Endless Appetite

Now that I am really ramping up my training to mid summer levels, my appetite has exploded. During the week I train 1 to 3 hours a day with a more concentrated effort on weekend sessions. Saturday and Sunday can account for 7-10 hours of running and biking. I love the time that I am putting in, but nutritionally, I am not sure I can keep up my "super healthy" eating habits. How much fruit and carrot sticks does someone need to eat to replenish that expended energy?

My Endless Appetite begins post workout Sunday with a gigantic lunch and lasts through Monday dinner. I would estimate I will consume 4500+ calories. That is a lot of fruit, yogurt, dry cereal (no more Kashi unfortunately) and anything else I can get my hands on. This caloric refill becomes tricky when I try to stay away from red meat, bread and other high gluten foods and avoid sugar junk food. While my body adjusts to these hours of fitness, I am forever hungry.

Back in January I worked my backside off to conquer the mental challenge of overeating and boredom food cravings.  The plan worked and I was able to shed 24 pounds.  Right now I actually need all those calories to increase the hours and intensity of my workouts.  Being in the early season stages, I am trying so hard to monitor and control my intake. In the past, I did not care what I ate, in fact we trained so hard to eat whatever we wanted.  My workouts would increase and that just punched my golden ticket.  I would train to eat anything from sausage pizza (now olive oil white pizza w/ veggies), cheeseburgers (now veggie burgers), full burritos from Chipotle (now Chipotle salad with chicken, beans, salsa only), bagels (now low sugar whole grain cereal and plain oatmeal) and cookies (still kind of eat cookies). 

The small changes I have made are working and the calories consumed are being burned.  Although, I am still tweaking my post workout diet so that my weekend afternoons are not spent camped in front of the pantry.  My first race is Saturday, The Cheyenne Mountain 50k Trail Race and yesterday I weighed in one pound above my lowest of the year and it felt good. Bring on the 31 miles of trails and mountain climbs!

Any thoughts on a great, healthy and very filling meal after 2-3 large volume days of fitness?  Thoughts and recipe links can be posted to help myself and others...