Diet

Food, diet, and eating

NorCal CrossFit Fuel Challenge 2014

Posted by bronick on January 8, 2014
Posted in: Diet, Fuel Challenge. Tagged: , .

Wow, over a year since my last post :-(

Needless to say, this past year… not so good in terms of getting my life back on a healthy track. I’ve let a lot of excuses keep me from eating better and going to the gym. It has been a very long time since I’ve done any serious cooking at home and I’ve had way way way too much pizza as evident by my expanding waistline. Not to mention the lack of energy and horrible performance the few time I did make it to CrossFit. I’m basically back to where I started… overweight and out of shape.

So with the start of the new year, I’ve once again decided to join the Fuel Challenge (http://norcalcrossfit-fuel.blogspot.com/2013/12/norcal-crossfit-fuel-challenge-january.html) at the gym but will attempt the Whole 30 (http://whole30.com/) this time. The catch is that due to logistical issues, it may not be an official challenge in the competition sense (not that I was looking for that), so we will see. For me, it more about the accountability and support of having other folks doing the same.

I’m even trying to get my mom to join in unofficially. We keep talking about trying to eat healthier and how we keep finding reasons why we haven’t done so yet. Hopefully this year we’ll be able to help keep other going in the right the direction.

I’ve just been lacking any sort of motivation and organization around getting my life going back in the direction I want. I’m been caught in that cycle of eat crap, feel like crap, no energy and don’t want deal with cook so eat more crap, feel like crap and don’t want to cook, eat more crap, feel like crap, etc… Going to the gym, cleaning my apartment, being active, and just being social in general have also all been lacking. Time to change all that.

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.

 

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!

 

Wed Meals

Posted by bronick on February 18, 2010
Posted in: Diet. Tagged: . Leave a Comment

Breakfast

  • Chicken Apple Sausage & Gouda scramble from Hobee’s (leftovers)
  • Apple

Other

  • Coffee w/ Splenda and half & half

Lunch

  • Paelo Turkeyloaf
  • Grilled asparagus

Other

  • Iced americano w/ Splenda and half & half

Snack

  • Mesquite Beef Jerky
  • Dried Fruit
  • Apple

Post-WOD

  • Whey Protein Shake

Dinner

  • Pizza :-( … Yes why why why do I do it…

Overall Paleo rating for the day (out of 10): 3
Mainly this is because the only Paleo meal I had was lunch.  CFSC posted that they are going to be doing a Paleo Challenge and already setup a new blog for nutrition (http://cfscpaleo.wordpress.com). Can’t wait for an official challenge since I kinda been halfassing it on my own.

Getting ready for the week…

Posted by bronick on November 17, 2009
Posted in: Uncategorized. Tagged: . Leave a Comment

So I’m trying to get my eating back under control. I’m reading up on the Paleo diet, but for now its the Zone Dinner tonight was zoned-chilli with leftovers for the week.

Zoned Chilli

Zoned Chilli

I also wiped a Zone egg & spinach pie for breakfast.

Zone egg & spinach Breakfast Pie

Zone egg & spinach Breakfast Pie

And now I just need to get back to the gym, which with my on-call finishing up tomorrow that shouldn’t a problem.