Relationship status: It's complicated

Remember when that was an option for relationship status on Facebook?  Maybe it still is, I don't know.  Even me, someone who chooses to tell her life story for the World Wide Web ("www"--that actually meant something once too), wouldn't ever choose to set my relationship status to "it's complicated."

Unless it was a joke, which I think is how most people used it when we were back in our undergrad days at the beginning of Facebook.

Anyways, today I'd like to address a complicated relationship I'm having.

With food.

Beautiful food.  We used to get along so well.

I love food.  I really do.  Like...LOVE food.  But right now, we seem to be having a difficult time.

Me and food have always gotten along really well.  I mean, I've at least never had a bad relationship with food.  Although, that's from my perspective.  I'm not the one being eaten.

As a child, I was one of those "weird" kids that actually liked to eat healthy.  When we went to the grocery store to pick out snacks, I went straight for the baby carrots and ranch dressing.  And cherry tomatoes.  I could (and still can) eat an entire box of cherry tomatoes in one quick sitting.  I was picky when it came to candy--I would only eat Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, and I think that was because they have peanut butter in them (although I don't really believe it's actually made from peanuts).  You couldn't get me near an M&M or Snickers bar or really anything that had much chocolate in it--unless there was peanut butter too (see above).

I didn't like ice cream.  I'd eat two spoonfuls and then pass the rest off to the nearest sibling or parent.  This may have been a lactose issue that I've recently acknowledged, but we'll discuss that in a bit.

I didn't like pizza.  I still don't really like pizza, even though I'll eat it sometimes now.  I don't like the mass of cheese that slips and slides around in a sheet on top of the tomato sauce.  If there's no sauce and only a minimal amount of melted and recongealed cheese, then I'm game.  Don't get me wrong, LOVE cheese, just not melted cheese that has resolidified into an uncheeselike form.  We'll discuss cheese in a bit too.

(Spell check hates the above paragraph.)

As a kid, I refused to order anything but "chicken" sandwiches at fast food restaurants.  No hamburgers for me.  And that was before I quit beef.  At McDonald's, the only two things I would order were fries and "apple" pies.

I stopped eating hot dogs at an early age.  In fact, that happened years before my 12-year-old decision to give up red meat and pork (haven't knowingly ingested either type of meat since 1996).

This is all starting to make me sound really picky.  I'm not.  Put any fruit or vegetable in front of me, cooked with any sort of meat substitute or seafood (and sometimes chicken) with any sort of spice (except dill--unless it's a dill pickle) and I will try it.

My latest adventurous cooking experiment: honey balsamic glazed carrots
and green beans with garlic over rice.  It was quite tasty.

So in general, I've never had a problem eating healthy.  This doesn't mean I don't have my weaknesses.  Put a bag of Lays potato chips in front of me and I cannot eat just one.  I will eat the entire bag.  The big bag.  Salt is my favorite.  I will choose a bag of BBQ chips over a chocolate chip cookie any day.

Back in my "heavier" days of college (my freshman 15 was more like a freshman 20 by the end of it all), my problem wasn't what I was eating.  It was how much I was eating (and perhaps drinking too...).  My portion sizes were atrocious.  It wasn't until I learned to cut the portion sizes and then start running that I shed those few extra pounds.

After that, food and I got along pretty well.  As long as I didn't eat too much of it and ran a few times a week, our relationship was happy and steady.  I was enjoying cooking almost every night.  I learned how to cook with improvisation--a little of this, a little of that--and actually have it come out tasting good.  I liked trying new veggies and new combinations of flavors.  I ate a salad before dinner every night so I wouldn't eat too much actual dinner.  Me and food were at the height of happiness.

Quinoa (or maybe rice, it's hard to tell...it's an old picture) with what appears
to be chunks of tofu and roasted delicata squash.  And a salad!
Actually, that might be couscous.  I just don't know.

For a few years, that happiness lasted.  And then me and food hit our true high point.  I started running marathons.  And the most amazing thing that I learned about running marathons is that all of a sudden you have a wonderfully relevant and legitimate reason to eat a lot of food.  You get to eat all the food.  Because you just burned all the calories.  And if you don't eat the food, you will waste away to nothing.

Obviously there are some exceptions to this little realization (like, you can't eat ALL the chips, maybe keep it to half a bag in one sitting), but being a person who really likes to eat healthy food, and a lot of it, this new need to eat was amazing.

One of my staples: pasta with sauteed garlic, shallots, and
broccoli in balsamic vinegar.  In this particular instance
topped with fresh basil, diced tomatoes, and an entire
cup of parmesan cheese.
And bread.  OMG I. Love. Bread.

*Side note: I would never ever be successful on a gluten-free diet.  There is just too much bread in the world that needs to be eaten.  By me.

During my past 3 years of marathoning, me and food found true love eternal.  My portion sizes got to increase again without body-weight repercussions.  I learned the art of snacking appropriately so that I wouldn't eat the universe at every meal.  My classroom started looking like the habitat of a squirrel before winter with little hoards of food scattered throughout the room.  A jar of peanut butter strategically hidden in a cupboard (peanut butter is a no-no in schools these days).  A bag of pretzels by my computer.  A sack of almonds on my bookshelf.  A box of granola bars on the desk.  Some yogurt in the fridge in the staff lounge.

