Yummy tummy

On Saturday, I ate a bagel and cinnamon roll for breakfast. Not in a long while have I felt as horrendously out of energy, unable to concentrate, and distanced from my own body. My eyes were droopy, my head pulsating a soft headache in my right-side cranium, leaving my body feeling awfully slack and reminding me of my cat, Mars, stumbling through the house while waking from his anaesthetics after his annual haircut. It truly is marvellous how influential diet is on our behaviour and physical well-being; how defining what you feed your body and soul is to the quality of your day.

This morning, I started the day off with a natural yoghurt, raspberry, and granola smoothie. This allowed me an hour-long session at the gym, with core and cardio galore, increasing my training program weights and speed. When I came home, I ate seven slices of pancetta, with zucchini and capsicum tossed in olive oil, salt, and pepper, before heading off to a power walk through Perth zoo. And only at five o’clock this afternoon, seven hours after waking up, was I once again hungry. While I only had to do four hours at the shoe shop yesterday - four sluggish, draining, long, long, long hours - I managed to enjoy a highly active Sunday today, without struggling with neither concentration nor awareness. These obvious facts still seem to amaze me every time I practice them in reality. 

I think it’s only in the last couple of years that people (wholeheartedly including myself) have truly started to realise: no matter how many times you sweat your butt off at the gym each week, it’s gonna make practically a squat, zero, nada, niente difference unless you accompany your hard ass self’s ordeals with a proper diet. Never in my training life have I encountered someone on the adjacent treadmill or weight’s section who’s convincingly said to me: 

“Oh, yeah, totally, I had a donut right before the gym and I feel great!”

You are what you eat, they say, and as I’ve mentioned in previous entries, I couldn’t agree more. But then again, maybe it’s the other way around, too. I certainly think that after a hard workout at the gym, there’s nothing more satisfying than a juicy, deliciously fresh apple. So perhaps it can kind of go like this too: You eat what you are.