I moved

Sorry Blogger, but Wordpress has cooler features.

You can find any future musings from me at http://lifeolimey.wordpress.com.

mmm stewed prunes

Well Mum recommended a quick recipe to help my system out with this iron supplement. 

I have to say as far as 'medicine' goes this was freakin delicious. 

I got organic unsulphured apricots and some prunes. Place equal amounts in a pan and add fresh orange juice to about 3/4 up the fruit. Heat on low for 15 mins or so stirring regularly. All the OJ pretty much vanished into a thick syrup around the apricots and prunes. I also added some mulling spice I found (cinnamon, all spice and cloves)

The resultant stodge was absolutely wonderful. I proceeded to add it to a bowlful of oatmeal with banana protein powder and I also threw in a bunch of blueberries. Yum :)

This was dinner this evening. Lunch was a bad choice, tried a new burger wrap at o'charlies. Lots of veggies (lettuce, pico de gallo, and jalapenos) and a nice wrap but the burger was pretty sucky. Was too much too especially for breaking a fast on. Oh well. 

Health stuff

Went to class tonight. First day back in 3.5 weeks sucked but I made it through it. Standard ladies class, so 20 mins warmup, 20 mins technique and 10 mins of rolling. Didn't think I was gonna make it through the rolling without losing lunch but ended up doing okay :)

Today is also a fasting day so only 2 meals.

Breakfast: 1 cup of Post Great grains raisin, date and pecan cereal with 2% milk
Lunch: kinda homemade chicken soup - creamy wild rice soup base (packet mix), add roast chicken, corn and mushrooms. 1 dannon 0%Plus yogurt smoothie and a pecan and cherry balance pure protein bar. 

Drinks: water, coffee, green tea, powerade zero during class

Won't be bothering with the balance bars again, I was attracted by the all natural, no preservatives claim. Wasn't that good though. I'll stick to my organic trail mix I made. Also gonna dump the smoothie, it was low fat/low cal. I'll go back to my probiotic yoghurts from yoplait though. They taste better. 

Found an organic dried dates, apples, raisins, apricot and cranberries trail mix and added organic sunflower seeds & pine nuts. I threw some walnuts in I had left over too. those were the only non-organic item. Yummy, healthy and no bloody almonds *bleugh* No sulphur covered fruit either which does indescribably bad things to my digestive system. Actually not so bad for me as for the poor people around me. *sigh*

Update

Life has been quiet recently I must admit. I finally got over my flu/viral thing when my fever broke after 10 days. That sucked.

Since then I have just been having arguments with my iron supplement. Lets just say my digestive system is not appreciating it and is making it known. Suffice to say not many workouts going on.

I did start fasting again last week. Started on Monday am at 180.2lbs (81.7kg for my English brethren) we dipped down to 175lbs (79.3kg) and sidled back up to 177.8 (80.6kg) this morning. Considering the 3 glasses of wine this weekend and a bad restuarant choice on Friday that was expected. It is still a net loss of 2.4lbs (1kg) for the week so I am a-ok with that. :)

Gonna try and workout this week, wish me luck :)

On to life, we went to the Celtic festival this weekend which was kinda cool. Heard some good music from the live bands while we browsed the stalls. Not much to buy but we picked up a cool dagger (hubby loves his weapons) and I got a Celtic fairy wing poncho, if your lucky photo might be forthcoming on Friday (we have a Halloween party and I will probably be drunk enough to be daft enough to stand in front of a camera). We also picked up a cool decorative towel (6' x 3') with enormous cool looking dragon. I'll get pictures once we hang it. Not sure how long it'll take the cats to destroy it but we'll find out.

That evening we went to a local MMA (Mixed martial arts) fight that my Jiu-Jitsu club put together. I say local.. this was a big deal, we had people from as far as California come and fight and the main event was one of the Gracies themselves which, if you are familiar with the history of Brazilian jiu-jitsu will understand, was a huge honour. I've never been one for live fighting before but I actually enjoyed myself at this event. I guess it is different when you have friends fighting and you can cheer them on. And cheer I did, my throat was definitely sore the next day :)

Hubby and I finished off a lazy Sunday by playing Little Big Planet together, this is a new game for the PS3. Platform puzzle games taken to a whole new and very cool level. Suffice to say I am still not very good at them especially with 3 glasses of wine down me. :)

Gotta have..

