Category Archives: Diet
Get your veggies!
So Ryan LOVES chili. For me…well it depends on the chili.
Anyway, chili is an easy Primal meal to make and you can make a huge pot of it and have leftovers for days, which is a real plus!
But honestly, I get bored with chili. It is just meat with tomato sauce to me after a while (since we don’t use beans and only use rice on high carb days).
So how did we make it more interesting? Add some more texture and even more vegetables?
We added CAULIFLOWER!
This might sound a bit strange, but when you either “rice” or put cauliflower in a food processor, you get what looks a lot like rice or couscous.
It adds a nice texture to the chili, hides another vegetable in the chili for those who don’t like veggies and it makes the chili even more filling without adding more calories (actually it may even make the portion you take less calorically dense!). More bang for your buck!
So here it is…Cauliflower Chili
Ingredients:
1 lb ground beef (grass-fed)
1 onion
15 oz can of Tomato sauce
1 tbsp chili powder
1 tsp Garlic salt
1 tbsp Cumin
1 tbsp Frank’s Hot sauce
Cayenne pepper to taste
1 cup Couscous-ified cauliflower (Yea…I made the word up)
Heat a skillet on medium and add onions and half the cumin.
When those are translucent, add ground beef.
When ground beef is almost cooked add tomato sauce and spices and let simmer on low.
You can let the chili simmer on low heat for awhile. If you can let it simmer for about 20 minutes it will be more flavorful.
While chili is simmering, add cauliflower to a mixer and dice/chop/couscous-ify. Once it is all like couscous, and once chili is about a minute away from serving, add couscous cauliflower.
Serve and top with either just a tiny sprinkling of grass-fed cheese or some guacamole!
I haven’t yet taken a picture of the meal, but it has become a regular in our diet! Enjoy!
Also, do you ever add random vegetables to dishes where they aren’t supposed to be and found the new recipe to be delicious!?! If so, let me know!
Do you know why?
Do you honestly know why you eat the way you do? Do you know why you do certain exercises?
If I asked you right now why eating vegetables is good, could you truly give me an answer?
Or would you just be able to repeat something that someone else told you?
How do you know that what they told you is even true!?!
YOU DON’T!
Unless of course you’ve done your own research.
Ok so I’m not saying to doubt everything that you hear. And I’m not saying that you shouldn’t trust a professional’s word.
But I do firmly believe that no matter what the subject, you need to do your own research.
I mean I tell you to avoid gluten. I tell you that fat is not the enemy. I tell you to eat LOTS OF MEAT aka I’m anti-vegetarian.
And while I hope you agree with me because I firmly believe I’m right, I know that people won’t believe with me.
And while I don’t mind a good debate, I really hate when people tell me that I’m wrong without truly backing up their opinion.
Sorry to pick on you vegetarians, but I really hate when you attack me about how our farming industry is hurting our environment and that we should all be vegetarians to protect it.
Because for one, this shows me that you obviously haven’t really read a word I said. If you notice I don’t promote conventional farming practices…I’m for all naturally raised animal products a.k.a the way animals WERE living on the land originally when we used to hunt them,
And two, no one really ever explains how being a vegetarian is MORE environmentally safe than eating meat raised the natural way. Most of the time when I actually point out how BAD mono-crop farming is for the environment, they have no response.
And why don’t they have a response?
Not because someone out there hasn’t come up with one, but because most people don’t really understand WHY they are doing the things they do!
haha random but funny!
So while I’m sure there will be a few vegetarians offended by this post, my point isn’t to get a response to my above comments. My point is that you need to THINK.
I don’t care what diet or exercise program you follow, even if it is mine. You still need to UNDERSTAND why you are doing it.
Don’t eat a diet low in fat and high in “whole grains” and tell me fat is bad and whole grains are good for you if you can’t back it up.
And saying, “Well whole grains have fiber” doesn’t cut it.
Anyway, next time you decide to take a stance on something, make sure you’ve really thought about your stance and understand the reasoning behind it.
I love the high carb days!
So right now Ryan and I are doing a carb cycling experiment and so far I LOVE it. ABSOLUTELY LOVE!
Also, I’ve seen great results over just about two weeks. We will see how things continue over the next month or so.
But anyway, one of the things I love the most is that I can now add in one of my favorite meals that I used to make when Ryan and I did our low-fat (ICK!) experiment.
FRIED RICE….or at least my version of the dish!
We’d stopped eating fried rice because we used soy sauce in it and soy sauce has gluten in it.
We also stopped making the dish because we in general preferred to get our carbs from fruits and veggies.
