giving up

i'm getting older. i still feel young and the fact that i get carded going into R rated movies tells me that i look young too. however, i am noticing that i'm not recovering from the high end workouts as fast as i used to -- and i always thought i was slow to recover in the first place. so, with goals including the words; "best year yet", and "PR", i have realized that i need to fine tune my overall approach. i feel i have a decent training strategy so the next step was to look at my diet... and it wasn't pretty. coincidently around the same time, i watched the movie "Forks over Knives", thus, just before 1/1/12, i 'gave up' meat. following a string of holiday parties and get togethers, i realized i had come to enjoy an alcoholic beverage pretty much every night. it doesn't take a genius to see how that affects performance/recovery but read about it here. so i've given that up too -- for a month (baby steps). on Feb. 22nd (the beginning of lent) i will become gluten free - just to see. i've also decided to give up on cutting my hair... well sort of. i haven't had hair past my chin for over a decade so i said i would grow it until May, then reevaluate. One last thing that i haven't entirely given up but am definitely fazing out..... artificial sweeteners and 'low fat' foods. aspartame is not good for us (it turns into fermaldehyde - hello!).... and artificial anything should be avoided. i'm reading labels and staying natural and organic. for more reasons why, check out this link. Unfortunately, this means no more diet coke (my heart breaks a little every time i say this). It will be hard. Somehow, in the process of all this, i've learned how to cook some pretty yummy items. so on top of the usually swim, bike, run stuff, i'm gonna post some food tidbits too. like this....
breakfast: cored and sliced apples with pancake batter (bob's red mill high fiber with flax seed oil and coconut milk)and real maple syrup tapped from grandma's backyard.

So that's what i'm giving up. Sometimes you gotta go backwards to go forwards.
As for 2012, I have decided to try and kick some booty at a few events in the near future, including the Pemberton 50km trail race, the Old Pueblo 50 miler trail race, and Ironman St. George. Bring it.