Back around August I started drinking green smoothies. I held up for a little over a month, and then I couldn’t take it anymore. The taste of raw spinach got to me, and I couldn’t look at a green smoothie without feeling a desire to do the technicolor yawn. It wasn’t that the taste of the spinach in the smoothie was all that bad. In fact, you can hardly taste it at all. But just the slight aftertaste of it was all it took to make me sick of them. I gave up for a while, but then I stopped losing weight (I’ve got a good 30-40 lbs of pure fat on me I need to lose), and I didn’t feel as good. I really missed the nutritional value of those green smoothies. I just wish there was some way to put it directly into my stomach without it having to go through my mouth.

I tried peanut butter and other ingredients, but always the taste of spinach was there. But I stumbled onto an absolute cure. One day I poured in a scoop of fruit punch flavored Accelerade, and the spinach taste was gone. I don’t mean that it was just masked or overwhelmed, I mean it was totally, 100%, gone. I could not detect the slightest taste or aftertaste of spinach. My green smoothies went from tasting like…well, a green smoothie, to tasting like something I paid $6 for at Jamba Juice with a fraction of the nutritional value.

I haven’t tried any other drink mix yet, so I don’t know if fruit punch Accelerade is the only thing that will do it, or if Heed’s Subtle Strawberry or Gatorade Lemon-Lime will have the same effect, but at least I’ve found one cure, and maybe there are more out there.

A week ago I got sick. The more I think about it, the more I think it was my body telling me I wasn’t getting enough rest, nor was I getting very good rest. I’ve known for over a decade now what constitutes a “good night’s rest” for me, but it was based on anecdotal evidence which I have more or less ignored all these years, but which now I’m committed to carrying out for the rest of my life.

Back in 1998 I was starting my second year of college. I was fresh off a two-year stint as a missionary for the LDS Church in Brazil, and had been following a strict schedule of waking up at 6:30 am and getting into bed at 10:30 pm. I probably couldn’t point to more than five occasions on which I violated this schedule, and during those two years I felt great. I carried this lifestyle into my post-mission life at college where it served me quite well, although I adjusted my schedule so that I went to bed at 8 pm and got up at 4 am. I couldn’t have done this without the cooperation of my roommate, who had a custodial job and had to be up at 3 am in order to go mop hallways. I have never felt more healthy in my life than those 8-9 months I was able to keep this up. Then I discovered girls, and it all went downhill from there.

I started dating a girl and instead of going to bed at 8 pm, I was online chatting until 4 am, and then I would sleep until 9 am. I stopped working out consistently. I stopped eating consistently. And when that girl dumped me three weeks later I felt like I had been run over by a semi-truck, not only emotionally but physically as well. I shaped up some after that, but never fully regained my sleeping regimen, despite repeated attempts.

Last weekend, I was listening to a show on NPR (which I have searched high and low for in vain) profiling a filmmaker with a sleeping disorder. The guy is unable to go to sleep until he crashes, which means he goes days at a time without sleep until he finally passes out, sleeps for two hours, and then wakes up, still wanting to sleep, but unable to because his mind is racing. That was interesting in and of itself, but what was really interesting to me was when he spoke about all the different treatments he had tried.

He mentioned that the #1 rule of good sleep is to get up at the same time every day, regardless of when you went to bed. The #2 rule of good sleep is to go to sleep at the same time every day. Finally, I had a “scientific” source for what I learned over ten years ago on my own. Coming on the heels of my breakdown due to a lack of sleep, I decided to get on a strict schedule of sleeping from 9 pm to 5 am, and I have noticed an immediate improvement. Not only do I feel better rested throughout the day, but I find it easier to fall asleep at night and wake up in the morning. I’m already at the point where I instinctively wake up at 5 am even if my alarm clock doesn’t go off, and I’m not tired. I feel ready to take on the day. They say it takes three weeks for your body/brain to adjust to a new sleep schedule, but for me it took three days.