HOWEVER, I’ve found that I feel better during my intense workouts when I consume a few more carbs so I started to add back in potatoes and rice. This summer I even went through a big homemade corn tortilla phase, which I’ve now grown out of.
Anyway, since we started adding in more carbs, I started to want to make the Fried Rice again since I’d loved the dish.
Which is when we found Organic Tamari, which replaces soy sauce and has no gluten. YUM!
I now make this dish as often as I can. We literally have had it every single high carb day during our carb cycling!
With a little chicken or fish and the gluten-free Tamari, this is a great lower fat, high carb meal…that is still perfectly Primal!
Below is the recipe. I hope you enjoy it as much as Ryan and I do!
Fried Rice
Ingredients:
1 lbs chicken breasts
2 cups uncooked white rice
3 chopped green onions
1 cup bean sprouts
2 eggs
1 tbsp sesame oil
1/4 cup Tamari
Cook the rice based on the directions on the package. We usually get the “slow” cooking rice but that is up to you.
Chop up the chicken and cook it in a separate pan. Once the chicken is basically cooked, add in bean sprouts and green onions. Add cooked rice to meat mixture. Put in sesame oil and Tamari.
Make sure the heat is up on your pan so you can get a little crisp to the rice.
Then make two holes in the mixture and crack an egg into each hole. Let the egg cook for a second before tossing the rice with both eggs.
Once everything is mixed, enjoy!
On our high carb days we keep our protein intake the same, but try to get no more than 50 grams of fat, which isn’t easy after being so used to eating high fat!
However, there are only 42 grams of fat if you eat ALL of the fried rice that the above recipe makes. This really should serve about 4-6.
(Picture to come tonight after I make it!!)
Also, a big shout out to Epic! Awesome training session today! Haven’t climbed a rope in a while. Also got to experience my first faux knife fight! LOVE IT! You guys are awesome!
Cold Turkey
There are many ways to go about creating a healthy diet change.
The most common is the cold turkey approach.
When people do this, they literally cut out all bad food and start a new completely clean diet. They quit “cold turkey.”
For some people this really works.
For others…well they can’t maintain it and end up back where they started usually in only a few short months if not weeks.
For many the widely accepted cold turkey approach just doesn’t work.
But you have to know yourself to know what kind of approach is going to work best for you. Do you know?
Have you tried the cold turkey approach before and had the diet fail?
Maybe it wasn’t the diet that didn’t work. Maybe it was the go all in, drastic change approach that was the problem.
So maybe you aren’t a cold turkey kind of person. That doesn’t mean you can’t change your lifestyle! You just need to try a different approach!
Another great way to start a healthier lifestyle is to make small changes. I’ve talked about this approach before and I’ve found that, all in all, it works best when you aren’t looking for a quick fix but a true lifestyle change.
How does it work?
Basically, you make small changes until you’ve found a combination of healthy and unhealthy that you can handle that will get you the results you want. The combination that usually works to get great results, while keeping you from going insane, is 80% clean and 20% cheat. (Reaching 80/20 is the goal not what you should necessarily start out with…Perfect IS NOT the goal…80/20 is!)
Each week or two you try to cut out one bad thing slowly and replace it with something good. For instance, if you drink soda, you could start by cutting out all soda for the week (go cold turkey) OR you could simply cut out one soda per day for the first week and then all soda three days a week the next week and so forth until you’ve removed all soda from your diet except for the occasional cheat!
This can honestly be done with anything. It can even be done in terms of adding in good things! Like even if you really don’t like veggies, maybe you start by adding in veggies to one meal every other week. Then one meal every day. Then two meals every day…and so forth.
Small changes add up quickly!
And usually when you make small changes, they really really take root! You’ve actually TAUGHT yourself to live with the new lifestyle.
Sometimes when you go cold turkey, you get sick of the diet. And so you cheat. But most of the time, you can’t get yourself to go back to that super strict diet and so you fall off the wagon until you find another diet to try and go cold turkey with that!
Most of the time when people go cold turkey they seek perfection!
When you make small changes, you aren’t looking for perfection. You are looking to become better – to become healthier!
So next time you start a diet, think about making small changes instead of going cold turkey. Don’t seek perfection! Remember the 80/20 rule!
Erin’s Eggs in Purgatory
So one of my best friends EVER, Erin, posted a picture a while back of a DELICIOUS looking breakfast.
I asked her for the recipe and I have to share it now!
So thank you Erin for your wonderful take on Uova in Purgatorio or Eggs in Purgatory!
