Paleo and P90X: Round 2

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Its summer and the weather here just can’t decide what it wants to do. Some days it’s hotter than blazes and some days it’s somewhat chilly. On the really hot days it’s difficult to get motivated to do anything. The heat just sucks the energy out of me and it seems like I’m tired all the time.

I didn’t manage to start P90X last week. I intended to but late nights and no motivation to make an early start kept me from starting it again. I need to get the prerequisites out of the way. Body measurements and before pictures are both really nice to have.

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Paleo, P90X and Summer

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Wow! It’s been about a month since I did a post. It’s interesting the turns in the road this journey called life takes us on. I’ve been extremely busy over the past several weekends and haven’t really had time to sit down and write a good blog post. I had the opportunity to travel again this weekend and chose to stay home instead.

Speaking of travel, I’ve been doing a lot of that over the past month. June 21st-24th I drove up to Moscow, Idaho and drove back. That’s about 1100 miles round trip. I was sick that weekend for the first time in several years. I quite literally haven’t been sick in years and the day I needed to drive up there I got sick. The following Wednesday evening I drove up to Portland, Oregon which is about a 280 mile drive and hopped on a plane for St Louis, Missouri. I drove back from St. Louis which is an 1800 mile trip. Last weekend I drove back up to Portland for the premier of a movie called “I’m Fine, Thanks”. That was another 560 miles of driving. This weekend I had the opportunity to drive another 300 miles to see family and decided to stay home instead.

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Paleo Diet week 14 Anniversary and exercise via P90X week 12 Anniversary

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This turned out to be an odd week all around. From the Paleo standpoint I did pretty good until the weekend. I took a little unexpected trip over the weekend and although I didn’t eat horrible I ended up eating restaurant food all weekend which wasn’t completely Paleo. I did manage to pick fairly Paleo friendly meals from the restaurants but I still can’t help but feel like it was a pretty non Paleo weekend.

The P90X went well this week again until the weekend. I ended up switching one workout for another last week and when I’ve done that in the past I managed to complete all workouts for the week just out of order. This weekend again because I was traveling I missed my work out on Sunday. I ended up walking a lot so it may be a wash but I still feel guilty for missing a day.

My weigh in on Saturday was good. I was at 174.6. That’s a loss of 1.4 pounds for the week. I’m sure at this point this is the lightest I’ve been since around 1988. I remember having a talk with some of my buddies back then about our weights and I believe I was around 176 at that point. I probably had more muscle because I was in the military at the time.

This post is extremely late as I’ve been busy with many other things over the last few weeks. I typically make the post on Saturday or Sunday but with the weekend trip that didn’t happen.

I’m in the final week of P90X. This week has an odd workout schedule and it feels weird to be almost done. The workouts this week seem to be mostly 60 minute workouts which are also odd after so many weeks of 90 minute workouts. I’m excited to be done but at the same time still trying to figure out what I want to do next. I may take a week long break and then dive back into P90X all over again.

Take care!

Joe

Paleo Diet week 13 Anniversary and exercise via P90X week 11 Anniversary

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This week actually turned out pretty good from a Paleo standpoint. There were some days I thought I wasn’t going to eat Paleo that I ended up staying Paleo anyways. I didn’t do a good job of tracking meals again this week but I think it was actually 2 meals for the week that were non Paleo.

I’ve been on vacation again this week and I let myself get sucked in by the internet. I haven’t been nearly as productive this week as I was last week. I spent a lot of time looking at and bidding on auctions, none of which I won. I came pretty close on a few but lost them in the last seconds.

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Paleo Diet week 12 Anniversary and exercise via P90X week 10 Anniversary

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So, it seems life is conspiring against my Paleo plans and I can’t quite achieve an 85/15 split. This week was 80/20 again. Not bad just not fully Paleo according to Cordain’s plan. I can certainly settle for 80/20. I’m still feeling good and all the pain I was having months ago in various joints and body parts is still gone.

I’ve been on vacation this week and working my butt off outside. I built a complete hydroponics system for raising baby lettuce this week. I also did quite a bit of work on a truck I’m planning on selling. It’s been a very active week and it was nice to have energy to get lots of stuff done.

Since I’ve been on vacation my normal ‘work’ eating schedule has been off. I haven’t really eaten three meals a day most of the week. I’ve been having two meals a day most days with a few random fruit snacks here and there. Thursday and Friday weren’t very productive but that’s okay because getting some rest on vacation is probably a good thing.

My weigh in today was good. I’m at 178. That’s a loss of 1.8 pounds for the week. It seems like the weight loss should slow down at some point in the near future. Almost 2 pounds this far in to a steady stream of weight loss is darn good. Not eating steady probably had a lot to do with it as well as all the outside activity.

