I slightly adjusted my summer food plan from before to the below:
- Breakfast - complex carbs and heavy protein - hardboiled eggs and fruit, and also a glass of iced coffee. Best. Combo.
- Lunch - complex carbs and heavy protein - green salad with chicken, beans, and fruit, sometimes with tuna or salmon instead of chicken, but usually not with eggs because I eat eggs for breakfast. Just remember the rhyme, greens and beans and chicken and fruit!
- Dinner - complex carbs with light protein - quinoa salad with beans and raw vegetables, boy it took a minute, but I finally eat a decent amount of vegetables, and now there's this article Could Leafy Greens Be The Perfect Pre-Workout Snack? to remind me what motivated me to eat vegetables in the first place, because vegetables promote muscle recovery.
- Workout Drink - simple carbs - CocoOJ2O, my old faithful.
- Post-Workout Snack - complex carbs with light protein - power smoothie, but sometimes I just have a chocolate silk and a handful of almonds.
I theeenk I am losing weight. In a good way, like I have a flat stomach sometimes for the first time ever. I think this is because 1) I've replaced most of my starches with fruits and vegetables, and the only starches left in my diet are quinoa and beans, and 2) between rowing and striking bootcamp at RowFit and kettlebells with Box, they're keeping me honest about keeping my core engaged. If I don't consciously tighten my abs before a box jump, I will not get up on that box. You know how a cat tries to jump to the top of a cabinet and bonks off the side? Yeah, that. Or Box had us doing the release part of a snatch, I didn't tighten and I almost did a somersault. Which is pretty scary when you have eighteen pounds of cast iron in each hand. Anyway the other day I was slouched on the couch and there was something weird about my stomach, I poked it and it was a plate. Of. Muscle. I have a fitness plan check-in coming up too, but on the other hand that's my point, food and fitness, they're all connected.
I want to point out, though, that I haven't cut out carbs. Fruits and vegetables are carbs! Not to assume that people don't know what they're talking about, they may know very well that they say "carbs" to mean starch like how I say "always" to mean too much and "never" to mean not enough. But anyway, I'm not about to refute exercise science about carbohydrate being your primary fuel. It just doesn't have to be sugary or starchy carbohydrate, though it can. It depends where you are on the carbohydrate ladder, I ain't judging you. If you were wondering though, fruits and vegs are fine as fuel for me, and I already said about nutrition for recovery, so you know, two birds, one stone, efficient.
