Last night I went a little nuts on the food. This is typical of post-race me, and I think of most runners: you run far or fast and then when you get home you eat everything in the house. Yesterday was kind of strange for me after the Lilac Run, namely in that my stomach was feeling weird for most of the afternoon, plus I had a headache. So I took a nap. But I’ve been craving ice cream lately. Specifically the soft serve ice cream they serve at Cheese & Crack, a little cheese snack shop here in Portland. Aside from the soft serve being the perfect consistency, they also dust it with stuff like chocolate malt or matcha. And you can get a chocolate cowboy hat.
So, I want that, really badly. (I also want the cheese boxes they make, but that’s a different story.)
But I didn’t get it. Instead I went to Safeway and bought Ben & Jerry’s. But I didn’t buy my typical B&J–no, this time I bought a non-dairy flavor, the Colin Kaepernick flavor, which was very tasty but a little Too Woke™ for my tastes! (That was a joke, in case you thought maybe I had suddenly turned into a MAGA hat wearing weirdo.) It’s made with sunflower milk. Hell, I didn’t even know sunflowers had nipples!
Side note: I’m sharing this particular gif because they called him Craig even though his name in the movie is Greg. I just find it funny that whoever made this gif didn’t take the extra five seconds required to learn the name of the main character in this movie which actually has two movies. Two movies to learn the guy’s name is Greg!
As you have learned by now, I am more focused on my diet than ever because running sometimes makes you poop. And the last time I had significant stomach trouble wasn’t actually during a run, but it was during an intentionally fast walk, which, ironically, is what you do when you have significant stomach trouble. I went for the walk right after eating a bowl of cereal (raisin bran) and long story short … I think I’m lactose intolerant.
Or, rather, I think eating dairy prior to exercise makes me more lactose intolerant. If anything, having a big bowl of fiber and milk probably isn’t a good idea. So when I went to get this INCREDIBLY WOKE Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, I thought I’d go for non-dairy just to see how it affected my guts. And the result is that I felt fine. I was definitely full when I went to bed, but that was likely from the bunch of other stuff I ate, including Kettle Chips brand air-fried chips which, I must say again are excellent and so much better than their normal chips. Less greasy, taste better. (I’ve found that most food tastes better with less salt in it. Not all! [Pasta sauce.] But most.)
But this morning I woke up feeling fine and I even went out for my morning run without using the bathroom beforehand and felt fine. It makes sense that I’m a little lactose intolerant, inasmuch as we’re all probably a little lactose intolerant because we’re not supposed to be eating lactose this late in life. Can you imagine like 10,000 years ago when ancient humans first discovered cheese curdling inside the mammoth’s stomach they used to keep some other animal’s milk? And then they ATE it and were like “Oh, this is pretty good?” Man, ancient humans must’ve been desperate for food to eat all the things they ate.
Anyway, I think my intention for this week is to drastically reduce my dairy intake and see how I feel. I still have some cheese around and will add it to things, but will try to keep it to a minimum. I also bought reduced fat cheddar slices which are fine. I don’t think I’m at a point where eating dairy causes me to shit explosively or anything, unless I’m exercising after I eat it. So let’s not do that as well.
Let’s see if I remember to talk about this a week from now!