Meat

My father in law came into town this week to visit.  It's always great fun to spend some time with family.  He happens to live in a town with a large meat packing facility, and on occasion, brings the best steaks.

This week I ate a lot of meat.

I had two steaks this week.

I ate at a barbeque joint twice.

A Cupcake.

A Snickers ice cream bar.

Jelly-filled doughnut holes (my coworkers are jerks!).

Cheesy chicken enchiladas at Red Burrito.

Mountain Dew.

Cheerwine (a very delicious soda pop found in the Carolinas)

It's amazing how different I felt. 

I felt terrible.

I don't feel guilty.  I'm not the type to feel guilty for eating delicious food. 

I did feel lackadaisical, sleepy.  I felt heavy.  I took the kids to the pool on a totally different, less convenient schedule.


On Monday, I weighed in at 212 pounds.  Down from 220 when I started this.

Today I'm at 214. 

Now, there is naturally a certain amount of weight swing that you have to expect being human.  The fact is that my pants are fitting better, which is a much better standard by which to measure one's weight.  But after feeling so sluggish all week, I have to say seeing that those two additional pounds today really felt backwards.  I've been steadily losing weight since we started.  It's not a massive, fast weight loss, but I've gained a belt hole and pants that I bought a month ago that fit me comfortably but snugly are now fitting me loosely.  I have to keep moving forward. Fight the fat!

Overall the last four weeks has been really awesome.  I've learned about all kinds of new foods and new ways to cook food I'm used to eating that removes all added fats, cholesterol, and increases the fiber exponentially (well, maybe by a factor of 3 or 4).  I've eaten delicious Chile, pizza, lasagna, pita sandwiches, and stuffed bell peppers.  Before this week, I'd had only 3-4 soda pops in the last 21 days.

I have to finish up this week doing well (birthday cake tomorrow, no choice there!), and then next week my wife, our friends, and I will do our fit test and before photos of our flubby selves.  The following week, we start P90X.

Most of the people I know who have done P90X have only made it through 30 days or so.  I hope to make it the entire 90.  It's not going to be easy.  I'm going to have to get up at 6am Monday-Friday, and exercise before work.  I'll also have to work out on Saturday, plus any other side jobs I pick up.

I honestly don't know if I will be able to make it through.  It's not an easy program by any standard.  On top of that, I'm not the most self disciplined person I know, but I'm going to try.

To me the most important thing is that I am doing something for my health.  I'm not just sitting around thinking about how I should change things.  I'm actively changing them.  It's not easy, especially at first, but when you begin to see results, when you feel the additional energy you have, it's very motivating.

I took off yesterday and today from work.  Just a month ago, these days would be spent doing a lot of sitting around.  May be working for an hour or two on the house or yard.  But yesterday I mowed my lawn, raked and bagged 10 garbage bags of leaves from the side yard, reseeded the yard, raked the seed into the soil, and watered the yard.  I was at it for about 8 hours.  And I still wanted to work on my wife's car in the evening. 

Today, it's front sidewalk garden attack day.

And with that, I'm off to play in the dirt.

P90....OMG MY LEGS ARE DYING!!!!!

So I mentioned P90X before as the workout we're planning on starting at the end of March.  If you don't know what it is, a quick Google search will show you.  It's tough.  It's killer.  It's no joke.  It's 90 days of intense working out combined with eating right.  If you do the entire program, it's supposed to be pretty awesome.  So far, I don't know anyone who's made it the whole way through, either from discipline or just sheer exhaustion.

We're going to try, though.

It has segments on back and shoulders, arms and legs, abs, yoga, kenpo, cardio, just to name a few.

Today we did the Plyometrics, or jump training, portion.  It's basically a video tutorial on how to turn your legs to jelly and make your bum sore for a week.  Last week we made it about 15 minutes in.  This week we made it 20.  It's a 60 minute video, but PROGRESS! 

Once we burned out our quads and hamstrings, we went for a 15 minute jog through our pre-dawn neightborhood.  The cardinals were out in force, their little birdy songs sounding like a Star Wars blaster skirmish.... pew pew pew!  (Geek out!)

By the time we got back to the house, the sun was peaking its head up just below the treeline, threatening the nearly full moon.

For breakfast I made some slow-cook oatmeal with honey, bananas, strawberries, and blueberries.  Next week maybe I'll try some raspberries or kiwi.

Condescending Condiments, Oxidation, and Cow Patties.

There are two "Condiments" that really do seem to rule my world right now. Guacamole and Hummus.  They're like the savory rulers of a diet primarily based on vegetables.  They're both creamy, delicious, and between the two, you can eat them with almost anything.  You can eat them both with chips or pretzels, on sandwiches, in salads, or with veggies.

