Lack of food-related constraint - AnnaTheApple

September 22, 2014

Drowning iPhones, beetroot and chocolate fudge cake

One week, one week, one week…before the Berlin marathon. To say I’m terrified is something of an understatement.

The weekend was nice and relaxed though thankfully. Friday night we went out to Nando’s again with friends. Nando’s is becoming dangerously addictive! On Saturday morning I was tempted to go to parkrun to do an easy gentle 5k but after running 10k on Thursday night and cross-training Friday I decided to be super sensible and go pool running instead.

Float time in the swimming pool…

Like last time I took my waterproof iPhone cover and Bluetooth headphones so I could listen to music and keep myself entertained. I was just doing my thing when suddenly my music stopped. I looked over to the side where I left my iPhone and saw it had vanished. Uh oh. I looked down in the water to see it glowing at the bottom of the pool. A small child had managed to knock it in accidentally. He stood there looking all guilty and said “Shall I dive down to fetch it?”… “err yeah” I said, trying my best not to panic. Luckily it was fine and the child lived on for another day. Whew. So 35 minutes of pool running went OK other than that incident.

The rest of the day was non-descript but in a lovely “got no plans” kind of way. Lots of walks with Alfie and watching Kings of Summer (which I highly recommend).

Sunday morning was long run time. I set my alarm for 8am and decided to test out a possible pre-marathon breakfast. My plan is to have two of the Beet It flapjacks before the race. They’re 235 calories each so my thinking was two would be perfect for a good breakfast and I get the whole beetroot benefits (boosting endurance).

Alfie was very interested

I’ve tried the bars before but just at work when I fancy a snack. They’re so tasty – kind of earthy but sweet and crumbly. Anyway I had two and then got myself ready and took Alfie for a longer walk than I usually would before a run, just to give myself a good amount of digestion time.

My tummy felt a bit strange after eating two bars. Not like I was sick or anything would happen, but just not completely right. I instantly regretted eating the bars and decided there and then to stick to my usual porridge before the marathon. I was sad about the bars but it was worth a shot.

On the actual run though my stomach was fine and I just got on with, well, running. I aimed to stay at around 8.30mins/mile as this is nice and easy. I felt quite slow if I’m honest but on my second mile I looked at my watch and found I was storming along 7.30-45mins/mile! I immediately slowed down. I continued letting my mind drift and listen to my podcast and realised I had sped up again.

But it didn’t feel tough at all. This was dangerous territory to be on and I snapped myself out of it and forced myself to slow down. This is not the time I want to have the best run of the month – that’s next week I hope! I need to save it for then, not on a training run.

Anyway the run went fine. No shin discomfort. Just a normal run – woooohooooo! And afterwards I just felt normal aches and tiredness like I would after a long run. And even today I feel fine! I can hardly believe it.

Now this might be completely coincidental but I could it have been the beetroot bars that helped? I felt so fresh and good on the run and even when I was running faster I felt like I was running a minute slower. Now I’m confused. But I do still have the Beet It shots which give the same amount of beetroot power as the bars and then I can still have my porridge. So I need to trial a shot before a morning run this week…

After the run I got showered and we headed to a local pub to have lunch with my parents and Ben’s mum.

Family lunch

I realise my choice of food is odd but hey ho. I had a mango chicken salad to start and, er, a chicken, beetroot and goat’s cheese salad for main…with sweet potato fries 😉 You might have thought I’d have had enough beetroot at this point. You would be wrong.

And pudding…oh pudding, how I do love you. I had a hot chocolate fudge cake with ice cream. Need I say it was to die for?

It was such a lovely lunch.

And cheers to my dad for the lovely ski whiffed photo!

After walking Alfie when I got back, this is pretty much what I felt like for the rest of the afternoon:

Knackered

What did you get up to this weekend?

Are you good with small children? Or children in general really? I am not.

Are you a starter or a pudding person? It really depends for me, usually I will only go for one but I was quite hungry. Normally it’s pudding if they have something good.

July 16, 2014

Men drink beer, men bring back meat…

Sometimes during the week Ben might go out with some boyfriends (doesn’t work does it? – boy mates) to go do what men folk do…like drink beer and talk about whatever those men folk talk about. My delicate feminine mind couldn’t handle whatever goes on in those meet-ups I’m sure 😉

While he’s out this is usually my time to take charge of the television…catch up with the Kardashians or check in with the Housewives (both Real and fake – though likely the same thing). Maybe even have a solo-Anna family Guy sesh, who knows! Rock and roll.

