Monday, December 12, 2011

Week 2 of the reformation

Monday
Skipped the gym this morning, because I'm trying to get my shoulder well. It's starting to feel better, but I think I may take tomorrow off and see if I can get it nailed.
Started the morning with about 2oz of summer sausage [8g] and a bowl of blueberries.
For lunch, I did well - went to the Garage Cafe for a Grass Fed double burger, hold the bun [56g protein]. Instead of fries today, I got autumn seasonal vegetable medley, which included brussel sprouts, squash, carrots, kale (I think), and onions. They had chimichurri sauce for the meat, and I got them to put it on my veggies instead. Yum!
Tomorrow my beef jerky from Steve's Club should arrive, and my new protein "unsweetened" protein powder. I will see if the unsweetened powder doesn't have xylitol, which may mean I can eat more of it without digestive problems. Tonight, Jen is cooking Steaks that we got from Amazon Fresh. The brand is "NW Grass Fed Beef" so I think that they should be good for me!

This afternoon, I did a search on Amazon for "non-dairy protein bar" and found several results, including the Clif Builder bar. It turns out that the Clif builder bar is available about 100 feet away from me at the vending machine, so I went and tried it. It has [20g] of protein, but a lot of it is soy based, which my stomach didn't seem to handle well. I may try it one more time tomorrow, and see how it goes. there were a couple others on Amazon which were soy, gluten, dairy free which might be another option.

For dinner, I had Jen's leftover steak, about 4oz [28g] plus two turkey sausages [20g], some salad with vinaigrette and goat cheese crumbles, and slices of sweet potato (about 2oz?).

I'm heading over to the gym for Military Press this evening after dinner, then I'm planning on having a Steve's Club beef jerky [28g] for an after workout meal.

Total for today will be:
8+56+20+28+20+28 = 56+56+48 = 160g protein for the day.

Tuesday
Started the day with Steve's beef jerky [28g] and a bowl of blueberries for breakfast.
Lunch was a 1/3 lb burger [42g?] and some fries.

Saturday, December 10, 2011

Lots of parties this weekend!

Saturday
Started the day out strong with two hours of crossfit with dave. First hour was hip mobility and the second we did tumbling, rope pull ups and 30 second handstands x8 rounds. 4 min total is a lot of handstands, even against the wall.

For lunch, I had a half pound burger at hale's and followed it up with a snack of summer sausage, protein drink (just one scoop) and a bowl of blueberries. Total protein so far of 80g.
I took Elijah to a bday party and had little mini tacos in corn tortillas, which my gluten free app tells me were compliant. Also was able to avoid eating the cheese which was on the table.

We had folks over for an early chanukah celebration. We had potato latkes and my wife made me a special batch with no matzo meal (which has gluten), so I made it through the night clean on that one. I was able to eat about 10 chunks of deep fried beef with Lysander's rub. Not sure how much protein each was, but I doubt I made it to 100g from the fried beef. I had a 1 scoop glass of Protein shake [12g] before the party which helped with the total protein for the day.

Unfortunately, a friend brought a bag of ghirardelli milk chocolate peppermint bark, and as the evening proceeded and my inhibitions were lowered by our libations, I succumbed to the Peppermint Bark. It didn't break "Rule 1" which is no Gluten, but it broke the no dairy rule. I think this is recoverable.

Interestingly enough, I went to the doctor for the follow up visit on Monday, 12/5 and started the diet on Tuesday, 12/6. I weighed in on 12/6 at 184.2 with 52.6lb body fat, and this morning I weighed in at 186.1 with 49.2 lbs body fat. This is of course according to a body fat scale which is notoriously poor for getting the body fat right. But, it is cause for cautious optimism. Of course, now that I have written this down, I'm sure that things will go sideways tomorrow.

