Recently I was given another awesome opportunity full of lessons learned and experiences gained. It all starts with the BOLD study, published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition [AJCN]. Standing for Beef in an Optimal Lean Diet, the BOLD study found that consuming lean beef daily as part of a heart-healthy diet lowered LDL “bad” cholesterol. [source] I was invited to participate in a BOLD Lean Beef Challenge – eat one meal a day featuring lean beef for seven days.

There were three small worries I had going into the challenge. [Not so much “worries” as “pre-conceived pessimistic expectations,” actually.] Rather than ramble on an on forever, I thought I would break these topics into three separate posts. Up first: how will eating beef every day going to make me feel physically and will it slow or reverse my weight loss efforts? It’s probably the best place to start, since this is the BOLD LEAN Beef Challenge, after all.

Prior to this challenge, our meals rarely consisted of beef. When making burgers or meatloaf at home, I often chose ground turkey or chicken. Pizza was topped with veggies and pork sausage or grilled chicken pieces. Pasta dishes left meatless or, you guessed it, served with chicken.

We ate this way because I believed it was best for my weight loss and I was living under a banner that taught me that choosing white meat was healthiest all the time. This may explain why I often felt I was in a chicken RUT in my kitchen.

Of course, all the while I never cut beef out of my diet completely – instead, I would “splurge” and “indulge” in a really great burger on a night out. Once I started reading more about BOLD, I realized that I was in need of a paradigm shift.

I’d never allowed beef to even try to be healthy in my life. It was only for the times when I was choosing something unhealthy that beef had a role in my meal. In my mind I had never thought about the possibility that beef could offer me a healthy option for my meal, as long as I chose the appropriate cuts of meat and prepared them in a healthy way. This deserves a great big giant “DOH!” I have no idea how was I missing out on this piece of common sense for so long.

Thankfully, the Beef Checkoff provided me The Healthy Beef Cookbook along with a gift card to try out some lean beef recipes myself. Reading through this helped open my eyes to all the different HEALTHY directions I could go when making my meal plan for the week. I also found this lean cuts fact sheet extremely helpful when shopping for the healthiest choices of meat cuts.

Even with a new outlook on beef being a healthy option to consider, I was still wondering how eating beef every day for a week was going to impact my body, my work outs, and my weight loss. Going in, I expected I was going to feel bloated all week, be uncomfortable and sluggish and not want to work out. I had a serious “beef is hearty!!!” mindset, and even though I was planning meals far from it, I imagined that my stomach would feel like I ate a large steak and potatoes after every meal. I expected to feel full for hours afterwards, no matter how appropriate the serving size I enjoyed.

I’m happy to report that I couldn’t have been more wrong in my expectations.  I paid careful attention not to overeat, and trust me – with the delicious meals we made this was challenging at times! – and never left the table feeling too full or uncomfortable in anyway.  I also made sure to pair each meal with some sort of vegetable and grain to get a well rounded meal.

I never ran AFTER dinner, always before – but I did eat leftovers for lunch several days during the week, and eating beef at lunch did not make any noticeable difference in my running after work.  Myth Busted!  

As for weight loss – the weigh in that took place during the challenge week brought me in at 1.2 pounds under where I had been the previous weigh in.  I’m not saying I lost it because I ate beef [I worked far too hard on those workouts to credit anything else] – but because I chose healthy, lean cuts of meat for my meals [you know, once I realized that was an option. DOH.] my weight loss efforts definitely weren’t lost. 

Coming up, I’m going to be facing my other two concerns going into the challenge: cost and cooking ability. [or a lack there of…]

Until then, I’m interested in learning what you thought about beef and what role it played in your eats the past few months. Was I the only one avoiding it in healthy meals and only using it as a “splurge” meal item?

If Chobani started making cat food, I wouldn’t only trust it – I would buy it by the gigantic bulk-store bags. And not only because Benson occasionally snacks on leftover Cho, but because I am brand loyal.  When I find a brand I love across the board [product, marketing, PR, etc] I sign on for life. 

Several weeks ago I was uberexcited when Nick and I were walking through a Dollar General and I came across these Old Colony Apple Sauce Oatmeal Cookies made with Musselman’s Apple Sauce.* 

Musselman’s is my go-to brand for one of my favorite day time snacks – apple sauce.  I keep emergency cups of several flavors at my desk at work for in case of emergency hunger breaks and have been known to rely on Musselman’s Chunky Applesauce for my long run fuel. 

I love the companies products, including all the Lucky Leaf pie filling I’ve had the pleasure to try in the past, and I was very excited back in the day to learn more about the company and how Musselman’s gets the job done when I had the opportunity to travel to Musselman’s facilities with a group of awesome bloggers last fall. 

I’m proud to call myself a Musselman’s Brand Ambassador because of what I experienced on that trip.  Part of it is no doubt because every employee we met while touring the various facilities was beyond your standard friendly and knowledgeable representative companies often put in front of their consumer audience. 

These men and women were also extremely interested in what we had to say – as customers who want a delicious product, as healthy living enthusiasts and moms who care about what we are consuming, as women on the go who are looking for the easier conveniences in the little things, and, something I was obviously excited about, as bloggers creating a relationship with brands.  I love that I’m able to work with such a great company who wants to hear my ideas, concerns, praises, requests, and questions with all the same level of enthusiasm. 

And because I’ve experienced such great things with such a great company, I will no doubt continue to choose Musselman’s when making healthy baking substitutions or choosing picnic snacks from the pantry or market.  I will continue to wear my Ambassador badge proudly, and I will continue to try and convince you to try some, too. Because I love this product and I believe in this company enough to do so. 

