Diet

30 Day Paleo Challenge – Week 1

Posted by bronick on June 9, 2012
Posted in: Food Log, Fuel Challenge. Tagged: .

Week number 1 is done! And overall I think I did pretty good. While didn’t do so good with packing food to bring to the office, I did try to make some smart choices… like getting a carne asada salad rather than a pastrami sandwich. I did do much better with breakfast and dinner having finally cleaned up my kitchen and did some cooking at home. Here are a few snapshots:

Another area I didn’t do so well with is the drinking, as I did continue to have some wine with dinner throughout the week. But in spite of this, I did still manage to make process according to the scale (which I know is not always a good measure, but it is nice to see progress there).

With regards to starting on a Friday, I think it works out well. As my weekends tends to be a little off when I’m being social, so rather than finish up the week that that way I get to start off the week that way. Speaking of the next week… its time to bump things up. I’m going to make an attempt to limit the amount of nuts and fruits, as well as not eat out so much.

Oh, here is the complete menu for the rest of week #1…  Read more…

30 Day Paleo Challenge

Posted by bronick on June 4, 2012
Posted in: Food Log, Fuel Challenge. Tagged: .

So once again I fell completely off the wagon, MIA from the gym, and was living off pizza. When will I learn :-(

With the start of the new month (June), I decided to try and get back on the Paleo/Primal track. Since I don’t seem to be doing so good with the “trying to just eat better”, I’ve decided to join in with a few other folks on http://robbwolf.com who decided to do a 30 day challenge for June (read here).

I was a little weary of starting on a Friday, as I usually like to start fresh with the beginning of the week on a Monday. However, considering that the weekends are usually my downfall, I figured decided it was a good thing after all. And for the most part I made it through pretty well, aside from a few glasses of wine and some cheese. This included resisting the pizza they provided for a meeting and later birthday cake at the office on Friday.

Here’s a sample of some of the meals which I make:


And here is the full meal log… Continue Reading

Primal Week 2

Posted by bronick on January 17, 2012
Posted in: Primal.

Ok, so not so good this week. Most days I was good and did actually prepare a food at home. However, I did also have a few off days (typically after Id had a few drinks). Last weekend I did cook up the egg muffins (aka mini crust-less quiches) and stuffed peppers. The quiches where awesome, the peppers… no so much. I never did get around to making the chicken salad last week which resulted in me eating out a bit still.

As I said, I did earlier… I did have few breakdowns: Went out with the co-workers for sushi sake on Thu (followed up by Taco Bell) . Then out on Sat with another friend (followed up by Taco Bell and a police chase next to me… read story). And then Sun was wings with accompanying not-so-primal sides and drink.

Here are a few  meals from this week:

Primal Week 1

Posted by bronick on January 9, 2012
Posted in: Diet, Primal.

Week #1 is done… and overall I did pretty good. I didnt get around to doing much prep work last weekend, so I did end up eating out a bit and short-cutting meals by using some precooked items. But I did make chooses along the primal lines for these (such as organic chicken meatballs w/ minimal extra ingredients). My breakfast was usually an omelet w/ bacon, veggies, and salsa. Lunches tended to be a salad with some sort of meat (Carnitas, chicken, lamb, etc…). So over all I think I did pretty good.

I did have one off day… which was of course Friday night. The stuff that was off the primal path was some vodka, vodka tonics, and a burrito. But the rest of the day was good, and Im not stressing… since one of the things I said I wanted to do this time was to work more for the sustainable eating v.s. going super strict and then fall off again.

Here are a few of my meals…

 

As for week #2, I did spend some time on Sunday planning, prepping, and cooking for the week. On the menu so far is: Egg Muffins (w/ peppers, onions, mushrooms, bacon), Primal Stuffed Peppers (beef & pork), Bacon-Chicken-Avocado Salad.

2011 year in review… FAIL :-(

Posted by bronick on January 6, 2012
Posted in: Diet, Primal. Tagged: , , , , , .

So I started writing this a while back, but never got around to posting….

While I had some great times in 2011, including traveling around the world, with regards to my health & fitness… it was a big FAIL. During this past holiday season I came the the following sad realizations….

  • Having to buy XXL clothes.
  • Gaining back all the weight I lost back in 2006/2007.
  • Being one of long time members of CrossFit Santa Clara, but being one the worst athletes.

I knew I had kinda let myself go a bit, but it wasn’t until recently that I realized just how bad.  I’m not saying I’m back where I started, as I know I’m definitly in better shape than I was back in 2006 before I started working out at all.  Over the past few years, my weight had been slowly creeping back up… but I think I held things at bay by hitting the gym often enough. However, since I got back from my sabbatical earlier this year I just never seemed to be able to get into a groove again. And then the holidays hit (Hallowed, Thanksgiving, and Christmas/New Years)… a few too many Starbuck’s Pumpkin Spice Lattes and Peppermint Mochas.

