Day 2 - Spring Clean-up

Old habits die hard and new "good" habits take a while to form and gel.  Today, day two is the 2nd day in a row that I was up and ate breakfast at 5:30 A.M.  I seldom ate breakfast that soon after waking and I am amazed at what I am eating for breakfast and that I am eating so much. 


Our culture has trained us to eat sugary cold cereals or grain based cereals like oatmeal, cream of wheat or others along with dairy.  Bacon, eggs, toast, and potatoes are another breakfast that is prevalent in our culture.  Then we get the breakfasts that taste Oh So Good, but I think we all would admit, if we were honest with ourselves, that they were bad for us; doughnuts, toaster strudel, pop tarts.  I have eaten them all even though I knew they were bad for me and not that long ago.


With this Spring Clean-up, I have committed to eating Paleo, with no cheating for 6 weeks.  That means no dairy, no grains and no sugars other than what naturally occurs in fruits and vegetables, honey or pure maple syrup.  It sounds harsh, but it is not there are lots of choices and tasty recipes, and I am expected to eat a lot.


Here is something else that is counter intuitive to what we accept as the proper way to eat.

1. I need to eat fat because fat is needed to help me feel full and our bodies need fat to help prevent the absorption of fat into our bodies and to help the body burn other fat.  Low Fat and No Fat options are not an option as they actually help make me overweight.

2. Instead of chewing food into small pieces before swallowing, I am supposed to swallow larger pieces because it slows down digestion. 


I mentioned earlier that I ate a lot for breakfast; I am going to post my meals for today here:

 5:30 AM - Breakfast - 1 chicken breast and 1 cup of veg. soup.

7:00 AM - Drink - black coffee.

9:30 AM - Snack - 1 cup greens1/2 cup cubed turkey & bacon1/2 cup mushrooms & lemon juice

1:15 PM - Lunch - grilled veggies and chicken in lemon vinaigrette.1 orange

7:45 PM - Dinner - 3 eggs, mushrooms, 1/3 cup sausage, artichoke hearts, sun dried tomato, asparagus, over wild greens. (salad) & 5 pieces of bacon. 1/4 cup dried cherries.

The Metcom that we will be using to test our performance increase in 6 weeks consisted of:

6 min AMRAP
20 Hand release push-ups
10 Calorie row
10 Sprints (10m each)

I had 2 complete rounds and 36 reps, which means I was only 4 10 meter sprints from 3 complete rounds.

Not bad.