Unleash The Animal

Yep, prepackaged food.  Now, I’m not talking about the crap you get at the grocery store.  Nope, I’m talking about the advantages of doing this for yourself.  Yes, you CAN do it, and you probably do, you just don’t realize it.  For example, do you pack your lunch to take with you?  Yes?  Good.  I assume you put it all on some kind of Tupperware-type plate that seals air tight, right?  If so, congratulations, you prepackaged a meal.

Here’s the thing: We’re all busy people.  Between work, family, the gym, and whatever else, we may not have time to cook every day.   So, why not do what you do for lunch, but for every day?  Just a couple of hours work on a rest day (use your gym time and a bit on a night there’s nothing good on TV) and cook up a storm.  Grill chicken, bake chicken, work up your tuna specialties, or what have you.  Then, just package them up and throw them in the fridge.

Why would you want to do this?  Well folks, here’s a couple of good reasons.  Obviously, there are more depending on who you are.  And, as always, this might not work for some folks.  However, it’s a suggestion for those who have a rough time with eating right.

First, by prepackaging, you’ve already worked up the portions to a point where the macronutrients should be consistent, more or less.  Obviously, you may not want to measure out exactly 4 ounces of chicken breast, but you get the point.  However, with something like Fitday, you can measure out what you put in your plate, input the data, and get a macronutrient profile for your meal.  You may not want to, and that’s fine, but it’s an option.  Why not have your own nutrition labels?  Then, when people comment about your meal, you can tell them exactly how much of what you’re eating.

However, like I said, that may not be for everyone.  The important thing is that you have a set amount of food set aside for each meal.  This will help prevent overeating, since you know you have 1 plate now, then another in a few hours.  No seconds keeps things nice and even.

Another advantage I’ve found with this is that it’s convenient as hell.  Why spend money on fast food when I can throw a plate in the microwave for a couple of minutes and have something hot and nutritious?  Besides, with the idiots working the drive-thru in most of the places around here, it ain’t that fast anyways!  Hell, you could bake a complete turkey (and thaw it) in the time it takes to get a coke from these morons!

The third thing I’ve found is that it seems to help prevent cheating.  After all, you KNOW you have healthy food there and ready, and since you don’t have 12 lbs of cheesecake sitting beside it, it makes healthy the easier alternative.  When you make healthy the easier choice through good taste and convenience, healthy will win out almost every time.  Jenn has been at this diet thing all week, using these basic principles (with my help) and she’s even managed to keep her sweet-tooth in line!  For her, this is absolutely huge.  Before this week, she was plagued by bad lunches, and now that I’m prepackaging her food, she’s not slipped once.  Obviously, I’m proud as hell of her, but it’s proof that this idea works!

Now, like I said, it might not work for you.  However, give it a shot.  Go to the grocery store and get some plates and give it a whirl!  If it doesn’t work, then look at it this way, you don’t have to wash lunch plates nearly as often

So, basically, it’s a win-win

I was just sitting here, looking down at my bicep and I flexed.  Hey, I work out, right?  It’s one of the things we do, this flex thing.  Anyways, I flexed.  And, to be frank (sorry Frank…I need to be you for the moment), it looked smaller than I remember it being.  Yep, my guns are shrinking.  Soon they’ll be Derringers and practically invisible…OK, maybe not, but they’ll still be less than impressive.  Since I’m bored, I’m gonna share with you
The remarkable thing is, I’m OK with that.  I realize on a real level that my arms looked bigger because of the fat around the muscles.  That is wasting away.  As of today, I’ve officially lost as much as my whole Body For Life challenge.  Honestly, I couldn’t tell you why, but it’s now true.  It took me 12 weeks before to lose 11 lbs, yet now I’ve done it faster (with less cardio…WOOHOO!).  This is, you see, an important milestone for me.  11 lbs ain’t nothing to sneeze at, at least in my book.  Think of all the people that want to lose 10-15 lbs.  Yeah, I can do that.  Oh wait, I’ve already done that…gimme something tough!  The great thing is, I’ve done it without craving horrible foods!

