I will keep it short and sweet today. I’ve lost 9.8 pounds and I have a before and after picture. Look what changing your diet and some exercising can do for you in just 30 days:
Tag Archives: cooking
Cliff Day Almost Finished: The hardest part of cooking right…
is cleaning all your stuffff. If we did not have a dishwasher, this whole detox would have gone a much different direction. I’d like to apologize for going MIA for a little bit there, life got busy. We are still doing the detox (albeit with a slip up or two, ie super bowl) and it is still going great. Dena has finished up her 30 days and she will be continuing it into the foreseeable future. I will be done on February 6 and I will be continuing for the most part. Any meals out will be anything goes and all meals at home/lunch will be sticking to the diet. Alcohol will be consumed responsibly.
So, I know youre dying to know how much weight we’ve lost, how great we now look, and all about the great things we’ve been cooking. Ill let Dena dive further into her stats when she posts, but for me now I am around 138, down over 8 pounds! I’m considering this as low as I want to go and will be increasing calories to above 2000 each day (at least trying to). Before/after pictures will be posted. I can definitely see my face looking less inflamed and the abs are back. Dena most certainly did not catch me checking myself out in the mirror.. As expected, I have been struggling most with the going to bed on time, as many nights I have to stay up past midnight to do work. I feel so old wanting to go to bed before 11.
As for the gym, my elbow has healed, just got the all clear from the doctor, and I am ramping up my weightlifting. Unfortunately, I have started getting awful shin splints, and I will be starting physical therapy on those. As for the morning shake, it is time to start adding amino acids, and maybe a touch of creatine. I have decided that it is a must to go in the morning to the gym. In fact I decided this last week when I started a blog post but never posted.
“I also need to get my ass in gear in the AM and hit the gym then. This after work at 7 is not cutting it. Just like I couldn’t do the shake in the morning without protein, I just can’t seem to get a groove going to the gym at night. Cannot emphasize this enough, remember it all about adjustment and what works for you.”Going at 7 or 8 at night is just not sustainable. Your energy is completely gone from working all day, you are either hungry or full depending on if you ate dinner, and the euphoric feelings you get from working out in the morning are glorious. My most productive days at work are after I work out.
All pictures of the food we have been eating can be found on our instagram, and we will be posting recipes later this week, Get ready to be hungry my friends.
Cliff Day 16: Green Curry Shrimp
I have been craving Green Curry since we started this detox. I also see everyone else making it so I thought why can’t I? I had the day off, and I had the apartment all to myself. Normally, this means a day of couch lounging and video games, but in the spirit of being less lazy, I went on a journey to create an amazing green curry sauce and overload it with shrimp.
I used the following recipe with a few minor tweaks:
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/emeril-lagasse/thai-green-curry-shrimp-recipe.html
I cut out the Eggplant, Shrimp Stock (replaced with extra coconut milk), and added some jalepeno.
After journeying to 4 different stores to find everything I needed, I began cooking. A short 20 minutes, a can I had to stab with a knife to open, and a huge mess later, my masterpiece was finished. I may not be as eloquent a cooker as Dena, I managed to keep her from seeing the mess I made, but we end up in the same place. You can pretty much use whatever vegetables you want and make sure to get gluten free/wheat free fish sauce (I used Thai Kitchen). Dena came to the rescue with what we should eat this over, as she made her wonderfully delicious cauliflower rice.
I want to add I recently purchased an amazing knife that made cutting the vegetables a hell of a lot easier (my hand disagrees) :
Try it out. Best knife I have ever used.
We have some more Pork Loin in the fridge, along with some lamb loin, so I am excited to see what we do with it next.
As for my weight progress, I have steadied off and I am now 140 even. I feel and look skinnier, and my former gut is calling me every day upset that every day we drift apart more and more.
Cliff day 14: Another Pound Bites the Dust
And Another pound gone and another pound gone, another pound bites the dust. Weighing in around 140 and down 7 pounds, woot woot!
Our approach to this detox has been much different on the second go around. The first time we did it, I was pretty miserable. We were incredibly strict, had 0 slip ups and it just wasn’t fun. The point of all of this, is not just to eat healthier, it is to lead a healthier happier life. I used to hate the shakes I made, they were bland and not the sugar filled ones I was used to. The thing is, I like peanut butter as much as I like sugar (mmmm Reese’s, my old go to treat). So even though peanut butter was not part of the original plan, it has allowed me to look forward to my morning shake instead of dreading it. My shake is now banana, unsweetened almond milk, strawberries, hemp protein, flax seed, and just a touch of vanilla extract. If there is one lesson you take from this blog, it is you have to do what makes you happy. That hypothalamus needs to be kept satisfied in some way. Did you know broccoli doesn’t stimulate it one bit? Shocker. So, if you’re having issues adjusting to all this, throw in something you love, whether it is a fruit or something you can’t live without (NOT CANDY!)