Last week, desperate to use up some avocados that were quick approaching their way-too-squishy date, I made my fist Guacamole.  Thanks to Alton Brown for the recipe.  I just so happened to have all the ingredients in the house already. It took only about 10 minutes to make, but the payoff of a homemade Chipotle-style burrito bowl was delicious. 

Things got interesting after I sealed up the unused Guac for overnight storage with one of the mother seeds in the container (which I heard prevents the oxidation of the Guac).  It didn't work.  The next day we went to open it up and the stuff was green and brown like a cow patty.  It smelled OK, but I'm too much a slave to my eyeballs to ignore the poo-like appearance.

Last week I did pretty well.  I did have my first coke in two weeks on Friday.  I had some spicy cheese with my lunch on Wednesday, and a piece of meatloaf Yesterday.   It was all delicious.  Back to the program today, though!

For lunch I have spicy vegetable soup, lunch pitas, and a banana with peanut butter.  I also have a handful of roasted nuts thrown in the mix as a snack.

For the love of shopping!

One thing eating food that contains lots of fresh vegetables is that you are constantly going to the grocery store.  I'm not the biggest fan of the grocery store, but there is one right on my way home, and a few short trips really is better than one massive trip with 20 bags full of stuff.  You have to eat the food you buy sooner because it doesn't have the shelf life of, say, a Twinkie. 

You also spend a lot more time in the kitchen cooking.  Most of the stuff you can just pull from the fridge or freezer and throw in the microwave isn't particularly good for you.  And it's certainly not as delicious as the stuff you can make with a little more effort.

Sunday night, we tried a recipe for a salad that contained corn, shallots, sweet peppers, bell peppers, avocado, black beans, all together with a lime-cilantro vinaigrette.  We are pretty sure the recipe was wrong in its measurement of olive oil.  It was basically oil soup.  Next time, we'll start with the raw ingredients and see if we can adjust the recipe to fit our tastes.

On the plus side, we've discovered two restaurants that have good food we can eat on this program.  Chipotle, and Yellow Dog cafe.  At Chipotle you can get a veggie burrito or burrito bowl with guacamole, rice, beans, salsa, grilled onions and peppers, and lettuce.  It's pretty awesome, actually.  Yellow Dog had some great wraps to pick from, packed with all kinds of different flavors. There are some other joints around here that look promising, but we haven't tried any of them yet.

On the sleep schedule side of things, I've pretty much gotten used to getting up at 6 am-ish.  It wasn't too bad once I started going to bed around 10pm.  The hardest part is that, until we leap ahead, the sun hasn't quit risen yet when I'm rolling out of bed, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. 


Peace!

Cheater, Cheater, Ice Cream Eater

Today you will read a harrowing saga of sugar, milk, and low temperatures combining in the perfect storm of cheating and excess.  But first....

I know I promised a post yesterday about why we're working on our diets and participating in the Daniel Fast with our friends, but after I got home our power went down.  After about an hour and a half of candlelight and a dinner of cold (but delicious) cereal, I went to bed.


Recently, my wife and I realized that we could no longer rely upon our youth to keep us healthy.  I'm turning 33 this month. I have a desk job with carpentry jobs only on weekends.  I weigh between 215 and 220 pounds.  I should weigh 185-190 pounds.  With a BMI of 28 I'm technically overweight and pre-obese. I pull muscles regularly.  Working out sporadically is of little to no benefit.  I'm getting fat.

We've gotta do something. 

She ordered the P90X DVDs from Amazon, and we started planning how we would approach a healthier regimen of food and exercise.  We don't want to go on a "diet" because diets fail.  We have to change the way we think about cooking, eating, and moving.  I figure if we learn enough good recipes that are delicious, and just start making them rather than mac and cheese, it'll be a huge step forward.

The first hurdle that we have encountered is that everything we've been eating is full of corn syrup, sugar, oils, and refined grains.  With the concentration of calories in our typical food choices, by the time I fill my stomach and feel satiated, it's easy to have eaten three to four times the number of calories I should in a single meal, plus cola, plus dessert, oftentimes consuming an entire day's worth of calories in less than two whole meals. 

Enter the Gut.

We didn't know how to cook a lot of healthy foods that were also good to eat.  We still don't, but we're learning.  If it doesn't taste good, I'll be the first one to drop it in the bin and head out to get a value meal.  We have slowly begun trying recipes, some of which work, and some of which don't.  Some "healthy" food is so disgusting that I assume the reason it's healthy is that you don't eat it at all and thereby don't expire from the shock of terrible tastes.