Eggs in Purgatory
Serves 2 (generously)
Ingredients
1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil
1 small yellow onion, chopped
4 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1/2 red bell pepper, chopped
1 tsp red pepper flakes
2 Tablespoons chopped fresh basil split
1 (28oz) can fire roasted diced tomatoes
1 tbsp grated Parmesan cheese
4-6oz Farm sausage
4-5 eggs
Salt & pepper to taste
Preheat oven to 375. Heat oil in cast iron skillet over medium/high heat. Add onion, garlic and pepper sauté until onions are translucent about 5 min.
Add sausage and red pepper flakes and cook till sausage browns. Add diced tomatoes, salt, pepper and 1 1/2 tbsp of basil and simmer for 15 min.
When finished simmering use bottom of spoon and make little indents in sauce, crack eggs into the indents and top with some of the Parmesan cheese (save some to top finished eggs with).
Place in preheated oven for 10-15 min, this is just an estimate because I didn’t actually pay attention to time. Cook until egg whites are cooked though but yolks are still runny. It may actually be closer to 15-20 min.
Once finished take out of the oven and top with remaining basil, Parmesan cheese, salt and pepper. Enjoy!!!!
ALSO, on a side note…I got nominated for Top 100 Health and Fitness Bloggers of 2013. Please go vote! And check out some of the other great blogs on there!
Another New Year’s Resolution?
I’ve started to hate New Year’s Resolutions time.
It usually means a ton of people come into the gym and sign up BUT NEVER SHOW UP AGAIN. While of course that helps our business, it annoys the crap out of me!
I HATE WHEN PEOPLE SET GOALS AND HAVE NO INTENTION OF ACTUALLY ACCOMPLISHING THEM.
I mean why even set a New Year’s resolution if you don’t honestly have any intention of actually doing it!?!
So this year…DON’T BE ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE!
Set out that resolution and make it specific. Make it measurable. Make it something truly attainable and realistic. And make it time-based. (Ever heard of SMART goals!?!).
The resolution “I’m going to get in shape this year” doesn’t cut it!
What does in shape MEAN? Does it mean losing 5, 10 or 20 pounds? Does it mean running faster? Lifting more?
DEFINE vague goals and make them specific!
And part of that definition should include a way to measure them. If you want to run faster, what time are you shooting for? How much faster? Or how much more do you want to lift?
Make your goal something that you can easily track so you can gain momentum with your progress or make changes if you aren’t moving forward.
Then think about how long you are willing to work toward this goal. Will you dedicate 3 months? Six months? A whole year?
You need to figure out how big your goal is and how long you have to attain it. Then you have to decide…”Is that a realistic goal for the time that I have?”
If you want to lose 20 pounds and are only willing to dedicate one month, don’t even bother wasting your time setting that resolution. THAT ISN’T REALISTIC!
On the other hand, if you are willing to dedicate for or five months to your 20 pound weight loss goal, you are WAY more likely to achieve it because your expectations are REALISTIC!
Ok…so if you’ve followed the guidelines above, you should now have a SMART resolution that is specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-based.
So now what?
COME UP WITH A PLAN!
While it is great to outline exactly what you are going to do everyday until the day you complete your goal, that isn’t realistic.
Life happens and tends to get in the way.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t be prepared for all the random crap that will happen.
So how do you prepare for the unexpected?
Think about all of the habits you have now. What habits are keeping you from reaching your goal? What habits are helping you reach your goal?
Make some lists. Make a TO DO list and a STOP DOING list. Pay attention to not only the negatives but also the positives! Maybe you love to cook…That is a positive! Maybe you work long hours…that may be a negative since you might think you don’t have time to workout.
Then make a list of things that tend to sidetrack you. What has made you fall off the wagon in the past? Are you an emotional eater? Do you get stressed and eat? Do you skip workouts if you’ve had a long day? Do you not plan out your workouts ahead of time so feel like you waste a lot of time at the gym? Do you get bored easily but not change things up?
Do you do too much too fast?!?!
Once you have these lists, hang them someplace where you can see them everyday. Every day try to do the good things and avoid all of the pitfalls.
But also know that one “mistake” doesn’t mean you should just give up. Don’t let one slip up derail your whole program!
Remember that life will get in the way. You don’t need to be perfect because perfection is unattainable.
Shoot for progress – try to make each and every day better than the last.
Try to create new healthy habits and just remember that you may have bumps along the way, but that those bumps don’t matter as long as you get right back on track the next day.
Stop setting resolutions that you never keep. Don’t be one of those people who sign up for the gym and never come!
Don’t waste your time. Set a goal and reach it this year!!!
