<p>Workout last night was walking to/from the parking lot to the Indians game and cracking open peanut shells from a bag of peanuts. Dollar dog night (2) and a beer added to the calorie surplus.</p>
<p>Hot and humid in Ohio this morning - ran two miles at a pace a minute less than usual. Then walked a mile to try and stop the sweating. !!! Followed up by a yummy breakfast of an omelet with mushrooms, onion, tomato and cheese and some mini blueberry pancakes. Now on to some gardening!!!</p>
<p>It’s been a little over 2 weeks since I switched from tracking with myplate to mynetdiary so that I could look at my vitamin & mineral intake. I really like mynetdiary better than myplate, especially the iphone app. It took a little getting used to, but once all your usual foods are in there, tracking is so much easier and pleasant to do. I love the barcode scan feature.</p>
<p>My current project is to get my potassium intake up to the recommended daily amount and I’m finding it impossible to do, even with supplements. I think I would have to switch to a potato only diet to make that happen. Maybe I could start a new diet fad, the Irish Paleo Diet: pretend that you are descended from celtic cavemen, and eat only potatoes.</p>
<p>I have managed to get my potassium up to 35% of the daily recommended amount, and have also noticed that I can now (perhaps placebo-ically), point my toes without my foot immediately cramping up. One of the things my chiro suggested to me was that my calf spasms could possibly be related to the balance of potassium/mg/etc, since I have recurring calf issues, like waking up in the middle of the night with a severe calf spasm, enough that the muscle is actually sore for a couple of days after. My food tracking shows that I get more than the recommended value for the other minerals, and way less potassium, so I’m hoping if I up the potassium, it might help my calf issues.</p>
<p>Interesting about the potassium, Blank. I don’t track what I eat, but looking at this article, [Top</a> 10 Foods Highest in Potassium](<a href=“Food Lists from MyFoodData.com”>Top 10 Foods Highest in Potassium) , bananas, almonds, sunflower seeds, white beans, pistachios, walnuts, pumpkin seeds, mushrooms, and salmon are regulars for me, so maybe I’m doing okay on this one (or at least am not super far off).</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.fitday.com/fitness-articles/nutrition/vitamins-minerals/10-high-potassium-foods.html[/url]”>http://www.fitday.com/fitness-articles/nutrition/vitamins-minerals/10-high-potassium-foods.html</a>
Carrots, too.</p>
<p>The problem is that a small person doesn’t get to eat that many calories in a day, so eating potassium rich foods takes up a large percentage of my available calories.</p>
<p>Ran 1 mile after dinner last night. Not a good idea. Wife also made a tray of Baklava. Hard to resist stuff for me. I think that she makes it every couple of years. The knee feels very good. I didn’t put on the knee sleeve and no twinges so far today. I almost feel like going out the door and running but I’m going to play it safe and head to the Y for a run and some time on the weights.</p>
<p>Survived! Brutal, hot day and extremely hilly course. Beautiful scenery, including Kix Brooks’ country estate. I ran smart and hard- 2:14, which is way off my “normal” but for the day and the course really good. Beat my daughter by a minute. We were together until about 10 1/2 and then she backed off to walk up one of the hills. I never walked except to drink at some of the aid stops and to eat my Huma gel. People were walking all over the place- it was like a death march. 3rd in age group but sort of a crappy prize (after I made us stay forever until they did the awards…). They billed it as a “gift certificate” to the running store, but really it was a discount coupon ($10 off a $20 purchase). I got 2 of the coupons and a large certificate that I can fill my own name in. I’m not complaining- I’m happy to make the awards stand after last week’s crash and burn. I can’t download my splits yet because something is wrong with RunningAhead, but I think I ran pretty evenly.</p>
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<p>I don’t have any lipid numbers from when I was an ol’ fat guy. The first ones were after nine months and 60 pounds of fat loss and exercise. At that time, HDL was 62 and total cholesterol was 256. I had cut my carbs way back, just as a consequence of not drinking sugar and curtailing junk food snacks, but I was still eating an occasional bit of bread, pasta, pizza, potatoes, etc. I read Michael Eades book Protein Power and Gary Taubes book Why We Get Fat a few months after that and started dialing back the carbs and increasing my fat consumption.</p>
<p>Clearly there are genetic factors that can trump everything else, but exercise has been shown to increase HDL and diet can change it. I think the biggest dietary driver of increased HDL is fat consumption, especially fish oils, olive oil, and animal fat. I get 55% of my calories from fat and it’s virtually all from animal or seafood fats plus olive oil. I’ve completely stopped using vegetable/canola oil except for unavoidable amounts in packaged or restaurant products – roasted almonds, KFC fried chicken, etc. The fish oil capsules and psyllium husk fiber I take every day both tend to increase HDL, so they may play some small part, too.</p>
