So Much Pesto!

Today I tried to put a dent in the pesto leftover from last night. (There's still half of it left)

So here's what I ate.

Pre-workout Breakfast: Banana with honey and walnut again. It was just so good the first time.

Ran 5 min warm-up and 4 sprints up a long hill in my neighborhood

Post-workout breakfast: I added some pesto to my scrambled eggs which was surprisingly delicious. I paired this with some bacon, and halfway through eating I realized that I'd just made green eggs and ham. Except the bacon wasn't green. Nor was it ham..it was turkey. But I was pretty darn close.

Lunch:

-Leftover rosemary chicken which was possibly even better after a night soaking in its broth.

-Leftover potatoes shaken with pesto.

-Honey flavored greek yogurt. I've been getting into greek yogurt recently. (Hence not giving up dairy) So I've been trying out a lot of new brands. Today's was Fage's 2% Honey yogurt. Its got a really nifty container that lets you pour however much honey you want into the plain yogurt. -The honey was extremely sweet (mmm) so I only added about half of it. I wish there was a way to save the rest! It's probably for the best though since a comparison of plain yogurt to the yogurt with honey shows that the honey adds about 21g carbs and 40 calories.

-Lots of pomegranate flavored green tea.

Dinner:

-Pesto Shrimp and Tomato- yep more pesto! just tossed some garlic, shrimp, quartered tomatoes and pesto in a pan and yumminess ensued. Got the idea from here

-Green omelette- I enjoyed the green eggs in the morning so I decided to kick it up a notch and made eggs with pesto, green peppers, broccolli, spinach, and green onion. So much green! such a happy tummy.

Dessert: took some frozen berries, heated them up with a little butter, added some walnuts and consumed

Rosemary Chicken with Pesto

I made this rosemary chicken last night as my first attempt at cooking a paleo meal and let me say it was delicious. I got the recipe from everydaypaleo.com which is an excellent source of exciting paleo recipes.

The chicken was seared then allowed to slowly cook in a delicious concoction of chicken broth, lemon juice, fresh rosemary, and garlic. The result- incredibly tender and juicy. The rosemary was ridiculously fragrant, and overall it was a nice light healthy feeling meal.

I also made the pesto that she paired with this chicken. Using fresh herbs was great. The whole kitchen smelled like basil and rosemary. The pesto itself was incredibly strong. A little bit of the stuff went a really long way so I ended up with a ton leftover.

For dessert I cut up a banana and drizzled some honey and walnut pieces over it. So simple. So good.

Goals and Rules

Let's lay out some ground rules shall we?

1. No grains or legumes: no bread, no pasta, no cake, no tortillas, no chips etc. (this list could go on forever)

2. No sugary drinks or foods with added sugars.

3. Exercise 6 days a week for at least 45 min. At least 3 of those will be lifting weights.

4. One exception to any one of the previous rules is allowed per week. That can mean one day off exercise, one grainy treat, or one sugary drink.

Goals

1. Lose fat, gain muscle- I don't really have a way of measuring body fat so I can't do this in absolute numbers. I'll be taking weekly photos to see progress.

3. Become a better cook. Learn to integrate 4 new vegetables into my cooking without needing a recipe.

4. Stick with it!

Current Stats

Waist-29.6"

Hips-35.8"

Thigh-20.6"

The Basics

A couple of days ago I decided to give the paleolithic diet a go. For those of you who don't know, this diet is essentially eating like a caveman would. Meat, fresh vegetables, fruits, and nuts. That means no processed foods, no cereal grains, and no legumes. Typically you'd also cut dairy out but I'm not quite ready to give up my yogurt and cheese! Basically a general rule of thumb of this diet is if it comes in a box, don't eat it!

So why have I decided to eat like a caveman you might ask? Well..

1. I'm trying to get back in shape, and this diet will force me to eat more protein which will help me build muscle and simultaneously it will make me cut back on sweets and other junk food helping me lose fat.

2. It will push me to broaden my horizons in terms of food. My typical meals consist of bread, noodles, cheese and chicken. The paleo diet means cooking my own meals. It means eating vegetables besides carrots and potatoes unless I am willing to eat the same thing every day. Hopefully I'll learn to appreciate more foods and become a kickass cook while I'm at it.

3. It's actually pretty lenient in some ways. No calorie counting, and eat whenever you like. After all, what sort of caveman would sit around calculating every last calorie he ate after a meal? That's just not good caveman etiquette.

'That's great, Alice, good for you,' you might say, but why blog about it?

Well good question reader, good question. This is just a way for me to keep track of my progress, to give myself some accountability, to record recipes, and to sustain my interest in the diet. I'll be posting recipes, workouts, stats, and my overall opinion of the paleo diet. My goal is to stick with this for a month. Conveniently this idea struck me on July 31st so I began on Aug 1st. Let's see where this next month takes me!