So now that the holidays are over,  its time to get back to business. I usually don’t really do a New Year’s Resolution, but I think I need at least one this year… Go Primal. Eating has always been my downfall and that needs to be my #1 priority to fix. On Monday, I embarked in the “cleaning out the fridge and cabinets” endeavor as well as hitting the store to stock up on veggies and stuff. I brought into the office  all my cookies, candies, and chocolates from the holidays so they aren’t at home with me any more.

I’ve started making food at home, but haven’t gotten into full swing yet and have still been getting my breakfast from the office cafe. But at least I’m ordering basically primal foods (eggs, veggies, bacon) and have been doing the black coffee.

To help keep kick-start the new year and keep me on track, I have decided join (although a bit late) in the 30 Day Fuel Challenge from the gym. Since I was already going Primal, I figured why not. I still need to get the official welcome pack. I have been logging my meals, so I now I just need to figure out the points for each day.

Resolution #2 is Get Active… this include both getting back to the gym on a regular basis and finding stuff to do outside of the gym. I think not doing stuff outside of the gym was also one of my downfalls. Back in 2007 I lot a ton of weight and got pretty fit, but never really started doing any physical activity outside of the gym. There are so may things I keep saying that I want to do: mountain biking, rock climbing, hiking, kayaking… but I never did get into doing them on a regular basis, and even less so this past year. So for this one I’m saying that at least once a week I will get out to do something active and fun. Like the Primal Blueprint says… “play”. Be it a hike, rock climbing, vollyball, or just a simple bike ride on my local trail.

Its been a while since I’ve posted any sort of goal or resolutions, but as they say… its easy to give up if nobody knows your trying. So a request to all my fitness minded friends out there…

PLEASE call me out if you see me slacking.

 

Back to it… 2011-11-07 WOD – Back Squats, then row/pullup/wallball

Posted by bronick on November 8, 2011
Posted in: Diet, Paleo, WOD. Tagged: , , , .

Ok, so I haven’t been so good with this stuff as of recently. Its been quite a while since I’ve been into the gym consistently for various legit and not so legit reason, I made it in ONCE over the prior two weeks. But worse than that, I’ve also been eating like crap, and by crap I mean lots of pizza… go figue, isn’t that always my downfall.

Anyway, as of Sunday I started trying to eat cleaner again (i.e. Paleo/Primal) and did good yesterday (Monday) as well. This included hitting up Costco to stock up on a few things so I don’t continue to order pizza. I really really need find some motivation to strict with eating clean.

It was also the first day back to gym… so needless to say, my legs are a little (aka ALOT) sore today.

I went kind of light on the back squats since my back started bothering me during the warm up (ugh). For the metcon, the jumping pull-ups where surprisingly hard… the legs just didn’t want to function. But it felt good to be back.

WOD:

Back Squats: 10 reps, add weight, 8 reps, add weight, 6 reps, add weight, 4 reps, add weight, max reps.

For Time:

  • Row 750 meters
  • 50 Jumping pull ups
  • 50 Wall Ball Shots

RESULTS:

Back Squats – 10@135,  8@155, 6@165,  4@185, 8@205

Metcon –  10:33

Pizza + Ice Cream + Ben = Bad Bad Bad

Posted by bronick on August 8, 2011
Posted in: Diet. Tagged: , , , , .

Wake Up Call (2011-08-08): I was pretty happy that when I got back from my sabbatical that I hadn’t gained a lot of weight despite all my eating, but then again I was walking everywhere. Well, since I’ve been back I haven’t been very good with my eating and I’m back to sitting at a desk for 8 hours a day. Plus I haven’t been very good with getting back into hitting the gym on a regular basis. I was planning on starting back on Paleo the beginning of this month, but didn’t quite get going last week and finally decided to do it this week. So after rolling out of bed this morning,  I stepped on a scale…

Weight: 201.8 lbs

I figured it would be bad, but wasn’t quite expecting to have tipped 200 again… but I did. Then again, looking back, that’s what I get for having pizza and ice cream while watching TV way to often over the past month. You’d think I would have figured it out by now, not to do this type of stuff… but I do.

Back At It…Again: Time to get back to getting in shape… again. Item #1 on the list is to fix my eating. I hit the store last night to pick up a few things to toss in a crockpot so I’ll have food ready when I get home. As I’ve said in the past, one of my big problems when I have no food ready to go I end up making very very bad food choices.