Every little moment I had in the room without the kids (planning time, lunch, recess), I was snacking as I prepped for the next lesson.

And if there was a birthday party in the classroom, yes I did eat that cupcake (unless it was chocolate with chocolate icing...blech).  I don't even really like cupcakes.  Just give me all the vanilla icing.

At home I started experimenting with more varieties of food in my cooking.

Sauteed crimini mushrooms and kale in a red wine sauce over pan fried
polenta cakes.  And The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.  And red wine.
Best dinner ever.

Butternut squash soup.  There had to have been some bread nearby too.

Roasted acorn squash with brown sugar and butter and sauteed
brussels sprouts.  A salad with more toppings than actual lettuce.

Everything was going great.  We had one minor hiccup last October as I weighed the difficulties of eating healthy, eating local, and eating "in season."  I never figured out what to do with that stupid persimmon.  I even bought a second one and finally just cut it up and ate it in apple-like slices.

Not too long after that, I decided to forgo dairy.  This was a long time coming.  I never liked milk as a kid and I already referenced the ice cream situation above.  I realized that eating cereal with milk and adding half and half to my coffee left me with an uncomfortable stomach for a good hour every morning.  I switched to soy milk and then eventually settled on almond milk for cereal.  I stick to soy lattes when I treat myself at Starbucks (no more half hour post-latte tummy ache!) and I don't eat yogurt anymore.  Cheese is the only issue.  Cannot and will not ever give up cheese.  But, when I bought 2 delicious blocks of cheese (brie and a nice smelly blue) at Trader Joe's this week and almost ate them all at once, I paid for it the next day.

After giving up dairy, I felt great for a while.  Food was still the comfort I loved.

But in the last 6 months, something has changed with me and food.  It's gotten complicated.  As I trained for marathon number 5, I started to notice something strange happening.

I wasn't hungry.

Gasp! How could that be??

My name is Tessa and I'm a vegetable (and salt) addict, but all of a sudden I wasn't hungry.  At first, I thought that it was just the low mileage in the early training days.  But then, as mileage increased and I started hitting the peak portion of the season, my ravenous hunger still failed to appear.  After Saturday morning long runs with Team, when we all go out to breakfast together, I'd normally devour every bite of my eggs, hash browns, and toast.  But this past season, I could barely eat my way through half of everything.

I left bread sitting uneaten on the table.  On more than one occasion.  

Sacrilegious.

I tried to ignore this weird phenomenon for a couple months, thinking maybe it was just a fluke.  Maybe my body just had gotten used to all this training season after season, and suddenly found a point where it said, "ok, we're going to survive this...you don't have to eat like the world will end tomorrow."  I thought maybe it had found an equalization point where massive amounts of food were no longer necessary for normal marathon training.

Then I ran the marathon.  And I didn't really eat much that day (compared to the normal marathon-running human).  Or the next day.  Or the day after that.  According to Garmin, I burned 3,286 calories while running the Rock N Roll Seattle Marathon.  That's 2+ days worth of calories.  And I never felt the bottomless pit, eat-everything-that-exists feeling I usually get the week after marathons.

It has now been exactly 2 and a half weeks since the marathon (weird, feels a lot longer than that) and my relationship with food has all but deteriorated.  I'm eating random food at random times of day (mainly because it's summer vacation and I have lost any semblance of a regular schedule) when I "feel like" I should eat something, because I probably just burned a lot of calories.  I haven't really been getting hungry all that often.  Food just doesn't sound all that great.  And my motivation to cook has almost completely disappeared.  And when I do eat, I will suddenly get to a point where I feel as though no more food will go in the belly.

I used to eat food because it was in front of me.  To the point of discomfort.  There's this weird stopping point now.  Like a stop sign that suddenly appears at an intersection you've crossed through every day without having to stop.

It's not like I've stopped being active since the marathon either.  Let's look at the mileage I've accumulated in the last 5 days:

Saturday: 9.3 running miles

Sunday: ~30 biking miles

Monday: 26 ridiculously hilly biking miles + .5 swimming miles

Tuesday: 5.2 running miles (combo of tempo/hill rep workout) + a 2.5 hour walk around the zoo to see lots of baby animals

Today: 5?ish hiking miles

Tomorrow I've got a swim and a track workout scheduled and for Friday there's in 60 mile bike ride in the works.  Yet food still doesn't seem like something I'm dying for.  I made dinner, and I ate it.  But I didn't love it.

I'm still trying my best to eat all the calories I should be (before, during, and after exercise), including good proteins and carbs.  But I feel like it should be easier than this.

Here's what I'm going to blame it on right now:

1)  I've been training for high endurance races for almost 3 years straight, so my body can do it all more efficiently without as much food.

2)  My highly routinized schedule is all sorts of messed up until school begins again in September.

3)  It's really hot outside and has been for weeks.  Who wants to cook and/or eat a lot when it's that hot?

I predict that come September when my schedule is back to normal, temperatures have dropped, and I'm tapering to get ready for a half Ironman, me and food will be on good terms again.

I sure hope so.  Because deep down, I still really do love food.

Let's be happy again soon please.