What I Ate Wednesday

I’ve never felt all that compelled to put together a “What I Ate Wednesday” post even though I see them quite frequently.  There’s nothing particularly interesting about the way I eat.  I’m not paleo or vegetarian, and I don’t eat organic stuff.  To be honest, I’m a little insecure about what I eat.  I’m not a clean eater.  I eat more candy than any adult probably should.  Probably my only healthy consumption habits are that I don’t drink alcohol and that I do drink water.

But this past week, the Ironman hunger I’ve heard people talk about finally hit.  I was starving.  All the time.  So I decided it might be worth my while to document what I eat on a random day of Ironman training.  I decided to document Tuesday, just because it’s easy to document Tuesday and then post on Wednesday.  When I started, I wasn’t sure what the day would be like with regards to food.  I decided to try to eat like I normally would and simply document the results.

I woke up at 4:30am to do some hip and glute strength exercises before going into work.  After I was done with those, I ate a banana.  I didn’t have time for much else, and I’m generally not all that hungry in the mornings anyway.

The first thing I do when I get to work (today at 7:00am, but usually a bit later) is make coffee and fill up my water bottle.  I just have one cup of coffee (with sweetened creamer) in the morning, and I try to drink three bottles of water throughout the day.

Around 8:30am, I started feeling a bit peckish and ate a raisin bagel with peanut butter.

Just a couple minutes later, I passed the front desk on a trip to the bathroom and saw that there was a bowl of candy out.  Score!  I snagged three pieces and ate them immediately.

At 9:30am, I had a small cinnamon roll that a co-worker brought in for a group of us.

I ate an apple at 11:00am.

And around 12:15pm, I busted out my “official” lunch.  Today, I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and milk.  And yes, I am twelve years old, thank you very much.

At 1:00pm, I had my daily tea.  Usually in the afternoon, I have some mint tea as a kind of “pick-me-up.”  It’s not caffeinated, so it’s not waking me up physiologically, but I find that the routine of sipping on something while I stare at a computer screen helps rejuvenate me, whether or not actual caffeine is involved.

At 2:00pm, I ate a banana with peanut butter.  In case anyone noticed the copious amounts of peanut butter in my diet, a few weeks ago, I got a whole flat of peanut butter (12 jars) for $12.  So I’ve been eating it with abandon.

I left work early so I could stop by the post office and planned to make up the hour or so from home in the evening.  I grabbed some more candy on the way out and ate it about 3:15pm on the train home while working on this post.

I got to Rob’s place and had a little snack before going for my run… a slice of cheese, two slices of lunch meat, and a Honey Stinger waffle.

Rob worked late, so I didn’t start on dinner until around 7:00pm.  At 7:15, I felt kind of hungry, but I couldn’t make much since I was, you know, already making food.  So I had a glass of milk instead.

And then around 7:45pm, I had dinner which was by far my biggest meal of the day.  We had bachelor pasta which is cheesy and garlicky and wonderful.

One of my favorite meals… I meant to take the photo before I added quite that much cheese…

One thing that you may notice from this post is that I’m almost constantly eating.  From the time I woke up until the time I went to bed, I consumed something every two hours or so.  I am a grazer at heart.  While I typically do eat a “real” dinner that fills me up, during the day, I naturally tend to eat just enough to take the edge off of my hunger.  This means that I eat often.  Fortunately, eating at desks is perfectly acceptable in my office, so I’ve been able to embrace this tendency.  I also eat a lot of carbs and a lot of sweet stuff, even if that sweet stuff is sometimes healthy, like fruit.  To be honest, I outdid myself a little bit today.  (Sweet snacks and a sweet lunch of PB&J?!)  By the end of the day I was craving something salty, something savory, and something with a little more protein to it. (I didn’t ever quite check the protein box, but dinner fulfilled that need for something salty and savory.)

I don’t generally track calories, but I went through my diet today and came up with a rough estimate of 3300 calories for the day.  It turns out all those snacks throughout the day add up—and that’s a good thing because I definitely need the calories they offer.

How much do you eat while training?

Do you track your food intake regularly?