My husband, I started a no sugar, no grain diet a couple months ago. I was resistant at first because I am a girl who loves carbohydrates and sugar. I am a carb eating sugar monster. Well, I was. The No Sugar No Grain diet is exactly what it sounds like. You can’t eat any sugar, and you can’t eat any grains. You can have everything else, which means natural real foods.
The diet was very challenging at first, but I still managed to lose seven pounds over the first two weeks (crazy). It was easier than I thought to cut out bread. I still had an apple each day (I can’t quit apples), and I would sneak chocolate once in a while. Everything changed the day after we had a pizza ‘cheat’ dinner. I woke up the next morning with my old hip tendonitis aching so much I was limping.
After thinking over the fact that I hadn’t run in the past two days I put two and two together and blamed the pizza bender for my aching hip. From that moment on, I decided to follow the diet and not anger my old injury. No piece of bread, nor dough, has passed my lips in weeks.
Within three days my hip felt amazing again. Every other time the tendonitis flared up it would take a month or more for me to run again. So three days to heal was remarkable and only further validified my theory about the pizza.
While the injury mystery is potentially solved, I am suffering from a different malady as a result of the diet. That malady is – pure, bone-deep, exhaustion. I was barely able to run two miles without bonking and walking through the rest of my run. It’s frustrating to have so little energy and not be able to do what I know can be done. And I have a very important relay coming up.
I’m in a damned if I do, damned if I don’t situation here. I can carb-load and risk re-injury and not be able to run Hood to Coast. Or, I can stick with the diet and have no energy to run. Yay…
I started reading articles about athletes who do keto or paleo diets, and discovered that they didn’t shy away from fueling with carbs before their workouts. They were consuming good complex carbohydrates very moderately. Some recommended half a baked potato with their dinner before a race. Others recommended a little more.
There are things that are strictly forbidden in the NSNG diet, those include potatoes, most fruit, rice. I have a hard time with forbidden. I feel the way you eat should be a choice you make to be healthier. How to be healthy is different for everyone. If customizing a diet makes you feel so guilty that you go back to eating junk, then it’s not very helpful. I believe in just trying to make the best decisions day by day.
So I’ve been eating small quantities of complex carbs before my runs, and I am happy to say that it is helping me get through the sluggish feelings while I’m running. My runs now end with my joints feeling better than they have in the past two years, and I’m excited about running Hood to Coast for the second time.
Let me explain here that I am not a medical professional. I’m speaking strictly from personal experience. Please see your doctor for advice on a No Sugar No Grain diet, if you are interested.
