Change

Most people don't like change.  I can remember many the times that I suggested changes to people who worked for me.  It usually got a wary response.  At the same time, change is the one constant in the world.  Nothing is static.  My good friend and mentor, Ray, used to say, "if you're not moving forward, you're moving backward." Moving forward requires change.  Embracing change is much easier to handle than fighting against it.

I've spent the last 9 months focused on doing the Ironman in Kona.  It was truly my singular focus.  It impacted other things in my life.  That was my choice, and I'm glad I chose to do it that way.  I will always know that I gave my dream everything I had.  Now, it's time for a change.  I've been blogging about what those changes might look like, and they're crystallizing for me.

I got a surprise the other day, when I found out that my cholesterol and triglycerides were higher than ever.  I would have "thought" that all of my exercise would have had some impact.  But, I really hadn't "thought" about it.  I had "hoped" it would make a difference.  The more that I think about it, the more I realize that my singular focus on training allowed me to do something that might not have been healthy for me.  Over the past nine months, I've liberalized my intake of simple sugars, in order to make sure that I could maintain the type of rigorous training program that I was engaging in.  In retrospect, it might have been the wrong choice.  Of course, I can't go back and change the past. But, i am changing the future.  As of two days ago, I've eliminated simple sugars from my diet.

As a physician and athlete, I'm actually fascinated by what happened.  I realize that it's possible to train 20 hours a week, and not burn all of the sugar that I was putting into my body.  Some of that sugar went into the production of triglycerides. In some ways, my efforts to become fat adapted over the past few years may have boomeranged on me.  It's probable that the sugar I was taking during exercise wasn't necessary.  I was taking in too much.

I have a change to enact and manage over the next three months.  No gels, no carbohydrate drinks.  I'll go back to my good fat, good protein, no simple carbohydrate diet that I'd been on previously.  I'll do my exercise in the morning before eating anything, and without any calories. I'm only going to be working out for 45-60 minutes at a time, so this isn't an issue.  Even if I was doing a longer workout, it would be an issue.  I know that.  This is a pretty easy change for me to embrace.