Fail... Except Not.

So, I failed pretty epicly at this whole blog thing =P

I got through my 30 days at the first of the year and to this day I am still going strong with Paleo. I did have a few week long periods of struggle in there because I "didn't have time for Paleo" or "it was too expensive", but I have come to find those were just excuses I made because of my old, "bad" habits. Currently, I will have 1-3 cheat meals a week depending on what is going on, but the rest of the time I eat pretty strict. I have found if I do several meals a week instead of 1 full day of gorging myself on crappy food I don't feel quite so disgusting or bloated.

Note: I have decided to give my cheat meals purpose. I don't use a cheat meal just because "pizza hut sounds really good right now", but rather to keep up with social connections and gatherings. Because lets face it, who wants to invite the guy to the bar who sits there drinking water and judging everyone else for drinking other things? I have found that if I create some ground rules to follow, I am much less likely to "cheat" on my lifestyle.

1.) If my dad calls me up and wants to go to lunch - fair game.
2.) If a friend is going to the bar and calls me up - 4 beer max.
3.) If my wife and I are going on a date (and yes, this is pretty rare) - fair game.
4.) If coworkers invite me to lunch - fair game if I haven't had more than 2 cheat meals that week.

Other than that, I don't eat things that would not be acceptable to a Paleo minded individual. and frankly, the less of the "bad foods" that I eat, the less I crave them. There is a part of me that would love to completely eat Paleo 100% of the time, but that just isn't very realistic. My reasoning for that is that now, if I drink a coke, for the next 4 days all I can think about is coke (which I was addicted to soda, so it is EXTREMELY rare that I will have one). But the same goes with other foods. If I eat pizza, it is something I crave for the next several days and it is much more tempting than it was before I ate it. All I can say it, make it manageable because if you don't, you will fail.

For those of you who have been wondering, here are the numbers I had at the first of the year compaired to now:

Weight - 226.3 - 190
Chest - 44 - 40
Arms - 14.75 - 14
Stomach - 40.75 - 34
Waist - 37 - 35.5
Hips - 40 - 37
Thighs - 24.5 - 23.5

I have lost just under 37 lbs
I have reduced my chest by 4 inches (and the man boobs I've had my whole life are going away)
My arms are more lean and my biceps and triceps are bigger than ever
My "beer belly" has reduced a whopping 6.75 inches!
I have taken 1.5 inches off my waist and now my "skinny jeans" are getting a little big...
My hips (aka "fat ass") have gone down 3 inches
And I have taken an inch off my thighs

I still have work to do, and a ways to go to get where I want to be. I plan to continue on with this journey and continue eating this way and keeping up with my CrossFit regimen. I will be taking 6 month pics at the end of this month so come back and check em out!

Day 8 & 9

Well, I had a pretty good day Monday, and then yesterday on day 9 I screwed up... but I'll get to that later. On Monday and Tuesday we had eggs for breakfast, and the local eggs we bought at the farmers market are BOMB! So yummy. and then for lunch on Monday I had Tuna Salad again.

For dinner however we didnt have a lot of time to cook once we got home from CrossFit, so we grilled steaks! Complements of my kickass friend Tyler! (Thanks for the meat!!!)

I normally like to heat it up to about 600... but it was balls ass cold outside and really windy so I took what I could get...

The steaks came out beautifully! Oh, and BTW, these steaks were about an inch and a half thick and had to have been over a pound a piece... And it was a good thing I didn't keep waiting for the heat to go up because I ran out of propane right when they were done!

The next day I was at work and a sale rep came in and demanded... okay, offered to take me to lunch. I caved. we went to Buffalo Wild Wings and OMG it was so freaking good but let me tell ya, I felt like total crap the entire rest of the day. I wont go into detail about how bad I felt, but lets just say it was a great motivator to not eat that crap again!

For dinner last night we made Moroccan Chicken and it was really good! I am not sure what all spices and what not were in it, but we sauteed carrots and broccoli in with it and it was great!

Day 6 & 7 (The Weekend)

Well, the weekend has come and gone, and I am still alive! But damn was it hard to follow this diet when everything and everyone else around is snarfing on "crap foods". Saturday wasn't too bad. We got up and made some eggs with kinda a vegetable/nut stir fry on the side (Red Bells, Onions, Zucchini, Almonds, Cashews)and took the boys to the farmers market.

We didn't buy a whole lot there because most fruits and vegetables aren't in season, but we did get some meat, eggs, sweet potatoes, and some lettuce! the eggs were even better than the ones we got and Whole Foods, and they were a HELL of a lot cheaper! (Side note) the girl that sold us the meat at the farmers market was a fellow CrossFiter that attends the CFOKC box! I thought that was kinda cool to see someone else out and about that does CrossFit considering no one ever knows what I am talking about until I tell them what it is... then they still don't get it. After the farmers market we took off to SAMs and got some paper plates and stuff so we wouldn't have to wash all of our few dishes EVERY time we ate something.

For lunch on Saturday we just kinda ate whatever. we had some leftovers and a pish posh mix up of a few different things. plus the boys were cranky and we were tired so we didn't feel like making much of anything. For dinner however, my lovely wife made chicken fajitas and man were they good! the orange and yellow bells had such awesome flavor that it really turned this meal into an awesome one.

All in all, Saturday was a pretty good (easy) day... Diet wise.

Sunday on the other hand was not so easy. We did do a really good job of sticking to our guns! but it was rough. In the morning, you guessed it, eggs! (I made the Onion, Zucchini, & Almond again) and then we were off to church.

