Paleo/Nutrition Challenge Reflections and My Last Meals

The Nutrition Challenge at my crossfit box ended last month, but they didn't announce the winners until last weekend.  Guess what? I tied for second place! Woohoo! Thank you everybody for your words of encouragement and support throughout those two months. It really was a challenge in every sense of the word. Let me take you through the last week of the challenge...

 

Looking for some new inspiration, we found a paleo friendly recipe in of all places, a Rachael Ray cookbook. Justin found a recipe for "Pork Chops Slathered in Mustard Butter with Bacon-Braised Napa." We didn't have any napa cabbage, or any cabbage for that matter, so we just sauteed the onions and raisins. 

It still turned out good with our improvisation!

Justin later made another version of this recipe using apples which was good as well!

As we were traveling to NYC one weekend, I found a way to eat paleo at Chik-fil-a. While I looked longingly at the spicy chicken sandwich and waffle fries, I had to settle for the grilled chicken bites and a side of fruit salad...definitely not as good :(

But for every meal that wasn't as good, there was always a delicious paleo meal around the corner. You can't go wrong with baked chicken with a side of sweet potato and greens. Tasty and nutritious!

Towards the very end of the challenge, I think Justin started getting tired of making paleo-fied versions of meals, especially if they didn't taste quite the same. He started making separate meals. Below is when he made stir-fry for dinner. The one on the left made the traditional way with soy sauce, thickened with corn starch and the one on the right made with coconut aminos, thickened with coconut flour. 

I could definitely tell that towards the end of the challenge, I was starting to lack inspiration, especially when it came to my lunches. But no harm in keeping it simple, right?

Anyways, let me share with you some of my results from the challenge! I lost 10 lbs over the two month period.  I also lost nearly 7 inches, but the more amazing thing is how much stronger I got! Sorry, but I'm not brave enough to post my before/after pictures. Maybe I'll share them after I've lost more weight? ;) 

 

Here are my weights/reps from when I first started the challenge...

And here are my results after I completed the challenge...

This chart's notes compared the improvement in weight/reps from when I first started to the end. One thing's for sure, when it comes to running, I'm still a pretty slow ;)

Overall, I would say that participating in this challenge was a huge learning experience. One that I'm really glad I took part in. 

Winners, winners, (unbreaded) Chicken Dinners!

Photo Courtesy of CF Rubicon

Some final thoughts...

Do I currently eat paleo now? Honestly, I don't but I try to adhere to eating clean (whole foods, no chemicals) overall, and mostly choose protein/veggies over carbs when eating.

Would I do a challenge like this again? Possibly, if I need a reset my diet.  It would be similar to how someone would do a fast or a cleanse.

Paleo Challenge: Halfway there, Living on a Prayer!

Hi Everyone! As my Bon Jovi inspired titled indicates I am just about halfway done with my Paleo Nutrition Challenge. It has been a challenge in every sense of the word and my patience has truly been tested these past few weeks as my weight loss has plateaued. *sad face*  Although I dropped seven pounds within the first couple weeks of the challenge, I have been at a standstill ever since. Talking with my friends and family about it has been extremely helpful. As my support system, they told me that I need to persevere and since I've made it this long (over a month without bread/starches and alcohol!), I can't stop now! They are so right!

 

After much contemplation. I decided to go to my work nutritionist to get some insight on how I can defeat this plateau. Since this is a free service that my company provides, I figured I had nothing to lose (no pun intended!). I made my appointment for Monday and she initially "poopoo'ed" me for being on the paleo diet. I stuck to my guns and told her this was how I ate and she laid off. I can't blame her since most nutritionists follow the traditional high carb/beans diet plan as a "model" of health. I mean honestly, oatmeal has never filled me up (unless I eat large quantities) and I'm always hungry by 11am! Anyway, I digress...After reviewing my food journal, she was still able offer me some helpful suggestions to get me out of my plateau.

 

1) Lay of the muffins! Yes my beloved muffins, rich in protein and coconut oil amongst other things...she suggested I limit myself to one per day. These particular ones I made over the weekend were strawberry!

 

 

 

 

2) Go easy on the Paleo sweets and treats. Therefore, my coconut cream and raspberries need to be once in a while occasion (soooo good!), not an after every dinner treat. wah wah.

 

3) Continue to eat fibrous vegetables, like brussel sprouts (my favorite!). Look who wants some, even though its not meat and he has no clue what it is. Go figure.  

 

 

 

 4) Although filled with healthy fats, limit my avocado intake to twice a week. She also suggested I limit my nut intake to one serving a day. That means, one serving of almonds or almond butter, not both! And remember measuring is key when it comes to these types of fatty goodness! A little goes a long way, so a dollop of guacamole with chili should be sufficient!

5) Stick with lean proteins like the turkey burgers pictured below. I must admit that I had been indulging on some pretty fatty cuts like sausages and corned beef!

