Day 7

Not a whole lot of new news to report on my caveman-style diet. I was a little slack yesterday as I had some popcorn at the movies last night. The main thing I’m realizing is that eating is much more of a social activity than I realized. Not being able to eat certain things affects what I can do with my friends to some extent. Yeah, I could go to the movies and not eat popcorn, but that’s part of the experience. I haven’t yet separated food from experiences like this so it’s difficult to participate. If I had friends who were also looking to be healthy, that might make it a lot easier.

I think after this month is over my plan will likely change to being healthy/caveman-style when I’m on my own, so I can eat other foods when I’m out with friends. That would still put me being 90% healthier than most people. What do you think?

Day 4 of Cavemanish eating

Yesterday was day 4 of my month-long trial/experiment in eating like a caveman, with some slight modifications. See below for my menu from yesterday.

Breakfast

• 2 eggs, fried on stove
• chocolate protein shake with ground flax seed and a scoop of cashew nut butter

This was my first time ever with flax seed. I wouldn’t say I enjoyed it. It tasted…strange. Not even sure how to describe it. Hopefully I’ll find some better ways to mix it in with foods, because it made my protein shake taste pretty weird.

Lunch

I went to Chili’s at Triangle Town Center for lunch. Chili’s has a huge menu, so it wasn’t too challenging finding something I could eat. I got the Cobb salad with lettuce, bacon, chicken (was breaded/fried unfortunately), tomatoes, egg, bits of corn and beans and advocado ranch dressing. It was very tasty but not as good and I almost didn’t miss having cheese. Almost…

The salad was huge so I took a lot of it home in a box.

Dinner

Dinner was leftover salad with some leftover sirloin steak from the night before. I also had some fruit (pineapple, honeydew melon, canelupe and grapes). Pretty healthy meal until…

Beer! I decided to have 3 beers last night over the course of the UNC-Rutgers football game. I’m dedicated to this diet for the next month, but not that dedicated I guess. We had friends over to watch the game and I just enjoy beer with friends and football. I don’t feel too bad about “cheating” like this.

Oh and just so you know, if I don’t mention what I’m drinking with my meals (except for the beer this time), it’s always been tap water.

Hope everyone is having a great Friday and has a nice weekend!

Day 3 of cavemanish diet

Yesterday was Wednesday, September 10, and it was my third day on this new paleo/cavemanish diet. If you’re new here, I’m doing this NOT to lose weight, but just to see what effect it has on my overall health, energy and workouts. I currently work out 4-5 a week with a mix of kettlebells, pull up bar exercises and body weight exercises, with some cardio/work on my punching bag thrown in. But enough about that. Here’s what I ate on day 3 of this diet yesterday:

Breakfast

• Protein shake – Body Fortress whey protein (chocolate) – 26g protein, 105 calories, 2g fat
• chicken sausage link – cooked in olive oil on stove

Lunch

I made some guacamole from scratch for lunch. Here’s my recipe for guacamole. Just take the ingredients and chop them up and mash them together in a bowl.

• 1 avocado
• 1 small tomato
• 1 tiny onion – very tiny – or use about 1/4 of a normal, fist-sized onion
• half a jalepeno pepper
• half a clove of garlic
• juice from one lime

I also had a piece of turkey and some almonds for lunch. The guacamole tastes good by itself or on the turkey. Makes the turkey a little less dry and boring.

Dinner

• Salad with spinach, leftover guacamole, sirloin steak and olive oil/balsamic vinegar
• snack later – 4 pieces of beef jerky

I feel like I am already noticing the effects of this diet. I worked out pretty hard on Monday but wasn’t as sore as I expected on Tuesday. Yesterday I also had a pretty good workout – did a lot of pullups, abs and chest, and I’m not too sore. I woke up this morning well before my alarm with so much energy I couldn’t even have stayed in bed if I’d wanted.

Let me know if you have any questions for me or suggestions for what I should write about regarding this diet. Have a great day!

