Food, food, everywhere, but nothing to eat...

I can't eat. I can't eat normal food. Normal everyday food that normal people eat. I'm broken. I like food, don't get me wrong. A nice spicy pad Thai...a ginormous salad with all the veggie trimmings...tofu baked, fried, grilled, or flambeed...YUMMY! My tummy doesn't find it so yummy, though.

I basically pick at the same things day after day and can count them on all my fingers:

• oatmeal
• tofu
• broccoli
• black beans & rice
• fake eggs or egg whites
• pretzels
• apples
• oranges
• protein drinks & energy bars
• oh, and coffee, coffee, coffee

The crazy thing is, some days none of the approved foods on the list stay down. Other days, they are golden. What's the secret? What's the magic? Is there a pattern? Like string theory, it makes no sense to me.

Now this wouldn't be a huge problem except it's come to my attention that I need food as fuel. Why is this a novel concept? Food=fuel. No food=no energy. And it has reared its ugly head almost every day the past couple weeks in my workouts. My Coach has taken to nagging me to eat. He actually stops my lessons and makes me eat some kind of energy chews. I have been skating for months sans break during my skate. It's only a 50 minute lesson. I've run for 4 hours straight without stopping for energy chews. WTF? Why now? Here are some reasons that I've been given:

• you have more muscle now and muscle burns more energy, faster,
• if you go for a 50 minute run and then try to skate for an hour, that's two workouts, not a warm-up and a workout,
• you are burning calories so you need to replenish them before you burn them (does that even make sense???)
• maybe you just don't eat enough, period. (Huh.)

I do eat. Okay. I try to eat. Sometimes less successful than other times. I'm now told to eat SIX times a day. HOLY CRAPMOLY! I can't eat three times a day, let alone double that. "Six little meals." Is there even enough time in the day to do that?

I'm reading this great book called Marathoning for Mortals by John Bingham. He's a regular columnist in Runner's World and author of No Need for Speed (Coach wouldn't like that one.) He's known as, The Penguin, for his funny penguin-esque running gait. His motto is, "It's not that I had the courage to finish, but the courage to start." Anyhoo, here are some tips from his chapter on nutrition for long distance runners:

• Food is fuel. (Got it.)
• Eating well is part of your training program. (This one is new to me.)
• No diet is right for everyone. (Duh.)
• You need more than water to be well-hydrated. (Does coffee count? The Penguin would say yes. He's addicted to Starbucks, too.)
• Hydration is an everyday activity. (The more you drink the more you pee.)
• Too much water is as dangerous as too little. (This one is down right scary.)
• Use sports drinks. (Toughy. My Dr. told me not to drink them. Too much sugar in these drinks and I struggle with keeping my sugar at an even keel.)
• Get the fluids in you, not on you. (He says to just stop or walk when your running a race to drink. Funny. I have the same problem, only I don't spill it on me, I get it up my nose.)
• Eating after a hard workout speeds up recovery. (Also news to me. You're supposed to eat up to 400 calories within 30 minutes of finishing the hard workout.)
• Food is fuel that your body needs to perform. (Okay, this one must be important because he repeated it. I think I'm catching on.)

And The Penguin's "Absolute most important nutritional step to ensure success: practice." Practice eating before, during, and after long distance running to ensure you get it right. Oh. My. Gawd. That's a lot of eating. And likely in my case, vomiting!!!

Okay, see? How can I keep all this crap straight?

So after reading how important water and sports drinks are, and that I should be eating during any workout that's longer than an hour (WOW! REALLY???), he also says that you shouldn't eat a PowerBar/Gel and drink a sports drink. It's one or the other, but regardless of which one you choose, you need to flush them down with water.

It's really just too much. What happened to the good ole days when I went to a three hour softball practice, rode my bike to and from 6 miles, came home, ran around with the dogs, and ate a bowl of cereal????