This is definitely going on my christmas list this year. With 5 cats I am getting real tired of cleaning and hauling cat litter. I've tred environmentally friendly cat litter (aka sawdust, loose and pellet based) and they hated it. Anya so much she would poo on every electrical cable in the living room instead and Mune would poop beside the box. Both would however pee in it.. go figure.

Thus! We found the Cat Genie,





You hook it up to a toilet or your washing machine inlet/outlet and it basically washes and dries the permanent granules with a sanitary solution. Poop gets ground up during the washing cycle and it all goes out the drain. I love it.

It's a tad pricy at $369 but it will recoup cost over time in not having to buy cat litter. The sanitary solution is dirt cheap in comparison.

http://www.catgenie.com/about-catgenie/1-how-it-works/

Pics!

Here is my beloved fixing the dryer. Took both of us in the end but wasn't as horrendous a job as expected, well except hubby undid almost every screw on the back trying to get to bits before he discovered you only had to undo two in the front. We had one left when it all went back together (as usual) but thankfully it did 3 loads of dry clothes without collapsing so we are declaring it all a success.

I took pics of Nara finally, she is a cute munchkin :) Gotten very friendly with us these day and her and Kai play but I think Anya is still jealous of her. *sigh* Time will tell I guess.

Speaking of Anya, she has decided that the bathroom sink is a perfect place to pee. I can't really complain as that is all she does in it and it does clean out easily, still odd.

Still meh

Well I'm still sick, on a course of antibiotics and various allergy meds to unswell everything. My sinus's and tonsils are swollen, running a low grade fever and apparantly I have fluid in my nasal caveties, yay.

Oddly not much congestion since monday. Everything else still feeling urky though.

I went to the docs monday for a full checkup and bloodwork. Made the appt before I got the cold. Some of it came back today and as I had to go in and get another shot of something she ran over it with me as I am apparantly suffering an iron deficiency so I am now stocked up on iron supps and gotta get that retested in 3 months. She showed me the numbers, don't quote me here as my brain is not exactly all with it, but I think it said the bottom end of the range was 53 (whatever they meaure it in) and I was at 40. Nurse said it would explain my tiredness and general not exactly peppy nature.

Meh..

I guess the happy claims of 'I never get sick' were finally noticed by the powers that be and they decided to set me straight. Bleugh. Thank goodness for pseudoephedrine. When I feel like utter crap and just wanna crawl under a rock and die this stuff makes me feel pretty much human again. I still got the sniffles much to my poor spouses annoyance but I don't feel like death warmed up.

Not working out with this going on and not fasting either, comfort eating is probably not helping things but screw it, I can diet when its over. Last workout was wednesday which was circuit training, excellent session too. John had given us a stern talking to about putting in max effort. I feel like I usually do but with that in mind I managed to pull some extra reps or keep the speed up on some parts where I probably would have stopped for a breather or slowed down a bit before.

I was real proud of my kettlebell clean and press. I usually struggle with the 12kg bell but that night I powered that sucker up 8 times on each arm without stopping. On the way home was when my ears started popping and by the time I went to bed I had dug out the nyquil already.

We bought a new chair for hubby last night which of course meant good fun and games for the kitties while he built it. Kai is definitely a cat who does not know the meaning of fear. She'll stand there while things are being yanked out and dropped all around her and she just sniffs them. Everyone else scatters but she just stands there saying 'what's this? new toy?' Then again she also plays with my vacumn cleaner. If I want to vacumn where she is sitting I have to shove her out of the way with the vacumn, she finallys shifts her butt with a look that says 'I was moving anyway'. We know she isn't deaf.. she just doesn't care. And that's when she is trying to swat it as I move it around.

