Maximising the protein to carb ratio

I have done extensive research – theoretical and practical – to determine the most bang-for-your-buck sources of protein.

• Canned tuna in water
• Canned pilchards
• Ostrich
• Venison
• Chicken breast
• Soybeans Chickpeas
• Eggs
• Cottage cheese

What the SO and I do every two weeks or so is prepare a batch of these protein sources and freeze it in portions for easy extraction during the week. Examples include

• Tuna fish cakes with pilchards
• Ostrich mince
• Meatballs (ostrich/venison/beef/pork mince)
• Homemade chicken bites

All of the above are combined with ground chickpeas (to make it go further and to add some carbs), ground biltong powder and various spices/chillies/fresh herbs so we don’t feel like running to Mcds for a disgusting, filthy, addictive cheeseburger.

I still have to order some bulk whey protein isolate, which will be added to the afternoon smoothie. Currently we are finishing up some flavoured protein we bought on daily deal.

A best-of-both exercise & food programme: Part 3

I really am not sure why I titled this series “best-of-both”. Both what? I have no idea.

Anyway, in part 2 I said my next post would be about the food and operations during Maintenance week and weekends. On weekends, one breakfast will be oats with plain yoghurt, and the other breakfast will be eggs and some form of protein, such as a pork chop or steak, with a small carb. Which weekend day it falls on depends on the schedule for the day.

Lunch on Saturdays and supper on Sundays will be a wrap filled with salads and a protein. Supper on Saturday will be a roti with curry or wholewheat homemade pizza. Lunch on Sundays will be a bit heavier because of the strength training and boxing session later in the day. This will be breyani, or curry and rice or something like that. Some weekends we will braai on the Saturday night, so that will serve as food for supper and all meals on Sunday.

During Maintenance week, the food is the same as Training week, except the low carb mash is replaced with either basmati rice or a small portion of pasta of some kind. The supper smoothie is replaced with a fancy salad or couscous with either chicken or beef, depending on what the lunch protein was.

My experience with Intermittent Fasting

A while ago when I was doing my daily trawl of Lifehacker, I came across an interesting post on Vitals. It was about intermittent fasting, a concept which I had never heard of before. Basically, what it boils down to is you set an eating window for yourself everyday, which is the allowed time frame for your daily calorie intake. @dicktalens recommends a 10 hour window for women, so that’s what I aimed for.

I was used to eating breakfast shortly after arriving at work at 06:30, with supper at 18:30. That’s a 12 hour window. Chopping two hours off that was harder than I thought it would be…for the first 2 days.

I decided that since I can’t really change when I eat supper because I exercise in the evening, I would need to shift the start of my window. I settled on 09:00 – 19:00/08:30 – 18:30, depending on how crazy the morning goes.

The first day was the worst. At 06:30 my stomach started grumbling as always, and I barely made it to 08:30 before inhaling a bowl of oats. Day 2 was a slightly better – by 07:30 when my stomach realised food was not coming, it went quiet. That was that.

I’ve stuck to my eating window for the last month, and it’s been great. I no longer get hunger pangs in the morning, or at any time anymore. The eating window has decreased the amount of time between meals, so I no longer need to “snack”, and I’m often surprised to see that it’s time for lunch or supper. My time is no longer dictated by when/what I will eat next.

Some mornings I will have a mug of rooibos tea with lemon, because it’s winter and super cold and black tea does not count. No.

Now that I’m almost 6 months into my epic revamp (should probably have made a separate blog for that, but I didn’t realise that I would get so into all of this), adjusting to new habits has become easier.

The first change was the hardest, but I know each change I make gets me closer to my overall goal of living a better, healthier life.

There have been days when I could not stick to my eating window. For example, once a week I visit a client at their office for the day. This means I have to eat breakfast at 07:00, and since I get home later, supper at 19:00. I also have to skip my exercise for that day.

That’s ok though – it shakes things up a bit, and I do a more intensive cardio/lifting the session the day before, so that day is a recovery day. I also pack in my carefully measured lunch as usual, to ensure I stay within my calorie goal for the day (the client has long since given up on offering me food, thankfully).

I need to write a post about why I feel like I have to put memes into almost every post

Spicy Pasta Salad

On Braai Day this year I was going to make some normal potato salad, only to find out there were no potatoes. I then decided to make pasta salad with whatever was in the fridge.

• 1 small red onion, diced
• Half a green pepper, diced
• 20ml sweet chilli sauce
• 30ml dhania sauce
• 10g fresh coriander, chopped
• 60ml mayonnaise
• 80ml plain yoghurt
• Black pepper (grind it fresh)
• Ina Paarman Garlic and Herb seasoning
• Two spring onion…stalks? Pieces? chopped

Mix together and gooi over 500g of boiled pasta that has been cooling in the fridge while you are doing this. Probably should have mentioned the pasta earlier.

Note: all those measurements I gave are serious estimates, I actually just eyeballed it and stopped adding stuff when it looked about right.