Tag Archives: calcium

Female Runners and Calcium

By Posted in Reads, Uncategorized Tagged 27 Comments

I wanted to ramble on a topic that has really hit home for me.  Not me personally, but I know a very fast runner (by fast I mean she is one of the top 50 females in the marathon in the US).  She struggles with this and she asked  me to post a blog on it because we all know my obsession with calcium and getting enough it.

Granted this is important for males too, it is especially important for females. For females that have lost their period, this is EVEN MORE important (Do not ever argue, it’s normal to not ever get your period when you are 22).  Females that have lost their periods do not absorb calcium correctly and their bones become weaker which can lead to a stress fracture or bone break.  When you do not have your period, your bones do not heal as quickly or as normally.

If you have one stress fracture…you are much more likely to have another…and another…and another…

So anyways, as a college aged female she was busy, active and quite a fast runner.  She didn’t get enough calcium and her nutrition wasn’t terrible but it was not spot on either.  She was at a very rigorous school as well as being a varsity runner so she had a lot going on.  While nutrition was important to her, it wasn’t the number one focus.  She would also like to point out that like many bloggers and female runners out there, she was not into drinking or partying.  

She began losing a lot of bone mass and density.  This happened over the course of a few years and by senior year it lead to her first stress fracture (ending her collegiate season). It healed eventually and she was able to run again (and still be mind boggling fast) but her bones were far weaker.

As she is 30 now, her bones will never be as strong as that of someone who got enough calcium during that time.   She now gets stress fractures repeatedly.  As in saying 8 weeks…no big deal…I’ll just start running again after it heals..try doing that every few months because your bones are too weak.

I’m not saying that will happen to you, I just think as young people we take our health with a grain of salt and live in that “we aren’t injured now” so let’s keep going along the way we are…think about the future when it comes… 

If you are a female lacking your period, you need to be getting more calcium then a regular person (runner or not).  A regular person needs about 1000 mgs daily and a female lacking a period needs 1700 or more.

I personally strive for about 2000 milligrams a day because I’m paranoid of getting another stress fracture.  Plus I enjoy a lot of dairy in my life.  I normally take a calcium supplement as well as my multivitamin which brings me pretty far up.

Question for you:  Do you get enough calcium? 

10 Foods I eat on the Regular

By Posted in WEGO Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , 21 Comments

WEGO: 10 Things I Couldn’t Live Without. Write a list of the 10 things you need (or love) most.

We all could write a mushy gushy post about 10 people, things, friends, family we couldn’t live without.   That would be easy now wouldn’t it?

I get a lot of questions about food and what better way to answer then talk about foods I consume close to daily.  I mean this is called Fueled By LOLZ afterall, in between all those lolz-I have to eat…sometime…

  1. Peanut flour-Lately a lot of my pancakes have been peanut flour based.  I make bread with it, whatever.  I consume this type of flour more then any other. 

Chocolate peanut flour pancakes

  1. Flax Meal-If I don’t consume peanut flour pancakes, I consume flax meal pancakes.  Chances are-I’m having one or the other daily.  I enjoy the amount of fat in flax. 
  2. Muscle Milk-Ever since I tried a free muscle milk with Laura at my 5k in Atlanta, I’m addicted.  It’s an expensive habit but they are so easy for on the go and when my tummy is constantly grumbling in class.
  3. Gas Station Coffee-Always having this.  Every day.  Another expensive habit.  No explanations needed. 

Yeah I normally look like a crack addict when I go in to buy it as well...

4. Eggs.  Eggs are easy to cook-I am simple and not talented at cooking.  It’s like god knew I needed an inexpensive easy to cook food to make up for the expensive crap I buy

5. Hot chocolate.  It’s still 40 degrees in Northern New York.  So while ya’ll enjoy your ice cream, I’ll enjoy my hot chocolate.  (Also-diet hot cocoa sucks…just saying.). 

I don’t know why I decided to hold up three fingers but I put in hot cocoa and this is what I found.

On that note-life just got tricky and I just went to look at my pantry and refrigerator to see what I have stored in there.   Clearly I eat a lot at home…

7. Canned and frozen vegetables.  I normally try and steam something at night to go with whatever meat I’m having because it’s easy and quick.