We have run into owning your own house challenge do it yourself no 3 (first was plumbing in the toilet, second was changing out the sink faucet when it started leaking) Now we gotta change out the belt in the tumble dryer. Sunday night it died on the first load, I will never under appreciate soft clothes again. We hung everything up and dried it the old fashioned way. So now it's all kinda crunchy..

Oh and that just topped off a bad end to the week on Friday when our mail server died at work and I spent 12 hours rebuilding it :(

Here's to a better end of the week, so far it is improving slowly :)

Workout's are going great, I made it to Sat morning's Gorilla fitness class although I skipped ladies class afterwards as I didn't have time to wash my Gi friday night. Wish I had as I might have discovered the broken tumble dryer when we have had more time to fix it on Saturday. On a good note I hadn't put the bed linen in :) We really do have to get a second set one of these days.

Nara (her name got shortened) is kinda of settling down, she is alternately bullying and being bullied. She is becoming cute with us though.

Food choices have been much better this past week. The stew I made was awesome :) Will definitely have to make that again. Still seem to have trouble controlling the chronic munchies at the weekends though. Still managed not to do too much damage :) Hanging tight at 174 right now which is awesome considering recent months ups and downs.

life

Hmm, lets see...

Mike absolutely killed us in Gorilla Fitness on Saturday morning, I haven't been that sore in a long time. Followed by a good ladies class an hour later and I was almost ready to take a nap saturday afternoon. Thankfully lots of coffee shored me up for a day of playing warhammer online. :)

I think my week of 'relaxed' eating ended up being a carboholics dream, upshot was weight went back up too. Monday weigh in was 178.6, tuesday morning after starting my fast at lunch on monday was 175.6 so I think it was mostly water but still I didn't lose any weight either so obviously not making that good of choices. I dunno what it is about D&D but I always have the most serious munchies throughout the session, perhaps it is cause we play in the dining room which is pretty much open to the kitchen.

Definitely too many taco nights and pasta lunches etc. I was also finishing the foccacia loaf I bought the previous weekend. I am not going to go back to too much of a low carb but I am going to try and limit them a bit better. My veggie intake probably fell in direct correlation to the starchy carb increase. So this week we are making better choices, I made a huge beef stew at the weekend, Beef, carrots, onions, mushrooms, tomatoes, sweetcorn and instead of potatoes which would be my normal addition I threw in two cans of black beans. I really wasn't sure how it was gonna turn out with that but I was pleasantly surprised. So I have a nice fibrous and tasty lunch for this week. I normally like stew thick enough to stand your spoon up in which involves a crap load of corn starch but I decided to view it as meaty soup and discovered it is just fine without the extra corn starch. Just goes to show what creatures of habit we are.

Well time to get to class, most of my stiffness has gone so should be a bit easier than last nights ladies class. Rolling with the boys tonight unless one of the other ladies shows up.

This is the perfect example of why we can't have any open boxes of tissues or toilet paper out in the open in our house. This happened when I mistakenly left the kitchen towel roll in sight of Willow. She can do that in about 3 seconds flat.

All our regular house guests now know to look in the second drawer down when they use the bathroom.

In other news Red Dwarf is making a comeback! yay

Sugar Rant

There has been a lot of fuss about High Fructose Corn Syrup being the devil recently. It's blamed for the obesity epidemic amongst other nefarious things. The corn industry is fighting back with adverts saying it's natural and no different from sugar.

I do try and avoid it personally but I think people are missing the point. The problem isn't so much the HFCS, it's the fact its in bloody everything. Americans are fat because they are jacked up on sugar. I realised the other night why everyone claims English food is so bland. I think its cause we don't put sugar in everything.

I just went to an Italian restaurant for lunch where I had some spaghetti bolognese. It was pretty obvious there was sugar in the sauce. Another 'famous' Italian restaurant makes a big deal about their 'sweet' sauce. Personally I find it unpalatable these days, I like to taste tomatoes not sugar.

The recipe for meatloaf my mother in law gave me has a tomato sauce spread across the top that is tomato ketchup mixed with an ungodly amount of brown sugar.

Pizza crusts here along with bread in general has sugar added. Plain white bread is almost cakelike.

