Body wrestling to greatness. Gotta Do this in Parts...#1

     The time is about 1:44p, as I restlessly stumble sideways through my kitchen, blurring past my teapot, while reaching backwards to hit the on button. I realize that I've had a rough morning, rough night, rough week. My teenage dreams of joining the army suddenly pop into my head, having passed the ASVAB but not pushing forward (because mom said no). But I was up at 4am!! Yes, but I could hardly see straight enough to be awake. Driving was an interesting option for the morning...imagine having to eat in five minutes, five mile run, and do five hundred push-ups immediately in the cold air of the morning. Sounds refreshing! So does sleeping, in that cold air...

     I like life rough, to some extent. Maybe it would have done me well to have gone into the service. I've taken easy for granted too long. It's not always the best when people have an easy life, because they never learn how to triumph through adversity. Here's where dieting starts to make sense to me again, for the first time in years, and why I've resisted for so long.

     I lumber over to the refrigerator door, and I reach in. I find a bowl of fried kale I made yesterday. Having made this my cover photo, I ate some and put it away. I'm very grateful for having done this, as lunch meets my lips. After heating up my big bowl of greens, I stumble over to my flip flops, preparing to head downstairs to find my earphones and begin my binaural beat session. I type blogs, connect with friends and clients, create documents and work on my Huna lessons before heading to my workout with partners. I gotta plan my contribution to the session. With all of us having a goal to meet, plus a necessary stretch session, today will prove to be long and potentially injurious to participants!

     Still needing to have some caffeine and some protein (gotta have my eins), I decide to start typing because I want to document this feeling I'm having. I started a food chronicle so I could blather on about what food does in me, and maybe in someone who's reading this, and to just monitor my progress. At this moment, my stomach feels nice and hollow after being up for several hours on only coffee with cream, and back to sleep, awakening and having my greens. I'm noticing how surprisingly awake and fresh I feel, despite a little stumbling.

     Since I am devoid of grain carbs or even root vegetable carbs at this point, I am naturally inducing my body into ketonic states of fat adaptation. In order to joggle the body, sometimes you must do some crazy things, or go to some length, to force it into submission. I think that everything I do to my body adapts quickly, except for some things that change the structure and function of my energy, and how I output. But somehow I am pushing right through this phase and into some measurable success. The scale hasn't moved incredibly much, though my leanness factor is definitely improving. I'm taking serious strides to create nutritional deficits in ways I hadn't previously explored, and taking new supplements as well.

Visit part two to read on.

Eating Right is a Full time Job.

Proper nutrition and home cooked meals deserve a salary of its own. With the fast food industry taking over our minds and waistlines, we need some recourse over the out-of-control healthy meal energy deficit our country is experiencing, and we have to do something to slow the downhill slide. It's time to do something about it, sometimes slowly, but surely.

It took me awhile for example, to get my head back in the game of buying food and getting in that kitchen. But I want my body and mind to be right, so I do everything I can, to make sure mealtimes at home happen. This includes not getting coerced into too many restaurant meals. After all, unless you have quite a lot of money to spend, both eating out and meals in don't often work due to the expense. It's often one or the other.

It makes for a lonely world. Sure I don't see my friends or family often, due to spending every available minute in the kitchen, but I'm skinny! No seriously, in order to be "skinny," I have to eat at home. Otherwise, every cupcake that wasn't nailed down, I'd probably consume. End of story.

So lately I've been able to break my addiction to shoveling excessive carbs down my Throat. So here's the truth: you really can't eat fats and grains in the same day, not the kind of luxurious fats I would load with in the morning. I see that life is low fats with grains, or high fats with no carbs. Yes, I'm currently on as low as I can. Really it's because there just isn't a reason for grains...not anymore. There are way too many poorly  processed ones. 

Let's go back to the Kitchen with this conversation. So because of my need to eat at home, I have to plan, shop, prep, and produce. I have been invited to so many events including a wedding to which I wondered, "how will this affect my food and training schedule?" I mean really, food and training has always consumed my life, but with this current goal, it has become more all consuming.

And then let's not even ponder what food plan to follow. Since I last blogged in Chronicles, I've done everything from Pescetarian to Warrior to carb cycling to crowding out with heavy roughage intake to 70% fruitarian to giving up and junking out on refined flours, deciding that there were some treats like burritos that I was unwilling to give up. But now I have decided that no craving is worth my health and figure. Especially not flour...or wheat, the evil thing.