8. When I eat on campus I eat a lot of quiche, but I guess that falls under eggs…I guess…not really.  I like to get wheatberry salad but they never seem to have that anymore.  Rude. 

 9. Oh I just noticed the giant hoard of pumpkin that I have in my pantry.  I add pumpkin to everything (mostly to get more servings of vegetables but also so I can maintain my orange glow…).  I kid.
10. Finally, I go outof my way to find products with calcium.  Whether it’s milk, greek yogurt, ice-cream, whatever else…if it’s got a lot of calcium-I’m all over that because I am 100% paranoid of getting another stress fracture.  #calciumwhore

That was almost too hard for me to figure out.  Right then.

Question for you:  What foods do you eat on the regular? 

All 3000 calories of my Eats (Dinner by Cook de Aram).

By Posted in Food, Pumpkin, Swimming Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 10 Comments

Thanks to everyone who responded about my last “concerning” blog ha.  In regards to that-I have tried to post about everything that goes into my mouth today to show just how much I eat.  It’s also a double grime girl swim practice day-so even better.  I’m going to not use a lot more pictures versus words.

I didn’t add any aspect of I compete at a varsity level in two different sports-not one but two.  Each college sport has it’s own set of practices and rules that I need to follow.  That means I have a set amount of practices I have to do for both sports.  My coaches both understand completely since swimming and running are endurance sports if occasionally I do need to miss one or the other.  Normally it isn’t speed days I miss but just more of cardio days.  It isn’t like I have decided to exercise more because I want to burn more calories (believe me I would burn those babies in my bed sleeping).

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Today’s question of the day:  What is your favorite type of boxed pancake mix?

Fiber one. “Just Add Water”

For ½ of mix you have 180 calories, 6 grams of protein and 5 grams of fiber.  My favorite part is 25% of your daily calcium!  The only thing you have to add is water-but adding milk is my route of choice.   Actually that’s a lie.  If you add ½ cup of Greek yogurt and ¼ cup of water you won’t be disappointed either.  I have used this plenty of times and it is really a plus.

Got a question?  Leave it or feel free to send me an email lolzthatswim@gmail.com

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Now for my actual food.

I tried a TLC raspberry chocolate bar.  It was pretty good but I enjoy my south beach bars more before practice.  I’m not the the biggest “nut” fan.

 

Practice in the morning:

I haven’t swam since Thursday so it was hard to dive into the pool this morning.

6000 yards

1000 warmup

8X250 Free Interval

200 backstroke

20X50 Free Interval

200 Backstroke

8X100 Pull

After practice I made chocolate pumpkin pancakes.  But you can’t really taste the flavors.  They kind of loss their flavor while cooking.  Needless to say, pancakes are still pancakes and they were still delicious.  I topped with OIKOS Greek caramel yogurt and a bit of syrup.  As always-my breakfast plate is my my yellow plate.

Then off to make up a quiz I missed from Friday and to go to Sports Psychology.  Both were uneventful.  I spent another two hours in the library doing some homework.  During that time I consumed an apple and Greek God yogurt.

I had lunch with Bonna again.  YAY!  I miss her, now that cross country is done, I need to see my friends somehow and when am I not eating?

Roast Beef Sandwich

 

turkey and ham

Then I was craving grapes before practice

Practice 2:

6800 yards

1000 warmup

12X175 free interval

2X150 backstroke

2X400IM

2X300Free

15X50 Free Interval

2X50 Timed Freestyle

400 kick

800 Free Pull

Aram made dinner tonight.  With the biggest sweet potatoes in the world.  He made grilled tuna, corn muffins and baked sweet potatoes.  It was delicious.  I am super full now.

Sweet Potato and Grilled Tuna

Corn Muffins

 

Question for you:  what are your plans this week, are you busy before the Holidays?

I actually don’t have too much work this week surprisingly.  Being a math major-you have homework or you don’t.  No long term projects or anything.  I’m flying home though a week from Tuesday.  I hope there are no delays.  Anyone know of any good restaurants around Syracuse, New York?   (big thumbs up for pancake places ha:))

Hello Pool, Where Have You been?

