My ever evolving diet and workout routine...

Health update and diet experimenting:

I started this blog to document my commitment to getting my health on track at the start of 2010. I had hormonal issues, IBS, dry, prone to breakout skin, poor circulation and stubborn fat around my butt and legs. I thought a vegan diet and running would be the answer, so I blogged about my commitment to this new way of life. About 8 months into this experiment, my health wasn't much better (I'd lost over 7lb though), and in fact, got worse, and I had to spend a few days in hospital because of pancreatitis. Since then, I've been experimenting. I went to see a dietician, and cut down big time of whole grain foods and pulses, and that helped the IBS for the most part, but I still had dry skin and amenorrhea. In January this year, I added yogurt, eggs and fish back and since then I've been reading a lot about paleo/primal diets and have been gradually aligning my diet along these lines. The thing is, apart from a spell of about a year when I was 19/20, I haven't eaten meat since I was 12. And meat is a big part of the primal/paleo diet...and when you give up rice, bread, wheat etc you need something to fill you up besides lots of veggies...and there's kind of only so much fish and eggs you can eat. So I'm toying with the idea of adding some organic meat in once a week, to mix things up and to up my iron intake, because despite eating brassicas every day, my intake is a little below the RDA and I had low serum ferritin diagnosed a few months back and refused to take the iron tablets. I still have amenorrhea and dry, pale skin so maybe a little iron boost might help. This is all still part of the experimenting to find something that works for me. I will say though that the most amazing transformation in my energy levels has been ditching sugar and grains. I have held on to things like brown rice and the occasional slice of bread but I haven't eaten any grain based foods for 2 weeks now and I now seem to be free of the post prandial bloat and discomfort I would get. I'm still a little constipated but I think that's because I need to ramp up my greens intake some more, but I've been doing this gradually because of my intolerance of some types of fibre. In fact, I eat more vegetables since I started eating eggs and fish than I did when I was vegan! I've also put weight back on on the scales (I'm now 125 lbs) but I'm two inches smaller around the butt than I was when I weiged 117lb!

Here are some of my recent meals:

Still eating yogurt most days: berries and quark for breakfast

Quorn pieces chilli with lots of bell peppers, topped with plain organic yogurt

Experimenting with protein powder: unflavoured whey, cocoa, peanut butter and plain yogurt, I ate some straight up, but the PB made it sickeningly rich, so I baked the rest for 20 mins and it was easier to eat:

Voila- chocolate PB protein cake. I actually find the unflavoured whey quite sweet.

After saturday's run, I breakfasted on a berry, banana and protein shake (just using water) and it was pretty good- not too sweet, thick and really voluminous! Half a banana, half a cup of berries, 30g scoop of powder and a cup of water made 3 cups of shake (that's only 2/3 of the batch in that glass)!

I had the shake because the rest of the week breakfast was usually eggs or fish: lovely but you do need to switch it up a bit.

Saturday lunch: panfried salmon, pesto and 1/2 a cabbage each(!)

So good, the salmon was a beautiful colour

For Mother' Day lunch, I made a provencale prawn stew (red onion, garlic, orange pepper, mushrooms, collards, smoked paprika, herbs de provence, tomato passata, lots of parsley and lemon juice) and fried some organic lamb steaks my Dad got half price. The prawns were a gift from one of my Dad's patients who is a fisherman. I cooked rice for my family too. I had half of one of the steaks, my

first taste of meat in four years(!)

The stew is a bit like paella without the rice.

Last night's dinner: veg omelette (an onion, 1/2 red cabbage, a huuuge courgette, 2 carrots, 6 eggs, smoked paprika and some mature goat's cheese), topped with super hot hot sauce and Quorn sausage.

Monday evening treat: glass of red wine and two squares of dark hazelnutty chocolate (plus some new paleo/primal reading).

Today's breakfast: canteloupe melon, yogurt, half a tin of salmon.

On the workout front:

I'm still a little jaded with running, but I did take MrPeskyRunner out on saturday morning for an easy prebreakfast 5k. He really struggles to have energy without a big dose of carbs so he found this tough but didn't feel too bad after it was over.

On sunday I went for a walk with my sister, and we did 10mins of on/off 30 sec hard running/walking near the end.

Other than that, I have been following Bodyrock, usually a day or two behind the schedule as I usually rest on mondays. I've been doing some weight lifting as well.

I'm off work today to go to the opticians and MrPeskyRunner is having dental work done (nothing serious). We're going to go for a nice long walk in the afternoon and then do a bodyrock workout. I did the Abs for Christmas this morning, ouch, lots of squats, but other than that, probably the 'easiest' bodyrock I've done so far (I don't know if you can really use 'easy' and 'bodyrock' in one sentence, haha). In any case, I'm up for yesterday's workout later this afternoon.

That's all for now, folks!

Helloo Vitality

I can't say for certain what it is, but I feel fantastic the last few days. Some of the possible contributing factors:

Setting up a standing workstation (instead of sitting at work)

Doing dead hangs, deep squats and couch stretches (hip flexor) after work

Bodyrock

Not running

Paleo diet (although I'm doing a pescetarian version with a little dairy still everyday)

My cravings seem to be melting away! The first day I was a bit hungry, especially in the afternoon, but my hunger seems much more normal now. I don't crave sugar/dessert after my dinner, I don't stuff breakfast into me if I wake up ravenous, but take time to drink some warm water, and then dabble in the fridge, and just eat to sate me. I started this month giving up refined sugar, and I got hooked- now I've taken it a step further, and I'm committing to a sugar *and* grain free diet for now- I think perhaps going grain free seems a bit radical but my tummy has been so well behaved this week, not a whisper of bloat, gas, discomfort. It's amazing really, that I can eat so much veg and not be full of gas!

