Making adjustments...

Last night I decided to change my eating habits. For years I never ate breakfast and never craved food in the morning. Some people need to eat in the morning to keep their energy up, I never did.

About 2 years ago, I started forcing myself to eat breakfast because the experts told me I should. The first thing I noticed was that once I started eating breakfast I found it more difficult to lose weight. Most days, I'd have to force myself to eat in the morning, as I don't have a natural urge to eat.

I believe that the body needs a break from eating so it can focus its energy on recovery and repair and not just digestion. I think the body should have a good 10 - 12 hours of not eating, basically a fast period. I've tried to stop eating at 8 pm and then eat breakfast a 8 am, which would give me a 12 hour fast period. I can't do it. I've come to accept I'm a late night snacker. Why fight it.

I've come up with a solution. Basically I'm going to adjust my eating schedule to my natural rhythm and not eat breakfast in the morning. I'm going to continue my late night snacking, which ends at around 10 - 11 pm and not eat until 10 am - 12 noon the following day. This will give my body a 10 - 12 hour fast.

I know if experts are reading this post, they may want to leave a comment that I shouldn't do this and that "breakfast is the most important meal of the day", etc, etc, etc. Common sense says "one size doesn't fit all". I think that it is important that we educate ourselves on the diet theories, but ultimately we need to evaluate our own situation, our natural inclinations, and adjust our diet structure accordingly.

I didn't eat breakfast today and I felt great. I didn't feel hungry at all this morning and my first meal was a sandwich at lunch time. As a matter of fact, two interesting things happened. I had more energy and alertness than normal and a cold sore I felt coming on yesterday and was lingering this morning, was gone by lunch time. I think this was because my body wasn't busy digesting food and was able to start detoxing my body.

I'm not a trained nutritional expert and I don't think that matters. I think the best approach is to listen to your body. Sometimes knowledge can hold you back and stifle creativity or experimentation. Even though I'm going to stop eating breakfast, if I wake up really hungry, I'll eat. I also think that your body will tell you what you need to eat by it's cravings. I do reserve the right to be wrong and I'll keep everyone posted on how my new plan works for me.

Training wise I had another great swim. Much easier mentally than the last one. It was also much faster overall. Some of the highlights included 12 x 25 meter warm ups at 20 - 21 seconds each. A 200 meter swim averaging a 1:37 pace; 300 meters averaging a 1:39 pace; 600 meters averaging a 1:43.7 pace; and a second, back to back 600 meters averaging a 1:49.3 pace. I was super happy with the swim, it was my best ever average pace for 3000 meters. Near the end of the session I could feel my arms were tired and it was tough to pull strong. I just tried to swim as hard as I could while trying to maintain proper technique.

With my hamstring injury, I'm juggling my workouts this week and decided to do my weight lifting session after my swim. I definitely couldn't push the weight I'm used to. The swim took a lot out of my arms. For each upper body exercise I had to reduce the weight I normally push, although I did make sure I didn't rush any of the reps. I also didn't do any legs exercises that would stress my hamstrings.

Hopefully by the end of the week my hamstring will be strong enough to continue with my regular training schedule. I aborted the moderate bike ride I had scheduled for tonight. On the MAO program a moderate session is of medium importance, unlike a tempo/speed or long session which are high in importance. My cycling is so strong right now, that not doing tonight's ride will have no negative long term effect and can only be recovery positive.

John P (@johnproc) sent me a tweet today curious about the resistance level I have on my bike trainer. I assumed he thought my average speeds seemed high and wondered if it was because of a low resistance level. Fair question. I don't know if it is high or low, although I've tried to set it up so that it is the same as if I was on the road. With that said, it really doesn't matter.

I follow the MAO program which is based on heart rate thresholds. For my long rides, I need to keep the heart rate under 143 bpm. I typically average 135 - 138 bpm. If the resistance is low, you need to do a lot of fast spinning to get it up or if it is high your cadence will be low and you'll be pushing . In either event, you are getting a great benefit. Speed is not an important measurement, heart rate is what is most important. For me, whatever the resistance, I focus on heart rate and keeping the cadence at 90 rpm and gear up or down accordingly.

Mark Allen mentioned that the year that he had his biggest improvement on the bike was when he did two indoor trainer sessions a week. In reality, riding a trainer in the required heart rate zone is harder than riding outside. When you ride outside you typically have terrain, like hills that give your legs a break throughout the ride. When you ride inside you are pushing constantly with no rest.

Experts agree that you can get more of a leg workout in less time indoors than outdoors. The common number seems to be a 25% difference. For example if you do a 4 hour ride outdoors, you can get the same benefit with a 3 hour ride indoors. For my winter training, MAO has told me I can reduce every second weeks long ride by 25% without foregoing benefits. I haven't yet done this, but I can if I want to. For now I want to push myself mentally and improve my fat burning system. But if I feel burnout coming on, I'll definitely make the 25% adjustment.

Long Swim - 3000 meters / 1:00:30

Weights - 40 minutes