Day 8: Whew, I made it.

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Ok, the first week is under my belt. A few glitches here and there - hello frozen yogurt! - but all in all, I'm pleased with how it's going. Week two means I can officially add in beans, nuts and gluten-free grains. I say officially because I've sort of been eating those things here and there already. It's just not in my nature to eliminte food groups without a good reason, and for the life of me I couldn't wrap my head around not eating beans, nuts or whole grains.

The gluten-free thing I get, I mean that's part of why I'm doing this, to check it out. But otherwise? Yeah, whole organic oats can't be a bad thing, right? Right. Speaking of oats...

Breakfast: oatmeal and an egg fried in butter.

It was an interesting meal. I used to eat this kind of thing all the time, except with grits instead of oatmeal. Hey, grits, I love grits! And they're gluten free so I'm good. Oh, but they're probably too processed to meet this challenge:

"Grits are coarsely ground dried corn. Prior to being dried the hull and germ of the kernel is removed. The resulting “hominy corn” is often bleached prior to grinding. The larger of the ground kernels becomes grits and the finer is cornmeal (polenta)"

Yep, that sounds like a process. But I do like the hot breakfast thing, it's a filling way to start the day, though I don't like the time involved. It was so much easier to put some Kashi in a bowl, pour milk and I was eatin'. Anyway, my workday got underway and before I knew it, it was 11:30am. I didn't feel hungry but figured I'd eat my morning snack anyway.

Snack: banana

Then I went to meet a client for lunch. But it fell through and I ended up missing lunch altogether. Doh! The thing is, though, I never really got hungry. Around 2:30 I had my afternoon snack.

Snack: Orange

And next thing you know, it's time to go to the gym! I knew I'd be in trouble exercising on so little food so I rummaged around in my gym bag and found these Power Bar Energy Blast gels. Truth be told, I think they're kinda gross, which is why they survived in my bag so long, but I was not in a position to be finicky.

I realize these are not on my 28-day challenge food list. Again, not in a position to care. I needed to fuel for the fire and this was all I had. I started out on my run with a plan to do a small loop that included a BIG hill. But as I was running I realized that loop would be too short so I did a larger loop that still involved a hill, just not quite as big.

I only looked at my Garmin a few times, I really wanted to run by feel. I felt really good, a little sore legs in the beginning but they warmed up pretty quick. I had a feeling I was running at a good clip, other than when I was dying running uphill and convincing myself I wouldn't die. I wasn't far from the gym when I checked my Garmin, just under 4.5 miles and running a pace of 8:58! Holy speedster.

I stopped at 4.5 miles and checked my time, 43:42. Yippeeee! Under 10-minute miles - 9:41 was my average pace. I did the happy runner dance, which is not much of a dance because being a happy runner often means I left it all on the course. I needed a good run, I really did.

After the run I did chest/triceps/PT exercises. My strength is really coming back. I can do all my stuff without much pain. I'm sure my fellow gym-goers are happy to no longer hear me whimpering in during my last couple of reps.

Dinner: 2 slices of meatloaf, mashed sweet potatoes, 2/3 of a banana.

Regarding my food today. I did not purposefully skimp on the calories. I'll work on it, I will. I don't want to lose muscle, I want to fuel my machine, and I want to feel good. I have no interest, NONE, in under-feeding myself. It's just hard when many of my go-to snacks are off the table (by my own choice, I might add), like string cheese and yogurt. I already know I'm lactose intolerant so I've considered adding dairy back in maybe next week just to give myself more snack options. After all, it's my challenge, I can do with it what I want.

Thank you for all the comments here and on my FB page. I want to share Mira's response to my commenting on her feedback in yesterday's post.

"Aww, I didn't school ya! I am just worried about you! I think you're nuts but I get what you're doing. I just refuse to feel like crap as long as you are willing. And I'm way too stubborn to remove whole food groups from my diet even for a week. It just makes me rebellious and mad. Hope you have a great day!"

Don't you love honest feedback? I do. And I have to agree with her, removing whole food groups is never good. The only food group I've mostly eliminated so far is dairy (I'm still eating eggs and butter). Oh, and nuts and legumes - but I only sort of eliminated those too. I have been lower carb than I used to be but not because the plan is low-carb, it's because I've been lazy about finding gluten-free options. Bread and pasta are just so easy. But I'm loving the sweet potatoes and I'm thinking I should check out parsnips and rutabaga soon too. Mashed rutabaga anyone? Uh...

The thing I like the best about this challenge is that I'm eating whole foods. For me, it's really about that, about not eating processed crap. That's why I defied the program modified the program to meet my needs on the beans, the nuts, the oatmeal - it's about eating whole, minimally processed or totally unprocessed foods. Like Michael Pollan said, food your great-grandmother would recognize.

Back to my point, thank you to Mira, the running nurse, toledo lefty, the running libarian, sara, steph, iron snoopy and anyone else I missed- thank you ladies! The feedback has been really helpful. And with that, I'm signing off for tonight.

ps - I wonder if the frozen yogurt helped my run today? :)