 

 

6) No more feast or famine. Basically, that means no more overeating one day and then under eating the next. Guilty as charged. :/ I thought I was doing my body a favor by trying to "undo" the prior day's overeating, but I was actually confusing my body because I had no balance!

So there you go. Six tips to get me on the right track. I'll be sure to update you if they worked!

If you've tried losing weight in the past, what did you do to get past the plateau? I feel petite sized women (like myself!) have it the hardest! Paleo is a healthful way of eating, however, it's easy to go overboard!

Our Paleo Eating for the Week: Breakfast and Muffins

Last Friday, I had a pretty uneventful, but productive weekend night making some paleo breakfast items for the week. Since I can't have grains while I'm on this nutrition challenge I love making muffins. The first recipe I tried was the blueberry lemon muffins from the book Practical Paleo by Diane SanFilippo. I swear, I have checked out this book from library so many times that I might as well buy it at this point. 

Or course I was watching the ACC Tournament and my beloved Terps squash Duke for the second time...of course I would later realize that they were fated for the NIT...wah wah...

 

I used the spatula to make sure that I got all the batter on the sides and put the batter neatly in the muffin tins. It was the perfect amount. Don't you hate it when you have too much or too little batter for a dozen muffins?

And of course I had my sous chef Derby let me know when the muffins were done!

Since I already had the muffin ingredients out and the stand mixer was ready to go, I decided to make another batch muffins. This time I was going to make paleo pumpkin muffins using this recipe from The blog, Cindy's Table. The good thing about this recipe is that it used the entire can of pumpkin. So many pumpkin muffin recipes out there use only a cup or so of pumpkin from the can. No bueno. What are you supposed to  do with the rest of the pumpkin?

Here are some shots of the ingredients going in (both muffin recipes have a lot of eggs in them so they have a lot of protein!) and the pumpkin batter...

 

Again the perfect amount of batter for the muffin tins--I'm on a roll!

The finished product! I had to bake them twice as long as the suggested 12 minutes, but they turned out great! They aren't as sweet as most muffins, but they taste great with a pat of Kerrygold butter!

Since my muffin tins were being occupied, I decided to make crustless quiche using a casserole dish. All you need is a dozen or so eggs and whatever paleo filling you like! The great thing about this recipe is that you can use whatever meat and vegetable you have available. Today, it was ham and broccoli. 

And I'm not stingy with filling either. Check out my awesome knife skills ;)

Just put it all together and put it in a baking dish for 30 minutes (or until the toothpick comes out clean). 

It came out perfect with a nice golden crust! 

And of course I couldn't help but cut myself a slice! It was delicous!

Whew! That's a lot of food prep! The best part about it is that I can keep all of this food in the fridge until I'm ready to eat or I can freeze them for later! As the saying goes, "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail." That saying is completely true for paleo eaters. :)

Our Paleo Eating for the Week: The First Week

Hi Everyone! I know I didn't post much this week, but it's because I didn't really have much to say! The weekend was chill and I've just been hard at work with my Performance Nutrition Challenge. I submitted my first week's data to my Coach, and unfortunately the numbers didn't quite match. When I put my information into the challenge spreadsheet the calorie outcome was way low. I'm not sure what caused the discrepancy, but I assure you I've been eating a lot and eating well! Here's a sample of what I've been noshing on this past week.

The first day on the challenge caught me off guard since I forgot to plan! Whoopsy! But I was able to scramble and throw some turkey slices and mushrooms in a container, along with some fruit (eaten with nuts of course!). The little packets of mustard you see in the background are key to this meal! ;)

I also made some homemade paleo banana nut muffins. I replaced the chocolate chips for nuts for obvious reasons. This particular recipe uses the perfect mix of coconut flour and almond meal. For some reason I find using only coconut flour makes things a little dry and only almond meal makes things a little greasy!  

For dinner one night I roasted an entire bag of brussel sprouts...

While Justin sauteed some onions and mushrooms...

We had this with my hubby's broiled rib eye, yum! I swear he has perfected this method and the end result is a big, juicy steak with the perfect crust!

While we were prepping the rib eyes we were also making the next night's meal. Crock pot chicken provencale:

It's what you would call a "dump" recipe in which you just dump things you have in your cupboard/fridge. (i.e.: canned tomatoes, chicken breast, chopped garlic, Italian seasoning, etc.) Here's a shot of the finished product we ate the next day. Justin had his with cannellini beans, I obviously had mine without.

The next evening Justin was in the mood for meatloaf so I looked for a paleo version of meatloaf that omitted breadcrumbs. Fast Paleo with their smokey bacon meatloaf recipe to the rescue again!

I ate it with a huge salad with vinegar and olive oil!

Look at that meatloaf! That bad boy is seriously a brick!

I'm really thankful that Justin has been open to making paleo dishes for me. And the fact the enjoys the paleo meals himself is an added bonus! It's great how giving up eating out for Lent combined with my nutrition challenge has sparked new creativity for us in the kitchen!