Sunday
This morning, I started the day with a bowl of blueberries, 3 oz of sweet potato (raw, sliced), 5 oz of summer sausage [20g] and 6 turkey sausage sticks [16g]. (And gave the last two pieces of peppermint bark to the kids so I didn't eat them)

The rest of the day was a pretty big fail. I had some more summer sausage [12g?] at midday, and then went to another kid's birthday party. The only thing to eat there (besides cake, sun chips and string cheese which are verboten) was grapes. I had a few of those. I had a glass of 1 scoop protein [12g] when we got home, and then two turkey patties [16gx2] and another glass of protein shake [12g].

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Trying to get lots of protein

Wednesday, 12/8 -- Day 2
This morning i weighed about 184 lbs. This seems like as good a weight at any to start my own personal paleo challenge. It's the same weight I was at beginning the first paleo challenge in the spring. I started the day with about three oz of summer sausage [13g protein], a bowl of blueberries and a Steve's Ironman Paleokit [35g protein, 27g carb]. I have the bad feeling that I'm gonna have to cut back on the fructose from the Paleo kits and the blueberries.  Fortunately, or unfortunately, I'm out of paleo kits for now. So I'll not be getting the carbs from that anymore. I'll have to replace the protein with the powder I ordered from Amazon yesterday (should be here tomorrow with Prime shipping!)

Lunchtime was a burger, no bun [28g of protein] and some fries (booo!) Fries are high Glycemic index, but at least gluten and dairy free.

I had a 70% cocoa chocolate bar to get through the afternoon, and another third of a loaf of summer sausage for 13g protein.

At the barking dog, I got a 10 oz hamburger! [70g protein]. The tally for the day is not sooo bad:

13+13+28+35+70 = 159g.

I also had three glasses of wine, which should be ok (?). I think that they may have been 8oz pours, because I didn't feel so hot this morning.

Thursday
I woke up early this morning after my several glasses of wine last night and was able to convince myself to go down to the Crossfit for the 7am class. It was "Squat day" in the Wendler 5-3-1 program, and I was on the 5/3/1+ week, so finished with 12 reps at 103kg. Not so bad! Next week I'll move my theoretical 1rep max up to 125kg or 130kg and start the cycle again. If you're interested in getting strong, and/or curious about what the 5-3-1 program is, check out this link: http://www.t-nation.com/free_online_article/sports_body_training_performance/how_to_build_pure_strength

Post-workout breakfast is 2.5oz of summer sausage [about 11g protein] and a bowl of blueberries, no whip cream. I'm out of the Paleo Kits and deciding whether to order some more. I think I will, although before I do that, I want to figure out if I'm going to try to cut out berries in order to cut down on fructose carbs. I should get my vegetable protein powder today from Amazon which will replace the protein I was getting from the Paleo kits if my stomach can handle it!

Hmm, just decided that I would get the Grass fed Just Jerky from Steve's. 28g of protein, no carbies. I ordered a 25 pack for about $6/pack.

Lunch consisted of two 4oz patties of Grass fed beef burger [56g protein], hold the bun, hold the bacon, hold the cheese. they also gave me french fries. I have some cognitive dissonance around fries. They are gluten-free, but high GI and probably have about 70g of carbs. I should probably find some other veggie carbs.

Dinner - a 1/2 pound steak [56g protein] and a little bit of salad. Had to forego the cheesy bits that Jen had added to the salad. For "dessert," I had my first shake with the new veggie protein powder [23g protein]. It has all kinds of stuff in it - chlorophyll, spirulina, algae, and rice, pea and hemp protein! Didn't taste bad, but hard to mix up, even with the little mixey thing that we have. May have to use the blender in the future.

Total protein for the day:
11+56+56+23=146g protein.  A little low.

Friday
This morning I was up and at-em for the 12 days of Crossfit at our box. Like the song, you do 12 rounds of stuff, each one adding one more thing onto it. It was a brutal 40 minute WOD.  I had Ribose-D in water before the workout, and afterwards I had 2.75oz of summer sausage [11g protein] and some carrots. Also, I had one scoop of Veggie protein in about 8oz of water [11g protein], which affected my stomach less than the two scoops I had last night. I will probably try to have one scoop in the morning and one at night.