One awesome thing that Musselman’s has done for my “class” of Ambassadors lies in the branches of this here tree I helped plant at the Orchard we all visited together.  Okay, truth be told, the entire group of awesome ambassadors had their hand in getting this tree planted together. 

Well, several weeks ago [times like this are prime examples of why I stopped making posting promises] I received an email from my Musselman’s friends with an update of our little tree – including photos!  I found the email really interesting, as it taught me a bit about what happens to the trees during wintertime as they grow.

Getting this email and reflecting on my time in Gettysburg is what inspired my posting about this awesome company, surely.  Hippie Heather thinks the tree’s growth over the past eight months is somehow symbolic to her own growth, too.  I couldn’t not share the update after thinking that over for far too long this weekend.

Here’s our little guy.  I know it doesn’t look like he’s all that big, but in comparing the photos I think you can definitely see the trunk has grown a bit! And you can totally tell it’s taller if you focus on where the branches start moving outward in both pictures, too. It was A LOT closer to the protective gate back in September of last year!

Here’s our tree with his five-year old neighbor.  Our tree is a Gala, one of my favorites!  [My top five list: Pink Lady, Honey Crisp, Gala, Empire, and Cortland.]

Here’s some of the fun facts the email shared about the processes at the Orchard for those of you who may also enjoy a behind the scenes look at apple growing:

In the winter the stem tips or “buds” of the apple trees are dormant making it a good time for pruning. The goal for pruning trees is twofold: for younger trees, it helps encourage a strong, solid framework and on mature trees, pruning helps maintain the shape and encourage fruit production.

Our tree didn’t have it’s first trimming this winter, though. Given the variety of tree and that it was planted in early fall, it’s critical to establish a good root system and feed the tree first. If you start pruning very young trees you promote tree/ limb growth and small trees are not always ready for that to take place.

Our tree should be ready in the summer for some early limb training and the building of the scaffold system with the tree, once it has a strong root system started. It’s hard to imagine that some day that little apple tree will be producing pounds upon pounds of fruit like all the other massive, beautiful trees on this orchard. 

*And, yes; those cookies were a great snack. Especially when I spread peanut butter between two of them and made mini sandwiches.

I was more nervous for this race than any sort of “official” race I’d run to date. After much hemming and hawing, I decided this had something to do with self-imposed pressure.  My mind was down with playing games all weekend long, especially on Sunday morning as I was preparing for my 3.1 miles. 

I had made a fairly short and sweet playlist for the Blend 5K.  I chose songs that I knew would keep me moving even if I didn’t want to be moving. 

I tend to hold on to lyrics and use them to fuel me through the rough patches. Young the Giant’s “My Body” was a must on this playlist. I restarted it at least four times during my run.

I ran a simple out and back course in a neighborhood I was familiar with, having run in it a time or two before. It’s flat, like woah, and near the water, which is often a welcomed running scene.  I walked for about a quarter mile to warm up before starting my playlist and setting off along my route.

I started out WAY too fast here.  I was running sub 9 for the first half mile before I realized I wasn’t doing myself any favors. I tried to tell myself that I could run smart from this point forward, but I was having a hard time finding the pace I needed and wanted to run at consistently. 

Not too long after my first mile, a car and I played chicken trying to get one another to go first, as it was backing out of it’s driveway, and I was waiting to cross.  I stopped jogging in place, eventually, and paused my watch.  It couldn’t have been more than a few seconds, but the uber-quick rest was a taste of something I wanted more of – and eventually I was stopping after every few minutes of running to walk for a bit before starting the cycle again. 

Not a big deal, I know.  I started to get really in my head about the whole thing and was being down on myself about a less than stellar performance when I realized I had the opportunity to turn this poor “race” into a strong speed training run. 

I continued running 3.1 miles, but I stopped my feet, and my watch, to stretch, adjust, and recover after pushing myself for several minutes of hard running.  After changing my mindset and declaring it a speed workout, I kept up with that sub 9 pace, bringing me in under my goal of 30 minutes.  It just wasn’t a true 5K PR because it was 30 minutes of speedy running with recovery seconds in between.

The kicker of course, is that speed workouts like my Blend 5K experience are the exact training methods that are going to help prepare me to run a SMART sub 30 5K this July.  I think that means I won this practice race. But- no!, seriously; all of you who ran it with us won this race, too.  That’s the best thing about this community: once we hit the top, there’s no stopping us…

Well, onto 15K Training: Let’s discuss!

I ran a great four mile, slow and steady, run about town on Monday.  I left me feeling really confident about being able to finish my race next weekend.  My current goal for the race is to PR.  My current 15K time is 1:51:37.  I will be ecstatic with any time, of course, but I’d preparing mentally for sub 1:50. [When I started training for this 15K, I was thinking about training for 1:36. That seems RIDICULOUS right now.]

I’ve been toying with the idea of running sans Garmin the past few weeks.  As I told her in the comments, when I saw that Meghann posted about a Garmin-free run last week, I knew I must fit one in my schedule soon.  I’m looking forward to running without being slave to the pace-space on my wrist.  I am anticipating a mind-game free run this week!

I’m also making sure to take one full rest day this weekend before my last pre-race long run on Sunday morning.  I made sure to write “Yoga for at least 20 minutes!” in my day planner for Thursday.  It’s one of my goals for this week to do one of the “Yoga for Runners” podcasts I recently downloaded from ITunes [for FREE!!] to add a little something new to my weekly workouts.

And oh my word – I have already preplanned and drafted my training plan for post 15K.  I’ve made some decisions I’m very excited about and will most likely be sharing soon.  Don’t want to over kill on the running talk in one night. Hmmmm. Never thought I’d be the kind of girl to say that.