We switched roles.. you were up running at the crack of dawn this morning and I didn’t have a chance to! It was pretty chilly this morning.. I even had the heat on in my car for a couple of minute on the way to work.. I am such a wimp!

Good luck at the Dr everything will be fine!

Love the quote and the sunrise!

I really need to try French waffles!

Good luck at the doctor!

What a beautiful sunrise! I need to try those french waffles – they look delish!

mmm…french waffles

That photo is fantastic!

I definitely had an “in the zone” run this morning too, I loved it!

Good luck at the doctors!

we found some WW english muffins the other day that make a great pre-run snack toasted with some PB. Might want to give that one a try.

good luck with the orthopaedist! they are a lot of fun sometimes, I used to write software for a local group. You also might want to get your chiropractor to check you out for a more holistic approach. My chiro makes adjustments on my knees, ankles and feet all the time. he’s restored fallen arches, fixed shin splints, you name it.

Those waffles look fantastic! What a great idea 🙂 Good luck at the doctor!

carolina john – oh you can BET i’m seeing an alternative doctor! 🙂 see the post!

tfh – hahah that’s funny. i bet all real runners would go on a run before their ortho appointments *just in case*!

marie – hey there! congrats on starting to run! that’s awesome!it’s definitely hard to find a balance between training and eating. during a two or three mile run, you may burn 150 – 250 calories, depending on your weight. To refuel after that, all you need is a small snack.

I kind of address this issue in my FAQs, but its more applicable if you are running longer distances. The part of this FAQ that probably applies to you is just to be aware of how many calories your burning/taking in, and break up your meals into smaller portions (6 or 7 eats a day as opposed to 3 meals), which will prevent you from feeling hungry in between meals without eating more calories:

QUESTION: Are you ever concerned about overeating because running makes you feel so hungry?

ANSWER: I can understand the tough balance between stepping up your exercise and fueling adequately without OVEREATING. One of the things I do is I try not to eat too much (calorie-wise) at any meal. If I only eat 350 calories at lunch and I get hungry by 2, I eat a small snack (250 calories or so) and I don’t feel bad about it because I know I ate a light lunch. On the other hand, if I had slammed 600 calories at lunch, I still would probably get hungry by 3, but I wouldn’t feel right about snacking again.

Also, I figure that running burns a LOT of calories. On a 6.0-mile run, I burn 600 calories. If I need around 1700-1800 to maintain my weight, that means I can eat 2300-2400 calories during the day. It’s rare I eat that much because I have a lot of low calorie foods (yogurt, fruit, veggies, lean meats), so that means I probably won’t even make my net calories for the day. This “evens out” days I don’t work out and still eat 1800-2000 calories!

Getting a heart rate monitor was great because it always me to “know” how many calories I burned, which I feel gives me more freedom to eat in the day.

The point is that I don’t stress out about calories too much because 1) I have a system that allows me to eat all the time without overeating at any one meal or over the course of the day and 2) I burn so many calories running that on days where I do overindulge, my exercise probably just erases it.