Some recent meals:

Last night's dinner and today's lunch (today with grated raw carrot rather than kale)-quorn and pepper coconut curry

Treated myself to dessert to use up some grown rhubarb (stewed with some honey to take the bitterness off), whipped heavy cream

Breakfast- grapefruit, leftover whipped cream, tinned salmon (I ended up keeping the egg for later as I was already full)

Dinner- grated zucchini, sauteed in olive oil, topped with a beaten egg and chilli powder and left it set up in the oven, with my breakfast egg, some mature goat cheese and hot sauce

A bite of 90% choco to finish the day:)

I've been snacking on almonds, berries and the odd banana. My caloric ratios are about 50fat:27carb:23protein (I'd get the carb a bit lower if I ate a little less fruit but I'm rather attached to my breakfast fruit dose and daily banana).

My two most visited sites at the moment:

Bodyrock tv

Mark's Daily Apple

That's all for now folks! I'll keep you updated with my paleo/primal experiment and increasing my bodyrocking instead of running so much.

Medicine Soup and Sunshine

When I got home from work and then my run on friday, I needed some relief from my cold symptoms, and MrPeskyRunner had also been smitten. I brewed up some gingery, chilli, garlicky broth with shredded collards. Spices+green=medicine.

I then had curry socca and a bean burger topped with homemade mango chutney (chopped up mango simmered for ages with curry powder) and cottage cheese for dinner- was pretty hungry by this stage.

I repeated last weekend's banana pancakes, but used oat flour this time rather than wheat flour (2 bananas, 2 eggs, 1 cup of oats, ground, 1/2 cup unsweetened soya milk, 1/2 tsp baking powder, cooked on the skillet with coconut oil and eaten with yogurt). They were tastier but softer and a little trickier to flip.

I have been doing plenty of Bodyrock- the Hot Mess Workout on thursday and again today and the 300 Rep Workout yesterday. I had already run four times this week so did none over the weekend. Tomorrow's supposed to be a break, unless I feel super energetic (probably not).

Today was so nice, I did my bodyrock workout outside, I really was a hot mess at the end with the lovely spring sun beating down on me.

Hope you all had a nice weekend:)

Pacing

Good afternoon!

We have been enjoying our day off. We've spent the time tidying the house and taking advantage of the time to make lots of nutritious food. We have been doing a little experimenting with our diets and we're tracking our intake (by putting everything into NutritionData at the end of the day) for a couple of days to check for any obvious deficiencies/excesses and then tweak accordingly. I'll post about the results, but so far my Vitamin E seems to come out rather low, and we're both eating more carbs than we though, even though we're trying to eat more protein.

Today's run was to determine MrPeskyRunner's pace for the 10k we're doing in April. We ran exactly 10k in 59:50 so he is hoping to maintain this and keep his time around an hour for the race on April 10. I am still aiming for sub-45; going on last year's results, this will probably mean I'll finish in the top 20 women! I only have two proper week's of training left, the week of the race I'm just going to do a bit of aquajogging. I'll probably run another 3 times this week and 3 times next week, with plenty of pacing work and two long slows.

Today's munches:

Breakfast- banana stuffed with PB, set yogurt with oat bran and cinnamon. + coffee, obvs.

Lunch- leftover brown rice with Quorn, spinach, pepper and a few olives, a spoonful of yogurt. I mixed it all up to eat. Mr PeskyRunner had extra rice, some mango chutney and a slice of bread with sunflower spread.

Afternoon snack: low fat plain yogurt, 1/2 cup raspberries, 1 T cocoa powder. So yummy! I love cocoa powder:D I only really started eating with without sweetener this month. I'm quite happy with sugar free eating and don't think it should be too hard to keep it quite occasional in my diet. I'm going to treat myself to a bucket of ice-cream if I finish in the top 20 women on April 10 though!

I'm away to do the last of the tidying, maybe some Bodyrock (although I don't know if I can be bothered with a second shower) and then fix dinner. I'm thinking socca pizza...

Today I learned...

...that hand whisking socca batter after Bodyrock and then another 40 min of weights is not very easy! I gave up and got out the stick blender, haha.

I threw a handful of oats into the socca batter to give it a bit more body and a little sweetness.

Topped with a heap of spinach, chopped wheaty sausages and very spicey passata, yum!

I did the You Push Me workout, with the beginner variation for the reptile push up and I did knee raises holding the couch and the radiator while I wait for my dip station to arrive, excited! Yes, I ordered a pull up bar, dip station and Gymboss! When I was doing this workout, the clock I had propped up on the mantelpiece fell over and broke...can't wait for my Gymboss to make Bodyrockin' easier and I can't wait to use it for HIIT running and aquajogging (in a waterproof case of course). The workout was great, tough but not impossible with the variations. My left arm is a lot weaker than my right so I find full push ups impossible. I am doing more reps on the left arm when I lift to try and equalise things. After a 5 minute cool down, I did stability ball chest flies, LOADS of sit ups, stability ball push ups, bicep curls and lunges and squats with the dumbells, as well as mixing it up with high knees and sumo squats, about 40 mins of that. Swwwweatee!

The no sugar challenge is going well, banana stuffed with PB is my saviour snack when I'm craving something sweet!

Other sugar free desserts:

Toast topped with cocoa powder blended with PB:

Fage yogurt, banana and cocoa powder:

I am loving cocoa powder right now:)

I had this yummy breakfast at the weekend:

Sugar free cereal soaked in OJ, a clementine, a banana and a heap of set yogurt. *Love* banana+orange.

I will be a better blogger with week because I'm off tomorrow and thursday. I intend to bake grain free bitter chocolate cake with a sweet potato I baked on sunday night and also the Twins Lemon Coconut bar.