Before, any time we got to church we would have doughnuts, and our son was not very happy when we told him he could not have one. I have to say, I have never been a big sweets person, but doughnuts never looked and smelt so good as they did Sunday...
After church got out we called up my parents to see if the boys could go over to their house so we could go grocery shopping, and see what they planned on for lunch. Typically every Sunday after church my parents go to El Chico and we meet them there, but El Chico isn't really (at all) Whole 30 friendly, so we thought we would try for steaks! We ended up going to Longhorn Steakhouse and it was a nice treat. It was crazy though how many things you can't order unless you have special instruction on the item... aka EVERYTHING! the house salad came out with cheese and croutons, so we had to take them off which was rather tedious, but we got it all cleared and ate it with some oil and it was really good. My wife and I split the 20 oz Porterhouse and it was really good, but unbeknownst to the menu... the steak came with a butter sauce drizzled all over it, so we soaked it up and scrapped it off the best we could, it was still really tasty though! (probably didn't get all that sauce off =P) we also got a sweet potato (plain) and some steamed asparagus (plain). Oh yeah, and the whole unlimited bread thing... we just told them not to even bring it by once we sat down.
After lunch we took the boys to my parents house and headed to the store. We were able to do most all of our shopping rather quickly, but there were so many distractions at the Sunflower Market! We did give in and get some unsweetened dried fruits that we could eat like candy, and they were delightful. We did buy lots of produce however and now our fridge looks great once again.

For dinner last night we didn't really have a meal, we just snacked. We ended up going to some friends house down the way and playing air hockey on his new table. It was a lot of fun, but I think it is the first time I have gone to his house and not had a beer! And that was kinda hard, especially when you are playing air hockey... but it was a lot of fun!
All in all, had a great weekend (even with all the temptation) and stuck to the diet!

Day 5

Today has been crazy hectic, and I have still found time to eat right and make good choices without the temptation of bad foods. For breakfast, you guessed it, EGGS! We had a repeat, but I think I made them better this time (red bell pepper, jalapeno, cashew)

I had a long beginning of the month meeting at the home office and then had some employee issues to handle, but that is all over with and then I was able to go eat lunch. For lunch today my wife was able to make it back to the health food store and got some good chicken breasts, so we had a chicken club salad. It had chicken, cucumber, broccoli, tomato, avocado, boiled egg, spinach, oil, and a little balsamic vinegar. It was not only good, but incredibly filling!

Tonight we took off over to CrossFit, we were going to try and hit up the 5:30 so that I could work out the first class and my wife could the second, 6:30, class (because we had to take the boys with us and I don't think it is the Crossfit trainers job to watch my kids...) but we didn't make it so we just went to the 6:30 and I let her work out while I watched the boys. Afterward we came home and had dinner. James went to CrossFit with us so we invited him over for dinner and we got to hang out a little. Tavia (wife) made some kick ass soup, even though she didn't much care for it. It was a Chicken Chili Soup and it was sooooooo good.

Thats all for today, time to keep on keepin on!

Day 4

Kinda been busy today, so I am just gonna make a quick post.

Today's menu started off with more eggs. These eggs were probably my favorite eggs yet! They had sauteed onion, zucchini, and almonds!

For lunch we had left over dry rub burgers (pic pretty much same as yesterdays, so I wont post it again). I am all about a burger, but I really did not like the spices and herbs on these, so I personally would recommend just straight up beef. the the veggies be your flavor!

For dinner we had an AMAZING gingered carrots and tilapia feast! My wife worked really hard to make this (and she even claims it wasn't that difficult) and it was amazingly tasty!

Day 3

Well, we will see how this post goes. I am trying out the Blogger app for the first time, hopefully it works out.

We had eggs again today. Today's eggs were spinach and macadamia nut eggs! They were actually quite good considering I'm not a huge fan of spinach... Except for in a "Green Monster" that is.

I did pretty good hungerwise all the way until lunch at 12:30, so that was nice too. For lunch we had dry rub spiced burgers and sweet potato fries. They were so good after having not had any sugars for several days. They tasted like what I remember brown sugar and marshmallow sweet potatoes... Delish!

Dinner was more sweet potatoes... They were good, but twice in one day is a bit much I think. Also, I started getting a queasy feeling while eating them, probably due to the sweet potato incident... But that's another story ;) Anyway, it was mixed with a turkey sausage which was pretty good, but I was too hungry after CrossFit to take a pic before I devoured it!

Day 2

Well I will start off with actually finishing out day 1. We had a wonderfully delicious dinner last night after CrossFit of “stuffed peppers”. Pretty much we took bell peppers, cut them in half and poured olive oil on them then put them in the oven. Meanwhile we cooked up some ground beef with onions, zucchini and a few different herbs. Then we put the meat into the peppers and cooked them longer

the smell of them was enough to make your mouth water! Then, after the longest 20 minutes of my life, we got to eat them.

Okay, maybe the 20 minutes a Tabada workouts we did before dinner was the longest 20 minutes of my life, but we’ll call this a close second ;)

Today we got up and ate eggs. I wanted to try something new, so after I cut up the bell pepper I sautéed it in some olive oil. Then I got crazy and added some jalapeno, cumin, and cashews! I was pretty worried as to how it would taste, but I gotta say… they freaking rocked!

I just got done eating my snack an hour earlier than I wanted to. We had Tuna salad again for lunch but we were out of apple, so it wasn’t quite as filling as it was yesterday (still good though). So, I was really hungry and ate my snack early and will probably pay for it later. Our snack today was “Bugs on a Log” or, Celery with almond butter and raisins. Not too shabby!

The ones in the pic also had coconut (because they were my wifes) but my sweet caring wife didn’t put coconut on mine because she knows I cant stand it.