Every time I’ve done Paleo I’ve had good results. The problem is that I don’t stick with it for anytime extended time frame. Being summer, I’ll have lots of obstacles in the way to throw me off track, but I need make sure I minimize the damage and get back on track. I’ve done the “I’ll start back tomorrow”, and then the next “tomorrow” and the next, and etc way to many times. No more months or weeks off!!

Item #2 is to get back to the gym. I’ve been “doing” CrossFit for about 3 years now. I love it. I’ve made progress. But no-where near what I’ve seen other folks make in a fraction of that time. I say “doing” because I haven’t be been very consistent and I haven’t been very motivated/focused recently.

Lack of motivation is big issue for me recently, I just can not for the life of me seem to get or stay motivated any more. When I was doing SGX (photo), I managed to stay pretty well motivated and stuck to it for an entire year. No such luck with Crossfit & Paleo. At most I’ve managed to keep it up almost 2 months. I gotta figure out how to get past this…

Part of this is that I need to set some goals. I took a goal setting seminar at the gym a while back, but haven’t used any of it.  As of recent, I’ve just kinda been going through the motions of going to the gym without any end goal other than to goto the gym. While “going to the gym” sounds good, its not clear goal and without someway to measure any real progress, it easily dies off. To help give me some goals to work towards, I’m restarting my Suck List from my old blog. I need to take the time come up with both short and long term goal.

Now lets see if I can actually stick to any of this. Now lets get start and do this!

 

Back to Paleo first week… B-

Posted by bronick on April 12, 2011
Posted in: Paleo. 7 comments

So my first week of trying to get back on Paleo went… ok. I give myself a B-, as I was probably about 80% paleo for the week overall. I was good at the start of the week, up until Thursday with the co-workers. We all went out for dinner at Roux (http://www.rouxkitchen.com/) and I couldn’t resist the jambalaya or a few cocktails. I will say, it was the best jambalaya I’ve gotten from a restaurant yet. Sat dinner and Sun breakfast were also not so Paleo.

One of my other sticking points is coffee. I’ve been doing Americanos with half & half  and Splenda.

So, let us see how this week goes… I did pickup some stuff over the weekend to cook, but haven’t made it yet. That is what is on the agenda for tonight is… so steak or Paleo Butter Chicken? Decisions…

O Paleo, Paleo! wherefore art thou Paleo?

Posted by bronick on April 5, 2011
Posted in: Paleo. Tagged: . Leave a Comment


Once again I’ve let my eating get the better (or more accurately, the worst) of me. Since the Paleo Challenge ended, I haven’t been very good with my eating. Its been a mix paleo, pizza, almost paleo, pizza, burgers, pizza, beer, etc… ugh. Yes, its really that bad. If I don’t have anything ready, I usually end up ordering pizza.

“Eat like crap, feel like crap”… kinda. One of my problems is that when I do eat bad, even after eating clean I don’t really feel like crap. However, I think its finally caught up with me. While I might not feel like crap initially, as of recently I have been lacking energy. So…

With a new month and the start of the week, I’ve decided to get back on Paleo for at least 30 days. After coming home to some slow cooked dry rubbed spare ribs (w/ broccoli), it was shopping and then cooking:

I need to make sure I stay on top of my meals and have stuff ready to go so there is no temptation to order pizza. Hence all the prep last night to keep me going for most the week. Now I just need to keep up with it. Here I go…

Paleo Challenge 2011 – Finish

Posted by bronick on February 16, 2011
Posted in: Fuel Challenge. Tagged: , , . Leave a Comment

After a workout at the gym yesterday, it was off for the post-paleo dunk! And the hydrostatic results are…

2011-01-01 2011-02-15 Change
Weight 190.0 lbs 180.2 lbs -9.8 lbs
Bodyfat 21.6% 18.49% -3.11%
Fat 41.04 lbs 33.32 lbs -7.72 lbs
Lean 148.96 lbs 146.88 lbs -2.08 lbs

(View more photo progress here…)

I’m pretty happy with the results. The guy from FitnessWave said 3% change in BF was good. On the down side, I did lose some lean mass as well. I have to say that this time around I didn’t feel that I had quite as much energy as the last challenge. Not sure what all plays into that, but talking to the guy it might have been underfeeding. He said a lose of 2-3 lbs lean mass is a good indicator of that. So I guess I need to eat more ;-P In the past I did more snacking which I didn’t do this time around.

I am definitly planning on sticking with mainly paleo eating going forward (after a few indulgences ;-D ), as it definitely does seem to work well. But there are few things I will be adding back in now that the challenge is over… like a post-WOD protein shake.

Looking forward to hearing how other folks did at the post-paleo party at the gym this coming Friday!