Earlier today, my wife agreed to hope on the scale tonight, and let me measure her body fat, then listen to me and what I’ve learned for two weeks.  Then, we’ll get back on the scale, and see what happens.  For her, weight loss won’t be as easy as it has been for me the last couple of weeks.  She craves every bad food she can think of.  She longs for it like she’s pining for a lost lover.  "Just a few Pizza Hut bread sticks my darling!"  However, if I can get her to see results in herself, it’ll be easier for her to decide between the grilled chicken breast, or the BBQ that was brought into her office (she works in a doctor’s office and drug reps feed them all the time…and all the wrong foods!)

One step I made to getting her on track was her being awakened by a healthy, but yummy, breakfast in bead.  She reveled in it, and I earned some serious brownie points that I’ll probably need in the next couple of weeks anyways.  I explained to her that I’m trying to make healthy food that will taste great!  If it’s not yummy, it’s less likely to be eaten in preference to something that’s bad for you, so yummy is a must.

Obviously, it has to be an individual’s choice to eat healthy or eat junk, but I can rig it.  I can make healthy stuff harder for her to say "No" to, and therefore increase her chances of success.  This is the one game where it’s OK to stack the deck, right?

Yeah, the scale doesn’t matter to me.  I guess that’s why I just had to hop on it this morning.  After two days of my diet not being right where I thought I needed it, I find an amazing 4 lbs drop, bringing my total since July 10 to 11 lbs.  Per my body fat measurements (which admittedly are questionable), my lean body mass has remains about the same.  Now, this is always a good thing.

Looking at my food logs (fitday.com) I see that I bumped my calories up a bit over the last four days, and Friday night being a cheat meal night it went way up.  Apparently, THIS is what a cheat day is supposed to do .  I ate pretty healthy on my "cheat meal", but there were a lot of calories and carbs in my meal.  Yesterday though, I had a higher level of fats, and far fewer carbs.  Not quite a Keto day though, so I’m not sure what happened.  Whatever, I’ll take it.

I think the thing is, I don’t care what the scale says anymore, but it’s not that I don’t care about any of the numbers.  Instead, I found myself being apprehensive about the scale’s measurements, and then took everything else to see what’s going on.  It wasn’t until I got the total picture (measurements, body fat, weight) that I got worked up.  I could see, at many points, that my body is burning fat up.  I’m retaining muscle as well.  You see, I care…but I can’t give a damn about one aspect of everything.  I now find that I need the whole picture to tell anything from anything.

So, basically, I lied.  I didn’t mean to, but hey…if this is the worse thing I ever lie about, I’m amazing

Looking at the costs involved, I’ve decided to step aside in my love of food bars.  While I agree shakes and such have their place in our hallowed diets, I just can’t spend $100 per month on just bars that I have a habit of getting tired of.  Instead, I’m looking at switching over to actual FOOD!  Besides, there’s more room for variation that way.

Here are a couple of options I’m toying with at the moment:

1.  Chicken/turkey wrap.  Take some of your favorite poultry meat, some lettuce, a bit of non-fat ranch dressing and stick it in a ziploc bag and shake it up until the dressing is on everything.  Slap that bad boy into some of the Flat Out wrap bread and POOF!  Granted, depending on the amount of meat, it may take two of these.  They’re filling, but not calorie dense enough on their own.

2.  Chicken Sandwich.  Take chicken breast, slap it between two pieces of whole wheat bread.

3.  Protein shake and yogurt.  I used to do this one…depending on the flavors of each, it can be pretty good.

4.  Extra meals.  Just like a regular meal, just at an odd time.  I know, this one is really pushing it, aren’t I?

These are just a few of the options I’m debating right now.  I’ll be honest, this is a money decision.  I decided to prioritize, and meal replacement bars are just to damn expensive and to tiring.  Instead, I’d rather replace them with food that’s easy to shift if I get tired of something and be more cost effective. Instead, I’m going to focus my supplement money on other things to try that will stimulate muscle growth, at least on a limited basis.

