Friday Fun!

Handle every stressful situation like a dog. Pee on it and walk away."
From the Brat Factor 365 Surprise



Heh... that's sort of a reflection of my mood today... kinda silly, kinda feisty, sorta stressed but willing to, well, walk away from it at least. ;)

First off: Happy B-day to the US Air Force!


I'll be showing my appreciation by sweating through a 5K this afternoon on behalf of those who have and are serving. For my scary brilliant cousin Brent (who probably WOULD have to kill me if he told me what he did), for Jim, Billy, Kim, Rob, Dave, Shaun, and the MANY other peeps I don't have names for... From my little corner of the world, I say Thank You! If it weren't for what you do, I wouldn't be able to get away with all the silliness *I* do. (And I put a little extra in the mail today to the USO. :)

I'm not really sure why I've been feeling all sentimental about the service men and women of late - I blame CrossFit as they are very much connected to the military, and have several workouts dedicated to fallen heroes. Either way, it is what it is.

Secondly, I've been carb obsessed this week, but not in the way you may think. Ok it sort of is, but there's a few parts to it.

One part is the fact that I realize my mental pictures are changing. What I mean is, if I were to say the word, "Carbohydrate", what's the first image that pops into your mind?

This...?


Or maybe this...?


For me, now, the first image I get is this...


It has come up a lot this week where the term "carb" has become synonymous with "Grain"... in fact doing a Google search for "carbohydrate" images yielded, in the first 5 pages, bread, pasta or both in 99% of the images.

Yet, when you look at the nutrition info of fruits & veggies, they are all carbohydrates. I've been getting a little frustrated because of it. I have been in a few conversations about limiting "carbs", only to realize the other person was talking about grains. Or, I've found that I have to make distinctions between grain 'carbs', fruit 'carbs' & veggie 'carbs'.

I blame Tom & Barry.

See, in BFFM and the Body Fat Solution, Tom Venuto drew the line of distinction between "fibrous" carbs (aka most veggies) and "starchy" carbs (aka potatoes, yams & grains).

Then in the Zone, Barry Sears further clarified it by showing me portions/block sizes for the different types of 'carbs'... when faced with a choice of 3 tablespoons of brown rice or 3 CUPS of lettuce as one serving/block of carbohydrates, which one do you think *I* am going to choose? Both have 9g of carbs, but which one is going to make me feel like I ate something?

And that brings me to the other part of the 'obsessed'. I think I've mentioned before that, due to learning and practicing very clean eating habits, and being sure I eat enough, the only time I /really/ get cravings is if, for whatever reason, I'm HUNGRY, or when I'm not getting something that my body needs.

This week, I have been craving cinnamon swirl toast like a mad fiend! But mostly just the toast... heck, it got to the point that the scary "donut stix" in the vending machine actually started to look... good!

Oh yeah, and I had a serious, sudden case of Teh Dubm.

Once that happened I realized something was seriously off... doing a quick check over what I'd eaten, I realized I cut out most of the fast acting, straight into the blood stream starchy foods, especially later in the day.

I had a hard pretzel and felt much better.

One thing I love about this journey is the fact that there is an unending supply of learning opportunities: What works; what doesn't; how to tweak what doesn't work to make it mostly work for now; etc.

What I'm learning these past few weeks is I need to remind myself that, "Body runs veggies (and protein!). Brain runs on starch!"

So to all my fabu friends who are past, present & future figure competitors: I feel your carb depleted pain!