As we started seriously looking at the state of our eats, it so happened that two friends, a couple we spend a lot of time with, were also coming to a similar point in their lives.  They had decided to begin with the Daniel Fast, and introduced us to it.  It's 30 days (I said 21 earlier, I know) of cleansing, physically and spiritually.  The idea is that you take the fast that Daniel took in the Old Testament, and spend 30 days eating no meat, leavened bread, or dairy, and drinking only water, as well as reflecting and meditating on scripture. 

Starting the fast and planning the transition into P90X afterwards is what prompted me to start writing this blog.  I figure if I'm blah-blah-blahing about it to everyone I know, it makes it harder to cave in and give it up.  Even if they're not reading it.  Seriously, I have no way of knowing if you are really reading this.  Unless you comment, I suppose.  Most of my page views are from me viewing my page to see if I have more page views.

I used to think that anything like the Daniel Fast implied the exciting mixture of carrots, lettuce, and crackers; a program that, frankly, is so unappealing as to be pretty much impossible for me to seriously consider.  That's most people's initial assessment.  After almost a week on the program, I can say my notion of that fast has turned around.  We've had delicious Chili, awesome pita sandwiches, superb vegetable lasagna, banana/blueberry/strawberry oatmeal and cereal, and spaghetti. 

Aaaaand a milkshake, fries, and a cheeseburger.  :*(

I have certainly missed a bubbly Coke here and there, but over all we've had so much awesome food to eat that I haven't felt that deprived.  I've also cut around 200-400 calories a day out by not drinking soda pop alone (with two nights of nasty caffeine headaches, which have, thankfully, subsided).  I also keep reminding myself that LDL Cholesterol, the waxy, yellow stuff that cakes up in people's arteries, isn't found in plants.  BONUS!

Anywho, Once we're done with the 30 days, we'll begin the P90X program, which is no joke, let me tell you.  Actually, I will tell you, just not tonight.

Which brings me to my harrowing story of the perfect storm of cheating and excess.  Wife and I went to Yellow Dog, an excellent local restaurant, and had some great sandwich wraps today for dinner.  I was stuffed and satisfied, albeit tired from a day power washing a patio.  As we headed to Bed Bath and Beyond to check out blenders/food processors, when the rumble of sweet, milky ice cream thundered its way about my wonderful spouse's head.  She was deaf to my encouragement to resist.  I drove by McDonald's and she splurged on a Reese's McFlurry. 

Upon finishing her ice cream with a flourish, she suggested today's blog title be "Cheater, Cheater, Ice Cream Eater", so I guess something good did come of it.


I'm gone!  *Swoosh!*



 

Slipping and Sliding: Day 4

Slipping and Sliding is an appropriate name for today.  I did very well, all day.  I ate cereal with fruit for breakfast, chipotle with no meat, cheese, or sour cream for lunch, and drank water all day.  When we got home, we had whole wheat spaghetti with roasted tomato sauce and salads.

All was going according to plan.

And then I uncovered a deep seated sense of deprivation in my wife.  She wasn't happy, and there was nothing I could do about it.

Ice cream it was.  We hopped in the car around 8pm and drove to McDonald's. 

I had avoided fast food joints all week because I knew I wouldn't stop at an ice cream cone.  I didn't.

I got a small chocolate shake, small fry, and cheeseburger.  It was awesome.

I didn't touch the Coke.  I can't let myself slip on that front.  I like it way too much to go there so soon on this program.  But nevertheless, we did go off-diet, and it was great.

Tomorrow, no compromise.  This weekend, no weakness.  We've done remarkably well this week, and we'll continue to do well.  I've gotten up around 6am every day this week and exercised.  I've only drank water and a couple of glasses of vanilla rice milk.  We're on track to make huge changes and I intend to keep it up.  Part of that formula, however, is complete honesty with myself and with the massive numbers of people reading this hugely popular blog.

Tomorrow I'll start writing about some of the reasons we're doing this and what the plan is for the next few months.

Today I got up and played 30 minutes a dance game on Xbox Kinect with my wife for some light cardio.  It's surprisingly good exercise. For breakfast I had a mixture of wheat flakes, shredded wheat (not-frosted), crisp corn and rice cereal, with blueberries, strawberries, and bananas, in rice milk (the closest I have found to real milk, which I absolutely LOVE).  It was delicious and hearty.

For lunch today I am having a Pita pocket with hummus, lettuce, tomatoes, shredded carrots, and pickles.


I have a snack mix of almonds, pistachios, walnuts, and soy nuts in a can, as well as a banana and almond butter.


Dinner will be vegetable lasagna with salad.


Let me tell you, I am not going hungry, but I'm eating about 1/3 fewer calories.