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Happy New Year, everyone! I hope everyone had a wonderful and safe new year!
As usual, with the new year comes new goals, new “resolutions,” new hopes, and new motivation. A lot of us will set goals that we hope to accomplish for the oncoming year. Whatever your goals may be, make sure they are realistic, and do not beat yourself up if you do not reach them.
One of my resolutions is to post more entries and recipes!
I don’t necessarily make “new year’s resolutions” because I am constantly setting and resetting goals for myself throughout the year. But I usually do reset them after the new year to allow myself to indulge a little over the holidays.
I do still have goals when it comes to my body and my strength. So I have started counting my macros. I have been logging my food intake in the past, but mainly just focusing on the calorie count more than the macros itself. I want to look good for the wedding (which is in three months!), but I also want to improve my strength. I want to be able to lift more and see my PR numbers increase.
But I don’t think I have been eating enough to properly fuel my workouts. My strength has not increased as much as I would have liked in the past year. And stepping back and taking a good look at my diet, I think I need more protein and more carbs.
I’ll admit that with a history of disordered eating, I have a slight aversion to bumping up my carbs. But I haven’t made any progress with keeping them too low. I tried keto for a while, and I felt like I was going to die during WODs. I thought maybe my body just needed to adjust, but I never saw any improvements from it, and my workouts always felt like crap (and yes, I did increase my sodium to try to help this). It may work for some, but everyone’s body is different. Some people can thrive in one way while others cannot. So I stopped keto, but still kept my carbs low. I kept logging food, but did not pay much attention to my macro-nutrients ratios. I just made sure my carb intake was under 100g a day and that I met my calorie goal.
So now I plan to Eat to Perform. I will hopefully be building muscle and lowering my BF%. I’ll give you a peek at my macros and meals with what-I-ate-Wednesdays for those that are interested, and hopefully be updating more with new PRs and progress! I’ll include my current numbers at the bottom (they are baby number right now…).
So this means I will need to plan out all my meals and prep in advance. I usually try to do this anyway, I do my grocery shopping in the weekends and will spend some time in the kitchen on Sundays preparing meals for the week. Here are some of the things that I like to cook to make meal-planning throughout the week easier:
Casseroles–I like casseroles because you get good left-overs, so you already have lunch prepared for a couple of days in the week. I especially love breakfast casseroles. It makes it easy in the mornings to just heat-and-eat. Here are my favorites:
Three-Meat and Sweet Potato Breakfast Casserole
Lo-Carb Paleo Breakfast Casserole
Bacon, Chorizo & Butternut Squash Casserole
Butternut Squash, Bacon and Bison Casserole
Gluten-free Spaghetti Squash and Sausage Casserole
Paleo Chicken, Mushroom and Bacon Casserole
Chicken Thighs–I love chicken thighs because they’re easy and delicious. And you can buy a big package of 10 thighs for fairly cheap. A lot of times this is my go-to protein to cook for the week.
Paleo Hawaiian Chicken Thighs
Rosemary Lemon Honey Mustard Chicken Thighs
Paleo Tangy Glazed Chicken
Fish–Fish is an easy quick meal to cook throughout the week since they don’t take very long to cook. I like to buy the big bags of frozen tilapia to keep for an easy, quick protein source. If I want it for lunch I’ll cook it the night before so I can just reheat and eat the next day.
Sweet Potatoes–one of my go-to slow digesting carbs. They’re easy to make, just toss them in the oven or the microwave. I’ll make a bunch of them for the week on Sundays.
Veggies–I’ll buy a big bag of veggies to portion for meals throughout the week. Carrots, Brussels and broccoli are my go-to veggies. My grocery store also has a frozen bag of grilled artichoke hearts that I will keep in the freezer at work to heat up with my lunch.
Those are just some ideas to make meal-prepping a little easier. I’d love to hear ideas from others as well. And hopefully soon I will be putting up new PRs and new progress!
So here’s to a happy, healthy, fit new year!
Deadlift: 195#
Back Squat: 135#
Front Squat: 110#
Clean: 110#
Clean&Jerk: 105#
Press: 80#
Push Press: 105#
Snatch: 80#
Strict Pull-ups: 3
