What I'm Eating, Analyzed

My current training strategy is simple: I am running every day for somewhere between 30-50 minutes at a steady pace. No intervals, no hills, no long runs. I’m just getting my body used to moving and letting my soft tissues make the necessary adjustments that will save me from injury later in the training cycle. I will be adding some similarly moderate biking as soon as the temperatures allow the compacted snow on the roads to melt (that’s supposed to happen this weekend) and swimming will be added as soon as I motivate myself to get wet when it’s cold outside.

This morning I went down to the lakefront path that links Vevey to Montreux to do one of my favourite flat runs of last summer. It’s a 10K out-and-back from the statue of Charlie Chaplin in Vevey to the statue of Freddie Mercury in Montreux (each town being their respective resting places). You couldn’t find two more expressively different figures than these two life-size bronze effigies. Mr. Chaplin, who is shorter than me, is standing in the center of a cheerful rose garden in one of his characteristically comic stances, wearing shoes that look too big and sporting a walking stick. At the other end of my 5K route, Mr. Mercury has been immortalized in one of his classic flamboyant on-stage stances, feet firmly grounded and right fist thrust in the air.

As with all my out-and-back runs, I ritualistically touch the marker at the turnaround point and check my watch. When I reached out my gloved hand to touch the turnaround marker today, I’m sure that, to passers-by, I looked like a die-hard fan reaching out to Freddie for strength. I was spent. I opted to not check my watch (for fear of completely demoralizing myself) and turned around for a significantly slower back half (with the chorus of The Show Must Go On playing over and over and over in my mind). I have never been happier to see Charlie’s goofy figure in the rose garden.

After cooling down, pulling myself together and picking up some vegetables (what else?) at Vevey’s farmers’ market, I headed home with the resolve to do some math. Is there something amiss with my macronutrient intake? At day five of veganism, it’s too early to see signs of protein or iron deficiency. While I have also been mindful of not making the classic new-vegan mistake of cutting out animal products without adding the variety of plant products needed to provide proper nutrition, I think it’s worth doing a check-in on what I’ve been eating to ensure that my painful start to training is not due to anything more than the aforementioned couch potato assimilation in previous months. This seems to be what everyone is most interested in anyway (I thought it would be dull to write about what I’m eating every day, but I obviously don’t know my audience).

So here’s the breakdown of what I ate yesterday (don't squint, click for a larger view):


Now, I did a wonderful (albeit obsessive) thing two years ago and recorded the macronutrient value of every item of food and drink I consumed while training for my second ultramarathon, Stormy Trail. So I have a good set of data with which to compare non-vegan me with vegan me.

Here’s what I ate on May 2nd, 2006:



So, the vegan me seems to be eating substantially less protein, and substantially more fat (but I plead that they are good fats) and my overall calorie consumption is higher (largely due to the calories from fat). According to my calculations, I am still getting the recommended amount of protein for my height and frame size (I should be getting a minimum of 70g for light activity levels – this is one simple protein calculator) and I’m not doing any weight-training, or back-to-back long run days of 30K and 40K respectively, as I was during the time period that the second sample day is taken from. My take-home message to myself: I'll need to do better with my protein consumption when my training volume starts increasing. For now, I am attributing my less-than-inspiring 10K to nothing more than some garden-variety lack of fitness.

I’ve set my mind to doing the statue-to-statue run again in two weeks, and I want to hear a different rendition in my head. If it's something other than The Show Must Go On or Death on Two Legs, I’ll consider it progress.