Paleo Challenge Day #2

By Harris Reynolds | January 14, 2016
First things first.

Day 2 weigh-in: 187 pounds
Starting weight: 191 pounds
Net Loss: 4 pounds (math genius I know!)

I survived day one of the paleo challenge fine, despite ending up a an Italian restaurant for dinner last night!

Ordering at a place that specializes in pasta can be a bit tough so in this post, I am going to give you a few “pro tips” based on my experience.  Here’s the first one.

Get Creative at Restaurants

Literally every dish was some kind of pasta dish, so I had to get creative in order to dodge the carb blitz trying to sack my challenge.

I ended up with this, which was actually brilliant.

 

saladI just ordered a basic house salad that I covered with meatballs and meat sauce.  I was very hungry at this point and since hunger is the best sauce, this meal was ridiculous.

I also had one Italian sausage that was also covered in meat sauce — also ridiculous.

This leads me to my next tip!

Don’t Be Too Nice

We had chatted a fair amount with our waitress and she was really nice.  So nice in fact that at the end of the meal she brought us thisTotally FREE!

cannoli copy

A cannoli!!!  What in the world was I supposed to do with that?!?!

No seriously, what was I supposed to do?

I had just spent the past hour avoiding the free bread on the table (they had a great looking oil dipping sauce too!) as well as some seriously sumptuous pasta dishes. And then this happens.

And it was free.  And when something is ‘F’ ‘R’ ‘E’ ‘E’, that always makes it harder to turn down.

But I did. I couldn’t do it, I had to say no. My wife did tell me it was good though! 🙂 Lesson learned, don’t get too chatty with your waitress or you could end up with more temptation! I’m totally kidding about this “pro tip,” — the real pro tip here is:

There is No Progress Without Sacrifice

The reward of a Paleo diet is not the ephemeral delight of your taste buds, but the lighter step on the scale, an increased work capacity at the gym and feeling better all around.

Speaking of the gym, we did a benchmark WOD, or workout of the day, yesterday.

15 minute AMRAP (Rounds and Reps)

10 Squat Cleans (115/80 pounds)
20 Push Ups
30 Sit Ups
20 Box Jumps (24/20 inches)
10 KBS 53/35 pounds

My score within 15 minutes was 2 rounds + 60 reps.  At the end of the challenge, we’ll perform this workout again to measure our gainz! My goal is to be able finish 3 rounds and get in to the fourth round if I can get my weight into the 170s. We’ll test my theory in late February at the end of the challenge.

But progress here will only come with sacrifice, so unfortunately, no cannolis for me!

Lastly I’d like to share…

Paleo Challenge Day #2 Meals

One reason I love challenges like this is because my body gets really hungry. And it is fine to eat plenty of food as long as it is the right food.

This morning I was starving! I had cooked some chicken cacciatore overnight in the slow cooker, so in contrast to the fairly normal “breakfast for dinner”, I had “dinner for breakfast”!

Here is my chicken cacciatore served over some finely chopped kale.

breakfast copy

So delicious, and lots of protein from the chicken and micronutrients from the kale. Love it!

For lunch, I decided to go to a Korean place that does a fantastic beef bulgogi.

bulgogi copy

That was some good Paleo eating right there. Dinner tonight will be at home and I know one thing that is not on the menu…cannolis!

Two days down… 43 more to go!!!

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