I've resorted to counting calories. Yup, it's true and yup, I can't believe doing this either.
I've never been an advocate of counting calories. I think it's more distructive and discouraging than productive and helpful. I've always been all about portion control and that's the route I take with all my personal training clients. I still argue and vouch that portion control is the way to go but I'm by no means a beginner to cleaning up my eating or a beginner with training. I needed to up my game.
They say insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. I don't want to be the poster child of insane clean eating when it comes to my own plate so I knew I had to do something differently. Doing something different meant counting calories.
I've been eating 6 meals a day for the past 4-5 years and it really works for my body, especially now that I run Hulk's and manage my own training. Doing a few rounds of padwork doesn't work well with my tummy if it's full so maintaining my six smaller meals, eating every 2.5-3hrs, works very, very well for me. I think the only downfall to this way of eating is if I miss a meal or am late eating. My stomach gets grumpy and groans much more than perhaps the average person who is hungry. I get hungry and easily agitated.
For the most part, it's easy for me to squeeze in my meals at Hulk's but starting next week I will be planning my meals one week in advance and leaving some meals open for on-the-spot cooking at the club. I pretty much have a fully stacked kitchen at Hulk's with all the fixings -- a fridge, freezer, microwave and you'd be surprised at just how awesome that coal-thingy-a-ma-jiggy is for cooking. I try to start my work day off by cooking a large pot of one of my one-dish-wonders -- a two to three portioned size meal that I can simply heat through out the day when I need to eat. However, these days my work day starts off super busy. We have a lot of student members and they come fairly early to train. Yesterday at 3pm, for example, I had about 15 members to train. So, in addition to counting calories, I'm also going to start preparing all my meals for the week on one day.
Truthfully, I can't believe I'm counting calories. I've got a healthy appetite and I do eat a lot, or so I thought, but apparently I don't eat enough. It's so very ironic too because I've got some members who joke with me, noting that every time they come to train I always seem to be eating. Yes, I eat a lot but now have to eat more. I can't help but find this too amusing and such a funny problem to have. I think the cold chill of the club surely plays a factor here. It's freezing at Hulk's and I spend a good part of my day doing silly dancing or walking around the club cleaning things or trying new exercises -- anything and everything to keep myself warm.
I don't care to jump on any particular "food-style bandwagon" because I don't believe there's necessary one correct way to eat and the fact that I can't remember the last time I've been sick proves to me that what I've been eating has been working for me. Everybody's body is different and frankly I think people give way too much credit to various "diets". It's like the vegetarian who says he's lost so much weight by not eating meat yet he fails to announce that the meat he used to eat was deep fried chicken or the vegan that says it made them be more creative in the kitchen. Going vegan is super hard as it is, I can only assume, and surely one going vegan will have to become more creative in the kitchen but I vouch that you don't have to necessarily go vegan to learn to love new foods and try new recipes.
I think people just need to eat real food. Having said this though, if I were to recommend one specific way of eating, it'd have to Paleo. Paleo is basically clean eating but a bit more extreme. It's been regarded as the "caveman's way of eating" because it stays away from processed foods and doesn't include any dairy or grains. I suppose I could give up my Greek yogurt but not my oatmeal. I'm still very much in a morning zombie mode until I have my protein-packed oatmeal pancake and morning coffee that has a dash of milk in it. I refuse to give up my oatmeal because I don't care to extend the zombie mode I wake up to on a daily bases to join someone's diet bandwagon parade. Instead I'm going to continue to eat clean, just eat more.
Eating clean and going Paleo share a lot of similarities. Both steer away from processed foods and are all about eating real food -- food that dies. Beyond a few things like canned tuna and Greek yogurt, almost all my food has a shelf life shorter than a week. I quite enjoy going grocery shopping so I go a couple of times a week, which only proves just how much I eat because I always think the food I buy will last me a week but it never really does. The plan is to continue this calorie counting for the remainder of my training camp -- am only on day 11 -- and see what the results reveal.
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