What is Energy?

Energy is a word one often hears. People say they get energy from all sorts of things and sometimes I must admit that I am not sure what they mean. There aren't many calories in vegetables, but I often hear someone say he/she gets energy from eating a lot of vegetables. Well... that is in fact also what I have experienced, but I wonder if the word energy is the right word to describe what is going on, why one feels so much better by eating a lot of vegetables.

I myself would rather think of energy as just calories, those units that measure how much energy you get from the food. There aren't very many calories in 100 grams of vegetables. Not as many as in olive oil for an example. I don't think I could possibly get the calories I need to run a marathon just from vegetables. Or rather, I know I have to eat something else. Vegetables are healthy and if you want to be healthy it is wise to consume a lot of them. But that doesn't mean they are the ideal food for strenuous runs or walks out there in the mountains. Then it is easier to get the calories from something easily accessible for the body. Fruit sugar or fructose gets easily into the blood stream and you get the energy you need almost immediately.

At the same time you can count on that fructose is not what you need if you don't move much. Fructose is very common. It is in most of the prepared food you can get these days and it can be hard to avoid it. Fructose is a kind of sugar and it doesn't matter if the name of the sugar is fructose, corn syrup, agave syrup or what it is.

Sugar isn't good for the body if you sit still. Nevertheless it is the main source of calories for many of us. I would call that energy. Energy you don't need if you aren't going to exercise.

When people talk about weight loss, it seems as if the most important thing is to be able to eat as much as you use to. Like the method of just eating less is useless. Why is that? Why is it so important to eat much? Well... if you move a lot, then you have to eat more to maintain the same body weight. But that isn't enough for most of us if we want to lose considerable amounts of weight. Then we have to eat fewer calories as well.

The method I use is counting calories both the ones I burn when running and the ones I consume. And I try not to get too many of the calories I eat from carbohydrates like sugar or starch. The calories in vegetables are mostly carbs also, but that is ok because there are loads of fibres and other important things there.

Loosing weight

I have never bought the idea of stepping on the scale just once a week. Because the daily swings would be there anyway, especially when you aren't loosing weight very fast. Our memory span is so short. At least mine is, that I have to weigh myself every day to keep my motivation going. Seriously, I can't see anything wrong with seeing the results immediately if I eat too much one night. Then the weight is bound to show that next morning. Maybe I would be careful the day before a weighing day, but isn't it better to be careful every day? This is a lifestyle, a marathon, not a sprint or a short diet. Life isn't about running a short distance to a goal. We are going to be here for a long time. And if stepping on the scale every morning is a part of what I need to stay thin, I will do that for the rest of my life. 

I was asked yesterday if it didn't take a lot of self control to count calories as I do. Yes, it does. But so does getting out of bed every morning and go to work. I have to keep a calendar at work, I have to write down everything I do. And If I don't do it immediately I forget things and the quality of my work isn't the same. The same thing counts for eating. Because I have to eat. I can't just stop that as I would do if I was trying to get out of some bad habit like smoking or drinking. Then I could think it was sufficient just to stop doing what I don't want to do and that's it. Although I am afraid things aren't that simple if you are an alcoholic and want to get out of the addiction. You would still crave the substance every day and have to change a life style to stay free. But as I see it, the main difference between loosing weight and stopping drinking is that when you want to loose weight you can't just stop eating. 

Because you have to eat every day. There are no simple solutions. People sometimes ask me what I did to loose weight. Especially when they find out that it isn't just the running because I was also running when I was fat. There are so many things I do. I keep log, I count calories, I step on the scale every day, I eat a lot of vegetables. I try to avoid empty calories. I avoid yeast by not eating to much bread and I rarely drink beer. 

This last thing is something I do because I heard that in Iceland, this country where my ancestors didn't eat bread or drink beer for a thousand years, it is possible that our digestive system isn't geared to digest all that yeast. I can't recite the theories behind this conclusion, but I decided  years ago to give it a try. Not to eat bread or drink beer. And I could feel difference. Before that I had symptoms from my colon that were pretty annoying. It hurt sometimes and I was bloated. Those symptoms disappeared almost entirely when I changed my diet. 

Runner's high?

Sometimes I come across people who seriously think runners run because it makes them high in the same way heroin makes a heroin junky high. There are people out there who think runners do run because they are addicted to those natural highs the body produces when you exercise execcively. Need I say this is bullshit? Yes, runners talk about being addicted to run. But what they mean by that is just that it makes one feel good to exercise. The feeling of tiredness and the relaxation afterwards is pleasant. And it can be fun to run out there. Runners also sometimes use the term "Runner's high". By that they just mean the good spirits you can get into by exercising. But mostly it is just heavy work. It can sometimes feel as if you are never going to get through that 10k route you decided to run that day. And you can feel ever so heavy and not up to it. But once you get used to this way of getting your exercise nothing else seems to have the same effect.  Ok, maybe swimming or spinning. But running is one of the activities you burn most calories in shortest time. And if that is your goal, to burn calories, then running is the thing to engage in. Even if the time sometimes seems to stop when you are out there. It doesn't have anything to do with addiction to want to be in good shape. There are no negative overtones in wanting to reduce the risk of health problems such as high blood pressure, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, overweight and musculo-skeletal problems. Running and walking are healthy physical activities for everyone.