Over the last few years I've been trying to be better in my eating. I don't have certain goals, but only being a few years out of college, there was a lot of room for improvement from eating anything from Ramen to a half a bag of Reeses Pieces for dinner. My first year out of college I lived with my best friend Han who is as nice a person as she is a great cook (which says a lot on both counts!) and her way of relaxing was to cook healthy meals for us! Really! I would come home from work, hit the gym and come home to a well-balanced meal which we would eat while we chatted and drank wine. It was the best living situation I will ever have and if I could ever knock her new husband out of the picture to go back to living with Hannah, I would! (Sorry Andy!)

(Andy and Han after cheering me on at the Marine Corps Marathon 2007)

When I moved to Pittsburgh, Hannah was terrified I'd starve. I knew I wouldn't starve, but not starving and eating well are two very different things. In order to help me keep up the healthy eating Han made me "Kitty's Cookbook" which was full of all of our favorite recipes, along with short-cuts for the busy and starving graduate student, alongside pictures of us and our old home (really, everyone should be so luck to have such a best friend). At first, I did really, really well. I ate so well my co-workers even began to comment and wonder how long I'd be able to keep it up. The sad answer: about 3 months.

However, I wasn't ready to slide all the way back into my old habits. I made little changes... switching to whole wheat breads and pastas. Eating a balanced breakfast every day. Drinking more tea and less coffee. I've always drank several liters of water a day so I kept that up. And over the last few years I've made other changes, one at a time: soy milk and creamer, organic yogurt, cheese made from milk that wasn't treated with hormones. A trick that I really like is that I have a "snack" shelf in my fridge. When I'm busy and tired and don't feel like cooking or looking for food and it would be oh so easy to eat a pint of Ben & Jerry's (which I've learned I can't keep in my house!), that shelf is packed with healthy, easy snacks: hummus, yogurt, low-fat string cheese, low-fat pudding, fruits and veggies.

I'd never considered myself a healthy or nutritious eater until the last few days. The other day I was looking at my grocery cart and everything in it was healthy. Every flipping thing. Was that really my grocery cart? By making one change at a time (really, it was about one change every 3-6 months) I'd morphed into someone who ate well! Then last night, after a 16 hour day, I got home at 10 pm. Instead of grabbing ice cream or chips or ordering a pizza (all would have been so easy), I consulted my snack shelf and grabbed some hummus and broccoli and some string cheese. Veggies and protein. Overall not a great dinner, but my midnight snack could have been much, much worse. I thought about what I ate yesterday and it really wasn't too bad at all:

Breakfast: Bowl of cereal with light soy milk

During class: Banana and peach ginger tea

Lunch: Turkey sandwich on a whole wheat bagel with low fat chive cream cheese and dried cranberries

After-run snack: Organic yogurt with honey and fresh blueberries; cup of 100% orange juice (no sugar added)

I'm running late and not going to have a chance to eat dinner snack: Banana

It's 10 pm and I'm tired and still have work to do "dinner": Hummus and broccoli with string cheese.

I still need to work on incorporating more fruits and veggies into my diet but I'm really excited about all of the progress I've made. On another nutritional note I've actually started trying to eat more calories recently and I've found that it has really helped my running performance and recovery. Eat more, run faster? I like this sport Wishing everyone else happy running and yummy eating!