I’ve been debating where I want to go with this blog. There isn’t a lot more to talk about from a Paleo standpoint. I’ve been working to get ready for some healthy eating by growing my own vegetables. I already have backyard chickens and my own grass fed eggs. I think I’ll add some vegetable growing posts to the blog. Healthy eating is certainly related to diet and exercise.

One of these years I’d like to be mostly self-sufficient for a summer. I think it would be nice to not have to depend on the grocery store for so much of my food. The food I grow at home is probably healthier than anything I get from the store. There are no pesticides in my home grown food and I don’t have to worry about things like e coli. The lettuce I’m growing this year will be both hydroponic and organic.

Take care!

Joe

Paleo Diet week 11 Anniversary and exercise via P90X week 9 Anniversary

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This was an off week for Paleo. Mostly due to my experiment with not having coffee at the house for a week. I ended up buying coffee out almost every day this week, each time with cream. It’s not super Paleo unfriendly but it’s also certainly not Paleo approved. We had meatloaf a couple times this week and that had some bread crumbs in it. Otherwise Paleo friendly but it did have some bread. All in all not a bad week but also not 85/15.

This was my first full week in P90X training block 3. Friday I had a 6AM meeting and ended up skipping my work out. To make up for it I moved it to Saturday and instead of taking a rest day this week I’ll count Friday as my rest day and just keep going.

Ab ripper is starting to get easier. I’m happy about that. On the overall it was a good week for P90X. All of the workouts went well and I can see improvement from last week. Every exercise it seems like the reps just keep going up week over week. The only ones that stay the same are the ones that are a set count.

My weigh in yesterday was good. I’m at 179.8. That’s a loss of 1.6 pounds for the week. This is the first time I can remember being under 180 in about 20 years. I think I started putting on weight in 1993 and although my weight has fluctuated up and down I’m pretty sure I haven’t dipped under 180 since then. The sad part is I still see a gut when I look down. I’m wondering how much I’ll have to lose to look down and see no gut.

Take care!

Joe

Paleo Diet and Exercise: Motivation

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I was thinking today about motivation. I’ve been lacking it the last several days and I was wondering why it’s lagging. I’m trying a new experiment this week from a pure budgetary stand point. I spend about $8+ per week on coffee and I thought I’d just try cutting it out completely and see how that goes. If it works out I’ll have $32+ per month to devote to something else.

The last two days when it’s time to do my morning exercise I’ve really just felt like going back to bed. I’m not sure if this is a motivation issue or a lack of coffee issue. I’ve switched to tea and tea also has caffeine so I’m really not sure.

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Paleo Diet week 10 Anniversary and exercise via P90X week 8 Anniversary

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This was a so so week for Paleo. I think I ended up doing 4 cheat meals for the week. Not a huge issue but it does bother me some. I didn’t track my meals for the week very well and that’s part of the issue. It makes it harder to know if you are at your limit if you’re not counting consistently. This would actually be an okay week on some Paleo plans. The Paleo Diet by Dr. Loren Cordain calls for an 85/15 split which is what I usually shoot for. Other plans like Primal I believe call for an 80/20 split.

This has been an interesting week from the P90X stand point. It’s my second rest week. This is the week before I hit Phase III of P90X. The workouts for the week were:

  1. Yoga
  2. Core Synergistics
  3. Kenpo
  4. Stretch (which I missed)
  5. Core Synergistics
  6. Yoga
  7. Rest or Stretch (tomorrow)

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Paleo Diet and Exercise: Beans, beans, we need more gas?

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A friend of mine and I were talking the other day and he was curious about my diet. I explained to him what I can and can’t eat and he was shocked when I said I don’t eat beans. His immediate response was “What’s wrong with beans? Beans are supposed to be good for you.” As is often the case, I had no response prepared and all I could do was shrug and say “I don’t know”. Since I’m having good response and good results from this diet, I wanted to know what to say next time.

Beans or legumes it turns out have a lot of the same draw backs as other items that are off the plate for Paleo. Beans are another food that is high in lectins. Lectins for those of you who may have forgotten, are a plants way of protecting itself. They cause issues in the stomach of whatever eats them to tell the critter that ate them not to eat them anymore.

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Paleo Diet week 9 Anniversary and exercise via P90X week 7 Anniversary

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This was a great week for Paleo. I managed to avoid temptation pretty well and I only had one cheat meal this week. My cheat meal wasn’t even much of a cheat. I had Chinese food Tuesday night and it was mostly meat and vegetables. I did however have a chai tea with milk and whatever sweetening they use in the tea mix. Anyways, it was only Tuesday this week so much better than last week.

We had cupcakes at work on Friday and that was a pretty tough temptation to pass up. Some of them were stored in my office so I literally got to smell them all day. I did well though and avoided them.

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