Hey friends!
Below I’ve taken some of the struggles that plant-based runners have told me about in the plant-based runners, unite! group (join at bit.ly/pbrunite) related to their health and running.
If you have any questions you’d like me to tackle, join that group and let me know!
So, let’s get started with one I hold very dear to my heart, avoiding snacking while working at home.
I’ve worked as an online running coach and in marketing before that since graduating college and with my history of obesity and binge eating, snacking at home has (in the past) been a big struggle. My wife gets this and the first step we’ve always made is to do our best to simply not have snacky junk food in the house. We are at the point where almost everything we bring home from the grocery store is purchased because of a specific meal in mind.
However, there is always going to be food around 😉 You can always make that PB&J or snack on those almonds, and the next consideration is to make healthy snacking choices and know that those mini-meals are benefiting your health and wellness.
A mantra I’ve had in my head for a few years now is “am I hungry or am I bored” and the answer is often that I’m just bored and looking for something to do and our society tends to fill that time with phone scrolling and snacking. If I’m going to have some nuts between breakfast and lunch I will often take a little ramekin out and portion some mixed nuts into that so I have a stopping point.
While we all love to run, sometimes going out for 2-4 hours at a time can still be tough at times.
Drop some of your best suggestions for overcoming fear or motivation problems when it comes to getting or completing those long runs in the comments!
A couple of my suggestions are:
1)Out and Backs: These are key for me and I almost always do an out and back for any run over 90 minutes or so because (maybe you feel the same) if I’m doing a 20 miler and I’m 8 miles from home I feel like I’m 80% of the way done with my run and once I get to 10 for the turn-around it’s all down hill from there, baby!
2)Music or a Book: I’ll often take my phone with me for runs that take me far away from home and maybe… 25% of the time I’ll turn some tunes on or an audiobook on for 50-75% or for the entire last half to just take my mind off of it a bit.
3)Get a Coach: I hear it all the time from my clients how the weather was garbage, they were not into the run, or whatever, but they didn’t want to let Coach Kyle down! It’s fun how once in a while they’ll say similar things such as having to talk themselves into those final few miles and not being able to come up with a good excuse for the coach to end it at 12, or 13, or 14 when the goal was 15 and they DID IT and were GLAD they did, it’s just tough to do sometimes.
4)Group Runs: Seriously, everything is 4x easier with a friend or two.
One of the struggles I often see runners mention is about cutting out or reducing added sugar from their diet. Have you ever struggled with this?
Maybe you’ve heard me say this before about being selective with the food you purchase at the grocery store and avoiding items with added sugar, high fructose corn syrup, dextrose, etc in the first three ingredients on the ingredient list. If you didn’t know, it’s arranged in order of predominance and I’ve found that by trying to not purchase products with straight up sugar in the first three can be a fairly simple way to drastically improve your diet.
For example, if you go to your fridge right now you may see BBQ sauce with high fructose corn syrup as the first ingredient. Can you believe that?! It’s a BBQ sauce and the most prevelant item in that jug is just…. sugar. If you start this habit I think you’ll find two things.
1)Added sugar is more prevalent than you may think.2)By not purchasing these items you end up purchasing much lower calorie and higher quality food that you may also enjoy eating more.
So what are some of your biggest struggles?! Join the plant-based runners, unit! group at bit.ly/pbrunite and let us know 🙂
These are the sort of decision making processes I take my clients through all the time.
With you it may be how to best improve your sleep this month and maybe next month we jump on a video call to chat for a half hour on different options for how to pick winter running gear for the upcoming season.
It’s nice to have someone who has been through it to tell you what the options are and to actually just talk you through them. If you’re serious about this sort of thing and want to learn more about how we can work together to dial your running in, I suggest you schedule a time to chat about working together: kylekranz.com/pbrcoaching
