healthy eating

“The food you eat can be either the safest and most powerful form of medicine

or the slowest form of poison.”
― Ann Wigmore

Hello My Lovelies!

I have exciting news! I have discovered a macronutrient cookbook that is literally changing my life! A while back the hubs did some bike maintenance for a friend of ours. To show his appreciation, this same friend gave gave us (ok, the hubs) a copy of The Feed Zone: Fast and Flavorful Food for Athletes Cookbook. At first, I didn’t take much interest. However, after all the binging around Thanksgiving, I was looking for a way to get back on track and optimize my nutritional intake. That is when I first took real notice of the book.

As it turns out, The Feed Zone is extremely well written and thought out. It not only explains the macronutrient philosophy, but also discusses food timing, determining your appropriate calorie intake, “divergent ideas on diet” (including carbs, gluten, and vegetarian), and hydration. The book is divided into six sections: breakfast, portables, apres, dinner, desserts, and basics. Each sections is then further broken down into: quick recovery, small plates, handhelds, big plates, and “one pots” with special notation for vegetarian and gluten free recipes. To make things even easier they also have blurbs on the recipes for when is the best time to prepare and eat them. Specifically, they will tell you which foods are best for before, during, and post training, as well as which can be prepared ahead to save time.

In addition to being super organized (which will thrill those of us with OCD tendencies), the book also has several other awesome qualities. For starters, it is written by Biju Thomas and Allen Lim who have spent their careers preparing meals for “the world’s best endurance athletes.” These are people who understand the nutritional needs of athletes and how to optimize performance with the right type of food and calories. They also understand how difficult it is to eat properly with a busy lifestyle.

Perhaps the best part of their approach is they have made everything extremely simple. There is a basic list of ingredients which can be used to make the majority of the recipes. I cannot even begin to stress how convenient this is for a person who absolutely ~~hates~~ loathes going to the grocery store. Essentially, I dragged the hubs with me, and we picked up the items we needed. Then I spent half a day doing meal prep for the week.

So far the system has worked pretty well. We are over two weeks in, and I have made the following recipes from the book:

sweet potato pancakes- which actually worked great for pack and go
chicken tacos- including the recipes for roasted salsa and spicy cabbage slaw
dry-spiced chicken and figs- I may or may not have started a kitchen fire with this dish… (the fire department said it was delicious)
wine and soy sauce mushrooms
pork loin with chutney- the fire department also enjoyed this one… which I made sans flames
whole roasted chicken- so easy and tasty!!!
sweet potato and egg burritos
sweet potato cakes- yup, we like sweet potatoes… a lot
meatballs in red wine sauce- lots of veggies and flavor in the sauce
pan seared steak
corn cakes with crisp chicken- made with the left over roasted chicken and possibly my favorite so far…

Aside from the part when I almost burned the house down, this book has made me feel like a gourmet chef. Every recipe is so full of layer upon layer of flavor. You would never believe tasting them that the recipes are so easy to make. In fact, the first week I that brought all my prepared food to work, my coworkers were salivating over my meals. They all wanted to know where I got the recipes, so (because I’m such a nice person) I gave them the name of the book.

So far, each recipe I have made has been completely delicious. I am pretty sure the hubs has been in heaven with all the prepped food in the fridge. Not to mention, it has been super convenient to portion everything out ahead of time, so we can just grab and go when things are busy. Personally, I feel accomplished knowing that I have made all my food myself.

The best part is that with all my meals packed for the day, I know I won’t make bad decisions like eating something processed or unhealthy because I’m hungry and that’s all that’s available.

This book is definitely worth the investment for anyone who is looking to get away from eating processed food and on track with a nutrition plan (or if you are just looking for some new tasty recipes). It couldn’t be more user friendly and the recipes are SO TASTY!!!!

How about you? What healthy eating habits work for you? Any recommendations?

“What winning is to me is not giving up, is no matter what’s thrown at me, I can take it. And I can keep going.”

Patrick Swayze

So I realized that in all my fervor and adoration for Triathlon For Every Woman, I forgot to update you all about the Fitness Challenge. Since we were going to be away and unable to complete the challenge during the week, our trainer (who is running the challenge) allowed us to do it before we left. It consisted of doing as many box jumps as possible in one minute. My box was 12 inches and the hubs had one 18 inches. I was pretty sure I did close to 60 and the hubs had close to 50, but the trainer said he only recorded me at 49 and the bubs at even less… which I think is his attempt to keep us from winning (due to the fact that we are already awesome!) Of course, his attempts have been thwarted because we are still in third place despite his meddling. Muahahahaha! Go Team Rice!

In truth, I really don’t care at all about winning, especially given that I am only in this thing to be supportive of the hubs. However, I am certainly not going to ever miss an opportunity to give the trainer a hard time, especially when he is trying not to give me credit for my hard work. He did offer to let us redo the challenge yesterday when I called him out on it, but I told him that wouldn’t be fair since the challenge had passed. We are going to play by the rules even if he isn’t. 😉

Our challenge this week consists of accomplishing everything listed on the bingo card below. The hubs and I already knocked out a lot of it yesterday and only have a few more tasks left each. So far I have completed the 100×2 lunges, 100×2 jump lunges, 100 squats, 100 jump squats, 100 toe touches, 100 sit ups, 100 jumping jacks, 200 mountain climbers, 50 box jumps, 100 kettlebell swings, 50 burpees (oh the suck!), 100 rope swings, 200 jump ropes, 100 pushups, 50 chin ups, 50 pull ups, 50 dips, and 5K (in 24:35). The hubs is a little behind and still needs to do the chin ups, pull ups, and dips… in addition to the rest we have left.

Looking back at all we did yesterday, now I don’t feel as bad that I was sucking wind so badly on my swim the following morning…

As far as our weigh in this week, my weight stayed exactly the same at 140.3 and the hubs was up about a pound. What I learned from this is that I can actually stuff my face and eat whatever I want (like in San Diego, yum!) as long as a run 20 miles a week… or there’s a good chance that I’m not getting in enough calories to keep up with what I normally do in a week and that is why my weight never changes regardless of how healthy I eat. I know… I need to work on that.

The good news is, I am already trying to get more healthy calories in. Yesterday I went grocery shopping and got lots of fruits and vegetables. The only problem is that it is a huge chore to only eat clean and still get in enough calories. Healthy food just doesn’t have enough calories in it! Plus it just isn’t feasible for me to being eating every 2 hours at work, which is how often I am ~~hungry~~ ready to pass out if I don’t eat. At some point I may need to sit down with a dietician and figure this eating things out. Lucky for me, I happen to be surrounded by them.

In the meantime, I may just have to get by eating everything in sight. jk… sort of….