Learning How to Eat and Starting Week 2

Let's talk about eating.

This workout plan is focused on building muscle.  Muscle burns fat.  That's the central theme.  To build muscle it takes protein.  Protein is probably one of the sparsest items in the average American's diet.  Of the three main calorie providers, fat, carbohydrates, and protein...protein is the red-headed stepchild.

The thing is, I've learned, protein is actually really easy to acquire.  Which makes balancing your protein intake versus your fat and carbohydrate intake less difficult.

First, lean meats.  Turkey, pork, chicken and lean beef.  Three things I like, and one (turkey) that I tolerate.  Beans are also very good, as well as certain vegetables, like spinach.  With the revelation that my children enjoy spinach, we're eating much more of that around here.

So let's talk about a few meals I've had.  Pork stir-fry and pizza.

For the pork stir-fry, as it was just me, I took one smaller size pork chop and cut it into thin strips.  I took a small amount of canola oil and heated it in a non-stick pan.  Then I threw the pork in, a splash of rice wine vinegar (I love this stuff), a decent amount of soy sauce and a bit of hot sauce, and some chopped garlic.  While that got going, I sliced up a pepper into then strips then tossed that into the stir-fry.  While stir-frying that I had a Green Giant Vegetables For One broccoli serving in the microwave along with a Minute Rice Long Grain Brown Rice.  They all finished up about the same time.  The brown rice was kinda iffy, but the rest was amazing.  It was a great, easy, quick dinner.

Pizza was a relatively healthy dinner, too.  Instead of regular sausage and pepperoni, I used turkey versions of both.  Turkey pepperoni is pretty nasty, but if you toast it in the oven for a bit after spraying it with canola oil spray, it makes all the difference in the world.  Combine that with the homemade crust I made, and one slice of pizza was plenty.

Besides dinners like that, my breakfasts have been high-protein as well, with turkey breakfast sausage and an english muffin as a typical breakfast.  Lunches have been a protein shake made with skim milk and a turkey sandwich.  For snacks in between it's been almonds and clementines or pears.

Over the last week, I've rarely been overly hungry, and when I have, I've eaten.  That simple.  With the change to smarter foods, my intake has decreased, but I'm still feeding my body enough to enable the increased energy my workouts are providing.

There's one other thing.  I don't know if it's the protein shakes, the change in diet, the workouts...but there is an interesting side effect.

Poop.

Yeah.  You poop differently.  Big.  Firm.  Long.  Logs.  Like..."OMYGODISITEVERGOINGTOSTOPCOMINGOUTOFMYBUTT" logs.  These are man poops. John Wayne poops.  Every time I drop one of these, I have the urge to call everyone 'pilgrim' for an hour.  These aren't the poops that ANYONE on Project Runway is taking.

Also, this was the first workout of week 2, back to Burn Circuit 1.  I've found I can already do more of the exercises at higher weights and do more of the pushups, as well as dropping lower on the squats and lunges.  It's encouraging.  Extremely so.

Rest day tomorrow, then Burn Circuit 2 on Tuesday.

Thanks for reading.

Jason