It is a challenge to get to bed by 9 pm every night. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve pulled it off more than once or twice since I started. But I have gotten to sleep before 10 pm almost every night, which is a great improvement over my previous schedule wherein I got to sleep between 11 and midnight, but was still getting up at 5 am. I’m still shooting for 9 pm every night, which means I have to start getting ready at about 8 pm right after we put my daughter down to bed, but it’s certainly worth it, and if I’m going to make it to Ironman I don’t see how I’ll be able to succeed without doing it.

The other day when I woke up sick I weighed in at 203 lbs. Today, after eating, I was around 205. It appears I may have moved from hovering in the 205-207 range to the 203-205 range. But that’s not what’s strange, what’s strange is the tale I will now tell you.

You see, my mom is a bit of a health nut. Growing up she was always making dishes like cabbage casserole, carrot casserole, etc. And when I stopped eating her cooking and started making my own meals, which generally involved lots of cheese, or when my dad and I would be eating ice cream, she would be eating something healthful and would say things like “I really like what I’m eating better than what you’re eating!” Naturally, I assumed she was lying, and was just trying to trick me into eating some cabbage casserole, but I wasn’t about to fall for it.

Then, after I got married, my wife would say similar things. I assumed she was also lying, and that perhaps it was some sort of conspiracy. I mean, what type of deranged person would prefer to eat an apple instead of a half gallon of ice cream? Crazy.

But out of respect for others who don’t like to see a grown man throwing caution to the wind, or perhaps out of a heavily muffled sense of shame, I have tried in the past to not binge on ice cream in front of others. So when my wife would go out of town, then things could get a little bit out of hand. Late nights, movies, ice cream, candy, you name it. Yeah, some guys would have all their friends over, get drunk, and trash the place, but my way of partying is alone with movies and food.

Well, my wife went out of town this weekend. Yesterday, actually. So I made a batch of cupcakes and some pudding to go on top. But that’s when the strangeness occurred. After I made them, I didn’t feel like eating any. I forced myself to eat a few mini-cupcakes I had made, but it was hard going. I went the rest of the day without touching the other ones, because every time I went towards them I felt a little sick to my stomach and they just weren’t appetizing. Finally, right before bed, I forced myself to eat one, but I didn’t enjoy it.

Today, I woke up and had a green smoothie for breakfast. I went to open the bag of cupcakes to have one, but again, it just didn’t seem appetizing, so I didn’t. This afternoon I forced myself to eat two, but again, it was hard work and almost thoroughly without satisfaction. I’d much rather have a Jamba juice.

Am I forsaking all sweets forever? No, I haven’t said any such thing. I’m just saying that something strange is occurring, and that maybe my mom and wife weren’t lying after all. Maybe they really are crazy, and maybe I’m starting to get a little crazy myself.

Man, as if everything I’ve gone through in the last week wasn’t enough.

Last night, as I was going to bed, I could feel a little tickle in the back of my throat and some minor pain when I swallowed. I also felt a bit “thick-headed” (my friends say I’ve always been that way), and more tired than normal. I was still planning on doing my workout this morning, but when I woke up at 5 am I knew I wouldn’t be doing much today. My throat hurt a lot, my head hurt, I had body aches, chills, hot flashes, and I didn’t feel AT ALL like getting out of bed. So I slept in until 9 am. I got up for an hour, and then went back to bed from 10 am to 2 pm. It’s now 4:30 pm and I was ready to go back to bed an hour and a half ago, but the work must go on, right?

In an attempt to nip this in the bud I had a large green smoothie for breakfast (foregoing the much more appetizing French toast my wife had made), and a bowl of chicken soup for lunch when I woke up at 2. I don’t feel much better yet, though.

What caused this? Well, here’s the email I sent to my coach:

Hi David, as I was going to bed last night I started to feel a little bit of a sore throat, some body aches, and other minor symptoms of something coming on. When I woke up they were in full force. I slept in until 9 am, got up for an hour, and went back to bed until 2 pm. And I already feel like going to bed again. I don’t feel terrible, per se, but I know I’m sick and I know enough to not push it. I’m keeping full of liquids and just taking it easy today in the hope I can kill this thing off fast, but of course I have no idea how long it will last.

I would guess there’s no point in revising my schedule until we know when I’m going to be able to get back in there. Do you have any recommendations on care or future prevention in the future? Part of me thinks the whole reason I came down with this is due to not enough sleep. I’ve been averaging six hours per night, and I feel tired pretty much every day, although I’ve felt great in every other way at the same time.