<p>The whole anti-fat, anti-meat message may be counterproductive. Yes, animal fat often increases LDL cholesterol, but it usually increases HDL even faster. Plus, if you replace fat in the diet with grains and carbs, then your triglycerides increase, your HDL falls, and you end up with an unhealthy profile (metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, etc.) even if your LDL and total cholesterol look good – the classic high carb/low fat small, dense LDL particle profile that is associated with insulin resistance.</p>
<p>No offense, but that IS a crappy prize!!! I’m with you on that!!</p>
<p>I can visualize your description of "death march. " under those conditions. Kudos to you - guess those brats for dinner last night didn’t do too much damage!!</p>
<p>Yay, MOWC. Sounds like a good run on a tough day. I hate those kinds of dollars off certificates because I always end up buying something I didn’t need!</p>
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<p>Unfortunately, they sort of did. I won’t go with TMI here, but we got stuck in terrible traffic trying to get to the VERY rural, small town race site (in fact, another issue today was that we started 20 minutes late as a result, which was really bad on a hot day). My daughter was with me, and it became clear to me about a half mile from the parking field that I needed, um, a pit stop. There was NOTHING! We were in standstill (almost) traffic, so I sprang from the driver’s seat, told my daughter to get out and take over and I would catch up with her, and I disappeared behind a barn! This is actually pretty normal runner behavior, but usually it doesn’t start from a car! I made it through the race- barely, but I will not be having brats and beer for a pre-race meal again.</p>
<p>10 miles cycling to the running shoe store. (Bought a new pair of brooks t7 racing flats. Last 2 pairs were Adidas adizeros. Little change of pace. I use these for track workouts and an occasional 3-5 mile run.)10 miles back home. </p>
<p>Our coach, who used to be a professional cyclist, was making fun of my bike, a 25 year old specialized which probably tips the scales at a little over 20 lbs.in his mind I might as well have been riding an old Schwinn with balloon tires. I keep looking for a tri carbon fiber on Craigslist. Can’t see spending 3000 bucks for a new one</p>
The Brooks T7s are nice. I wore them when I was fast enough to actually run shorter races in racing flats. Now- not so much!
<p>I don’t like to eat a lot of food (outside of simple carbs) anywhere near a long (for me) run.</p>
<p>That’s also one benefit of running on the treadmill or in a radius around home, work or the fitness center. A bathroom is not far away.</p>
<p>Just got back from picking up some new running shoes. I bought another pair of Brooks Defyances. Gotta get a lift in here soon today…</p>
<p>I have probably asked this question before - do you count the calories from fresh fruits?</p>
<p>One of my colleagues has been in one of those point counting program. he has lost a ton of weight. He told me that they don’t count fresh fruit as any point. That means he could eat as much of them as he could. </p>
<p>But those fruits carry calories too. A large mango, for example, is sweet and very filling. Today I have been just eating fruits and my weight before dinner is off the roof.</p>
<p>Went to the information session for the fall full marathon training. To my surprise, they say they will have up to 1,000 people sign up this year. And that the popularity keep growing double digits year over year. The ability to handle all these people coming together at the same time becomes an issue. </p>
<p>Long distance running as a part of life style seems is gaining acceptance most among young white female. Most of the people came to this session are them.</p>
<p>Add something about Brooks shoes. Of the 20 or so last running class participants, about 14 wears Brooks. </p>
<p>A pair of Glycerin 9 is one of the best deals I have done - paid $25 for the brand new pair at Nordstrom Rack.</p>
<p>MOWC, good running over them hills. However, you are giving me hope that one day I could catch you in the race. :)</p>
<p>You people are making me itchy for new shoes. :)</p>
<p>DadII:</p>
<p>Eating a ton of fruit is not a good fat loss strategy. Fruit has a lot of fructose, the kind of sugar that does the damage from soda and juices and probably contributes to insulin resistance. The saving grace with fruit is that the fructose is eaten with a lot of fiber and, unlike drinking juice, it’s hard to eat mass quantities of fruit in a single sitting (although I’ve certainly tried!).</p>
<p>So, as sweet stuff goes, fruit is the best of the alternatives, but you want to limit it to a piece or two a day if you are trying to lose fat. The apples I eat are about 22 grams of carbohydrate each. So a couple of those puts you halfway to the 100 grams a day that I think is probably the upper limit for carb intake on a serious fat loss effort.</p>
<p>Having said that, apples are my guilty pleasure. Because I eat so little sugar, they are intensely sweet to me now. I have one or two a day.</p>