Welcome to Week 8

Nutrition is such a complex area because there are a number of factors that can affect your food choices;

• Biological e.g. hunger and taste,

• Economical e.g. cost and income

• Social e.g. culture

• Psychological e.g. mood, stress, guilt

• Attitude e.g.beliefs and knowledge of food.

And using food as a reward can add another layer of complexity to a lot of “noise” surrounding this topic. How many times have you heard marshals in a race shouting words of encouragement “Keep going, you’ve earned your cake/wine tonight” to the point that it appears that food is seen as a reward and running as the punishment!

And have you ever found saying to yourself -

“I had a hard run today; I deserve this.”

“I ate too much this weekend, so I have to work it off this week with some extra runs .”

“I’ve been really good on my diet this week, so I earned this treat.”

“I drank too much wine last night, so I need to go to the gym twice today.”

You really are not alone! These thoughts/actions are really common and reinforced by stereotypes of runners needing to be lean/thin to be able to run faster and perform better.

But what it boils down to is the connection between your diet and your training plan; food is fuel, to succeed you must train, have enough energy to train consistently and meet your energy needs on a day-to-day basis. This means eating enough calories throughout the day to support your training.

Healthy eating habits also help you avoid losing days to injuries and upper respiratory infections such as colds because a well-fed body is a resilient body.

Key Points from Week 8.