David’s response was:

Josh,

I’m so sorry!

You’re right, we would want to hold off on scheduling until we find out how bad this is, and hoe long before you recover.

For future prevention and care, sleep, vitamin C daily (which is probably enough in your smoothies) and 50mg Zinc the moment you start to feel sick.

The intensity you performed on Saturday probably lowered your immune system. After a big workout or race, sleep becomes even more important than normal.

Let me know how you feel tomorrow.

David

On top of a general lack of sleep, during my horrible, terrible, no-good bike ride yesterday (I make it sound like I have a negative attitude, but I was smiling the whole time, I enjoy challenges most of the time, I’m even smiling right now) I only consumed 200 calories of Gu, and maybe another 20 calories of Gatorade. I had a small, chocolate cupcake for breakfast, and a Gu before my bike, and maybe a Shot Blok or two (not two packages, two bloks). In all, I’m guessing that from 5 am to 4 pm I got perhaps 350 calories into my system. By the time I ate a protein bar at around 4 pm I was exhausted, and I probably hadn’t had enough liquids either.

Add up general fatigue for several weeks, the race on Saturday, and yesterdays events, and perhaps my body is telling me I need to take better care of it, which I’ve known for a while, but man, I have trouble with my transitions. Sure, I had a 1:05 transition in my last triathlon, but when it comes to transitioning from being awake, doing normal stuff, to being in bed at night it seems like it takes me 2:00:00 to make that transition. The biggest problem is I start reading WSJ articles on my Blackberry. Maybe I need to apply some triathlon transition discipline to the rest of my life.

My coach’s green smoothie recipe includes 2 tablespoons of flaxseed oil. But when I went to pick some up, the ground flaxseed was so much cheaper than the oil that I got the ground, thinking it might be as good as the oil. Turns out there is a bit of healthy debate on this matter out there on the Internets, and here’s the response from my coach:

The ground flax seed has less Omega oils per gram, and that is what we really want out of that oil. Taking in Omega oils for several weeks will significantly reduce inflammation.

If you look on the back of the nutrition guide for both the ground and oil, how much ground would you have to put in to get the same amount of Omega oils? AS long as you can get a similar amount, I don’t see a problem, but my guess is that you will have to put in a bunch of ground flax to equal 1 Tsp of oil.

However, if you read that article I linked to above, there are some claims out there that the ground flaxseed does indeed cause problems. It would seem to me that for my purposes, the oil is the safe bet, so I’ll be sticking with the oil from now on, once I finish this bag of ground flaxseed that I bought…

Morning workouts are best for my schedule, and I used to rarely eat in the morning before working out. If I did, it was half a Clif bar or maybe a banana and a glass of milk. I always felt just fine working out without much in my stomach, or without anything at all. But the last month or so I was having a complete smoothie before my workouts, and then a full breakfast afterwards. I thought that maybe it was a good thing to have some food in me while working out. But my triathlon coach has told me that if I don’t feel like I need it, then I don’t need it. At least not for shorter workouts, which is all I’m doing these days. So here is my new daily food routine:

1. Breakfast, green smoothie – Immediately after I get home from my morning workout.

2. Lunch, spinach salad, or something else healthful.

3. Afternoon snack. Something healthful.

4. Sensible dinner with plenty of protein. I’m focusing on fish (mostly salmon) and ground turkey.

Overall I’m trying to include more fruits and vegetables, unprocessed, whole grains, less fat, less red meat, and less sugar. Oh, and definitely less dairy.

Over the past month I’ve been hovering between 215-220 lbs. After going on a strenuous three-day hike in the Uintas of Utah with my family I dropped down to around 210, and now I’m hovering between 210-215 lbs. I’ll keep you posted on how it goes from here. The first shipment of spinach is coming in today, so tomorrow morning will be my first green smoothie.

