Primal Project

Day 4: Going steady

Woke up feeling a bit sluggish. I realised I probably need to eat a bit more food, especially with the weight training and soccer. It’s been freezing cold as well, and the last thing I want is to end up sick or run down from not getting enough healthy food into me.

I also had an awesome afternoon nap for about one hour. It really recharged me. I can’t believe how important sleep is, and how often I fail to get enough.

What I ate

Breakfast

• 3 scrambled eggs, 2 pieces middle bacon, leftover salad, 1 large mandarin
• 2 x fish oil tablets
• 1 x multivitamin tablet

Lunch (post-workout)

• Chicken souvlaki, steamed vegetables with olive oil

Snack

• 2 x handfuls of roasted (unsalted) cashews

Dinner

• Rib eye steak with cauliflower mash (with butter)
• 2 x fish oil tablets

Moving About

Hit the gym today and felt really good, even though I had a bit of muscle soreness and some slight pain in my back from a bad deadlift on Tuesday. I lifted:

• Squats: 3 x 5 @ 85 kg
• Bench Press: 3 x 5 @ 70 kg (new personal record)

What did I do well?

• Got plenty of sleep
• I’m really starting to listen to my body. I’m feeling really in tune with it at the moment
• Getting closer to the Primal Blueprint ideal

How can I improve?

• Always have healthy meals prepared, or at the very least some tuna and frozen veggies on hand.
• Research cashews - are they as good as other nuts like almonds and macadamias?
• Read Starting Strength to learn more about proper weight training technique.

Day 2: Smashing through the cravings

In my house, my family like their sweets, their junk food, and tend to eat a lot of carby, floury crap. Avoiding these foods is hard. Even though it’d be doing them a favour, I can’t insist that they upend their lifestyle for me. They aren’t believers yet. 

I figure that the best I can do is to let results speak for themselves. Tell them nothing about what I’m doing, except when they finally say, “You’re looking great. How did you do it?”.

In the meantime, I need to make sure I’m well fed (with all good, whole foods), well hydrated, well rested, not stressed, since these things seem to trigger cravings for sugar, flour-products, and refined carbs.

What I ate

Breakfast

• 3 x scrambled eggs with diced onions, green peppers, mushrooms and bacon, cooked in Ghee
• 2 x fish oil tablets
• 1 x men’s multivitamin tablet

Lunch (post-workout)

• 1 piece of chicken thigh fillet, 70g of ham, some lettuce, a boiled egg, and half an avocado, topped with full fat caesar dressing. Nom Nom!

Dinner

• Braised marinated beef stew with onion, carrots and broccoli. There is a bit of cornflour in the sauce (about 1/8 of a cup), so it’s not completely Paleo, but it’s not a bad effort.

Snack

• Pumpkin seeds

Moving about

I was still a little sore from soccer. The DOMS is taking forever to go away. So I went for a ~50-55 min easy walk around my hood. I went to the gym to lift some heavy stuff too. Today I did the following:

• Press: 3 sets x 5 reps @ 45 kg
• Deadlift: 3 sets x 5 reps @ 115kg

I’m slowly building back up to my personal records of 50kg press and 130 kg deadlift. I should be there in a few weeks.

What did I do well?

• Plenty of exercise, and added more weight to the bar
• Took the time to prepare nice meals for myself
• Resisted temptation and cravings

How can I improve?

• Cut out the pre-made dressings. It’s better to make my own so I can be sure there’s no sugar or other crap in it.
• Eat more vegetables
• Get my coach to have a look at my deadlift technique. I find it hard to ‘hump the bar’ at the top of the movement.
• Don’t eat salted pumpkin seeds - too much salt = no good.