Happy Six Month WODiversary

After reading the title of this post you might be wondering, What the heck is a WODivesary?" Well, it was exactly six months ago this day I first started doing Crossfit! It's crazy how time flies! It seems like only yesterday I did my first WOD (aka: Workout of the Day--hence the title name) and was the new kid on the block. Now, it feels weird to see all these people at the box that are way newer than me!

See me and my ugly erg face? Courtesy of Crossfit Rubicon

In case you're wondering, here is the first WOD I had ever done:

Tabata Triple*, complete one full movement before starting the next

• Bottom to Bottom Wall-balls (with the rest at the bottom in a squat)
• Top to top Pushups (with the rest at the top in a plank)
• 10m shuttle runs

tabata = high intensity interval training

I guess after that workout I was hooked! ;) It was the perfect mix of skill, strength, and cardio to keep my interest. Unfortunately, I don't know how well I did because at that time I was recording my stats on my smartphone app. I lost my phone on New Year's and now I don't have any record of that particular WOD or any of my starting weights on my lifts since then (womp womp). Needless to say, I am now recording all of my WOD times/scores and lifts in a good old fashioned notebook.

This week is testing week at my box. With notebook in hand, I'll be recording my results from the baseline workouts so I can retest myself at the end of the Nutrition Challenge. That way, I can see how I've improved physically! I'll be sure to share my starting results with you next week.

 

Here are some of my reflections on the past six months:

• I love how practical crossfit is and how it fits with my life. Everything from our monthly Costco trips to helping our friend move in last week or just jumping to reach that really high container (trust me at 5'3 I do that a lot), can directly relate to crossfit. No weight machine will ever do that.
• For some reason, crossfit has the uncanny way of creating communities/bringing people together. I've done various workouts in gyms, aerobic classes, etc. and never got to know the people in my class. There's something about suffering together motivating one another during the WOD that unites people like no other...
• Coaching is everything! When left to my own devices, I can wander through a self-guided workout and barely break a sweat. When you have someone yelling pushing you, it can make all the difference. I still have my favorite coaches, but the "young guns," as I like to call them, are quickly climbing up my favorite list!

In keeping with the crossfit theme, I'll try to update you guys weekly on my progress with the Nutrition Challenge or just talk about crossfit stuff on the blog for the next few months. I can't wait to look back and see how I've progressed after nine weeks of the Nutrition Challenge and even further down the road after I've been doing crossfit for a year!

It'll be good to mix up the blog topics every now and then, especially since we haven't been doing much house stuff as of late. ;)

Our Attempt at Chicken Cordon Bleu

A few weeks back we had cooked an entire spiral ham. Needless to say, we had a ton of leftovers. Besides, making egg muffins (which I'll feature on the blog soon!) I wanted to find recipes that featured ham/pork!

I got this recipe from Hopefully Homemade and she called it, "Chicken Cordon Bleu - Loosely Paleo." However, the neat thing about this recipe is that you can make it a paleo as you need it to be! If you don't eat ham/pork you can use another meat! You can use cheese from a grassfed source if you have it, or just omit cheese altogether and have a meat roll-up (chicken and ham) as I like to call it. I think the official name is a roulade. ;) Anyway, the possibilities are endless!

So here are the ingredients:
6 boneless chicken thighs (we used chicken breast)
6 slices bacon (instead of wrapping it in bacon, we stuffed it with ham)
5 oz goat cheese (we just used the swiss that was in our fridge)
1 egg
1 Tablespoon water
3/4 cup almond meal (for my husband's, he used bisquick)

The following ingredients are for your selected dredge:
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon dry minced onion
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
A pinch or two of dry mustard powder

Lastly, some toothpicks and a glass or ceramic baking dish

Eek. Since we didn't have toothpicks (I know, what house doesn't have toothpicks? Ours apparently!) we tried to MacGuyver some using coffee stirrers.

Justin displaying said coffee stirrer...

 

 

And the rigged up "toothpicks"

 

I don't cook much but I was able to help out by letting out my aggressions on flattening out the chicken breasts...

 

Here's a close up of Justin wrapping up the ham and cheese. It a bit tricky because we stuffed them to the brim!

 

He can hardly contain his excitement!

 

Here's a shot of Justin dredging the chicken in the almond meal with the egg in the background.

 

Obviously mine are the brown ones (almond meal) and his are the white ones (bisquick)

 

We baked it at 375 for 30 minutes or so. Sorry, I can't remember how long exactly since I like to stare at the food while it cooking...I kid...kinda... :) However long we cooked it we were happy for the results! Look at the crispy coating!

 

With that ooey, gooey meaty goodness!

 

A close up shot of all the insides!

 

 

And a shot of the complete meal!

 

Overall, I would say the meal was a complete success. But for someone who eats as voraciously as Justin does it was like Russian roulette, since the stirrer/toothpicks were kind of hard to see while eating! Whoopsy. Just imagine taking your next bite not knowing when the next toothpick/coffee stirrer might hit! LOL, next time we'll invest in some long bamboo skewers or at least some toothpicks with flags to prevent any possible eating injury ;)