As for how my detox is going, I slipped up a little bit, although I’ve said from the beginning it would happen. I went out with coworkers on Friday and I had a scotch, it was glorious. I was proud I was able to stick to just one. While I was worried it may affect the detox, I didn’t regret the decision. I woke up yesterday below the 140 mark and Today I am 140.4. The weight is melting off as I guess my old metabolism has decided to emerge from its hibernation, realizing I’ve taken a break from abusing it. As of now, I consume 1600-2000 calories a day but I would like to up that after this month to stimulate the muscle growth (Did someone say second lunch?!). I’ve also decided to introduce a healthy electrolyte drink in the morning, as I have been a tiny bit shaky and this should help.
Enjoy the long weekend everyone!
Dena Day 13- Finding Balance
I am learning that the hardest part for me of this detox process has been finding balance…especially now that I have introduced going to the gym! For the first week or so, I had found my rhythm and was doing really well on prepping meals. If I didn’t have the groceries I needed for dinner, I had plenty of time to swing by the grocery store, meat or fish market, and eat at a decent hour. But, it was time to get sweating (and not from the oven while cooking up a storm). Two nights ago was my first day back into the gym and I had planned to go straight after work since I am not a morning person. My first set back was when I ran out of time in the morning and did not pack my gym bag. The truth was…I had no idea where my gym bag even was! No problem! I’ll just swing by my apartment after work to change and head on to the gym! Well do you know how cold it was that night?!? And my apartment was soooo warm. I convinced myself that I HAD to go since I failed the night before but I will only do a quick workout. After all, by the time I got home it was around 6pm and I also needed to run to the meat market to pick up ground turkey meat for the cauliflower pizza crust I wanted to make that night, and the meat market closed at 7pm. So…I never made this recipe before, but how much trouble could it really be? The funny thing is that I had no excuses not to go to the gym in the cold. I was going to walk to the meat market and the meat market is literally a block and a half away from the gym. After the gym, the meat market, and the vegetable market to pick up the cauliflower, I was finally home! It is now a little after 7pm. My advice to you is to: A- read the entire directions of a recipe beforehand and/or B-try more complicated dishes on the weekend if you are pressed for time during the week. This meal was delicious do not get me wrong and I will definitely make it again. However, It just took longer than I expected! By the time I finished cooking, it was 9:15pm.
Lessons Learned (sort of)
The next day I made sure to bring my gym clothes to work in my recently found gym bag. Also, we had leftovers of pizza we were able to bring for lunch which was nice. Cliff was going to be at a comedy show at night so I did not have to worry about eating together and what I was going to make. But, I realized that we needed food for the next day’s lunch and dinner since we were going to see a show after work. For some reason after work, I was really hungry so instead of going straight to the gym, I decided to go home and eat something small, digest a little bit, then go to the gym, then cook meals for the next day. Finished up at 10:15pm and I was exhausted!
Lessons Learned
- Plan meals ahead- decide what you are going to eat for the week or at least a few days at a time
- Spend some time on the weekends going food shopping and gathering all of your supplies.
- Cook a bunch on Sunday to get you through the beginning of the week
- When possible, make extra food and freeze it for emergencies or when you do not feel like cooking. This works great with burgers!
- Stock your cabinets with proteins like canned salmon, and sardines. This can easily be added to a salad to create a quick meal.
-Dena
Almond-Flax Crusted Chicken Wings
Looking for a great recipe for Healthier wings during the NFL Championship games this weekend? Check out this amazing meal!
Almond-Flax Crusted Chicken Wings
We adapted Dr. Hyman’s delicious recipe for chicken breasts and applied it to chicken wings when entertaining guests at the apartment to watch football. These were definitely a hit! For me, my goal is always to make things that taste delicious even to people that are not detoxing. For this recipe, I omitted the onions that are listed in the recipe and create 2.5x the liquid mixture that was covering the chicken wings in order to cover all the surface area. We had a lot of wings (approx 24)! Also, we did not let the chicken marinate 1-24 hours prior to making the dish to enhance the flavor. There were some hungry mouths to feed! We ended up cooking these for 10 minutes and flipping them and cooking for an additional 10 minutes on the other side. I suggest purchasing a meat thermometer to double check the internal temperature of these. In general, for chicken you are looking for a final internal temperature of 165º F for white meat and about 180º F for dark meat. (USDA recommendations).
Enjoy!
-Dena
http://drhyman.com/blog/2010/05/18/recipe-almond-flax-crusted-chicken/
Cliff Day 10: I pick things up and…
I put them down. My first trip back to the gym was a good reality check. I had dreams that I had not lost that much in the months while I was healing, but I was so so wrong. I did a basic chest workout to get my muscles into the groove of things and nothing seemed to go right. I was constantly worried about my elbow and I’m not even going to discuss how little weight I could do. I have always been a skinny guy, and while this has its perks, it also has its downfalls. Building muscle has been a huge challenge throughout my whole life. I have tried many different supplements, and nothing has ever gotten me to the point I’ve dreamed of. I am avoiding any until this detox is over, but I will list out my favorites at some point. When I have ever come close to a muscle-building goal, I have sustained some sort of injury. I mean once I had to take a 4 month break from working out because I hurt my wrist while playing soccer. That’s right folks, I hurt the thing you are not even allowed to use in that sport. Now that I am fueling my body with the good food it can actually use, my hope is my gains will go up up and even more up.
