Whole 30 – Day 30

Not really sure what the deal with my appetite is. Feeling pretty icky because of womantimes, sure you appreciated that oversharing. I am so close, yoga yesterday no post, more of the same stuff. Except I think with the omission of my avocados and coconut cream with my coffee, I have been feeling the lack of calories and my body is screaming for some food, for the past 4 or so days, I have been feeling like this:

It hasn’t been all terrible. Last night, I cooked the rest of my bounty (save for the corn) from the YummyFarms delivery.

 

Purreed tomatoes, a serrano, and a bell pepper  with a splash of vinegar to make the base for the chicken. It has been great to be creative in the kitchen, but ultimately I miss this:

This has been forbidden due to its sugar content. Miss Fruity pants does not have much of a case against added sugars in thing when I have been drinking smoothies like it is going out of style. I have already decided that I will make this a Whole 31 because it seems right to complete the whole month of August with the meal plan and then I can weigh myself once all of my water weight has been successfully flushed. Plus it is a holiday weekend, and well I haven’t been to church (aka: Barcelona, aka Mad Classy, aka dubsteps and drankz!!) in a while.  Come on Lauren, you have to remind yourself you are not 21, but actually 31. This is always a depressing conversation to have with myself, wild woman to wifey material.

Moodiness aside, I still try to cultivate my creative side, oh and to make myself feel a bit better for slacking yet again on the workout, for shame, for shame. Word maps are a fun little artistic way to display what your word frequency is for blogging that is based on actual facts rather than self-defined tags. Here is the one I got from Wordle:

Yesterday, I forgot my FitBit, so the numbers were going to be low, and the day before I left my key fob for the apartment’s gym, so without my beloved air conditioner, treadmill, and television, it was absolutely unheard of to actually get the steps. Yeeeah, that’s the ticket, can’t walk without a treadmill.  Well, this has been painful to write just in that uninspiring, crampy, complainy, and defeated by fruit sort of way. Whole 60, here I come (unless I dive face first into a Whataburger Patty Melt) It is funny, the more I think about digressing from my new found clean eating lifestyle, the less it really appeals to me. Do I really want to gain the possibly 20 pounds that I have lost by cutting out all those nasty things. Not, no, but HELL no! We will see what I feel like tomorrow at midnight.

Day Twenty Nine

This morning feels blessed. Today when I woke up, I was in a weird mood. I wasn’t terribly motivated to go to Earth 60, but I went anyway and it was tough (no breakfast), sweaty, and to really knock me off my balance for today, I forgot my damn bra. Ya know, that could have ruined my day, but it didn’t. It’s whatever. I will be like the 70’s today, and with my, shall we say, petite, set of knockers (more like jinglers, hah!) it really isn’t a big deal. If it gets too cold, I will just wrap up in my office blanket. 70’s day!  Okay enough about my pencil eraser, time for first round of Workout DVD Duel’s. Today’s contenders are Jillian Michaels and Jackie Warner, and we have a bit of vintage materials circa 2008 from them. First off it is Jillian Michaels 30 day shred Level 1:

facing off against JW’s “Workout” lower body:

(not entire workout)

The common thing about these videos is the bit of snarkiness by both Jillian and Jackie. Let’s face it, working out sucks sometimes and snide remarks are way more realistic than some overly enthusiastic cheerleader trying to make it feel like you are eating a cupcake, no, let’s get down to brass tacks and power through this shit. That is the kind of attitude and honesty that I prefer. The structure of these videos also makes the workouts challenging thus effective for sweatiness and fatigue.

Jillian’s workout is a bit more of a comprehensive full-body routine, which may or may not be good to be working the same muscle group day after day, from what the fitness business would have you believe, but they would have you believe a lot of things that aren’t necessarily correct, ie: the efficacy of eating small meals a day versus the standard 3. Jackie’s give you an upper, lower, and core workout, so that would give you 20 minutes for three times a week. Both of these videos provide cardio along with strength and stretches, so it gives you a fuller picture of fitness. Although both of them give a comprehensive workout, I would have to say the winner in this round is Jillian. Some of Jackie’s leg moves were kinda advanced such as the lunge box squat combo, and I never got into a good rhythm with that section. Also, in terms of working muscles you wouldn’t normally, my upper body always gets neglected and the fact that Jillian gives us the shoulder raises with a side  made my arms scream while pumping up my heart rate. My biceps also being bitchy today because of the squat/curl combination.  My legs do not feel much love even after doing the workout, it could be that I did not advance myself with the weights, but the more upper body I incorporate, the better the workout, in my view.

