Monday, July 25, 2011

Monday Monday Monday

I woke this morning with that disgusting dried out salty mouth feeling. I hate high sodium :( totally killer. Sometimes I get it so bad the inside of my mouth peels :|....

Anyhow, weather is decent in Hamilton today. Since it rained Friday night the weather has been much more moderate! Finally. I am just doing some chores and another lame living room workout. Can't wait to get my hands on a real gym pass again.

I'll post my "before" measurements now... Given I have been eating clean and working out for 2 weeks but the change has been nothing dramatic. I probably have some water weight on from all the salty food anyways :)

Measurements (July 25, 2011):

Height: 5'8"
Weight: 145lbs
Waist: 28.5"
Neck: 13"
Hips: 32"
Bum: 37"
Calf: 14.5"
Thigh: 24"

Using an online body fat percentage calculator (based on height/weight/measurements) I have: 16.2% Body Fat which puts me in the "athletes" category. According to this I am 23.5 Pounds of fat and 121.5 Pounds of lean (muscle, bone, body water). I'd like to get one of those skin pincher measuring things to be more accurate though!

I'll post some 'before' pictures later ;)

Latest Whim: joining the McMaster Track team. I'm gonna have to man up and throw in some more running with my weights if I want this to happen. We will see.... .

Later!

-Cait

Sunday, July 24, 2011

Cheat Day 2

Hola!

Cheat day number 2... More successful than the seditating east side marios from last week, but still not 100%! Michael and I got up this morning, started our day with protein smoothies (which I will give you a healthy breakfast kick-start recipe for). Then we went around the corner to a local bakery for cinnamon buns, only to find they're closed Sundays. We ended up settling for Second Cup and were not impressed with their cherry cheese cake. Was fridge-old and rock solid, not the mouth watering soft and evil cheese cake we were looking forward to. I actually got my money back, and I am not the type to complain about bad food!

We finished our coffees and then went for a hike through a local conservation area, mostly forests/trails/streams. I had been there a few times before but it was Mike's first visit. We went for a hard 45min hard hike - got a sweat on! Was nice to have a thoroughly enjoyable workout even on our cheat day :) got our blood pumping and enjoyed the scenery and adventure as well.

When we got home we went to the nearby grocery store to find our cheat-dinner. We had started the Sunday cheat ideas with: pizza, nachos, ice cream, etc etc. BAD stuff. But we've been eating so clean recently we couldn't do it. Instead I made a stir fry with tofu chicken and broccoli with general tao chicken, and a side of rice. Michael also made fries and I had some of those Quaker rice crisp chips. I am STUFFED! Don't feel disgusting though which is nice. The only downer to the meal was pretty high sodium. I have that nasty dry mouth feeling. Still struggling with doing cheats right lol! Til' next Sunday :)

I have just about completed my diet. This is where it stands right now:

Meal 1: Protein smoothie (breakfast recipe at the end)
Meal 2: 1/2 cup egg whites, 1 whole egg, 1/4 cup spinach/arugala, scrambled and micro cooked, with 1/2 cup salsa, 1 slice of multigrain bread
Meal 3: 1/2 cup quinoa, 3/4 cup spinach/arugala, veggies, 1tbsp balsamic vinegar, 1tsp mustard, 1tbsp lemon juice, 1tbsp udo's oil, 1/4 brick tofu, 1tbsp "super seeds", 1/4cup unsalted mixed nuts --- done as a cold salad
Meal 4: 1/2 avocado, veggies, lemon juice/balsamic vinegar/fresh dill -- done as a salad
Meal 5: Protein bar
Meal 6: 1/2 cup lentils (done as curry), with 1 cup broccoli
Meal 7: Protein shake with 1tbsp udo's oil - right before bed

Stats: 2046 calories, 94.5g fat, 234.1g carbs, 138.2g protein.
                               36% fat, 40% carbs, 24% protein
Info courtesy of FitDay - thank you!

So these meals are throughout the day, with 2-2.5 hours in between each one. It's been hard for me to eat all of these as I just don't get hungry for it. Michael was telling me you have to force your metabolism to speed up and then after about a week of doing it religiously at the 2.5hour mark you will always be hungry by that time. I have yet to add in the lentils meal - I'm headed to Bulk Barn this week to re-stock my supplies :)

I also obviously have more adjusting to do: I need to increase my protein and keep the calories around 2000. I am switching protein powders/bars soon so I'll have to fix that when the time comes as well. 

As @JeanetteJenkins said, "Fail to plan and you are planning to fail."

Cheers everyone!

-Cait

Breakfast Smoothie
  • 1 scoop protein
  • Half a banana (pre-frozen)
  • Berries (pre-frozen)
  • 2 heaping scoops of ground flax seeds
  • 1 tsp glut-amine powder
  • 1 cup non-sweetened almond milk
  • Water & ice - base on thickness
Blend together and drink in the morning with your daily supplements! Gives a kick to your metabolism with low carbs, high fiber, high protein!