NOW, onto the good stuff. If I told you, you could make pizza out of cauliflower, would that be something you’d be interested in? WELL, thanks to that magical girlfriend of mine, we had exactly that last night. Not only that, due to Dena’s allergies, we had to substitute eggs in it with a flax-seed mixture. It took a LONG time, a bit of “bickering”, and a huge mess in the kitchen, but after all was said and done, it came out great. I’ve also learned, to never tell anyone I was a dishwasher in High School because my mom’s favorite line, and now Dena’s is…”But we need a professional to do the dishes!” But I digress. We used Tomatoes, Basil, and Ground Turkey as toppings. While i would not call it your every day pizza, it certainly was pretty darn close. And the best part was we had leftovers. I haven’t been this excited for lunch since yesterday’s lunch of leftovers! My weight has grown stagnant, which I am okay with because I am still looking and feeling better every day. The world needs to understand weight is just a number, and that it is about how you feel, how you look in your eyes, and how you’re treating your body (although I wouldn’t object to weighing 170 built of pure muscle). Napoleonic Complex much?
Cliff Day 8…Sandwiches I Miss You
Sandwiches….All I can think of are sandwiches. Sandwiches in the morning, sandwiches with bacon, and sandwiches inside even bigger sandwiches. I want to take a bunch of ham add some american cheese and put it on a fabulously delicious French Baguette. As you may be able to tell, the weekend was a rough one. Dena and I went to hang out with some cats at Meow Parlour, a fun cat cafe, and I got Decaf coffee for the first time in my life. If you have never had Blue Bottle Coffee, I highly recommend it because even their Decaf was great. Earlier in the day I was not all that hungry for lunch so I had a small piece of chicken (big mistake). By 3 P.M. I was starving, so I did the only logical thing and got Katz, just the pastrami, no bread. Now, this technically falls under the allowed foods on the Detox, since it is just meat and spices, but I felt it was a bit of a cheat. I really did it to try to satisfy this sandwich craving. While amazing, the craving for a sandwich is still there.
Not surprisingly, Sunday was the first day my weight had not gone down at all, in fact it had gone up a little. I attribute this to more water retention from the Katz. Watched football all day while Dena made me almond crusted wings (absolutely amazing, Recipe to be posted). For dinner we had turkey meatballs over spaghetti squash in a home-made tomato sauce. If you really want to detox, I highly recommend just getting an awesome girlfriend that knows how to make yummy healthy food, makes it much easier. Weight this morning was back down to 142.2 and my stomach is looking better every day. This is day 8 now and we will begin our gym routine but this shows that just by changing your diet you can start melting off the weight, even without steady exercise.
For now, I will be overindulging in vegetables and listening to Galavant on repeat to drain away the pain of the Dallas Cowboys Loss.
-Cliff
Dena-Day 7
Starting a new plan and way of eating can be very daunting and appear to require too much work and effort on your part. Last March, when Cliff and I did Dr. Hyman’s 10 Day Detox Diet, I stressed way too much over having to be perfect and I did not want to stray too far from the dinner recipes given in the book. The best part of following the book’s recipes was that I learned many new recipes and found some new favorites which I have continued to make regularly. If this is your first time trying to detox, I HIGHLY recommend following Dr. Hyman’s plan and trying as many recipes in the book as you can! They are super yummy! However, instead of following one of these recipes, Dr. Hyman does say that you can opt for choosing a green to steam or lightly saute such as broccoli, asparagus, arugula, spinach, kale or chard, and combine it with 4-6oz of protein such as chicken, turkey, salmon, shrimp, grass-fed meat,canned salmon, sardines or herring, hard boiled omega 3 eggs,tofu or temph.
So this time around, in order to save some time and relieve stress, Cliff and I are trying to make dinners so we have leftovers that will last us. My favorite thing to make is a roasted chicken. And by my favorite thing to make…I really mean my favorite thing I eat that I make Cliff make. It requires very little effort to cook one of these and in my opinion, you get the most bang for your cluck…I mean buck. Now we have left overs that are versatile and can go in many dishes. I was able to add some chicken to my salad I had for lunch today and Cliff and I had some for dinner tonight and there is still a bunch left! Another cooking time saver I have discovered is roasting vegetables. Drizzle a little olive oil, salt, and pepper over your veggies and pop them in the oven. I make sure I make extra so I have those leftovers. Tonight’s dinner included chicken, left over broccoli and mashed garlic cauliflower (another one of my favorite sides!)
Clenaeating 