You cannot buy pre-packaged fruit these days that does not have sugar added. I got excited when I saw no-sugar added mandarins on the shelf, till I picked up the package and saw 'sweetened with splenda' on the side. For goodness sake, mandarins, peaches.. shoot almost any fruit is just fine on it's own. It does not need frickin sugar added to it.

So buy fresh fruit I hear you say.. yeah I do, but there is something nice and convenient about a pre-sized cup of fruit in juice though. I can keep it in the fridge indefinitely. Whenever I buy peaches I usually manage to miss that sweet spot where they taste great and end up letting them over ripen and some end up getting wasted.

The point being that if normal supposedly savory foods had less, preferably no sugar in and the already sweet stuff wasn't additionally sweetend with more I don't think there would be such a problem.

We were offered another kitten last night, sadly I had to refuse. She does look absolutely adorable as you can see but crazy cat lady in training I might be but I am also a snobby crazy cat lady and I refuse to feed my kids crappy catfood. Thus I have to set a limit on mouths to feed as they are getting expensive. Especially as three of them have a definite preference for wet food.

If you're interested we are using a holistic cat food from Wellness. No grains, human grade meat (not ground up chicken feet), and no crappy fillers. Good stuff and comes in lots of varieties to give them something different each day. :)

Jiu-Jitsu was great last night, learned some cool arm locks. I also found one of my training partners is one of the first people not to think I'm crazy for fasting. She has done it herself last year and loved it. After our conversation I think she is going to start again. She is pretty fit so she is just doing it once a week to maintain weight. Nice to have a warm body to talk to that understands though.

Did my circuit training last night, was a rep workout which is cool but not as much running as normal. Was feeling decidedly peculier afterwards so not sure I have quite thrown off this infection. I get the feeling it is just lurking.

At least that is my excuse for pulling a total girly on the way home. I had to stop and get gas(petrol) and the stupid machine was being petulant about giving me a receipt so apparantly I was a bit distracted. On the way home I was making fun of this idiot cause he kept honking his horn at every stoplight. Wasn't till a bit further on I went to change lanes and on looking in my side mirror realised my petrol cap was open.. *sigh* I pulled in to the advance auto parts store parking lot as I had a sneaking suspicion that the crappy bit of plastic that holds the cap was not enough to withstand 40 mph traffic. Sure enough it was completely missing. So withdrawing rude insults at aforemention not so much idiot I went into the store and admitted my own idiocy to the nice chap behind the counter. He hooked me up with a new cap and we had a good chat about cultural differences. Having a british accent is sometime's a blessing and a curse. I get some interesting conversations sometimes.. and others that leave me going .. Huh?

Lady: Where are you from?
Me: England, just north of London. Moved here 3 years ago. (this was a while back now)
Lady: Oh cool.. So did you speak English when you moved here?
Me: Uhh... M'am.. I am English.
Lady: Yeah.. but did you speak it?

The mind boggles.. I made my excuses and left fast.. I still wonder what on earth she is under the impression that English people speak if it isn't English.

Weirdness

So I missed last nights bjj class because by 5pm I was exhibiting all the signs of an oncoming respiratory infection which plague me now and then. Cold, dizzy, slight fever, headache, sinus ache, ears popping and all those other wonderful symptoms. So instead of trying to go to class I just went and bought more catfood and headed home. By the time I went to bed I felt fine, this morning I feel fine.

How does one get sick and throw it off in the span of 8 hours? I love my constitution, really I do, but that is just weird.


Speaking of weird, more cat stories for you. We, like most people, used to keep a cup by the sink in the bathroom. Our eldest, Mune, decided one day that this was going to be her drinking container of preference. She never did like her water dish. Put a glass of water down and within 3 seconds you could guarantee she'd have her head in it drinking your water like she hadn't had any for a week. As we gained more cats they saw this trick and thought it was a good idea. In the end we had three cats fighting over the cup in the bathroom while you were trying to clean your teeth. So my hubby took away the cup declaring that they needed to learn to use their own water dish. That was about 6 months ago.

