Eating Paleo/SANE
I keep thinking to myself that I really should take photo’s of my meals and post the recipe’s, yet the problem is that by the time I think of all of that I’m already eating and I almost never work to a recipe because I’m hopeless at organising my pantry enough so that I’ve always got the exact ingredients for any particular dish. So I cook entirely based on what we have on hand, and how fresh it is. I’ve also started to cook a little extra of certain foods to be used at later times. For example, I might cook up some extra sweet potato mash to make pancakes out of, or roast some extra vegetables so that I can throw them together with some leftover meat to make a hearty and nourishing soup.
The food has been amazing and I guess you’ll just have to take my word for that. I’ve been making my own fruit & nut bars, dabbling with making chocolate and mug cakes, but more importantly I’ve been eating lots and lots of food without feeling bloated, without being left unsatisfied, without a great urge to snack between meals, and without falling for the temptations that pop up from time to time. Even better, all the measurements and math I have done has shown me that I am burning off the excess fat and building muscle, all naturally and as my body demands in response to both diet and exercise.
Shopping has become much easier, and yes, I can now trust myself to shop when I am hungry. If it has a label and I don’t recognise any of the ingredients, or if the ingredients are on my Paleo “banned substances” list, I just don’t buy it. I am making sure that we have a few standard “staple” foods, such as broccoli and sweet potato and lots of other vegetables as they arrive either in season or as it takes our fancy. We always have meats and sea foods, loads of fruits, nuts, seeds and dates, and of course spices and other natural “flavour enhancers”. I’m really enjoying the flavours of each of the foods that we eat, and I haven’t missed bread at all.
Well, OK, the only concession I will make is that I do miss ordinary flour, but only because it makes things like cakes and pancakes so much easier to make. My wife is Russian, and whenever we used to make pancakes they have always been very large and very thin, and often used as a wrap for other food such as fish and potatoes. I have been struggling to come up with anything that would allow me to make Paleo pancakes in a more Russian style because all of the ingredients I have used so far have not bound together very well, forcing me to make them very small so that I can flip them without breaking them. This morning I made sweet potato pancakes which turned out to be very tasty and satisfying, but sadly small and not very useful for using as a wrap. Oh well, I’ll just keep trying until I can find something that works. Oh… and the only other concession is that I do miss indulging in the occasional pizza… but I haven’t been tempted at all! Really!!
Working out
I recently posted that I had made a rough workout plan for myself, and that my workouts had been a little disorganised up until now. Since I am working out using High Intensity Interval Training, I’ve decided that before each workout, I will choose 8 different exercises, mixing in both compound and isolating movements, and working to maximum intensity over a 20-minute period. I’m doing this by basically creating a kind of Tabata set and repeating it 5 times, starting with a slightly lower intensity for the first set just in case I haven’t warmed up enough, and increasing the intensity as I complete each set. Yesterday I focussed entirely on my core, and today I did a full body workout that left me in a heavy sweat after only a couple of minutes.
I begin and end every workout exactly the same using the same warm-up and cool down routines every single time. This doesn’t tax my imagination too greatly, but also keeps things simple and familiar, and in a way it’s almost meditative so that I can be prepared mentally as well as physically.
- The Warm Up
- Deep Breathing for about 2 minutes
- In through nose and raising arms to expand the chest and breathing in to both chest and belly for 6-10 seconds
- Out through mouth , lowering arms, expelling all the air and sucking belly button into my spine over 10-15 seconds-
- TVA Vacuum, twice
- While breathing slowly and deeply, I do circles with all of my joints, bot clockwise and anti-clockwise, starting with my ankles and working up through all of the joints to end with my head and hands. I try to move as many joints in circles as I can at the same time to save time, and I get myself all nice and loosened up for;
- 100 x Jumping Jacks
- Deep Breathing for about 2 minutes
- The cool down
- Medium to Deep stretch of each muscle and joint group that I can easily target by myself.
- If I have help nearby, I do an assisted deep Psoas stretch.
- Laying down and resting for 1 minute reflecting on the workout that I have just completed. I think that this is important to review how the workout went and to see how I might improve it or do things differently another time.
Workout Schedule – Day 9
Instead of a HIIT set, I decided to try a slight variation of the Wednesday/weekend workout from Jay Cardeiello’s book Cardio Core 4×4.
1 | Side Plank + Oblique Twist | 20 reps x both sides |
2 | Side Plank + Hip Flexor Stretch | 30 seconds x both sides |
3 | Plank with high knee side swing | 20 reps x both legs |
4 | Tree Pose in the Push-up position | 30 seconds x both legs |
5 | Circling knees in the Push-up position | 15 reps x both directionsx both legs |
6 | 1 legged push-up position, swinging raised knee underneath into an oblique twist | 20 reps x both legs |
7 | Lie with back flat, legs fully extended vertically | 30 seconds |
8 | Hug Knees to chest | 30 seconds |
As workouts go, it’s wasn’t particularly strenuous. It would not be good for someone with a shoulder injury and certainly put my own weakened shoulders into an area of discomfort, particularly when doing side planks.
On reflection,
- Exercise 1 of the set. I have always enjoy doing the side stands with an oblique twist as this requires concentration and an effort to both complete the movement and to maintain a perfect plank. This is an exercise I have often incorporated into many of my HIIT sets.
- Exercise 6 of the set is one that I will be varying and including in future HIIT workouts. Jay calls this exercise a pendulum in his book. I like that it is a compound movement, but I think I’ll spice it up a little, so that it becomes a Push-up + Alternating Oblique Twist. An Upper body and Core all-in-one compound movement!
Workout Schedule – Day 10
Since the core workout felt like a bit of a let down, I made this workout a little more core intensive than I might otherwise have done. I did this as a HIIT/Tabata-styled workout, with 5 sets for a total of 20-minutes.
1 | Right Side Plank |
2 | 5Kg Dumbell Hammer Curls |
3 | Burpees |
4 | 6Kg Tricep Press (aka Skull Crusher) |
5 | Squats |
6 | Bicycle Crunch |
7 | Lat Pulldown |
8 | Left Side Plank |
This has kind of been my go-to workout for those times when I couldn’t be bothered thinking of something new or different to do. I’ll be sure to vary my next full body workout so that I get a better variety of movements and exercises into my workout “diet”.
I’d thought about adding the oblique twist to the planks, however once I’d been through the second set I was grateful for the breather. The hammer curls were done slowly (1-second curl up (palm in), 4-second curl down (palm out), because I prefer form over speed – especially when lifting weight. On reflection, I would have got more out of the curls if I increase the dumbell weights by 0.5-1.0Kg (given I’m getting stronger every time I work out). I should have also used a heavier weight for the Tricep Press, although I found that by the last set I had slowed down because I was starting to really feel the weight on the bar.
Extra workout – Day 10
Worked some more on my “guns” (pew-pew!!).
Given I felt that I hadn’t worked my arms as hard as I had hoped, I added an extra kilo to my dumbells and did 3 sets of hammer curls to failure. I also added an extra 4 kg to the barbell and redid the tricep presses, just to really mess up my arms! 😛
Recovery
In 3 words… Water… Protein… Fibre. I ate a really nice piece of grass fed rump steak, a mixed salad, and drank down a bottle of water. I’m now going off to relax and at the same time I’ll be attempting to use “will power” to encourage my muscles to start soaking up all of that lovely protein I’ve eaten!
So I’m now suddenly back on track as far as my workouts are concerned, with a vengeance it seems and I’m sure I’ll be feeling today’s efforts in my arms and shoulders tomorrow. It will be a good ache though, earned with hard effort and by staying focussed on my goals. Tomorrow will be a nice and somewhat easier yoga session, with a few nice extension movements and a whole heap of balance poses thrown in. I expect that my yoga will be a little wobbly though, given I worked my core a little harder today. 🙂