Cookies, Cookies, Cookies
Yes to the dress…just maybe not this one…
Around the holidays, I kind of feel like Cookie Monster – I see cookies and I want to stuff them all in my face as fast as possible.
And may times, I give in.
However, the last two holidays, I’ve actually had to keep my diet fairly clean in the weeks before the holidays (when it seems that almost everyone is bringing in junk food!).
Last year, I had to make weight for the powerlifting competition and this year, I had to look good for wedding dress shopping.
Two very different motivations…both equally compelling.
This year, I knew we would be looking at dresses when my Mom and sister came out to visit, which meant that I needed to feel confident and good about how I looked. I didn’t want to be bloated and full of cookies and burritos and other indulgences.
But it wasn’t easy to turn down all of the cookies.
I think that is what motivated me to try the potato diet experiment. I was motivated to stick to it because I wanted to see how it worked. (Interestingly enough that diet actually hindered my weight loss. I finally dropped all of the weight from my vacation binge once I went back to my low-carb, high protein and fat diet.)
However, the clean diet before the holidays was worth it.
I looked great AND I found the perfect dress! YAY!
Actually getting the weight off made dress shopping easy AND fun because I felt like I looked good in almost everything I tried on.
If I’d been up and bloated from a ton of bad food, I wouldn’t have felt as confident which would have probably made me feel more down about how everything looked.
Let’s face it – how you feel you look DOES influence how you feel things look on you!
So I avoided the sweets and felt good.
However, that doesn’t mean I’m going to totally deprive myself!
The holidays are a time to indulge and enjoy. BUT that doesn’t mean you have to binge eat for weeks!
My point is that you can plan ahead, look great for any events by eating super clean BEFORE the holidays and still get to indulge in plenty of cookies during the holidays before returning to your clean eating program!
So if you have a wedding coming up or are doing some major dress shopping this January, don’t let the holidays derail your progress! Plan ahead!
Farmageddon
So this morning while we were drinking our coffee (one of the few mornings on which I attempted to make myself try to like coffee…it wasn’t successful..), Ryan put on Farmageddon.
I was curious to see the movie after all of the seizures of raw milk going on and the fact that California is one of the few states to still sell it in a few markets.
Raw milk cream…even better!
Honestly, what I saw in the movie was slightly depressing. SMALL farms were being raided and their raw milk products seized and destroyed.
The government was coming in and taking away the livelihoods of small, local farmers.
They claimed that these raw milk products were dangerous and contained bacteria that could make people ill. They claimed they were doing it for the good of people.
But why were they really doing it? Where these raw products really bad?
Why the government did it, I can only guess at. Was it to protect big business? Was it to keep people in line?
Who knows, but I can say it wasn’t because the products were actually dangerous.
Observational evidence suggests that raw milk may improve lactose tolerance, prevent the
development of asthma and allergies, and may be more digestible than pasteurized milk for
people who have difficulty digesting fat. Pasteurization decreases the content of iron, copper,
manganese, and iodine in milk, and may diminish the bioavailability of calcium and phosphorus.
It causes major losses of biological activity for vitamin C and folate, substantial losses for
vitamin B6, and may have similar effects for other vitamins. The available data for the
prevalence of foodborne illnesses associated with specific foods are extremely poor in quality
and rich in bias. Even taking these data at face value, however, raw milk may have the potential
to protect millions of people from asthma and prevent hundreds of asthma-related deaths without
causing major increases in the total burden of foodborne illness. (Realmilk.com)
Honestly we didn’t even start pasteurizing milk because it was dangerous in and of itself. We started pasteurizing it when we started keeping cows in crowded DIRTY pens and we started feeding them waste. Then their milk was blue and we added chalk to make it look new.
No wonder people started getting sick and we figured we should start pasteurizing it!
So it wasn’t the raw milk but all of the awful practices we had that made the milk dangerous….I guess I would understand why we wouldn’t allow raw milk from the cows on some of our big conventional farms since those cows are kept in disgusting conditions and fed crap, BUT I don’t understand how we can’t allow raw milk from naturally raised, grass-fed cows when it has benefits such as more vitamins and improved fat digestion.
Why? Why don’t we want to explore the healthiness of raw milk? Why do we just ban it WITHOUT doing any true studies?
Hmmm…maybe because we don’t want to actually change the problem, we just want to do a superficial fix. It is easier to just pasteurize milk than it is to make all of our farming practices better so that we don’t have to….
One potato, two potatoes, three potatoes…ICK! No more!
The potato diet has been sweeping the Primal and Paleo community ever since Chris Voigt did his 20 potatoes a day for 60 days diet and lost weight and improved his cholesterol and blood pressure.