Day 2

Today was my second day on this crazy new primal eating plan. Breakfast was easy:

• OJ
• 1 scrambled egg
• Trader Joe’s chicken sausage cooked in olive oil on stove
• multi-vitamin

At lunch I experienced my first challenge. I was going out to lunch with a friend and I had to figure out a place that had healthy food, with no preservatives, etc. This was in a place in Durham (9th street) that I’d never been before. Finally I decided on a hole-in-the-wall Mexican place. Not much on the menu for me (without modifying) but I decided to go with the taco salad with chicken. This consisted of grilled chicken, lettuce, tomato, guacamole and salsa and was pretty delicious. I’m a big fan of guacamole and I’ll have to share my recipe with you at some point.

Dinner was also challenging. I had planned on coming home and eating a salad with turkey or chicken, green peppers, and some macadamia nuts on the side, but due to unforseen circumstances, my plans changed. I was forced to find something to eat at Char Grill or go hungry for a few hours (until after 10pm). So I ordered a plain grilled chicken sandwich and didn’t eat the bread. I’m not gonna lie. It was boring and unsatisfying.

When I finally got home tonight (about 15 minutes ago) at 10:30, I had a small spinach salad with oil and vinegar, beef jerky and some macadamia nuts. I won’t say I’m full, but I’m definitely not going to bed hungry at least.

Tomorrow morning I’ll be doing my kettlebell workout and hopefully getting more creative with my meals. Stay tuned to see how that goes.

Living Like a Hampster!

So we fought our way to the top of the food chain to live like – oh I don’t know – hamsters? -GeorgeJu

Some people may consider the caveman/paleo diet to be inferior, but I am giving it a shot to see how it is, how it makes me feel, etc. Here’s what I’ve had to eat so far today:

Breakfast

• Glass of Orange Juice – Tropicana Not from Concentrate, some pulp (usually don’t really like pulp but decided to go home today to work, and that’s what my Dad drinks, so I had to make do)
• One fried egg
• One link of chicken sausage from Trader Joe’s – cooked on stove in olive oil
• a few pieces of misc fruit (caneloupe, strawberries, honey dew melon)

I felt pretty full after eating all of this and didnt finish my last bite of chicken sausage.

Lunch

• Piece of thick-cut turkey from Trader Joe’s – tasted pretty boring without any seasoning at all
• small package of cashews
• piece of watermelon
• some blueberries

Again, I was pretty full after eating this meal, and didn’t even feel like finishing all the turkey. I think this is probably because I haven’t worked out yet today–haven’t used much energy up yet, so haven’t needed to replace it.

So far, so good. I think for dinner I’ll have some type of salad and maybe some beef. Stay tuned for more hampster-ish meals, and if you have any ideas for easy/quick/healthy meals, let me know!

My Experiment with Caveman/Primal Eating

So I’ve decided to do an experiment. For 30 days I will not eat any processed foods (no frozen pizza or meals, sugar, etc). Only fruits, veggies, meat and nuts (with the occasional protein shake thrown in). I’ve read a fair amount about the caveman diet/primal blueprint on sites such as Mark’s Daily Apple and Robb Wolf’s blog and have gotten interested in this type of eating recently, but have never had the discipline to actually implement it. I’m doing this because I want to see what effect this will have on my energy/health and my workouts (currently I’m doing a kettlebell routine 2-3x a week with some pullups thrown in). I’m NOT doing this to lose weight; if anything, I need to bulk up.

Also, I’m hoping to come to the conclusion that it’s not that hard to eat healthy. I guess we’ll see how it goes. I’ll be writing on this blog at least once a day for the next month to let you know how I’m feeling, what I’m eating, etc.

I hope you find this informative and helpful. I’m not promising that I’m going to be able to do this 100% and not have any “cheat” foods, but I’m going to do my best. I’m just learning as I go along, and I’m certainly not an expert on this subject.  Feel free to leave any questions you may have in the comments.

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You can view the thoughts of Sports Business Blogger Jason Peck at Take A Peck.

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