By Posted in Food, Swimming Tagged , , , , , , , , 6 Comments

Good morning world!  I am writing the first line of my blog at 5:30am.  I’m about to go to swim practice and I’m rather nervous but sitting here with my luna mini and coffee has calmed me a little bit.  Well now that I have prefaced my blog-it’s time to go. J

5:30am Luna mini and 2 cups of coffee

Swim practice today:

Warm up:
800 freestyle/200 breaststroke/100 kick/200 backstroke/100 butterfly
Main Set:
8*50 pull free
8*50 drill free
400 pull/400 kick
12*100s free
2*200s free
2*200 free cool-down
Total: 5000 yards

Then I came home and made a giant protein pancake. In my efforts to use up the rest of my optimum protein and topped with peanut butter, fage yogurt, and sugar free syrup.

8:45 am: Hershey’s cocoa and fiber one pancake and two cups of coffee
1/2 cup fiber one cereal crushed
1/4 egg substitute
1/2 cup water
31 grams cookies and cream optimum nutrition protein powder

11:30 am. Sitting in the library after class, I see a diet mountain dew calling my name. I purchase that is this candy bar/snack bar. I wasn’t going to buy it then I notice-for 90 calories, 9 grams of fiber. Yes, please. It was quite tasty as well.

1:00pm. I did work in the library while my boyfriend had class. Then we went to the all you can eat Lehman Dining Hall. Today I wasn’t really that hungry but i had a sub, broccoli and a couple pieces of their pasta salad. The sub was quite good and had chicken breast, red peppers, banana peppers, American cheese, and spinach on top. I also added red wine vinegar which I had become a huge fan of.

Insert a run here. One hour of glorious running. I probably ran about 7-8 miles with hills. It was a great run though.

5:45pm-I went to Becky’s place dining hall with my boyfriend. This is a la carte and a bit more expensive than other dining halls. I ended up having mango stuffed chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy and more broccoli. I also had a fruit salad and skinny cow ice-cream which I did not picture. Aram had a chicken and cheese wrap. I had a few bites of it and it was pretty good. He isn’t feeling well (probably from me) and so he did not have his chips and the rest of his wrap :( .

I am doing a challenge with a friend of mine Allison (I should just make her one of tags in my blogs so she can search herself-all the times she has been mentioned ha :) ) Today started the challenge and my side of it is to be getting at least 150% of my daily intake of calcium 6/7 days a week and also when I eat sweets, not to have 10 servings. Just one. Today I had just one individually packaged skinny cow dulce de leche ice-cream. Isn’t it nice how they serve it in one serving packages? Fool Proof for people like me.

What is your favorite dessert and why?

Running and A Few Goals

By Posted in Personal, Running Tagged , , , 7 Comments

Running and goals and such.

This is more to keep my mind sane because I need to figure out my plan of action.  ha.

Since I have been running more and more, I have found that I haven’t been eating the best.  With my 30 hours in 28 days running plan, yesterday my coach, Pete talked about the importance of eating healthier.  While yes, most of what you see on my blog is what I eat, there have been several occasions where I have gone to late night and ordered a giant order of French fries or something of that nature.

Needless to say I have been made a few goals for myself that coincide with running (and swimming):

1.       I need to be getting more calcium.  I cannot afford any stress fractures.

2.       More veggies.  I haven’t been getting enough of those when I go to the dining hall erg.

3.       Go to bed at a reasonable time.  I want to be in bed by 10:00 every night.

4.       Schedule me time every day.  30 minutes will be for me, doing whatever I choose.  Mostly relaxing.

Last night after my race (which for the amount of hills and running I have done this week I can’t complain); I came back to my room and just slept.  I was watching a short documentary about running that my coach sent me:

http://www.hulu.com/watch/63726/nova-marathon-challenge

We had a very long bus drive (about four hours) on through hills and bumps and our bus driver enjoyed driving at 60 miles an hour.  For those of us who get motion sickness, this is never enjoyable.

Today I start fresh.  Now just to clean up and decide what I want for breakfast.

From the race yesterday: