Swimingly

I started my job last week and right now I’m working from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM CST. I decided the best way to get to the gym would be to just get up at 5:45 and go before work. This leaves me plenty of time in the morning to get ready for work too.

I have started focusing on swimming as my main form of exercise right now. I like to start out with a little water walking and then do some body weight exercises like squats, leg lifts, etc. The water really helps me a lot because it takes the impact off my joints plus it feels great.

I took swimming lessons as a kid so I do know the basic strokes but I am way out of practice. I spend part of my time in the pool working on fundamentals so I can start doing laps. I am currently working on being able to put my head under the water and time my breathing. Today was the first time I was able to swim a crawl stroke across the deep end, which is about a third of a lap lane long, and get my breathing under control.

I know with time this will get easier because I will learn and train myself to swim better. That’s pretty exciting really because I can do this and I’m already showing improvement. Plus, just being in the pool floating around feels awesome.

Dinner Invention

I wasn’t sure what I wanted for dinner tonight but I did know I had a pound of ground beef that needed to be used. I looked around on the web for recipes but couldn’t find something that I both wanted and had all the ingredients for. I really didn’t want another night of hamburger patties. So I decided to get creative and just start cooking and see what happened, what I ended up with was a type of paleo hash that’s actually quite good.

Paleo Slaw Hash

• 1lb of ground beef, you could use turkey or sausage
• 1 avocado, mashed
• 1/3 cup coconut milk
• 1 package of broccoli slaw
• seasonings you prefer, I used Mrs Dash Table Blend
• preferred oil, I used olive oil

Heat oil in a skillet and brown ground beef, add seasoning.

In a bowl combine mashed avocado and coconut milk and stir until mixed. Mixture will mostly likely be lumpy.

Once ground beef has been brown add the avocado/coconut milk mix and stir well.

Once well mixed add one bag of broccoli slaw and stir well. Allow mixture to cook while stirring frequently.

The broccoli slaw will start to wilt and get a deeper shade of green, this means it is ready to eat.

 

 

Paleo Breakfast

When I went to bed last night I was hungry which I guess I expected to happen but I was surprised that it actually kept me awake. I survived the night though and decided to celebrate by cooking a delicious breakfast. I went with two slices of bacon, coffee with almond milk, and paleo pancakes. I put the recipe below for the pancakes and they were tasty but it was more like banana flavored scrambled egg. I had a hard time flipping the cakes so they came out a little mushy. I might play around with adding some almond or coconut flour to see if that helps make them hold together better.

Easy Paleo Pancakes

• 1 banana
• 1 large egg

Mash banana in a bowl until fairly smooth. Add egg and stir with a fork until completely mixed.

Heat your choice of oil in a pan, I used olive oil, and drop batter into pan. Let pancake cook until brown on the bottom and flip. (This was nearly impossible for me without it breaking apart, don’t worry, it still tastes pretty good!)

I ate mine plain but they could easily be topped with berries. You can also add cinnamon and salt if you desire, I did not. No pictures on this one because it was not photographic.

Paleo Challenge Day 1 Journal

I woke up late today so skipped breakfast and for lunch I just had an orange and some slices on salami because I was in a hurry to get somewhere. I met up with a friend I hadn’t seen in probably 10 years and met a new friend too. We met at a coffee shop so I did get a latte but with almond milk. While not considered totally paleo I’ve decided I’m not going to give up my coffee and tea because I like them and they are healthy drinks in my mind. Have  to be  careful of the syrups though. I picked up almond milk at the store because it does add a nice flavor to coffee.

I went to the local coop to pick up some of the items I felt I needed to properly eat during this challenge, like almond milk, sun butter, avocados  etc. I picked up a couple bacon cranberry burger patties because they looked good and I’m having those for dinner plus asparagus cooked with a little bit of ghee. This is the first time I’ve ever used ghee so but it does have a light buttery-ish flavor to it. The cranberries in the burger patties have a little sugar in them so it’s not completely paleo but compared to how I’ve been eating I don’t think it’s a big deal at all.

This is how my dinner came out, it was quite tasty.

Dinosaur (Paleo) Diet

I know it’s not really called the Dinosaur Diet but I’m going to call it that so it sounds more awesome. I was motivated by Steve’s 30 day paleo diet to go ahead and join him and do the challenge myself. I have been reading about the paleo diet and it’s actually a fairly sound set up from a clean foods stand point. I’m a big fan of clean foods and I think this 30 day challenge will help me get back into eating the way I actually enjoy.

I’m planning to easy into paleo for the first few days though and probably won’t go 100% paleo but rather stick to the 80/20 rule. I mostly plan to make an exception for yogurt (quality yogurt with clean ingredients  and possibly milk because I need a source of vitamin D supplementation due to a known deficiency.

Today I bought a grill pan at ShopKo so I can cook up my veggies and meat grilled style which is how I really like my steak and asparagus. I can’t wait for the farmers’ market to start and hope to get most of my foods there.

