Okay! Clean
Eating. What the heck is THAT? That’s the thought that went through MY mind
when I first heard it. All lifestyle
changes for health involve eating right and exercise. In fact, when people say it, “Eat right”
always comes first! It is also the first
thing we toss aside as we do the exercise.
I did it too.
When I got P90X, it came with an exercise guide and a
nutrition guide. There is nothing I hate
more than the “Nutrition Guide.”
Generally, they are recipe books.
So I toss them. The Beachbody
book, I will fess up, is also very much a meal planner and recipe book of
healthy alternatives. I hate to cook. I eat in ten minutes. I don’t know how anyone can enjoy it. So I tossed the book to the side and opened
the DVD’s.
When I got Insanity…first thing I saw was a nutrition guide. What? No exercise guide? I think I got gypped! Nope, insanity only has a flyer. But, it does have a nutrition guide too.
When I eat, I want simplicity. I do not want to think about it. I eat almost the same thing every day. But, again, I don’t think about it.
As I was doing my Challenge Group in P90X, I was having some
energy issues. My diet was not giving me
the energy and recuperative fuel that my body needed. I sent my diet to my two Coaches, who came to
the conclusion that it had enough calories but I wasn’t getting enough
nutrients. In the course of our
conversations, Lisa Barker, my primary Beachbody Coach and sponsor, said, “Wow,
Dick, you eat really clean.” I did not know
what that meant. Embarrassingly enough,
I knew a lot about fitness but not a lot about nutrition. As people say, “I knew just enough about
nutrition to be dangerous.”
From the time I lost all my weight on my liquid diet, I had
a new meal plan for my life. I have been
modifying it over time. Apparently, I
created a meal plan for myself that typified something called “Clean
Eating.”
I have Oatmeal in the morning (not processed, the real oats that take five minutes to cook) with all natural Applesauce (not the stuff with high fructose corn syrup, the ingredients say ‘Apples, water’), a palmfull of raisins and natural ground cinnamon. That’s my breakfast every morning for the last four years. There isn’t one processed food in that breakfast. No chemicals, no additives. All of it is the way it arrived on this earth.
My lunch is a salad with about 3-4 ounces of grilled chicken
or fish. The salad is iceberg lettuce
and spinach, broccoli, tomatoes, green peppers, olives, jalapeno’s and the
meat. The dressing is balsamic
vinaigrette and is pretty much the only processed thing in the meal.
My dinner is Shakeology with fruit blended in. I will grab some real meat protein if it was
part of dinner that night but otherwise, a handful of nuts and raisins with
maybe an apple round out dinner.
After exercise, I eat more trailmix and fruit.
All of my snacks during the day are natural foods except the
Protein bar I have mid-afternoon.
My diet is pretty clean.
What is “Clean Eating?” It is basically eliminating processed foods.
Foods with chemical additives. Foods that have been manufactured (like
Twinkees). Foods that have been
drastically altered with transfats and refined sugars and chemical sweeteners. It’s actually the simplest thing in the
world…if your food doesn’t come with a label (like chicken, fish, fruit and
salad), it’s a pretty good rule that you can eat it in modest quantities.
If your food HAS a label…and reading that label brings back
nightmares of High School Chemistry…don’t eat it. You know what real food is. There is stuff on a label that is NOT on the
food pyramid…anywhere. High Fructose
Corn Syrup. Hydrogenated anthing. Aspartame?
Olestra? All of these things are
toxic to your body. Not necessarily
poisonous (although some actually are), toxic.
Toxic means that they do not belong in your body and your body naturally
wants to eliminate them. Toxic also
means that prolonged ingestion of these things will imbalance your metabolism,
weaken your immune system and leave you exposed to health issues. While your body (and primarily your liver) is
processing all the toxic junk from your food that you have eaten, it cannot do
what comes naturally, which is turn the real fuel into energy and burn your
fat. So you are tired and you gain
weight.
While the body chemistry is somewhat complicated, eating
clean is not. The only reason to get
recipe books on Clean Eating is if you really love food. If eating to you is some kind of passion (and
it is NOT to me…not judging, that’s just me) maybe these books will help you
create beautiful clean meals.
Bottom line here is, while exercise has changed my life, the
change in my everyday diet to cleaner eating habits has probably influenced it
even more. My cholesterol of 163 (down
from almost 270 in my really big days) is just one body marker that tells me
the diet has been beneficial. I will
include more about Clean Eating as I educate myself further but for now, just
read the labels. Only eat foods that are
delivered to you the way they were delivered to this earth!
Exercise later today!!
THE WORKOUT
Pure Cardio tonight!
It went really great. The first
two nights were hard (and I don’t count the Recovery Night). I went into tonight really hydrated because I
know how much the twitch muscles are going to be used. They have to be hydrated or you will
pay. I also stretched before and after
on the advice of a coach who answered something I put up on the Team Beachbody
bulletin board. I went into the exercise
ready to kill it…and I did.
I felt so good afterwards that I went on my treadmill for
about 25 minutes to burn another 200 calories and stretch out those calf
muscles!
I was ready for the pace and rhythm of the routine tonight,
and that helped a lot too. Oh yeah, knowing how
to DO the routines…that was valuable.
The first two nights, I had to look up and check and recheck my
form. I only screwed up one time tonight,
the drop into push up position and then hop back up and jump. Can’t remember the name, a true indication of
‘week one-itis’. I was not just going
to plank and hopping back up, I was doing Tony Horton prison pushups. I burned out around 45 seconds.
So, all in all, a real great night. Tomorrow we do the first repeat. I love the first repeat night because there
is ALWAYS improvement.
Okay, see you tomorrow.
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