Friday, July 22, 2011

Avocados!

Hey everyone,

Yesterday I had to do my workout in my living room. Obviously a gym is more ideal, but i have a bit of a situation keeping me from the gym... At McMaster you can only buy gym passes per term, so since it's 3/4 way through term I'm not going to pay full price for 1mo of gym and have to renew again in September. I may go down there and try to negotiate soon though.

Anyhow, I have 25lb and 8lb dumb bell pairs, a yoga mat, furniture, and a fan (no AC :'(). The workouts I have been doing are based off of bodybuilding.com (http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/womans_lean_sexy_bible.htm) so I adjusted the "Week 1-4 Tuesday" workout for my living room. Squats I did with 25lb dumbbells at my side (light weight so I did plenty of extra reps). I did stiff leg deads again with extra reps. For lying leg curls/leg extentions I substituted with different workouts. For Quads I did reverse lunges with 8lb dumbbells in hand (extra reps again). For Hammy's I did a reverse plank. This I had to get creative with: I put my yoga mat down infront of a stool, laid on my back with heels on the stool, and stiffened my body upwards (head, hips, heels in line) with my arms supporting on the ground. I held this long as I could bear it for 3 sets. Calf raises I did ten per step of the entire flight of stairs (no more than a moment's rest between each). And then I completed the abs simply on my yoga mat. The workout did me well though! I woke this morning with achy muscles (such a great feeling - reminds you that you DID something). This also helps a bit with water retention - since I have no AC so I was sweating profusely the entire time :P

This post is titled Avocados! because yesterday was the first day I added a half avocado into my daily diet! I LOVE AVOCADOS. The nutrition in these things is amazing and they're so delicious. A great salad consists of: 1-2 sprigs chopped dill, 1/2 avocado chopped, chopped tomatoes/cucumbers/snowpeas/what ever veggies you love, 1tbsp balsamic vinegar, pepper. Super healthy and soooo delicious!

Tomorrow is Farmer's Market visit to pick up some delicious, fresh, organic produce :D

Hope you all are feeling great :)
-Cait

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Diet in the Works

Hi all!
I have been steadily adjusting my diet and working with perfecting it. The diet I am aiming for is 40% carbs, 25% protein, and 35% fats (mix of whole grains and high fiber foods). As you all know, I am doing this as a vegetarian, so it makes it tricky to use high protein carbs (such as lentils and quinoa, for example) without going over my daily calorie limit. More specifically, I am aiming for 150 grams of protein - making up the 25% (this is 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight) - and the carb and fat percentages are based off of this. For calories, my BMR (basal metabolic rate - the calories I burn merely staying alive - calculated this in my physiology class last year) is 1520, and on a normal day I probably use 2000-2500, or more, depending on how active I am. Jeanette Jenkins, who I am following on twitter @JeanetteJenkins, made a very good point: 500calories per day is 3500 per week, which is equal to one pound of fat. So I am aiming to cut my calorie intake by 500 calories per day - putting me at a limit of as close to 2000 calories as possible, and hopefully burning 1lb of fat per week. This is VERY difficult to do!
So here are the basic diet-making-concepts that are working for me so far:
1. AVOID "BLAH" CARBS - i.e. pasta and bread - do little for you except provide fuel. I have cut pasta out totally (still mourning) and only have one slice of bread per day.
2. AVOID ALL OILS except Udo's DHA oil. Udo's DHA has better absorption than classic Udo's, and provides a healthy omega 3-6-9 ratio (something majority of people do not have - focus on omega 3's)}
  •  cook eggs in the microwave, scrambled with a little water - no oil in the pan
  • if you make a salad - limit to 1 tbsp udo's per day and get creative for the remainder of your dressing
  • 1tbsp udo's in your protein shake before bed - for slower absorption of protein over night
3. POWER CARBS - complex carbs that provide you with killer sources of nutrients and also high protein. Quinoa is the ONLY complete protein found in a carbohydrate. Lentils, beans, nuts, seeds, etc. etc. are all excellent - just watch your fats. When you choose your power carbs, make sure you have an appropriate protein combination so that you get proper absorption for muscle building. Also, eat as little carbs as you can get away with, while still getting your protein and nutrients from them.

4. FLAVOUR - make friends with herbs and spices! Virtually calorie free and packed full of flavour and other health benefits. Also, get to know low-cal sauce options - balsamic vinegar, mustard, lemon juice, garlic, etc.

5. WATCH YOUR SOY - Soy is amazing. All vegetarians and vegans thrive on soy products to an extent. However, too much of any good thing is bad. Variety in a diet is extremely important - so don't focus all your protein in soy.

