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I've been thinking about food a lot lately. Well, that would be disingenuous. I've been thinking about food more than I usually do lately. It's kind of tied up in that whole get fit, lose weight thing.
My diet back when I was a kid was one of donuts, white bread, salad, meat and pasta. I hated most veggies because my family thought that steaming everything to a wilty mess was the best way to cook them. So when I cut out meat and mom replaced the white bread with wheat, I thought I was doing an awesome job. Unfortunately, instead of replacing the meat with veggies, I filled in with pasta and cheese. Lots and lots of cheese.
It wasn't really until we moved out to Seattle and got that bi-weekly vegetable bin that I put any effort into eating more veggies. Mostly because, well, there were all these veggies and maybe I didn't like them (or thought I didn't like them), but they needed to be eaten. In this manner I learned that I actually really love asparagus and carrots and broccoli and spinach and kale when they're cooked properly. Also, thank the gods for the internet and all its wonderful recipe resources.
Things pretty much stayed the same until last month, eating veggies semi-regularly but binging on bread and other grains when I was lazy. Then we started crossfit and I declared diet time. Unfortunately, strength training and losing fat do not easily go together. On the one hand, your body needs calories to build up that muscle. On the other, you need to run a calorie deficit to burn off fat. If you don't pay close attention, you can very easily end up burning muscle and building fat. It's mostly a matter of timing, but also a matter of what you eat.
So I switched up my food intake and focused on protein over carbs. Yes, that has meant meat on occasion. Yes, I have also been feeling guilty. It has also meant realizing that eggs aren't so nasty, when coupled with cheese and salsa (omg huevos rancheros). But the biggest change has been filling in the carb hole with veggies. I thought I ate a lot of veggies before. Hah.
Although I haven't lost any weight since I started on the high-protein, low-cal diet, I haven't gained any either. And I'm definitely gaining muscle mass, considering I was able to do 10lbs more with the bar yesterday than a week ago. Huzzah! Part of the reason I may not be seeing much of a difference may also be because I'm terribly lax on the weekends. I need to buckle down on that. But I have noticed that my energy level throughout the day has evened out considerably, going from spiking in the morning and hitting rock bottom in the afternoon to just about average all day long. That has been nice.
Still, I'm not terribly sold on high-protein. At the end of this week I'm going to switch it up a bit, and focus more on the fruit and veggies. A lot of crossfit-ers swear by the paleo diet, which I disagree with philosophically on so many different levels, and a handful more go more extreme with raw. Starting in August (or rather, next time we go grocery shopping), I'm going to do a bastardized version of the two for 30 days and see what happens. 30 days is a useful time period to test stuff out and turn it from a oh-god-I-could-never-do-this to why-the-hell-not. All the fruits and veggies I could possibly want, some nuts and seeds, no dairy/grains/legumes. And this is the absolute perfect time for fruits and veggies, so I'm a bit stoked. :)
TLDR: I like fruits and veggies a lot and I'm going to eat more of them and tell you what happens.
My diet back when I was a kid was one of donuts, white bread, salad, meat and pasta. I hated most veggies because my family thought that steaming everything to a wilty mess was the best way to cook them. So when I cut out meat and mom replaced the white bread with wheat, I thought I was doing an awesome job. Unfortunately, instead of replacing the meat with veggies, I filled in with pasta and cheese. Lots and lots of cheese.
It wasn't really until we moved out to Seattle and got that bi-weekly vegetable bin that I put any effort into eating more veggies. Mostly because, well, there were all these veggies and maybe I didn't like them (or thought I didn't like them), but they needed to be eaten. In this manner I learned that I actually really love asparagus and carrots and broccoli and spinach and kale when they're cooked properly. Also, thank the gods for the internet and all its wonderful recipe resources.
Things pretty much stayed the same until last month, eating veggies semi-regularly but binging on bread and other grains when I was lazy. Then we started crossfit and I declared diet time. Unfortunately, strength training and losing fat do not easily go together. On the one hand, your body needs calories to build up that muscle. On the other, you need to run a calorie deficit to burn off fat. If you don't pay close attention, you can very easily end up burning muscle and building fat. It's mostly a matter of timing, but also a matter of what you eat.
So I switched up my food intake and focused on protein over carbs. Yes, that has meant meat on occasion. Yes, I have also been feeling guilty. It has also meant realizing that eggs aren't so nasty, when coupled with cheese and salsa (omg huevos rancheros). But the biggest change has been filling in the carb hole with veggies. I thought I ate a lot of veggies before. Hah.
Although I haven't lost any weight since I started on the high-protein, low-cal diet, I haven't gained any either. And I'm definitely gaining muscle mass, considering I was able to do 10lbs more with the bar yesterday than a week ago. Huzzah! Part of the reason I may not be seeing much of a difference may also be because I'm terribly lax on the weekends. I need to buckle down on that. But I have noticed that my energy level throughout the day has evened out considerably, going from spiking in the morning and hitting rock bottom in the afternoon to just about average all day long. That has been nice.
Still, I'm not terribly sold on high-protein. At the end of this week I'm going to switch it up a bit, and focus more on the fruit and veggies. A lot of crossfit-ers swear by the paleo diet, which I disagree with philosophically on so many different levels, and a handful more go more extreme with raw. Starting in August (or rather, next time we go grocery shopping), I'm going to do a bastardized version of the two for 30 days and see what happens. 30 days is a useful time period to test stuff out and turn it from a oh-god-I-could-never-do-this to why-the-hell-not. All the fruits and veggies I could possibly want, some nuts and seeds, no dairy/grains/legumes. And this is the absolute perfect time for fruits and veggies, so I'm a bit stoked. :)
TLDR: I like fruits and veggies a lot and I'm going to eat more of them and tell you what happens.