Usually this is also the time I can have whatever I want for dinner without Ben turning his nose up (“how many vegetables are you having?” or the always pleasant “that looks like sick”). Very exciting. Anyway, I digress. So Ben went to the pub and very likely two hours later I went to bed (as I said: rock and roll).

In the morning Ben and me got up and were catching up, having not had the chance to do it the previous night, and he casually mentioned that he won some meat. Random but OK, that’s quite cool. What kind? “Beef something” he says.

Getting my breakfast ready I open the fridge door to find a rather large hunk of meat sort of crammed in among the yogurts and butter.

A bit of meat he says?! This could feed a small family for two weeks!! I was stunned. We don’t even eat beef that regularly! Ben appeared rather sheepishly and went “yep that’s the one”. You don’t say…

Could have been worse, Nathan (one of said boy mates) won six pork steaks and woke up in the morning to find he had eaten half of them when he got in…

Anyway I carved that bad boy up (the meat, not Nathan) on Sunday afternoon and it literally took me 45 minutes. I cut some of it into chunks after my dad suggested using some of it for casseroles and slow cooker meals, and cut the rest into steak portions. All now safely in the freezer.

It’s mildly amusing that last week I cooked us some organic beef steak and Ben really wasn’t a fan. Probably me not overcooking it and it turning out a bit more chewy than we like.

I sprinkled the steak with some steak seasoning (Schwartz) and we had it with vegetables and roasted sweet potato chunks (and BBQ sauce of course).

Well beef will be on the menu now for a fair while so I might have to get the cooking of it right! Well, practice makes perfect I suppose.

And while we’re on the subject of recent eats, we’ve also been enjoying pork steaks with a honey and soy sauce marinade served with a new-to-me vegetable/fruit (?): plantains.

I fried seasoned slices of plantain in coconut oil. I’m not going to lie, they didn’t entirely rock my world. But they were a nicely carby addition to the meal. We were slightly disappointed that they didn’t taste a little of banana… 😉

And one last meat-related point. Probably the worst time to win a huge hunk of meat is when you go to Casa Brasil, the all-you-can-eat Brazilian rodizio restaurant. I think I ate gammon, roast pork, pork ribs, beef sirloin, beef rump (I think?), and another type of beef (more chunky but lovely and salty)…

So yeah, perfect timing when I can’t even look at the deli meat in Tesco at the moment.

Have you ever won a food item in a raffle?

Have you ever tried plantain?

Are you a big meat eater? What’s your favourite meat? I must admit I’m a very boring meat eater in that my favourites are chicken and turkey. Though I love ribs…heavenly.

**Psst! Check out Laura’s blog Wholeheartedly Healthy for a brilliant giveaway –> HERE ! **

July 9, 2014July 9, 2014

Am I healthy?

This is a question I’ve been asking myself recently.

I like to think I’m fairly healthy. I do lots of cardio-busting exercise running 4-5 times a week. I do some strength work to try and smooth out biomechanical imbalances. I always hit my ‘5 a day’ fruit count (no, not just with apples ;))I eat stupid amounts of vegetables. We’ve swapped to organic or free range meat and I try and buy organic vegetables and fruit where it ‘matters’. I’m at a healthy weight, everything functioning like it should (or I hope at least!)…no major spot break-outs or lack lustre hair. Perfect, right?

Hmmm. There is something that I never really mention on the blog. Most people would probably say it’s not a big deal. But I’ve started to wonder about my consumption of artificial sweeteners.

It’s no secret of my love for sweet stuff. I could eat cake every single day if I let myself. I don’t because I want to be healthy. I’ve often had comments from people like “where do you put it?” or “I wish I could eat like that and remain so slim”. Well my secret is I don’t eat it every single day. Obviously it appears on my blog a lot because I love cake and it’s a whole lot more interesting than “here’s another apple…”. But if I’ve eaten a lot of cake or chocolate one day I’ll balance it the next day or the next meal. I do love healthy food and eating salad for a meal is my kind of thing.