For those that don’t know the paleo diet the following are the basic foods you eat:

• Lean meats including eggs
• Seafood
• Healthy fats
• Nuts and seeds
• Fruits
• Vegetables

Anything that doesn’t fall into that list is considered non-paleo. This means no dairy, legumes, sweets, salty snacks, or grains. It’s going to take time to adjust to not eating cheese or grains but I know I can do it.

I still need to go shopping and start meal planning to make this easier. I see eating a lot of eggs for breakfast but that’s something I used to do all the time, but this time there won’t be cheese involved. I’m really interested to see if this will help with some of my health problems, especially my fructose malabsorption.

Adding fructmal restrictions to paleo isn’t too difficult, just can’t eat some types of fruit, especially apples for some reason. The fruits I do best with are oranges and berries so I’ll still have some I can eat. Mostly I need to fill up on vegetables because most of those are good to go, except maybe tomatoes and onions but I’m still not positive.

I’m Bringing Bloggy Back

Time to get my act into gear. Many changes have happened – I finished school, graduated, got a few jobs in health care but ended up losing my job. I have been unemployed since February and despite many applications and even some interviews I have yet to land an actual job offer. I had one that looked close, I even had two interviews, but they never called back after the second one even though it felt like it went really well. I have decided that it’s time to get back to my health. I’m going to start slowly with walking and swimming.

I plan to start going to a morning water pilates class at the Y and go for lunch time walks around my apartment complex to start. Then I need to work on really cleaning up my eating. I seem to have developed fructose malabsorption issues and I really should clean out a lot of fructose and sugar from my diet. I need to get my kitchen cleaned up and re-organized so I can cook easier in there, right now there’s not enough good counter space. I plan to move an extra tv stand I have into the kitchen to hold my microwave which will free up space. It will also give me more storage space for my crockpots and cookbooks.

I’m bringing the blog back because I need something to be accountable to and it worked before so I’m making it work for me now. I’m motivated by posts I see from Steve about his CrossFit workouts so I’m going to also try to create a bit of this for myself at home. I have some fitdecks that will help me pick out workouts to do as well as weights and such still.

So let’s do this! I need to get back to biking, hiking, and racing!

The Weigh-In

I’ve decided that since I’m doing so well with my new eating plan that I would finally start weighing in at home. I’m not sure how my home scale compares to the doctor’s office but I’ve lost about 18 pounds so far just by changing the way I eat. So this will be my official weigh-in for the re-birth of the blog.

Today’s weight: 372.1 lbs

The Farmers’ Market

Farmers’ Markets fit really well into my eating plan because I can get lots of fresh vegetables and locally raised meats and eggs. Lincoln has at least 3 farmers’ markets that I know of and there might be a fourth. There are also produce stands on street corners right now too. I like the Old Cheney Farmers’ Market because they are close to where I live and they have a system set up to let you purchase using a credit or debit card. They even take SNAP (formerly food stamps) which is a great local program. The system works by purchasing tokens from the information booth and then using them to purchase goods from vendors. The vendors then give change in cash and then get reimbursed for the tokens they turn in at the end of the day.

It was warm and humid out today but I walked around with Sandy, Ross and my parents (well they wandered off on their own) and found some good foods for the week. I can actually see getting most of what I need weekly at the farmers’ market so I’m going to try and make this a routine weekly errand. Today I got some nice local ground beef, pulled pork, eggs, baby bok choy, broccoli, lettuce, and dried bell peppers. I also splurged and got a mango tea, it was unsweetened tea with mango infused, and it was great because by that point I was getting really warm. I believe I spent about $32 so I was well within my budget. The only things I still need to get is some fruit and chicken, the only chicken I saw today was a full roaster and that wasn’t quite what I wanted.

I also need to make time to get down to the bigger Haymarket Farmers’ Market this season too. I have friends that go pretty much every week so that will be fun too. They have a lot of live entertainment and other things going on and it’s a Lincoln tradition.

How many of you buy most of your food at a farmers’ market?

Sample Meal

This is a picture of what I had for dinner tonight. Grass-fed grilled beef patty, mixed greens, and mashed butternut squash. Pretty tasty!

Food Plan

I came up with this food plan yesterday and decided to put it into practice today. It may seem extreme but now I’m looking at it as an experiment so I am going to track my progress and see how it goes. The plan itself is actually really simple and below is a list of foods I’m going to eat:

• Proteins (chicken, beef, pork and eggs)
• Vegetables (as much as I want)
• Fruit (only once or twice a day)
• Olive oil as needed when cooking

That’s it. I am going to focus on what I am going to eat versus thinking about cutting anything out because I want to help minimize the feelings of loss. This is actually easy to work with in my mind because it’s a limited list with a lot of different options. Since I already have regular doctor appointments to monitor my nutrient levels and the likes that will help me see how this is benefiting or hurting my overall health. I would like to get some baseline readings at the start but I might have to just use the information from my last doctor visit.

I’m also trying to eat less often during the day and just eat meals and regular intervals. The hard part might be eating out however I don’t have a lot of money for that right now so that is helpful. Plus, I can pick places that serve foods I can eat with some modifications.