So to be a better runner, I should lay on my couch all day and eat fried Mars Bars???

I've never been the greatest representative of common sense, but sometimes I can't help but scoff at the way we over complicate things. All the tools/gadgets we absolutely need, and the guidelines/theories/systems we passionately embrace against all other contradictory studies... I just want to throw up my hands and say "enough! Just listen to your body and use some common sense." But what seems like common sense sometimes doesn't pan out, or maybe I just don't have a good intuition for my own needs yet. Everything in moderation does fit the bill, but then again what if you can't identify that nice happy median moderate point?

Things I've been thinking about that seem very counter-intuitive to me:

1. Fat. Not the wobbly stuff on our bodies, but the macronutrient. I remember when I was much younger, my sister reached the ripe teen-age of body-consciousness and responded by hitting the stairmaster and tweaking her diet. Not a bad thing, in itself, but her nearly absolute elimination of all things "fat" resulted in ammennorhea and the episode has been passed down in the family as sort of a pre-anorexia-cautionary tale. I suppose I figured this could never be me. I don't eat diet foods. I don't choose "low fat"/"non fat" options. I don't see the point in frozen yogurt or snackwells or all those things that were in vogue in the nineties. Up until recently, I haven't really "watched what I ate" and now that I am it's to make sure I'm eating enough! And yet, I find myself surprised at how low my fat intake is, even when I'm trying to increase it; and I am trying to increase it.

Since I started running more seriously, I've been having to adjust my diet to compensate for the effort. Theoretically, this shouldn't be so different than the dancing, but in actuality it really has been; I suppose dancing, particularly social dancing, reaches a certain level of effort and then peaks, as the body becomes increasingly efficient at the motions it needs to do and the emphasis shifts to complicated refinements that don't alter the energy expenditures as much. After the first adjustment, you're about as aerobically fit as you're apt to be unless you can continue to exponentially increase your dancing time or are training/cross-training for professional level competition. Even when I'm dancing for five or six hours at a time, the first aches and pains I'm likely to feel have more to do with blisters and uncomfortable clothing issues than muscle pain or fatigue. Running/strength training/etc. is about continually building, so everytime the body adapts, the effort level increases through variations in duration and various levels of intensity... Alternately, dance isn't different. I did lose thirty pounds over the course of my first year of dancesport. Maybe after that, things leveled out or maybe I was undernourished and unaware. It's hard to guage. But whatever else, the new strains that come from running have made this particular concern much more present.

I've started tracking my food intake. First, just on a casual basis, but eventually in a more regulated way. I'm currently obsessed with trainingpeaks.com, even though it records far more information than I ever needed to know about my body and really is better suited to elite athletes. It is pretty handy though and endlessly entertaining in that bored-internet-obsessive-sort-of-way. I have been getting less than 10% of my calories from fat. This is below recommended minimums across the board and could pose health risks. I of all people should know better, but still - somebody ought to have told me! All these years obsessing over getting enough protein and whatever else vegetarians don't get enough of and nothing about fat!

People talk about fat as if it were pervasive, unavoidable, and insidiously irresistable. Look it up in any women's magazine or nutritional site and you'll find hundreds of tips for cutting it down. If it isn't downright evil - trans/saturated - then it's at least high in calories and therefore to be viewed skeptically. Sure, Protein rode in and saved the day back in the Atkins frenzy, but fat emerged more as the exonnerated scapegoat, a sort of "not so bad" red-headed step-child of Carbs/Protein. There are nods to the fact that fat is essential, especially now that we honor its three musketeers - poly, mono, and omega - but the general consensus is that fat is just too darned tasty, too high in calories, and too difficult to avoid.

I, personally, don't have much of this theoretical taste for fat. I do enjoy nuts from time to time (although the pricetag on these can be a little prohibitive), but most other fatty foods feel heavy, oily, and generally just kind of annoying to me. I prefer "clean flavors," like vegetables, fruits (not avacadoes, which are slimy and weird and just odd), etc. So, when I eat what I feel like eating, I really don't end up eating much of any fat, the more I think about it. This last week I've been making a conscious effort to add fat to my diet - mostly nuts/seeds and their respective "butters." But it isn't easy! I've yet to break 15%. Even if you don't buy into the vogueish theory that a high fat diet boosts endurance, most recommendations range around 20-35%. And yes, breaking nutrtition down into these statistical nothings is a little absurd, but that doesn't mean there isn't a point to attempting some kind of balance.

2. Recovery. So some days, it's better for my ultimate fitness level to sit on my ass and do nothing than run for ten miles? Recovery days, like today, drive me crazy. Three miles at an easy speed! That's it? All I can think is if my long days are supposed to be run at a slower pace, then surely the low mileage days should be correspondingly done at a faster pace. Couldn't I just knock this pesky little 5k out in twenty minutes and have done? I do understand, I do; just not with every fiber of my body. It takes a gargantuan effort not to stage a coup and at least run up a hill or add in some non-running high intensity exercise in there somewhere. Maybe just "forget" to keep track of where I am in my run and "accidentally" run another mile or two... OOPS!

But, if my light week last week has proven anything it's that recovery time is magical. This week back has felt so easy, at paces and lengths that were really wearing on me two weeks ago. Even my strength training has improved - on Monday I added at five to ten pounds on almost everything with the same sets/reps.

So, more rest, more fatty foods? Apparently I am supposed to model myself on your average American couch potato, huh?