I’m open to other suggestions of whole foods to use between meals.  I don’t want to feel like I’m stuffing myself all the time, you know?  Still, it’ll be fun watching my coworkers faces when they see me eat all the time, and lose weight

Yeah, this evening’s post is pretty much filled to the brim with stuff.  First, today was supposed to be cardio, but my legs are still feeling the workout from last Thursday (see previous blog).  Since tomorrow is legs day, I had to decide which day to take a break on.  I opted for today, mostly because I seem to burn more calories lifting than I do on the treadmill.  Until I can get some idea how to wrap my hands, the heavy bag won’t work for cardio, but I’ll get on that this weekend, since it’s payday weekend.  A good way to get cardio and loosen up the arms after triceps and biceps are worked, and to save the legs a bit for squats!

Next, I tried something different tonight for dinner and DAY-UM, that stuff was good!  I had never, ever, in my entire life, had mashed sweet potatoes.  Well, at Sam’s last weekend I saw a package and decided to give it a try.  Since we all know sweet potatoes are the carb of the Gods, I figured I should try every way to get some I can.  Well, this stuff was GOOD!  There is a downside though…this stuff is loaded with calories.  However, a 1/2 cup serving, 5 ounces of roasted chicken, and a cup of steamed broccoli was still only about 400 calories, so I wouldn’t sweat it to much.  Go get some if you haven’t already!

Next is my supplement question.  Mostly, as anyone used the Animal products?  I’ve heard good stuff from time to time in the past, and I’d really like to pick up a good multi and some BCAAs.  I’ve been looking at the Animal Pak, since it seems to be a bit of both, but I’m open to other options.  Mostly though, Universal’s stuff is really well priced here on BB.com, so I figured it was worth a shot.  Any input on their stuff is welcomed!

Man, what a workout!  My back and biceps are blasted!  I haven’t worked my back like that in ages, and my biceps are screaming at me right now to do it to them again next week.  Great, solid workout!  With days like that, I’ll reach all my goals without a problem!  Jenn did great too.  She wasn’t feeling to well, but she wanted to go and put forth maximum effort.  While her weights right now are "girl" weights, she’s pushing hard.  It won’t be long before she starts embarrassing the paper dolls in the gym!

Diet has been really clean with the exception of the planned cheat meal last Friday night.  So far, no cravings as far as I can tell.  The biggest problem I’m having is getting enough calories.  I need to squeeze in something like 600 calories tonight to reach 2000.  That’s just not going to be doable.  Instead, I’ll need to boost my breakfast up a bit, and my lunch for that matter.  The meal replacement bars are what they are, so nothing I can do about that now.  But I have got to get enough food!  I damn sure don’t need my metabolism slowing down…that’s part of how I got into this mess in the first place.

Luckily, my motivation is great.  No cravings for bad stuff, no desire to skip workouts, no distractions of any sort with the exception of watching a bootleg version of 300 before the workout, but that only serves to pump me up even more!  Besides, I don’t really have a choice.  The men in my family die young.  My uncle died at 39.  I turn 34 in September.  Death is a constant enemy.  I train to fight off Death.  When he comes for me, he’ll find that I’m no easy prey.  He better come and be ready for one hell of a fight.  I don’t go gentle, and Death will find that out for himself.

Yeah, let Death come.  I’m kicking that bastard right in the junk!

My diet, that is.  Yesterday I was awful.  You see, I didn’t plan properly and didn’t eat nearly enough food.  A bit over 1200 calories by my figuring.  Everything I ate was healthy, but it’s still not a good idea to do that again.  Just because it’s the weekend, I have to remember to plan ahead.