Kai in the mean time became a faucet kitty and would curl up in the sink and wait for you to turn the tap on. Willow would go so far as to lick up any toothpaste leavings in the sink if she got to it before Kai curled up in it.

This morning hubby walked in to clean his teeth this morning to Kai in the sink, Willow sitting beside her and Mune on her old perch on the back of the toilet (where we would usually put the cup for her). They were all looking at him expectantly. He finally relented and went and got their cup.

I in the mean time was feeding Anya and Inara. Anya seems to think the world is coming to an end in the morning and that she is starving to death. I've never seen a cat who is free fed (they have dry food down all the time) dive into their food so bad, she is such a greedy little bugger. She'll growl at anyone who comes near the bowl, even puts her paw over the bowl so they can't get a nose in the edge and then proceeds to try and bury whats left when she has had enough, kinda hard on ceramic tile, she trys hard though.

Inara is definitely coming out of her shell and even joined us for breakfast of her own accord. Still growling at everyone else though.

Gotta love em :)

My Kids

Probably one of my favourite pics. Such a lazy bunch. From left to right, Mune, Kai, Willow and Anya.

Inara still to follow.

BreakFast

I broke my fast today after 22 hours when hubby called me to go to lunch. We went to O'Charlies and I got the Bistro chicken. Grilled chicken breast on top of parmesan encrusted potatoes with a bistro salad (oil and vinager dressing). Was pretty tasty, not too filling and I got some healthy greens in. The salad was actually a pretty decent mix of greens. Not just crappy romaine or iceburg.

Definitely better than the breaded chicken tenders and fries that were tempting me. :)

Life.. I do actually have one!

I guess its not really life o' limey without some actual life outside my workouts. I'm not a complete health nut.

My cats are my kids and on Friday we got #5. When she stops hiding I will get some pictures she is pretty cute though. She is actually Anya's litter sister. The lady that adopted her had 2 18 year old cats. The kitten just wants to play and her elders just want to sleep so she was driving the poor things batty, thus her former owner offered her to us knowing that we would give her a great home.

She, now named Inara, spent the first couple days cowering in corners so I put her in her own room for a while until she despazzed, got used to the new smells somewhat and didn't have to run the gauntlet to get to the litter box and food. She is now wandering the house although still hissing at anyone who comes too close. I am extremely surprised at how unconcerned the other cats are. Kai is fascinated with her (as I expected) and has been following her around sitting about 3 feet away and looking bored and unimpressed at the hissing fits. I figure another day or two and they will be playing quite happily.

Mune, my eldest, I was sure was gonna leave home but she seems the most unconcerned of the bunch, I think she has finally got past caring what strays we bring in :) She has been cuddly and fairly 'normal' for her. With her that means hating everyone except me and my husband. She'll accept strokes from people when she is outside and will do the leg rub to people inside but try and touch her inside and she'll more than likely leave you with scars. When we got Kai, and then Anya 3 months later she was even being vicious with us. Not a happy kitty to say the least.

On other notes we started Warhammer Online on Sunday. I am a video game geek too and love my MMO's. I am playing a Chaos Zealot at the moment although the Greenskin Squig Herder will be my alt for sure. The squigs are so cute and I have always loved pet classes. :) I normally hate PVP but am actually finding the pvp scenario's a lot of fun.

Had to cut that a bit short when some friends came over for D&D. We are playing 4th edition right now. The combat is definitely so much more interesting now. We had a one shot Sunday as one of the main players was missing so I rolled up an Eladrin Ranger. My char for the main campaign we are doing is a Dwarven Fighter. Loving both right now.

Oops, lunch break over :) Back to work...

New Month, New Plan, Finally Results

There is a reason that my prior attempt at blogging trailed off. OCD, or more accurately OCE, Obsessive Compulsive Eating.

This is a term coined by Brad Pilon, my new favourite hero. He is the author of Eat Stop Eat. I've seen his book floating around for a long time but in my perceived superior knowledge I had dismissed it as another fad diet. That was my biggest mistake.