Last thing I have to say about getting your diet started - is check out FitDay (http://www.fitday.com/). It's a
"Free diet and weight loss journal". They give you opportunities to track foods, activities, mood, journal, body, stats, etc. My favourite part of the website is the size of their information data base. Grueling over a calculator and nutrition labels is something no one wants to do. FitDay has THOUSANDS of stored food items and activites. You can use it daily, or use it to plan your day-to-day diet. Enter all your selected foods, and you can select amounts, so you can adjust the quantities or remove/add foods to try to hit your cal/carb/prot/fat goals, check %DV for nutrients, and view this info by chart/pie graph/bar graph! Saves a headache and is extremely sophisticated.

I will post my diet once I have it perfected! I also plan on posting my "before" photos, measurements, and weight (eeek you lucky ducks).

Anything specific you'd like to learn about? I'm a science student with a passion for nutrition, so I'd be glad to write blogs about nitty-gritty stuff to do with BMR, metabolism, food use, and anything else you guys fire at me!

Have a fabulous day everyone!!

Monday, July 18, 2011

Diet Cheat Day

So, generally speaking, most healthy fitness diets consist of one "cheat day" per week. This is an opportunity to eat outside the usual so your body can replenish the carbs, fats, and any other nutrients it's been depleted of - and put them to good use. One should be sure to still include veggies, carbs, proteins, and fats into a cheat day - but can be anything you'd like with no limits on amounts of each.

For my cheat day, my boyfriend Michael and I went to East Side Marios. What better cheat? Unlimited bread and salad, and a relatively large portion of pasta. So we thought...

I have never felt WORSE after a cheat day. It makes me not want to diet cheat at all - which you'd think would be the opposite. The salad was delicious, as always, but the bread quality has been going down over the years, along with the pasta quality. I hate to inform you that my pasta choice was "Vernazza Peppercorn Alfredo" - was far from what I expected with regard to the description, left me bloated, saline, and exhausted. Mike and I passed out when we got home and didn't recuperate for the remainder of the evening. The worst part was - we got totally ripped off. Over $40 for 2 meals of mediocre quality.

We pinky-swore to never go there again...

Hopefully next Sunday's cheat will be more satisfying to my wallet, belly, body, and senses.

Saturday, July 16, 2011

what to put in a blog...

Hi all,

Kind of bizarre - blogs. It's like a journal, but others read it. The difference between a blog and a journal is the mere fact of feeling judged or not - the pages of a diary are certainly not going to pass judgment, and the small 'secure' lock ensures no one else will either.

Anyways - I will try to write this blog as bluntly and honestly as possible. My worst fear is sounding either of timid or arrogant - I do my best to aim for between those two. I have a tendency to sound harsh or condescending in writing - so I hope I am not perceived this way by anyone who decides to read!

I made an account on blogger almost 2 years ago, and never posted anything because there was no actual purpose to the blog. It's one thing to treat a blog like a journal - but if there's no story, why would people read? I wanted to do something like "Julie and Julia" where a woman writes a blog about her venture to cook every recipe in a famous French cook book.

I have always been a bit of a health/fitness fanatic - but in the past year I have been doing more and more research and making more drastic changes in my life. I have grown a fierce passion to get very fit and to dedicate myself completely to healthy eating. When I became a vegetarian, I lost 20lbs. When I moved out to go to school and was doing my own grocery shopping, I got thinner still. Now I am at a comfortable weight - fat in spots but easy to hide! (I'm sure everyone can relate to that one lol) - but I want to maximize my potential. With athletic genes and an existent healthy lifestyle, I figured it wouldn't be too much difficulty to go "all the way" with health and fitness.

I am committing myself to gym and cardio time as well as a healthy diet. For gym I am mostly doing weights mixed in with strength/cardio workouts. I am also doing separate cardio sessions - mostly running and soon jump rope and swimming. My diet is a typical high protein, low carb diet. I will give details for all this in later posts when I have everything down-pat.

I have been doing this for a little over a week now, and as I develop and mold my diet for myself I am realizing just how restrictive it is! And how creative I need to be! For example. Olive oil - something I LOVE - goes on everything, good omega-3/6 ratio, healthiest cooking oil. BUT despite the fact that olive oil may be a good alternative - I can't even fit a table spoon of it into my diet due to the high fat and calorie content. So, for one of my meals I had been doing a quinoa and vegetable salad with seeds and nuts - very high in protein and all good fats. I put 1tbsp of Udo's DHA oil onto it - cut the olive oil - and instead I add a combination of lemon juice, mustard, and balsamic vinegar - all very low calorie fat free options - and it tastes GREAT!

To finish off - I hope that I can be an inspiration to dieters, gymers, vegetarians, fitness fanatics, health fanatics,  and anyone else who finds my content of an interest. It is motivating for ME to be able to post my experiences and knowledge for others to read! I love to help people - so hopefully I can do this through this blog :)

Have a great day everyone!!!
-Cait