Up until David started coaching me on Monday, I was waking up, having a smoothie made of non-fat milk, a banana, some almonds, and maybe some other fruit thrown in. I would then go work out, come home, and have a bowl of oatmeal with two cups of milk or or a bowl of cereal. For lunch I’d have whatever was around, often leftovers from dinner the night before, which frequently includes liberal amounts of cheese and white, processed flour, and then for dinner I’d have whatever my wife makes. Oh, and I’d have snacks throughout the day. Often yogurt with granola, yogurt with cottage cheese, etc.  In other words, my diet has been unorganized, except in that I always made sure it included a lot of dairy.

David doesn’t like dairy. That is, he likes it, he just doesn’t think it’s that good for you. I’ve heard the anti-milk arguments before, and I must admit they make sense. Why is the milk of another animal such a staple in our society? Does it really do a body good? I’m not too educated on the matter, but common sense would at least tell us that maybe milk shouldn’t be the type of thing we drink two gallons of every day.

However, David also said he doesn’t like to use the word “eliminate” when it comes to food. So where does that leave me? My decision has been to scale dairy way back, as an experiment, and see what happens. My brother, who has had allergies all his life, recently cut out the majority of dairy and sugar from his diet, and he’s lost weight as a result, but his allergies have also gotten much better. David’s family replaced their breakfast cereal with green smoothies, and his son who was hospitalized each spring due to asthma was not hospitalized this year and didn’t need his asthma medication. So I figure it’s worth a try. I won’t completely eliminate dairy, and I’m not quitting cold turkey, because I need to get rid of the stuff we’ve got. I might still have a bowl of cereal once a week. I might have some yogurt once in a while. I’ll still have a bowl of ice cream when we have company over. But I’m going to try cutting my dairy intake to about 5-10% of what it was, if not lower.

Lucky for me, I love soy milk. But David says that has a lot of estrogen in it, so I guess I need to be careful there too. But I don’t think it will be too huge of a problem.

My wife and I have had debates regarding how much choice influences eating habits. Her opinion, if I understand it correctly, is that everyone is the same, but some people lack self-control and therefore have poor eating habits, while other people have more self-control and therefore eat better. My opinion is that certain people are subject to cravings and desires that other people are not subject to, and therefore some people find it more challenging than others to maintain good eating habits. These “challenged” people must therefore exercise greater levels of discipline and self-control to maintain the same eating habits that other people do naturally.

For example, I’m overweight and my friend Mark isn’t. When Mark and I eat together, he tends to eat noticeably less than I do. It’s not that he says “I’ve had enough, I better stop eating.” What happens is that as he’s eating his stomach tells his brain that he’s full, and he simply doesn’t want to eat anymore. My stomach does the same thing with my brain, except that it doesn’t do it until I’ve eaten three times as much as Mark has.

So what of it? I think my wife doesn’t like my line of thought because she thinks I’ll eat too much of the wrong foods and then excuses like “I’ve got cravings” or “The devil made me do it!” or “What can I do? I’m just one man” will issue from my lips, and then sooner or later I’ll have to be enrolled in an eating disorder treatment center. But that’s not the case for me. That is, yes, I could use my theory as an excuse, but I recognize that whether or not I am subject to influences that my wife, Mark, and others are not, doesn’t really matter if I’m going to achieve my goal of being fit and healthy and doing an Ironman. If I’m going to be an Ironman, I need to eat certain things in certain quantities and avoid other things. If that means I have to exercise greater self-control than someone else would to achieve the same results, then fine. It’s no difference than saying that someone who makes $10 per hour will have to work more hours than a guy who makes $15 per hour in order to buy the same TV. Yeah, duh. I only bring up the matter because I think when we understand the true nature of how things work, it makes it easier to control them. If I know I have to work harder than someone else to get the same results, then I’m less likely to get discouraged if I feel like I’m putting forth more effort and getting less results than they are, because I already know I have to work harder than they do, and that what applies to them doesn’t necessarily apply to me.

Now here’s the thing–I believe we can change our cravings. In fact, I know we can. I know this because I’ve found that when I’m exercising a lot, my cravings change. When I’m heavy into training I find myself craving wheat bread, water, vegetables, and fruits rather than hamburgers, fries, and milkshakes. It’s not the fake “Oh, I’d much rather have a piece of wheat bread instead of that cake” that parents use to try and convince their children to eat healthfully–I really do feel like eating more healthful foods. By the way, does that tactic ever work with kids? My experience is that they look at the adult as if they’re crazy, and never trust anything the adult says ever again. I mean, would you?