Day 15 of the Whole 30 experiment. Just devoured some organic sweet potato mash I created last night. Fun fact, organic sweet potatoes are yellow! Had to taste it to verify it, but sure enough they were still sweet. On this diet path, I am cooking/preparing (okay canned fish is kind of a cheat, I will admit) 95% of my meals, so if you do not have an arsenal of spices, chicken can get pretty boring. Because I get bored so easily, I have been experimenting with unusual combinations of spices. For instance, last night, I decided to get a little bit equinoxy and added cinnamon and clove to the chicken:

The trick I employed to get all the meat covered was to pre-cut the chicken while the sweet potatoes were boiling, put this into a sealable container, and shake with a base of the spices plus coconut milk,  shake it up real good, and let the chicken/spice mix and sit in the fridge for about 9 or 10 minutes to marinate. The chicken is fully coated once you take it out to cook, and tastes super yummy after you add some broccoli and onions to the mix.

Monday night, I experimented with some paleo sides of vegetables. Oh, how I miss my mashed potatoes. The go-to substitution for this as I have read on the interwebs is mashed cauliflower, or as I like to be fancy and call it purée, so I gave it a go. Firstly, I boiled the vegetables as you would with potatoes. Once these were cooked, I added them to the Ninja, and added olive oil as a non-dairy substitute for butter. They blended rather easily and the consistency had very much the mouthfeel of mashed potatoes, so it was a win for texture. The taste was a bit on the sweet side for my liking, and that is saying a lot because I (used to) have a raging sweet tooth. The solution to counter-balance the sweetness was to add a bit of garlic and salt to the the mash, which gave it more of a savory note.

For the stir-fry, I went “Superfood” and added spinach and almonds. The spinach was not fresh, but since I was sautéeing it anyway, it cooked nicely. The almonds weren’t quite toasted due to the timing, but still the crunchiness of the nuts complimented the creaminess of the purée quite nicely.

Not as active as I would like to be, stats and further analysis tomorrow.

Day Twenty

Mad at myself. Not really for slipping up on the program, but I don’t think I am really honoring the spirit of the plan. In “It Starts With Food”, the Hartwigs mention that one of the goals of this program is having a healthy relationship with food. What I have is a dangerous dance into disordered eating at times. I thought the routine of work would be my sanctuary for sticking to the plan, but it turns out one sweet potato for the whole day is not going to be enough food to last. Thankfully, my boyfriend came to the rescue with an avocado so that I could make it through the last couple of hours until I came home. I really just wanted to smoke a cigarette just so that it would suppress my appetite a little and not have to eat, but how the fuck is that healthy?

Spin class today would have been disastrous, I think. I already had a bad case of the “I don’t wanna”s this morning pre-yoga, and I wasn’t feeling so blissed out in my practice when I was seeing little stars appear in my vision while in triangle pose. Not cool, not cool at all. Having eaten dinner (broccoli, chicken, onions, cilantro and spices marinated with coconut oil) I am pretty content right now, and way under my caloric recommendation for the day, so again that theme of failing to make the right connections. For me though, it is about sticking to the plan no matter what. I could have broken down and eaten some of the almonds, but I knew they were cooked in peanut oil, so that made them incompatible, or worse I could have had my formerly daily spike in insulin with my afternoon diet coke, but that would be not honest to my body. These are not good things to consume, and admittedly there might be some righteousness in restricting myself so harshly to rather go hungry than feed myself with “unclean” food. I don’t know, where is the real virtue of fasting, if it has no religious purpose. Is dieting my religion now. Bow down to the gods of Paleo eating, you’re going to get what you deserve. Ha, I am stupid.