.

Serve with bread or rice.
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I hope all of you are enjoying the holidays! Hopefully I will have the opportunity to update once more while we're up here.

Have you ever been on FoodGawker or Tastespotting? Or read a food blog? (Yes, I'm guilty of this as well.)

In case you're wondering, every recipe either has bacon or is "healthy". With a myriad of fad diets out there, from gluten-free to paleo to raw vegan, everybody has a different definition of healthy. And, frankly, if you have to call a recipe out as healthy, it probably isn't.

Take these "healthy" chocolate coated gingerbread balls:
http://www.nutritionistinthekitch.com/2012/12/13/chocolate-coated-gingerbread-bliss-balls-vegan-gf/

Between the dates, the maple syrup and the molasses, I don't consider these particularly healthy.

When I picture healthy, I see a huge fresh veggie salad topped with an avocado-based creamy dressing and lightly toasted nuts, served with a whole grain and beans. Or a grain bowl. Not chocolate-covered anything.

Of course, somebody on a paleo or raw diet might look at the "healthy" I just described and wrinkle their noses in judgement.

So in this new year, let's resolve to be a little bit more specific. "Reduced calorie", "low fat", "veggie-ful", "paleo", "raw" and "vegan" are all great descriptors. Even "butter-free". But please, don't go calling your fudgy brownies healthy because you added prunes. They're still brownies.

As I mentioned earlier, I've received a lot of comments and questions about my eating habits since dropping most animal products from my diet. To give you a sense of what I eat to maintain my health, I decided to track my intake and record it here. These days are not consecutive, but are over the course of a week or two.

Since we eat a lot of homemade foods, and tracking recipes is really time consuming, I definitely made some approximations. This is pretty close, though, to what I ate.

You will notice that I regularly consume over 120g of protein, plenty of fiber, and a good balance of macronutrients. You will also notice that I eat a lot of sugar. Yum.

Note: I am currently on a 500-calorie deficit to try to slowly drop down to racing weight by mid-January. The calorie budget reflects this, and is 500 calories less than I theoretically burn in a day.

Also note: I'm not a nutritionist, and I'm probably making mistakes. This is not necessarily the right or the best thing for you to eat. I'm trying it out, and it's what I think works best for me right now.

Fruit is really expensive. Shopping at the farmer's market didn't allow me to fully appreciate this, but seeing it on my receipt really demonstrates that. We've cut back some on fruit consumption (~3 pieces/day instead of 5+) and are eating the oranges in our backyard.

We are also forcing ourselves to eliminate food waste. I know a lot of food waste results from businesses tossing perfectly good food, but we were also guilty of wasting food. Things started to go south in the fridge and, instead of using them, we let them languish until we had no choice but to toss them. Not shopping on a set day has really helped with this--it allows me to almost fully empty the fridge before I begin to plan my next set of purchases.

I've been using the extra room in our food budget to purchase more organic products. We've put a list of the dirty dozen and clean 15 up on our fridge. It's a constant reminder that the price is worth it for those 12 items. I've also been starting my shopping in the organic section.

As it turns out, most of the items not in the dirty dozen are fairly comparable on price for organic vs. non-organic. The huge price differences are usually on those items in the dirty dozen. To help with the budget, I've started buying items from the clean 15 more often--switching sweet potatoes for white, for example, and eating more onions.

So far? It looks do-able. We will definitely still purchase some non-organic items. For example, organic pineapple and organic corn*** are usually pretty pathetic looking and expensive, if they are even available. Organic cabbage and avocados are incredibly expensive.

There are other places we can make the switch, too, from dried legumes and bulk grains to tofu and soymilk. (The organic soymilk is actually cheaper at our local natural foods store, probably because it's a lesser known brand.) Yesterday, I paid the extra 60 cents to purchase organic vegetable bullion, and chose organic canned tomatoes instead of conventional.

Other things that have helped our food budget? Eating plants! Organic dairy, eggs and meat are really expensive. If I'm going to eat animal products, I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure it's organic. By drastically reducing our consumption of animal products, we have completely changed our food budget.

*** I know that GMOs are an issue with conventional corn. Yes, this is of concern; at the same time, I really like tasty corn. I certainly hope I don't turn green or start growing corn silk out of my ears, but I'm going to risk it.

I get a remarkable number of inquiries about my ability to get enough protein and calories without eating animal products. I can tell you without a doubt, I have no trouble getting enough calories.

In our old apartment, there was no place to keep our rowing machine. It ended up living in our bedroom, which was really unfortunate.

In our new house, we contemplated arrangement of the office/exercise room/dining room quite a bit. We had three rooms to use, and we intended to dedicate one of those rooms to a second bedroom. We ended up dedicating the largest of the three rooms to a combination of office and exercise room.

Although I wish we had a couch in here for watching movies on the computer monitor, I can use our awesome speakers for my workouts. You win some, you lose some. Overall, a huge step up from our previous solution.

I've been terrible about keeping and posting training logs, but I would like to restart in earnest. It keeps me honest about my extra workouts, and gives me a record of what I've done and how far I've come.

This week, training started full swing after a light week for Thanksgiving.

Monday:
I woke up to a sick husband, and a cold, wet, foggy morning. I headed down to the boathouse, but it was too foggy to go on the water. We ended up doing 3x5k on the erg at super easy pressure. Our coach came and took blood samples during the workout to make sure we were in the right training zone.

In the afternoon, I headed out for a short 45' jog through the neighborhood. I promised myself I'd explore the area around our house sooner than at our old place, and running is a great place to start. I finished up the day with a short max-weight lift.

Tuesday:
I hardly worked out today, I told Dan, before recounting my exercise for the day. 20' bike to and from the boathouse/BART in the morning, 24' of erging for a lactate test, about 75 minutes of walking, and another 40' of biking later in the evening.

Wednesday:
High winds kept us off the water. The erg workout was 60' on, 4' off, 30' on, all at our "steady state" intensity from Tuesday's lactate threshold. The workout was difficult to perform, but I recovered quickly. In the early afternoon, I squeezed in a short max-weight lift.

Thursday:
Despite rough conditions, we managed to make it out on the water for 15km in a quad (four people, eight oars). We spent most of the row battle wind and waves, so not a lot of technical work, but a good workout. I followed this up with a run. (We were supposed to do 20km on a water, but we had to go in early.)

Friday:
The morning started out with a 30' erg test. For those readers that erg, we are supposed to do these at stroke rate 20 and drag 125 (a really heavy load for me!). It's been quite a while since I did a 30' test, so I got a huge PR. (I went from 7115 meters to 7221.)

We were supposed to follow this up with an 80' run, but the pouring rain easily convinced me to bike instead. I also added in a lift at the boathouse: bench pull, bench press, and single leg squats, all high weight, low rep.

Saturday:
I went down to the boathouse in the hopes of going on the water, but high winds and heavy rain brought in even the men's eights. There were no ergs left at the boathouse, so I headed home and did 3x20' on our erg at home. I should have done 4x20', but ran short on time.

In the afternoon, I did two 30' bike rides across Oakland, followed by about 3.5 hours of what amounted to very slow yoga/dance. (It left me very sore, and reminded me that I need to stretch more.)

Sunday:
One of the women from Lake Merritt Rowing Club, the master's team I cox for, came over in the morning and we did a lift. She does CrossFit, and is generally much more confident about lifting heavy than I am, so it was great for me.

I followed up with a 60' run with a few short sprints. Along the way, I also found a nearby playground and squeezed in some pull-ups on their monkey bars.