I have nothing but my own anecdotal evidence, but I believe that our cravings for foods are influenced by at least three factors:

1. Habits/experience, or “what we’re used to”

2. Exercise/fitness

3. Choice

It’s been hard for me to cut down on cheese and ice cream, but the less I eat of it and the less frequently I eat it, the easier it gets to eat less and less frequently. Exercise as I already mentioned above completely changes my appetite. And finally, I think the mind has a huge impact. I think I can choose to like certain foods and “trick” myself into believing it. My hope is that by exercising self-control for an extended period of time (a few years), exercising, and choosing to like healthful foods, maybe I can change my cravings to the point where it’s second nature, and maybe I’ll be just like Mark. That is, maybe I’ll crave better foods and smaller quantities of food, and it won’t be something I have to constantly watch, it will just be normal.

On Sunday my dad asked me if I had ever heard of a “green smoothie”. On Monday my coach asked me the same question. I have been known to make smoothies from avocados (one avocado, three tablespoons sugar, some ice, some milk, blend, delicious) which are quite green in color, but that’s not what they were talking about. Far from being a dessert, as the avocado smoothie is, this smoothie is green because it’s made with spinach. Yes, that’s right, the stuff Popeye eats that make his forearms so big.

Other than spinach, the other ingredients aren’t mandatory. At least I don’t think they are. As far as I know there is no governing body that maintains guidelines as to what can be called a Green Smoothie and what cannot be, but apparently there is general consensus in the public domain that the smoothie cannot be called “green” unless it contains spinach, gets at least 40 miles per gallon, and has a hybrid sticker on it. Here is the recipe my coach passed on to me:

- Spinach, as much as you can handle. Buy in bulk from Costco and freeze.

- Water to preference.

- Banana.

- Flax seed oil. 2 Tablespoons per smoothie. Get from any health food store. Good Earth, Whole Foods, Wild Oats, etc.

- Berries and fruit of your choice, blueberries add the most sweetness.

- 1 scoop protein powder per serving.

He also told me that if I must sweeten it to use agave nectar rather than refined/processed sugar. But having made many smoothies in all my days, I think I’ll be ok with just berries.

Got any other recommendations for green smoothie ingredients? Do sound off.

If you were getting on your teenager’s case about how he needs to do better with his homework and he said “Yeah, I know, but rest is important too, so I’m taking a week off” you’d haul his lazy behind out in the street and whoop on him until you had more neighbors around spectatin’ than you had out to your last block party, right? Of course you would. But when it comes to exercise, guess what? If you rest, that doesn’t mean you’re lazy, it means you’re smart. But don’t take my word for it, look at these other expert people (you can tell they’re experts because they have blogs) who say the same thing:

The Importance of Rest Days

The Importance of Rest

Importance of Rest

The last guy has pictures of musclely men and cats, so you know he’s serious when he says that rest is important.

But all kidding aside, resting is critically important to your training. Training is the act of working your muscles until they’re tearing and getting hurt. When you rest, they heal and more tissue fills in the tears and such, which makes your muscles bigger and stronger.

“But I rest every day” you say? Of course we all rest. Nobody is out there training 24 hours per day. But we’re talking about resting for several days at a time or taking an entire week off. Or, if you’re like me and have a pulled hamstring, taking multiple weeks off. Unfortunately for me, it’s the only way I can heal and get back to training.

I’m no expert on this stuff, but what I’ve seen and heard is that your body will generally tell you when you need a break. If you’ve been training 3-4 days per week for two months and you feel like you’ve hit a wall and your legs never feel properly rested then take a week off and just rest. Whenever I do this I find that once I start again that sure, it’s hard the first day, but by the second or third day I’m back into training I feel much better than when I started my rest period.

So if you’re new to triathlons and you think taking a break means you’re lazy, don’t sweat it, just take a break if you feel like you need one. Just don’t let that break turn into six months. That’s not called resting, that’s called quitting.