My latest mealtime prep has consisted of proteins and veggies. I'm coming up with every version I can think of. So far this week, I've had bacon burgers and salad, bacon and cauliflower, cottage cheese, high protein low carb and sugar free cakes made with almond flour, Spanish "rice," eggs and avocados, avocado grasshopper shakes with avocado, cacao nibs, and DoTerra peppermint essential oil, pork loin with snow peas and bean sprouts, broiled baked chicken with cucumber nutribullets. Really I haven't had much of a desire to consume grains. I imagine that if there be a time soon where I want a grain, I'll carefully journal and examine my reasons why. To be ultra thoughtful of our food intake plays an important role in our food destiny. What we think about today, affects tomorrow.

I stand by my current justified choices but then I'm seeing a result. This means I continue pushing at all costs. Hopefully I can be some form of role model who set the precedent for you in your quest for greater physical results.

Vegas Doesn't do Bulletproof.

Alas, my efforts to stay on point with Bulletproof philosophy has somewhat failed me in a rather sizable way. Or shall I say, I allowed Bulletproof to slide while on our vacation. What would I have done? Packed my French press and a quarter pound of coffee? The only reason why this may work out either in my favor or while breaking even, is because the time spent in Vegas, and the amount of food we even ate was minimal.

Anyway...

Who fasts while in Vegas??!?? ...I kind of did.

It wasn't really my intention. But I sort of just didn't eat. I don't know exactly why, but it seemed to be the thing to do. I mean after all, we weren't there to ruin our girlish and boyish figures, but instead to have fun. And right in the midst of learning to do a new thing with my fasting, was not the proper time to even come to Vegas. So I made the best of it. I also made a new decision to find a similar stride next time, as the food options at the Luxor were slim pickings.

Since being on a grass-fed regimen, I realized I had one of several choices: I could pack my meals from home, freezing and precooking my meats and metering out everything,  I could buy some ready-to-eat foods like almonds, nut butter, protein powder, fruit and jerky, or I could be subjected to the dreaded monster food breakfasts, lunches and dinners at both fast food and sit-down dinner restaurants. This was my dilemma, to which had a simple fix: Don't eat until 2p and then don't eat unless you're hungry, eat snacks I bought from the store before getting on the road, and most of all, if you buy a sandwich and it doesn't for some reason hit the spot, you know that your mind and thoughts do not have to be centered around food, in order to have a good time.

I ended up having a rather uninteresting beefsteak sandwich of only half I chose to eat. The next day I had a chicken sandwich and a coffee. That was it. Earlier that day I had apples and almonds. I guess I ended up substituting my food calories out for a little alcohol. The great thing about alcohol and food consumption is, I get to choose what, how much of it, and when.

Bacon, Steak and Grilled Kale: Mealtimes will Never be the Same again.

Once I realized what my day consisted of, it became a day of cooking and backloading proteins. Once my fasting section of the day was done, I began cooking my bacon and had them with hard boiled eggs. Next for dinner, I cooked almond flour pancakes, bottom chuck steak and grilled kale. It was important to eat the coconut slathered kale with the beef, so as to assist and ensure the digestion of such rich proteins.

By the evening, I felt stuffed like the fatted calf...mealtimes were changed forever.

The one very awesome thing about going back to meat is the sensation of fullness that had been previously missing from my diet in a large capacity. Not only that, but I feel a different, stronger foundation is forming, as if I really am extracting nutrients from my food the way nature intended. My body responds well to real food in all forms. But now I'm really trying to get it to respond to weight loss, and it's no surprise that it finally is.

Dave Asprey explains that it takes something upward of years to heal any preexisting metabolic damage created from past formidable lifestyles. It also takes time to shift consciousness into a receptive state where it is willing to receive new information and utilize to its highest advantage. Ain't nobody got time for a lack of results! Not this mujer.

Speaking of consciousness, I find it valuable information inside my scope of practice that I've tried multitudinous nutritional disciplines with a moderate success rate, and here I am back at bacon and eggs for dinner. What gives? How could I at this point seem almost hypocritical to the Atkins adage of "it's going to kill you" song and dance I used to sing? What happened to the old me, besides more education? Nothing. Just more education. And what you choose to do with education is the very difference between being something individual but simple, and being unique and great.

What I find most entertaining about the whole food experiment is that the next day, I was indeed not hungry even in the least and had consumed a mere chunk of beef and kale leftovers, along with my normal morning bulletproof cup and some tea. Monday morning brought a long stretch of fasting success followed by several handfuls of mixed nuts, one apple and some pepperoni (that will no doubt keep forever I reckon) and a serving of nut thins. Then I proceeded to eat a lemon. Why, I'll never be able to answer that. But I can tell you, it was worth every lemony, sour lip-puckering moment imaginable. Would Dave approve of such sour bliss? Even though it's not grass fed beef? Yeah. Probably.

Pancake Hacking, Kitchen Hacking, Nonsense Hacking.

 Everything seems to need hacking these days.

