Tag Archives: glutenfree

Cliff Day Almost Finished: The hardest part of cooking right…

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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.

Dena Day 13- Finding Balance

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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

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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

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/

Dena-Day 7

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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!)
Chicken
ChickenDinner

Cliff Day 2

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Cliff Day 2:

Day 2 of the detox begun with a rough night of sleep, but this is normal as my body is missing all of the things that it used to get every day.  So far, this whole detox is not so bad.  Obviously no results so far, but also not craving any of the sweets.  Although, I am missing the caffeine like woah at work today, and my focus is all over the place.  Hoping this will improve over time.

As for working out I plan on going back to the gym on Thursday.  I have had a bum elbow thanks to tendinitis for some time now and am hoping after this next physical therapy visit, I will be cleared to begin my upper body workouts again.  Worst comes to worst it’ll just be legs and cardio.