Paleo Zone for Dummies!!!

I found the best website in my opinion, it has a link to a Zone Block Calculator and also has a Zone Blocks food excel spreadsheet which is so handy!!

You must check it out: http://crossfitfenrir.com/2011/08/25/paleozone-dummies-part-ii-step-step-guide-started/

I'm not officially going to start Paleo Zone until Monday but I wanted to test it out a bit.  Last week, for breakfast I was eating 4 whole egg omelet with onions and peppers topped with salsa and half an avocado.  According to Zone, I should have 4 blocks for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and 3 snacks consisting of 1 block.

Here was my 4 block meal:  4 egg whites, 2 whole eggs, 1.25 cups of peppers, .5 cup of onions, .5 cup of salsa, .5 cups of blueberries, and 4 tablespoons of avocado!

Doesn't it look delicious! Let me tell you it was, and I was contently full no need to eat more.  

For the snacks of just 1 block, it seems kind of silly to have 1 oz of meat...  But here's what I had, 1 oz albacore tuna, 1 cup grape tomatoes, 1 tablespoon avocado.  It was the right amount of food for a snack for sure along with my 16oz Kona coffee I have been sipping. I'm not going to count coffee into my zone because it basically has no nutritional value except to give me that Jolt!

Nom Nom Love my Keurig

The best organic coffee I have found, which also tastes amazing is Newman's Own!

Side note:  If you are like me and use the George Foreman like its religion, well then you definitely know that its a B**** to clean!  My mom recently sent me a 3 pack of scrubbies and I recommend the one below.  Works like a charm to get all the grit off!  You can purchase them at Bed, Bath, and Beyond: http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/product.asp?SKU=16636959

Lunch time!  I had a frozen turkey burger (Lean kind from Costco, figured its roughly 5.3 oz which 4 blocks is 6oz for ground turkey...close enough!), 4 cups raw broccoli, .5 cup of blueberries, .5 cup salsa (love salsa!), and 4 macadamia nuts.  I had some Frank's Red Hot on my burger which has no nutritional value so add as needed.  Once again, contently full!  Even though this has only been my first day of testing Zone, I am really liking the structure.  I love eating paleo foods but just eating strictly paleo with no structure was way too out of the box for me.  I like things to be a little more uniform and thats where Zone comes into play nicely.

Side note: I just realized I'm probably having a lot of Tomatoes may want to switch that up a bit.

For Snack, I had 1 oz tuna again, 1/3 cup of Hawaiian sweet potatoes, and 1 tablespoon of avocado. Bites of tuna and avocado is actually pretty tasty!  I think the sweet potatoes helped during my WOD today.  I went to Mobility WOD at 5:30 which is amazing if you haven't tried it.  Really helps loosen up all the muscles and stretch those overused muscles of crossfit aka. Shoulders, Hips, Quads, Hams, and Lower back. Basically your whole body ha.  Today we focused on Squat and lower back, 5 min squat test was brutal.

The WOD of the day was a skill of 15 pistols which I am actually improving at!  Then 21-15-9 of Push Press @ 70% of your 1RM which was 70lbs for me.  Then 15 burpees and 20 ab-mat situps in between each round.  Killer but awesome!  I finished in 11:33, very proud of myself at Rx :)

Dinner time! I had 5 oz of marinated pork a little more than 4 blocks but I didn't feel like being meticulous. Plus, I lacked a bit on carbs...I had 2 cups of zucchini which is basically a whole damn zucchini cooked!  With 15 spears of asparagus, total that is roughly 3.5 blocks.  I had a bacon wrapped date as dessert so we will count that as the full 4 ;).  Also, 4 macadamia nuts as my fat blocks. NOM NOM!

I am allotted another snack before bed but we will see if I am hungry...we just finished dinner at 9:30pm ugh hate eating that late but I love going to workout at the 6:30 class. Oh well, ya win some ya lose some.  I know this was a very long post, my next one's won't be as detailed but I felt I needed to go over my full test of a day on Zone.  So far I think it will be very good for me!  I am going to do it for the entire month and see where I am at and how I have felt for the month.  But it won't be completely strict, I plan on having a few drinks every now and then and probably a fun meal of whatever I like too.  "You only live once." ;)