For lunch, I had a double burger and fries again [56g protein]. I forgot to get the seasonal veggie medley until it was too late, so I got them dang ol' carby fries. So I'm only at 78g protein so far. I'm not too worried because tonight is potluck at the gym, and Dave usually makes copious amounts of chicken sausages, so I can probably put down close to 100g of protein from those!

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Starting again, but not as part of the Paleo challenge

It's about six weeks after the Paleo challenge, and I'm up to 184 lbs. That's up 22 lbs from my minimum weight back in June while I was training for the half marathon. It's not all bad, as I've been working on putting on some muscle. Unfortunately, it's not clear how much of the additional weight is fat and how much is muscle.

But...I have learned some stuff over the past six weeks. My goal since the middle of the paleo challenge was to put on muscle. From reading the blogs, I learned that I had to eat an enormous amount of protein along with lifting in order to put on muscle. So I bought some protein powder, whey based, and started drinking a lot of milk. One morning I put two servings of protein powder (22g protein x2) in a 16oz glass of milk (8g of protein x2), and I learned what people meant by "my stomach didn't handle it well.  They mean you get gas. Lots of gas. So I ruled out dairy as a source of protein, which also ruled out my atkins bars, which has 20g of protein each, but this was mostly from whey as well.

I then went to get a food allergy test, as suggested by Duncan at the gym. I went to my doctor who did an "IGE" test. I never actually saw the doc. The nurse took my blood and called me with the test results, which said basically that I wasn't allergic to anything.  I was telling a friend about this, and he suggested I go to his naturopath doctor. Long story short, I did. She did the IGG food allergy test, and it turns out I'm allergic to lots of stuff! Including pretty much all dairy (except sheep and goat's milk), gluten of course, beef and lamb came out high, as well as almonds, garlic, and some beans. After getting this I scheduled an appt with her to review the results. In the two weeks before the appt, I figured that I'd be on the kale juice only diet once we met. It turned out not so bad. She said I can still eat meat, but I should completely cut out gluten and dairy, and cut out eggs, beans, and garlic and almonds for the first month. Strange, that's the paleo diet - no gluten, beans and dairy! Go figure.

In addition, she has given me a ton of supplements to take -- Seriphos (to sleep better), which lowers cortisol levels, multi-vitamin, mega-dose (5000IU) of D3, sublingual DHEA to promote the breakdown into different testosterones, Taurine (I was low on taurine, which is an essential protein (Amino acid?). That's about it. My medicine shelf looks like a geriatric!
So today, I started on my new gluten and dairy-free diet. For breakfast, I had about a third of a loaf (about 3 oz) of beef summer sausage [13g of protein], along with a bowl of blueberries with no whip cream :(. For lunch, I had a double burger at the work cafe, with no bun and no cheese. [about 56g of protein?] I just read on the net that 1oz of beef is about 7g of protein. I also had some fries. I know these are bad carbs, but since they don't have gluten or dairy, I ate them. I had a 70% cocoa chocolate bar in the afternoon. No bad stuff, but some un needed sugar. For dinner, I had an 8oz steak, and about 3/4 of my wife's steak, so 14x7g = 98g! of protein. Now I'm finishing a big bowl of blueberries for dessert (still no whip cream). Jen made vegetables for dinner, but they were cooked in garlic butter, which I realized too late is dairy, so I passed on this.  So I made it through the first day with no dairy or gluten! And total protein intake was:

Breakfast 13g
Lunch 56g
Dinner 98g
Total = 167g!

That's almost what I need, which is 1g for every pound I weigh. So good start for the first day. I also ordered http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001EOKYHK/ref=ox_ya_os_product, which is a plant-based vegan protein powder, made of pea, rice and hemp protein, plus "barley grass, barley juice, spirulina, wheat grass, chlorella, alfalfa, red beet root, broccoli, and chlorophyll." It does have some xylitol, so I hope it is just a small amount and won't give me gas. We will see. This has like 23g of protein per serving.

Unfortunately, I skipped the gym today because my shoulder has been sore. I am hoping getting the gluten out and adding more protein will help reduce the chance of injury! Again, we will see.