However, like I said I love sweet things but I can’t eat calorific sweet things all day long. So I’ve found ways around this. And now I’m starting to wonder if my ‘work arounds’ aren’t much better.

‘Sugar-free’, ‘no added sugar’…these are words I’ll look for. I’m not interested in ‘fat free’ or ‘low fat’. It’s all about reducing the sugar for me. However I’m not all about reducing the sweet taste. And here lies my issue.

Am I consuming too many sweeteners every day? What are the risks with eating too many sweeteners? What is this doing to my health in the long-term?

To put this into perspective this is what I consume every single day:

No Added Sugar Squash

I drink squash by the bucket load. At work I have a 500ml glass and I probably drink at least three of these with squash every single day at work. Sometimes more. It’s very rare that I’m actually thirsty. I drink squash because I get bored at work and it stops me from mindless snacking…so instead I’m mindlessly drinking. I’m also constantly going to the loo. Good for getting my daily steps! I have to buy a 1.5 litre double concentrate squash every week for work. Less than 10 calories per 250ml? Perfect! Let’s ignore that long list of chemical-sounding ingredients shall we? Hmm.

Low Calorie Mint Hot Chocolate

I will have a large mug of this every night.

I take this hot chocolate with me if I go on holiday, to friend’s, I took it with me to Endure and when I stay with relative’s. It’s the last thing I have at night and I love it. Alfie loves it too, he gets to lick the mug afterwards (shh, this isn’t disgusting at all. You’re wrong). Also probably the one reason I have to get up every single night to pee. But less than 40 calories for a mug! It tastes delicious. I can’t even touch Starbucks hot chocolate in comparison to this chemically formulated brand. I’m well and truly hooked. But again, those ingredients look so dubious. Sure once in a while it’s fine…but every single night?

Low Calorie Jelly

Like my hot chocolate, I’ll have a pot of sugar free jelly every evening. We used to buy the ready-made pots but it would cost us a fortune the rate I was getting through them (like 70p per pot). Now we buy the sachets that make four pots a time (we kept the old pots and make the jelly in them) for the same price. I actually found out my lovely running friend does this too!Sorry for appalling photo which you probably can’t read!

She probably doesn’t have one every single day though…and on bad days I might have two (‘bad’ days like “I fancy chocolate but I ate cake earlier so maybe I’ll have another jelly instead”).

Sugar free chewing gum

A bit like my squash obsession, I’ll chew a lot of chewing gum at work. Mint gum after my morning coffee, maybe a fruit-flavoured one before lunch, one after lunch, one after my other coffee, one because I’m bored…I get through a lot. I’ve heard horror stories about what it does to your insides. I don’t even want to know.

I reach for these sugar-free alternatives to keep myself in check and not over-do the sugar-rich things I love. But is this any better? Recent research has shown that diet drinks actually don’t work as the body is tricked into thinking that calories are going to be arriving and they never do – so you crave more sweet things. And what’s the story on sweeteners and whether they’re bad for our body or not? Do we really know in terms of long-term consequences? Do I want to know?

I want to cut down or cut out completely…but the sad fact is I know I can’t give up my hot chocolate. I love it too much. And my one jelly…that can’t be that bad can it? But I can reduce my squash intake. Yesterday I’m proud to say I drank one 250ml of squash (to keep me sane…) and the rest was plain water or this:

Water with lemon slices. Boring as hell I assure you and doesn’t quite hit the spot, but it’s a change I’m willing to make.

Small steps right?

Do you think you’re healthy?

What is the one thing you do that you know is not healthy?

What do you think of artificial sweeteners?

July 2, 2014October 28, 2016

Endure 24 – part 1

Endure 24…a 24 hour running event of a five mile lap. You could enter in a team, as a pair or solo. Our running club entered four teams and one madman solo runner 😉 I was part of a team of eight very speedy runners.

Leading up to this event I contemplated not doing it. Due to my annoying hip niggle I just hadn’t got in the miles I wanted to in order to feel really comfortable bashing out as many laps of the course as I could. Ben and his team had gotten out and done a good amount of training with running multiple times in a day over a few weeks. I hadn’t done any of that and hadn’t even got back up to running 10 miles yet. Ben, and several others, convinced me to go though and enjoy the experience while setting myself a limit on the number of laps I’d complete. I conceded this was a good plan: enjoy myself rather than pressurise myself and ultimately risk injury.