In fact I wished some people would have their mouths hacked. Ah, but I digress (almost).

Nowadays when I see a pancake made with flour, after years of licking my lips and contemplating the first buttery bite I ask myself, why? With this question I can now rule my world. To satisfy my sometimes present pancake lust, I bought some almond flour and worked it out with some organic heavy whipping cream and eggs. With a pinch of salt, this alone justified my pancake. After smoothing a small dollop of honey butter cream on my fluffy treat, never again would I even so much as need to consider any other fattier, more carb-ridden option than this.

In the kitchen I hacked away at tossing things out that no longer made sense to be in my midst. I looked onto my refrigerator shelves and found condiments, foods and bottles of undone, unopened or uninteresting options that clearly hadn't yet seen the trash can, but meant to jump in a long time ago. This part was easily done. I thought I had the healthiest oils in my kitchen and down to a science, but after hearing Dave's thoughts on it, I decided to take another course of action and stop consuming a majority of vegetable oils. I'm down to coconut oil, MCT oil and grass fed butter. In fact I was so concerned about having enough for my morning cup that I grabbed two packs of butter the last time I was at the store. I've never eaten more butter in my life and lost weight from such madness....but it definitely explains my deeper, inner knowing craving butter for so many years without knowing exactly why.

Growth is always about doing something slightly or even majorly uncomfortable in order to get crazy awesome results from something you don't normal obtain such successful joy from...and you're sick of not attaining that state, finally.

A Relatively quick food log; a check-in.

I had so much to do tonight, and I sit here typing.

Not my intention, but when the writing bug bites, you swat and scratch.

It's not that I won't still get it all done, it's just that it's getting done over the course of the evening in its own time. That may result in sleeping on a desk somewhere, or just simply recoffeeing at some opportune moment in the day, which I have not been accustomed to doing since the Bulletproofing had begun. I haven't had to even think about extra caffeine mid-morning or anytime throughout that day. It's actually been so awesome that I've also realized I can pseudo-cop the effects of the full shabang with a tablespoon of coconut oil. 2T was too much but one works fine for some reason. What I did was poured about an ounce of brewed coffee out into a shot glass and downed that with a glass of water so I could water down the remainder and enjoy at my leisure without any tummy pain, for both the strong coffee and oil induction at once. Then I basically waited until about 1p and sat in the sunlight soaking in Vitamin D.

...and now I am sleep hacking. But I digress.

I ate some mixed nuts, nut thins and two apples, then headed back in. About an hour later I enjoyed a peanut butter protein bar. I didn't eat again except for fluids until around 9p. At this point I made myself a couple of mini grass fed burgers with garlic and an aged cheese garnish slice. I ate some squash and purple potatoes some time later. When I need to carb back load it's difficult for me to stay too low in the carb sector, but then I realize I usually crave carbs for good reasons and not sugary, lacking in nutrition and agenda-less calories. Once I had two almond flour pancakes made with cream, I was good to go. I was super excited about the fact that I found a very effective and fluffy pancake recipe that is creamy delish and has a great taste to it. My honey butter cream is even better and mostly on the approved side (to the left) when looking at a list of Bulletproof foods.

Super hopeful that my package arrives in the morning tomorrow. I have to do everything I can to restrain myself from jumping out of my skin for a good cup.

Turkey Talk...

Wow. Just wow.

I ate my first slice of turkey last night (you know what comes next) after 14 years. Yes. Turkey. Wow. Really Connie? What is compelling you? My whole family asked. I told them it just seemed like it was time. That's the same way I started dating Mike, the same way I conceived Kai, the same way I went into teaching. Everything I've ever done, especially important, just seemed like it was time to take care of. And so I did.

I want everyone to know that this was a long and tough decision for me. I involved all who would listen. I involved the nutritionally educated meat eaters and the vegans. Everyone had a chance to input their feelings on the situation. And everytime I asked myself if I was sure. That's what kept me pescetarian one more day.

And then it happened.

I think what made me try turkey last night was my sister. She seemed happy that I was rejoining the carnivorously inclined, and I thought, "no sis. I'm not going back to eating how the family does, but back to healthy and clean meats that had a nice life, more or less, and didn't die under a major amount of stress." That would change the flavor quality of the meat anyhow.

I don't know what made me do it, except for the compelling research that kept me on the edge of my seat about all the nutrients I wasn't getting, and how I should at least look into supplementation. But that's the problem with supplementation. There's no real logical reason, except for experimentation, that we aren't getting our nutrients from the soil. But if we have healthy farms with healthy foundations and humane butchering practices, (*gulp*, still makes me feel nauseous) with a 100 percent grass fed and finished animal, our bodies will come out all the healthier.