Second of all, my nutrition was way out of wack. I was eating around 1,300 calories a day and running on average 30-40 miles a week. WHAT? I have no idea how I was even functioning! During training, I should be eating around 2,400 calories, a full THOUSAND more than what I was eating. I completely reevaluated my diet and saw I needed about 360 g of carbs, 150 g of protein, and 40 g of fat. I was definitely not hitting this.
Trying to hit these numbers is hard for me. I’m not used to eating this much, and I am trying to figure out how to maximize these numbers. Good thing I love carbs though, those aren’t hard to find, but it is hard to find room to eat a ton of them. Rice and beans are definitely my friend, packing a big punch of carbs and protein. My biggest problem is trying to find plant based protein (a lot of it) and not go over my fat- since a lot of my protein comes from nuts. I’m trying to figure it all out as I go, and some days I make mistakes, like eating a big meal with beans before a track workout…(bloated like NEVER before). I also need to buy more food from the grocery store since I need to be consuming so much more. There are pros and cons to being able to eat pretty much as much as you want!
I’m tracking all my food through myFitnessPal, and I try not to obsess but I feel like I need to be looking at it all day to figure out what my next meal will be. This weekend will be spent planning out the week, (I finally see the appeal of meal planning), and making sure I make myself plenty of plant based snacks to stay up on my macros!
If anyone has any advice for my marathon nutrition, let me know. If you are interested in how I stay plant based, let me know too. And if you just wanna chat about nutrition, I am always up for a good convo on that.
The pic below is me devouring the heck out of my burrito. Treat yo self. Also my 40 oz Hydroflask gives me life: hydrate or diedrate, amirite?