Ben and a few others arrived Friday morning to the campsite (yes, it involved camping…portable loos, portashowers and British weather). They set up loads of tents for those from our club who couldn’t come down in the day (like me, I was at work). I arrived Friday evening and essentially the hard graft had been done – thank god, I haven’t put a tent for over 10 years!

A group of us decide to walk the course to see what was in store for us. A lot more undulating than we thought! 90% off road, on dirt tracks and through the woods. Nice and scenic though.

We had a lovely BBQ that evening and basically just had a good old laugh and a fair amount of drinking (*cough* Ben and Mike *cough*). We had a late night and unfortunately a rather early morning with the sun beaming into our tent.

Obviously I took my porridge. And obviously I managed to knock over my porridge while cooking it on the world’s smallest stove. Epic oat-related fail.

The event started at 12 o’clock Saturday. Some crazy people cycled down to the local parkrun that morning before to “get some more miles in”. Not me I hasten to add. The weather looked a little precarious but we all prayed for the rain to hold off. What with Wimbledon and Glastonbury happening at the same time this was highly unlikely.

I had told my group beforehand that I only wanted to do three laps (15 miles in total). I explained that I hadn’t prepared properly and my main goal was getting to Berlin marathon without injury. They all understood and that was brilliant. I was put as the 7th runner (out of 8) so the other speedsters could get as many laps in as possible.

On Ben’s team he was number one. We all headed to the start to watch the first runners go at midday. It was all very exciting.

Look at that concentration

But then the rain began. It absolutely bucketed it down like you wouldn’t believe. Ben got fairly wet on his run, and the number 2s and 3s got absolutely drenched.

Not the most pretty of selfies I must say!

While the beginner runners headed off I quickly got down to the important stuff. Eating lunch. Before coming up I had slow-cooked an entire chicken and roasted three sweet potatoes. I then shredded the chicken and smothered the lot in BBQ sauce. Heaven. Except when it came to eating it I didn’t portion it out onto a plate. I just sat there munching away enjoying myself. I pretty much ate 3/4 of that bad boy. I was stuffed. I was still stuffed at 3.30pm…30 mins from my first run.

You can’t see it, but there’s a chicken food baby there

The rain finally stopped and it was my turn to go. I was excited.

The first mile was tough because, though it was on tarmac, for the first little bit, it was a slow gradual incline which kind of killed your flow. Then it was onto some trail running. There were a few more inclines and a beast of a short sharp hill towards the end. There were so many people on the course, some bombing it down at stupid speeds or some taking it slow and simply walking (usually the solo runners pacing themselves for the long hours ahead).

As I started running I knew I had an issue. My stomach was so full. Within a mile I got a stitch. I thought I was going to be sick. Towards the later part of the run I wanted to be sick to at least relieve some pressure. I never eat before I run, whether it’s the morning or evening. I eat before races but only because there’s such a gap between breakfast and actually racing. Usually many hours. OK I had about 3.5 hours between eating and running but essentially I’d eaten 3/4 of a chicken and a whole load of sweet potato…That wasn’t going anywhere fast.

As soon as I finished I hunched over convinced I was going to be sick. A lovely girl from my club tried to give me some food as she thought I needed it and I almost did throw up. Thankfully though the chicken stayed in place. Note to self: never eat that much chicken before running. Ever.

After feeling better I grabbed my stuff and headed to the showers. I thought I’d try and shower after each run. After a little wait I was in one of the tiny little portashowers. Essentially it was a shower cubicle with a bit of space to get changed in. No windows, no temperature dial. It was lovely and warm though thankfully.

The issue I had was that as the water was so warm the room became very steamy and hot. I think I can safely say that one of the hardest things to do is try and put on a sports bra when you’re still hot, the room is steamy and it’s an over the head affair (i.e. no straps to undo). I got stuck half way. It wasn’t pleasant. Then after struggling with that for what seemed like an hour, I then had to somehow get my tight FULL-LENGTH running leggings on too. Jesus. I almost just opened the door and got changed outside. “Excuse my bum, I’m just bloody hot!”

Whew. I felt like a whole new woman after that though. All squeaky clean and lovely. I found myself chatting to a elderly lady as I headed back. She must have been 80 or over. She was small and hunched over and nattered away to me. I asked her if this was her first 24 hour event. She laughed in my face and said she does it every year. She hoped to do six laps! She said she did one event in the 1980s as a soloist and was gutted that she only (only) did 98 miles. My god what an inspiration!

