Been a few weeks since I last blogged. This has been through general laziness on my part (which I feel bad about) but also as I've been pretty poor lately regarding my diet and training.
Diet first - it's not been good... Those who have read my blog will know that I was trying the Paleo way of eating (see previous blogs for details) and after the first few weeks of my body getting rid of all the crap I had been feeding it, I was starting to feel good.
But then I started to become lazy with my eating - mostly through not eating enough. That led to a lack of energy and a steady decline in my overall mood.
So I started to reintroduce bread into my diet as part of my breakfast, stupidly thinking the extra carbs would help, but this turned out to be a bad mistake. I had a few slices of toast with organic butter & scrambled eggs and shortly after it felt like I had swallowed a brick - I had bad stomach cramps and horrendous bloating. Then rather then stop I carried on having this for breakfast. Over the course of a week or so my stomach slowly became used to the bread but I still wasn't feeling great. My body had done a great job in clearing itself of toxins yet here I was piling it back in. In case your thinking "it's only bread" look on the back of a packet of bread next time your shopping and tell me how many of those ingredients you would willingly eat.
Then between Christmas (when my diet hadn't been too bad aside from the bread) and New Year, my mum made a batch of Vegan Cup Cakes. These were loaded with sugar, but you have no idea how good these taste, far better then any shop-brought cake. One or two should've been enough, but over the course of 3 days I had... 16. Writing that figure down, I feel pretty embarrassed. If someone told me that, I would've read them the riot act, that really is a shocking amount. Even my mum thought so as she had eaten a fair few herself (sorry mum!) and has vowed not to make any for a while - but they did taste fantastic...
I also started to eat lots of left over chocolate, shop-brought sausage rolls, all kinds of stuff, feeling guilty while eating it all but not stopping.
Eventually I started to clean up my diet, sticking to whole, unprocessed foods but even then I was still sneaking in a Mars bar here and there.
Then the past weekend I got through a whole loaf of wholemeal bread in 2 days, and I felt dreadful. Again, my stomach felt like it had a brick in it, I started getting headaches again, feeling and looking bloated and I felt so tired. So, I made the decision to not go near bread for a very long while - it obviously wasn't doing me any favours and it wasn't even tasting nice anymore.
This is one of the things to remember though when taking a food or food group out of your diet - what may effect you might be perfectly fine for somebody else. I seem ok with milk and cheese (admittedly I only buy the organic kind) but friends of mine have had bad reactions from these. Look at my bread binge - had a bad effect on me but a good friend of mine gets through almost half a loaf a day. It really is down to how you feel.
Listen to your body and how it feels, don't think you have to eat something just because 'the experts' tell you. The ad men and the bread companies tell you how healthy their bread is. But what they don't tell you is they bleach the grains first and take out all the natural goodness within the grains, then add back the very vitamins they took out, turning the bread from something wholesome to something man made and heavily processed. Doesn't sound so great now, does it?
One other thing that I feel is best is rather then say your never eating something again (say chocolate or a Cup Cake...), allow yourself to enjoy it sometimes. By barring yourself from enjoying something, you'll only want it more. Two ways that I've adopted this: one is to sometimes allow myself a Mars bar after a heavy weights session along with my normal protein shake. This isn't as crazy as it sounds, as the carbs and sugar in the Mars will be used by your body to restore muscle glycogen that was depleted while you worked out. Without carbs , your body could break down muscle tissue for this same purpose, which is something you don't want to happen. Carbs also create an insulin spike which helps to move nutrients into your muscle tissue quicker.
Now I now protein shakes aren't clean but they are an excellent source of quick and easily digestible protein. But do read the labels as some are stacked full of sugar. I use True Whey Chocolate Mint from www.myprotein.com as it has a lot less sugar then most more expensive brands and tastes great. I normally have two scoops mixed with water after a workout giving me 40 grams of protein, BCAA (Branched-Chain Amino Acids - these help to support your recovery by helping to promote lean muscle growth along with a host of other benefits), some plus some fruit for carbs and simple sugars. But I will sometimes indulge in chocolate afterward - lots of people will scream "noooooo!" but it works for me. If it doesn't for then no worries, try something else and see how you feel.
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