Week 2 (almost) complete ~ the pursuit of elitemess

I am one day away from completing week 2. I feel bummed today. I don’t really know why. I guess because I may have set myself up for a bit of failure with all my fine-tuning rules. Here were my rules again:

This week I am not consuming the nuts. (ha ha sounds rude right). I will try not to have the paleo treats, chocolate and whatnot. I will have my fish oil.

I will try my hand at intermittent fasting to kerb the appetite and get a bit of calorie deficit in my life. This may be against the paleo philosophy to worry about calories, but heck I have a deadline and am currently eating that of a professional athlete training for the regionals, not a normal boring human tyring to lose fat cells.

I will aim for 3x (+) crossfit sessions, with 1x lung-airing run and 1x sprints. Sleep? Well. I am trying. Robb Wolf podcasts help a lot. No offence intended, but they make me have nice snoozy commutes to work, and I feel I am osmosis learning the paleo ways whilst I snore away. Efficiency is very crossfit you know.

Nuts, Yep I had them, not as much as week one, but I had a few moments in the world when I didn’t plan my meals properly and had to buy nuts before I had hunger rage. I am not too worried about the slip-up as they were ‘in case of emergency’ nuts, and really were the only natural thing to eat around me.

Observation - most people eat shit and even think their eating-shit is not shit. Case in point with Mr ‘low carb, no vege/fruit, no fat’ dude from work who is completely obsessed with my food habits and challenges me on a daily basis, ‘why are you eating that avocado? It will make you fat blah blah blah’. Meanwhile he is throwing down low fat yogurt and skim lattes with 3 equals and can barely lift the cup to his mouth as he is so emaciated having cannibalised his muscles. Em sorry I digress.

Paleo treats. I had them too. I am such a cup of tea and biscuit addict, I was in the high risk category of elevated cortisol meltdown at even the thought of no treat of some sort to end my day. I realise this now – Admit to self is the first step, I. AM. AN. ADDICT. Don’t judge.

Tea (black) and air is just not as satisfying.

I tried black tea and a grapefruit but for some strange reason that was revolting. Yeah I know who would have thought right.

So after stalking my #paleo twitter feed I found a swear word amazing brownie recipe I adapted to reduce sugar and hopefully not spike my insulin. I made a batch, ate a few, and threw out a few as to not eat anymore fews. I made another batch, gave most away to my coach at BODYM. I may have also eaten a few more fews and also a few lines of the dark chocolate, just to test out the smoothness. Other than that, all was well.

Recipe of love
(Thanks to Crossfitsouthphilly)
I have changed a little bit to add Australian ingredients for you.

- 140 grams high-quality dark chocolate (I used Lindt 80%)
- 1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce (I used apple puree from canned fruit section in shops – check for no added anything)
- 1/2 cup high-quality cocoa powder
- 2 organic Omega-3 eggs
- 1 cup light agave nectar (I used ½ cup of glucose syrup – in baking section of shops)
- 1/2 cup almond meal
- 1/4 cup coconut flour
- 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
- 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C.
- Spray olive oil spray on an 8×8-inch square baking pan an line with baking paper.
- In one mixing bowl, whisk the eggs until lighter colour.
- Add the other liquid ingredients to this bowl.
- In a second mixing bowl, mix together dry ingredients.
- Place the 150g chocolate in a microwave. Don’t over-melt, and keep an eye on it.
- Pour melted chocolate into dry ingredients.
- Pour wet ingredients into dry ingredients.
- Mix together
- Pour into lined baking pan. Bang on the counter or table a few times to get air bubbles out.
- Bake in the centre of a preheated 180 degrees C oven for 30 to 35 minutes, or until the brownies are set.
- Don’t overcook. I removed them when they were firm to touch in the centre, as I think they cook a bit more when removed anyway.
- Cool on a wire rack.
- Get out anyway how. I am a bit crap at this, but allegedly you turn over with plate and wish for the best.

Intermittent fasting was a bit of a fail too. I managed to do alternate day intermittent fasting, but for every day was a stretch. For those not in the know, basically the go for IF (as *they call it) is to do 16 hours of fasting each day and 8 hours of eating. I try to do no eating after 8pm and then break the fast at around 11am, as women rules are a few hours more lenient. Disclaimer: don’t take my word as the proper rules, I could be getting it completely wrong and just be skipping my breakfast as I am too lazy to pack my eggs to work.
(*they=the elite)

Crossfit sessions and running – I did ok. Managed 2x crossfit sessions, and loved being there, and did 2x 4.5km runs, with improvements on my pace each time. I wagged 1x crossfit session as I was tired and thought I would try prioritising rest as per Mr Robb Wolf rules. Well that was my excuse and said excuse is possibly is more acceptable than I wanted to have a bath and watch TV on my lazy fatness.

This week I also read some killer articles, re-read Robb Wolf's The paleo solution, and am halfway through reading Mark Sisson's The Primal Blueprint. I will add links to some of the articles in a separate post if you are interested.

Week 3 focus
write more | eat less | sleep more | move more | stress less.

Anyways, another week, another few Kg (ok 1kg to be exact, whatever, who's counting), some more happiness (mostly). Bring it on xxx