OK I will leave it there for now. I won’t lie, it sort of goes pear shaped from here for me 🙁

Have you ever done a 24 hour event?

Do you enjoy camping? Hmmm. I can’t say I’ve been won over by it this weekend!

Do you eat before running? What do you have?

May 28, 2014

Cake (of course), champagne and a whole load of shopping

Other than cycling and swimming, the weekend was still a busy one. It started Friday night with Ben getting a sports massage from our local friendly sports therapist Kyle.

I must say, there was an element of pleasure in watching my husband get a deep massage, rather than it being me this time! He bared up well – no major swear words or serious grimaces.

Then, after swimming and parkun on Saturday, we got ourselves nice and dapper ready for my mum’s birthday. What better way to celebrate than to take my parents for champagne afternoon tea?

We went to the fairly local MacDonald Botley Park hotel. It was very posh. We had little dainty sandwiches, two (two!) scones each and small dainty cakes. As I’ve had my fair share of afternoon tea and I feel I can judge these things quite well now 😉 I must say it was very nice. The scones were superb. Personally the cakes, though tasty, weren’t the best I’ve ever had. I much prefer a big slab of one particular cake rather than tiny portions of different cake (there was a chocolate coffee thing, slices of lemon poppy seed cake, plain sponge and fruit cake).

Can we just continue to talk about cake a moment? I’ve fallen off the wagon and into the dessert trolley it seems. My previous one week without cake only heightened my need for it. Things weren’t great last week.

Well obviously they were great taste-wise, but not great for my sugar consumption!

I went to Wagamama’s with work friends and after feeling rather saintly (but still a tad hungry) after my chilli chicken salad and miso soup I was persuaded to look at the pudding menu – well, I hardly need persuading! This then resulted in two of us ordering a stupid amount of different puddings. It was being expensed by work and some people weren’t having pudding…so it all evened up. In the end I had the above chocolate fudge cake, half a white chocolate cheesecake, I had some coconut ice cream, raspberry ice cream and a try of the passion fruit cheesecake. Needless to say I felt a little full afterwards. It was rather funny to watch people’s faces as my work colleague and I demolished a table of puddings.

But I think I fully put to bed my incessant craving. Obviously I then had afternoon tea on Saturday but I’m in a good place now with my cake love – it’s manageable 😉 Though I did have a baking fail on Monday when I attempted to make a chocolate peanut butter brownie to take into work the next day.

I think it’s probably safe that I can’t really bake very well. Who knows how many cakes I’d try to make in a week otherwise? Dangerous for both bank account and waistline.

To be fair, after I scraped the burnt bits off it looked a little better. A bit of melted chocolate drizzled on top sort of livened it up as well. But cutting it the next morning was a proper arm workout. It was a brick, there’s no denying it.

But can I just say: there was none left on Tuesday evening. Not such a fail after all? Or maybe my office are that desperate for baked goods…

Jumping back to Sunday, Ben and me had a lot of shopping to get done. New trainers, new trail shoes, a tent (for our upcoming 24 hour race in June – I’m trying not to think about that right now), camping chairs and walking boots.

We both successfully got the new trainers (Mizuno Nirvanas for me). It’s funny because I went with the intention of changing from Mizuno’s as that’s what I’ve always had and I thought I might need a change. I’m a serious over-pronator so always have to go for a stability shoe. But out of all the ones I’d be advised to try and had a little run in, the Mizuno’s felt the best. Saucony’s felt very rigid and the Brooks were second best but just not as good.

We got the walking boots done and dusted too.

These are for our upcoming trip to Snowdonia to see my grandad (who is a qualified British Mountain Guide and used to do crazy amounts of rock climbing, mountaineering, and still goes mountain biking and lots of walking – as well as the slightly less exciting golf ;-)). He’s taking us up Snowden (or at least pointing the way) so we needed to be prepared. We’re very excited!

And other than Monday’s cycling and Nando’s extravaganza, that’s pretty much it!

What’s been a recent baking fail for you?

Have you ever ordered more than one pudding off the menu? It felt so indulgent and extravagant!

Have you been hiking before? Anywhere nice?