I finally saw Craig Ballentyne, another favourite trainer of mine, recommend this book and the results of the latest Turbulance Training Challenge. One lady's results were phenomonal, actualy they were all phenomonal results, but hers stood out as she seriously looked 20 years younger. She had used Eat Stop Eat as had the rest I believe.

So I shelled out some money and read Brads science on Intermittant Fasting. It made sense, a lot of sense. I started my first 24 hour fast that very next day.

My monday morning weigh in was 179.8, This morning (1 week later) after 2 fasts (Mon and Thurs) and a very relaxed eating plan, three meals a day, not watching carbs or proteins or fats or calories I weighed in at 175.8. That works for me. I actually weighed in Saturday morning at 174.4 which I haven't seen since prior to last thanksgiving.

I feel so free, so relieved. Something is finally working. And all I have to do is not eat for 24 hours twice a week and keep up my resistance training. The latter is continuing to be done via my jiu-jitsu and circuit training.

I will still continue to eat 'healthy', plenty of veggies, healthy fats, lean proteins etc but I won't shy away from the bread basket, nor will I gorge myself on it either. Sensible eating is still the key, I don't have to stay absolutely 100% on plan with a carefully detailed macro percentage calorie based plan to make any progress however. All that does is make me go crazy.

Food - 08/06/08

Breakfast:

• 1/2 cup Cottage cheese
• 1 scoop Protein powder
• 50g blueberries
• 5g Biotest Superfood

Lunch:

• Ate out:
• 3 hushpuppies
• 1 cup corn and crab bisque
• 1 citrus grilled tuna salad, mixed salad greens, mandarins, feta, walnuts

Not the worst lunch, but not PN compliant due to missing my 2 other meals and the hush puppies and bisque.

PM Workout - Circuit Training

Dinner:

• 2 x grass fed Buffalo franks
• shrimp
• Steamed Zucchini
• Mushrooms
• Black beans
• Organic ginger sesame sauce

Drinks throught the day the have been water and green tea. (I use a packet of stevia in my tea)

I also had one cup of black coffee

Workout - 08/06/08

Wednesday AM:

• Rest - Woot, an hour extra sleep

Wednesday PM:

Circuit training at BJJ School

• Running - 10-15 mins
  
• 1 min work rounds, 30 sec (rest/switch):
  
• Ring Pushups w/ feet elevated on a box
• 12" box jumps
• slosh pipe walk and carry
• Ab Wheel
• Deadlift (135lb)
• Bosu Ball Pistons (15lb db's)
• Burpee w/ pullup
• Kick Arounds
• Rowing Machine

What actually happened was more like this:

• Hold myself up on the rings was the primary feat, not sure pushups ever got involved
• Box jumps were good, I normally use the 18" box but that was being used for the rings
• Squatting and picking the pipe up was a challenge, no walking. The pipe is about 15' I think and half full of water
• ab wheel was good
• pistons were good
• burpee, I leapt up and grabbed the bar hanging for a split second, still not up to pullups yet
• Kick Arounds were good
• Rowing machine got me a bunch of kudo's from the guys, I held a 1.45 average. I have no clue what that means but they all said it was awesome. all I know is I was a hairsbreadth from vomiting :)

All in all a great workout, I love these circuit training sessions. Brutal but so rewarding.

Food - 08/05/08

Pre-Workout Shake

• 1/2 cup Cottage cheese
• 1 scoop Metabolic Drive Protein Powder
• 3oz Bolthouse Farms Green Goodness
• 50g blueberries
• 1tbsp Genuine Health Greens+

AM Workout

Breakfast:

• 1/4 cup dry oatmeal
• 1/4 cup Cottage cheese
• Half scoop Protein powder
• 5g Biotest Superfood
• 1tbsp Carlsons Fish Oil

Meals 2, 3 and 4 are batch cooked and split into 3 tubs

• 9oz 99% lean ground turkey
• 6oz Green beans
• 3oz Carrots
• 3oz Water chestnuts
• 3oz Sugar Snap Peas
• 14oz diced tomatoes
• 5oz Mushrooms

PM Workout

Dinner:

• 2 x Applegate Farms organic spinach and feta sausages
• Steamed Zucchini
• Mushrooms
• Black beans
• Organic peanut satay sauce

Drinks throught the day the have been water and green tea. (I use a packet of stevia in my tea)

Workout - 08/05/08

Tuesday AM:

Using 26lb Kettlebell.

