Yesterday Luke and I had a long chat about food. I had a suspicion that I was being too cavalier with the amount of fat I was eating. In the last couple of days the odd handful of nuts had started creeping in whist I was preparing dinner and my mayonnaise habit was becoming a little too frequent. Luke agreed.
Luke told me that we were about to enter a new training phase that would last 6 weeks. Finally (FINALLY) I was finished with the pulse squats although he hinted menacingly that if I gave him grief then he’d put them back in just to torture me.
I asked about fruit (I don’t eat much, blueberries in the morning and an apple or pear in the afternoon) and we started to talk about how to tailor what I eat over the next 6 weeks to speed up the results.
Let’s be honest here, I am not in the ‘lifestyle phase’ at the moment. Once I am then I will have much more latitude to eat fruit and more carbs; but until then I’m in the ‘lose the bloody body fat phase’. I have learnt over the last 10 weeks that when you are on a quest to reduce your body fat it is NOT about the journey – it’s all about the destination.
The fact that it is all about the end goal makes me ask myself how far I am prepared to go to get there. I’m training hard, really hard, and eating well but there are tweaks that will make my quest go a little bit faster. I only need to implement them for the next six weeks – so I’m not looking at a lifetime of puritanical servitude.
The changes that would help are as follows: no fruit, loads of veg and about 100g of protein a day. The protein aspect is going to be hard for me. I’ve already really stepped up my meat intake during the last 10 weeks and I don’t really want to eat much more.
Also, I don’t want to get bogged down with my macro nutrients. I know that many people find it helpful and until recently I had a myfitnesspal (MFP) subscription myself. However, I found that recording my food intake on MFP just became one more thing on my ever growing To-Do list and when I couldn’t keep it up-to-date it made me feel that I was a failure.
I really like the MFP app. It has been really handy in the last couple of days in helping me identify the amount of protein in various foods but logging every mouthful isn’t how I want to live. I want to be able to have a mental picture of what I eat each day and make food decisions and adjust them accordingly.
The obvious solution to increasing my protein intake is protein shakes. A quick search of our cupboards revealed a chocolate Vega protein, a pure hemp powder and a natural flavour Sunwarrior powder. All vegan and all ghastly for different reasons. The chocolate Vega is so sweet that I can’t drink it; the Sunwarrior tastes of dust and the hemp powder (which is the best of the lot) is a bit gritty.
This morning I made porridge as normal and had the stunning idea to mix in a scoop of the Sunwarrior powder. No sooner had I put the spoon of the ghastly concoction in my mouth than I realised that it was totally and utterly inedible. I binned it and started again. I made a dust flavoured protein powder drink with almond milk and a separate porridge with flaxseed.
There’s no question that I’m going to give it a go. I will strip back my diet to maximise my fat burning potential. I will eschew all fruit and anything other than porridge, veg and protein because I want to get to the ‘lifestyle phase’ as soon as humanly possible. I’ve spent 18 years overweight so 6 weeks of gruel and plain chicken seems a small price to pay. But, however I decide to shovel enough protein down my neck, the next 42 days are looking a bit bleak.