Steak, chicken or salmon for breakfast?
20 Feb 2012 3 Comments
in Diet and Nutrition, My Training Updates Tags: Breakfast, chicken, Clean and Lean Cookbook, diet, Eating, fitness, healthy eating plan, James Duigan, protein, salmon, Scrambled eggs, Steak
At the beginning of my diet, health and fitness search I wouldn’t eat breakfast at all thinking that I was saving calories and convinced that I ate less overall by not eating first thing. The days when I did actually manage to eat breakfast were when I had been awake for hours and breakfast would usually consist of yet another cup of coffee accompanied by (on a good day porridge with butter and sugar) or on a bad day white toast, crumpets or something similar. Always followed up a couple of hours later by something sweet and hoping I could just get through until lunch!
A very early change to my diet was getting my head around the concept of eating breakfast (a) at all and (b) within an hour of waking up both of which were a real challenge to the way I thought about food. I have been slowly changing my diet over the last year and trying to get better at eating clean – I never ate lots of processed food or ready meals but the culprits for me were flour (in anything from bread to pasta), white rice, potatoes and obviously sugary stuff.
Like this:
Living with the lion….Part 2
07 Feb 2012 Leave a Comment
in My Training Updates Tags: Calorie, Clean and Lean Cookbook, James Duigan, Lou Schuler, Muscle, Physical fitness, protein, Rachel Cosgrove, The Female Body Breakthrough: The Revolutionary Strength-Training Plan for Losing Fat and Getting the Body You Want, weight loss
It’s all very well learning to live with the lion outside your door but how about we take a leaf out his book (I know I’ve mixed my metaphors!) and learn to eat like one?
Having had my own personal nutrition/weight issue the last few weeks I have been working with Kieran to understand what is working and probably more importantly what I am doing wrong. We started with my recording everything I ate on My Fitness Pal and it wasn’t until this week that we started to discuss the number of calories and the amount of protein I was consuming. Bit of a light-bulb moment when I realised I was eating, at max, 1200 calories a day (and frequently much fewer) and Kieran realised I was only eating at max 40g of protein a day. And this is despite my training 4-5 times a week; I was quite obviously not eating enough and definitely not enough protein!
Looking at the Rachel Cosgrove book “The Female Body Breakthrough” and my other current favourite “The New Rules of Lifting for Women – Lift like a Man, Look like a Goddess” by Lou Schuler its quite clear that the consistently recommended amount of protein is around 1g per lb of LBM but that overall the amount of macro nutrients consumed should be the rough proportions of 40/30/30 of carbs/fat/protein respectively.
On that basis I need to seriously up my protein content!
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Clean and Lean – progress so far!
10 Jan 2012 Leave a Comment
in My Training Updates Tags: Clean and Lean, Clean and Lean Cookbook, healthy eating plan, James Duigan, nutrition
Well, the principle of eating clean and lean is there – protein at every meal and lots of veggies – but finding it hard to be a complete convert.
Reading the meal plans and bad, better, best from the Clean and Lean Cookbook James Duigan) I am not so very far off but I’m afraid that life gets in the way a bit – I know its no excuse really and if I was better organised or planned things better I would do my prep at the weekend and have lots of yummy meals just waiting for me. But juggling that with spending time with my family and looking after poorly bunnies (one of my house rabbits has been ill and is needing hourly nursing) means that completely Clean and Lean has to be compromised!
So, knowing all of that and rationalising it all in my head. why do I feel guilty when what I eat is less than perfect? Why do I put more pressure on myself and then beat myself up for not achieving perfection? Why is it when I have had a reasonably healthy home made meal (meatballs cooked in a homemade fresh tomato sauce with wild rice) do I feel bad that it wasn’t chicken rice and broccoli?
I know I should really go back to keeping a food diary; it would tell me how off kilter I am but probably more importantly it would show me how good I am being. BUT…….I spent so long obsessing about calories, cutting back and thinking about everything I ate; it was so hard to let go of all those years of thinking about every pound lost that I am scared that if I start recoding it, all those feelings will come back. Hmmm, bit of a dilemma to be explored a bit further……