• Turkish Get-Ups - 8 mins of alternating reps. Total reps: 16
• 2 mins rest
• 1 handed swings. 30 sec work, 60 sec rest - alternate hands.
  x 10 sets = 15 mins total, 202 swings - Average 20 swings per hand

Tuesday PM:

• Horse Riding - 1 hour.
  

Food - 08/04/08

Pre-Workout Shake

• 1/2 cup Cottage cheese
• 1 scoop Metabolic Drive Protein Powder
• 3oz Bolthouse Farms Green Goodness
• Half a banana
• 1tbsp Genuine Health Greens+
• 1tbsp Maca Powder

AM Workout

Breakfast:

• 1/4 cup oatmeal
• 1/4 cup Cottage cheese
• Half scoop Protein powder
• 5g Biotest Superfood
• 1tbsp Carlsons Fish Oil

Meals 2, 3 and 4 are batch cooked and split into 3 tubs

• 9oz 99% lean ground turkey
• 6oz Green beans
• 11oz Broccoli
• 3oz Carrots
• 3oz Water chestnuts
• 3oz Sugar Snap Peas

PM Workout

Dinner:

• Salmon burger
• Steamed Zucchini
• Mushrooms
• Black beans
• Organic Ginger and Sesame sauce

Drinks throught the day the have been water and green tea. (I use a packet of stevia in my tea)

Workout - 08/04/08

Monday AM:

Using 26lb Kettlebell.

• Turkish Get-Ups - 5 mins of alternating reps. Total reps: 12
• 2 mins rest
• 2 handed swings. 30 sec work, 60 sec rest.
  x 11 sets = 15.5 mins total, 251 swings (should have been 10 sets, math at 6.30 am is not my strong point)

Monday PM:

• BJJ - 1 hour - 30 min warm up, 20 min technique, 10 mins rolling.

First Steps

Not quite first steps I guess, I have been dieting my whole life pretty much, I was the fat kid at school, the one sneaking Mars Bars when no one was looking and finding every excuse under the sun to get out of PE lessons.

Now I am 30 years old, and while I discovered, after moving from my English homeland to the United States, that my weight (180lbs @ 5'4) was considered almost 'normal' in comparison to the average American I am still not happy.

I want to be fit, I want to be healthy and above all, I wanna look good nekkid *grin*

I have been a avid follower of John Berardi and his Precision Nutrition program for the last 18 months and while I haven't exactly made any startling progress I have learned a whole lot about me, how I tick and I have drastically cleaned up my eating. I no longer live on junk, my main intake is healthy whole foods, lots of vegetables and lean meats. My lack of success has been due to weekend slipups and not enough exercise.

Thanks to a recent recommendation I was introduced to Intuitive Eating. This book has seriously turned around the way I am looking at food. I have been following it's principles for 2 weeks now and while I slipped up this weekend and fell back into old habits it has been an interesting experience. The slip whilst annoying did teach me a few things and I am going into this week with a clearer mindset on what it means to eat intuitively instead of gorging on candy and Wendy's spicy chicken sandwiches (damn that small weakness).

So having learned a bunch of stuff what am I doing?

Workouts:

• Kettlebells - these rock, I get up at 6.30am and do a 20 minute workout in the mornings. This week I started a fatloss plan from David Whitley, RKC.
• I am also training in Gracie Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, whilst not training at the Gracie Acadamy I am training under one of Pedro Sauer's students.

Diet:

• Healthy whole foods
• Limited processed foods.
• Controlled carb intake, whilst still making up about 30% of my daily intake starchy carbs are limited to post workout. Gotta earn them. The rest of my carbs come from lots of vegetables and some fruit.

I will be posting my diet and workouts here on a daily basis.