So I decided to try it.
Baked fries were great the first meal….
I mean how can you turn down trying a diet that has health benefits, promotes weight loss and supposedly keeps you full and energized throughout the entire day!?!
Anyway, I started the diet and for the first day, liked it. It was fun eating potatoes and getting to eat a large quantity of food at each meal. (This diet is literally potatoes and about a tsp. of fat per potato).
But the morning after my first day on the diet, I woke up starving, which is something I’m not used to. Usually, even when I’m not doing a lot of fasting, I don’t get hungry to at least 12 p.m.
But I was starving. My stomach was literally growling.
However, I did lose 2lbs after my very first day on the diet.
Eating potatoes that next day again wasn’t bad except that an hour after eating, I was again starving.
My energy was low all day and I felt sluggish during my workout
Ryan felt the same way. He was grouchy and aggravated all day.
But we stuck with it.
I slept well the following night even though I again woke up feeling ravenous. (I lost a pound.)
Ryan on the other hand slept terribly and woke up hungry and in one of the worst moods ever. He, however, gained weight.
We again stuck with the diet. We tried making mashed potatoes. We baked some “fries.”
And it tasted fine although we both started craving meat.
I felt like I was suffering from the low carb flu. I felt awful.
But another day complete.
On the third day, I woke up angry, but I’d lost another 1/2 pound. Ryan also gained weight and he was ready to give up.
Again we struggled through another day of feeling crappy…And my workout suffered.
On the fourth day, we both gained weight. We both decided that if we gained again, we just couldn’t put up with the fact that we felt completely and utterly horrible. (And trust me, we don’t give up on diets easily…Actually Ryan has never even acted like a diet was tough!)
On the fifth day, Ryan gave up. He gained weight again. I only chose to continue since I lost another pound, putting my total at 3 1/2 for four days.
It was hard struggling through without him on that fifth day. All of his food looked so good!
All I could think was, “I HATE POTATOES!” How the heck did all of these people like this diet!?! I feel hungry basically all the time. I’m low energy AND my workouts are suffering. I feel like I have the low carb flu, but unlike the low carb flu…IT WON’T GO AWAY!
That night I woke up starving in the middle of the night and felt like I was going to crawl out of my skin. I sat awake reading for hours until my body normalized.
When I woke up, I’d lost 2 more pounds, but I couldn’t handle any more. I was eating till I was full each meal, but I ended up feeling like I hadn’t eaten only 30 minutes later!
I’d lost 5.5lbs in 5 days, but the weight loss wasn’t worth the way I felt. While the potato diet wasn’t ever meant to be something long term, it wasn’t even maintainable for me for one week.
On that sixth day, I caved. I needed a re-feed. The second meat touched my lips, I felt re-energized.
But on Monday, I went right back on the diet. I’m trying to really give it a chance, but I’m not sure I’m going to make it another 5 straight days.
I’m sure there are people out there that this diet would work to kick-start their weight loss, but it isn’t for me….And definitely isn’t for Ryan.
His body definitely operates better on few to no carbs. I definitely need more carbs than he does, but all potatoes…Uhm…NO.
This diet doesn’t work for me. Is it worth trying?
Of course! (I did find it interesting that I didn’t really crave anything specific while eating ONLY potatoes. I did want real food, but nothing specific…It makes me wonder if you crave more specific things when you can occasionally have them…)
I would be interested to hear anyone else’s experience with the potato diet! And I’ll keep you posted during this second week of trying!
P.S. This does also highlight my point that just because someone says something works for them, doesn’t mean it will work for you!
P.P.S. Coming soon…An Under Armour giveaway! Get excited! 🙂
Oh No! Thanksgiving makes you fat!
There are many different schools of thought when it comes to holiday eating.
And I’ve written about these different schools just about every holiday.
Let’s face it…You can either diet or binge eat on Thanksgiving.
And in my opinion, neither will make you fat.
What makes you fat is the fact that you decide to eat unhealthy foods from Halloween until New Years.
That is what makes you fat.
A single day of indulgement (I can’t figure out if I made this word up or not) during the holidays isn’t the problem. It is the fact that you don’t just get right back on track once the day is over.
Yes there are leftovers. But you can make healthy dishes out of them. Or you can give them away to other people.
You don’t have to CHOOSE to continue to eat crap all the way until the New Year.
So stop freaking out about Thanksgiving! It is ONE DAY.
Worry about the fact that you’ve been stuffing your face since Halloween. Or the fact that if you don’t get back on track after Thanksgiving that you will start packing on the pounds!
So enjoy tomorrow! I know I will be!
Man Bicep 