To that end, I got some stuff to make wraps.  I can throw one together that’s fairly well balanced, healthy, and it takes just minutes to make.  However, chicken (or whatever meat you use) must be cooked beforehand.  Luckily, the recipe isn’t dependent on any particular kind of meat.  I threw one together for lunch in a hurry today and it wasn’t bad.  Next time, I’ll mix the ingredients up in a Ziploc bag and shake it well to get the dressing on everything first, but other than that it was great.  I’ll be happy to share the recipe if anyone is interested.  It’s pathetically simple.

It’s a great thing to have some easy, quick food available.  After all, we have to live our lives and the wraps will be one key to help me do that.  Today, for example, my diet has been great.  I’ve eaten only what I’ve supposed to eat, and eaten when I was supposed to eat.  It’s great to be able to do that.  I should have done that yesterday, and I will next weekend for certain.

Convenience is enticing.  It’s really easy to go to McDonald’s and eat up.  However, it’s not the path I’m on.  My wife offered to pick some salads up for dinner.  I declined.  That convenience won’t get food ready for lunches tomorrow, or dinner tomorrow night after the gym, or any other important time ahead for us.

You see, working full time is one thing.  Adding on gym time, as I’m sure most of you know, is just another strain on already limited time.  We eat after the gym, and it helps if food is cooked but only needs to be warmed up.  Not the best, no.  But, it beats the fast food demons.

I’m finding few cravings really.  I often hear about some of my favorite foods and almost lust after them, but it soon passes.  That makes it a whole lot easier.  Now, I’m craving my oven fried chicken that’s cooking right now.  It’s smell wafts through the air, dancing under my nose to tease me with it’s nutrition and yummy taste.

After all…if it I can’t make it yummy, I won’t eat it! Thank God I can make up some stuff on the fly

First, I’m quite sure that this is hardly groundbreaking research here, but thought I’d share it just the same.  Who knows how might read this.  I decided to compare and contrast my caloric intake from dinner last night, to a typical American meal on a friday night.

First, let’s discuss my dinner last night.  It was pretty good, for mostly coming out of prepackaging.  I had grilled fish fillet, brown rice, and lima beans (mostly for the fiber content).  The caloric info breaks down as such:

Fish Fillet: 100

Brown Rice: 150

Lima Beans 80

Now, that gives me an entire meals intake of only 330 calories. Doing that six meals a day tops out at just under 2000 calories for an entire day.  Not to bad, since I’m 227 lbs and my caloric intake is somewhere in the 3000 range.  Hell, I probably need to get MORE food

Now, the average American probably ate fast food (no data to back that up, but you all know I’m right ).  Let’s take the quintessential American fast food place, McDonald’s.  Mickey-D’s has come under a LOT of pressure to make their food healthier, so let’s see how they did:

A single Ranch Crispy Chicken wrap, not a lot of food, comes in at exactly the same as my meal last night, only there was less of it…330 calories. Now, if you replace that with grilled chicken, you get a whole savings of 60 calories (270 total for the grilled chicken ranch wrap).  Not to bad, if you find yourself with no other choice, but it’s far from being that healthy.

You and I both know, however, that America didn’t eat grilled chicken ranch wraps.  They went with burgers and fries.  Now, let’s take a look at the breakdown of that meal:

Big Mac: 540

Med Fries: 380

Med Coke: 210

For a total of: 1130

That’s almost 3.5 times the calories of my meal last night, for a similar amount of food!  And since many people opted for large instead of medium, that number is probably higher!  Not only that, but I didn’t look at other things like fat content, protien, carbs, anything like that.  Just pure calories!

So, the moral of this story is, if you want to lose weight, you can have two meals at McDonald’s and maybe, just maybe, you’ll lose a bit.  Or, you can eat healthier meals, eat 6 times per day, and still keep your total caloric intake low to help facilitate weight loss.

Tough choice, huh?