Not Just a Man's World

Paleo recipes: strawberry cheesecake pots (primal)

Ammi — Tue, 15 May 2012 20:00:33 +0000

This is very much primal, rather than paleo, but it works a treat. Cheesecake is perhaps the pudding I miss most with all that creamy deliciousness, however the base was never the thing that really mattered to me – it was the topping. So I found myself wondering, what if I just put the topping into smart glasses as a free-standing dessert of its own?

This was a first attempt and it really does taste like a cheesecake with the Mascarpone bringing out the cheesiness of a good cheesecake. It also reacts better with me than most since it doesn’t actually have any cream in it and therefore doesn’t have that heavy clagginess that a more cream-based dessert creates for me.

If you aren’t averse to dairy then give this a go. Once you’ve mastered it you can actually do almost anything with the fruit instead of strawberries. Blackberries or raspberries, perhaps.

Paleo strawberry cheesecake pots (primal)

Ingredients (makes 6 small glasses):
500g mascarpone
200g plain Greek yoghurt
4 tbsp runny honey
1 tsp vanilla essence
227g strawberries, roughly chopped
4 small sheets gelatine or 11g sachet powdered gelatine
handful flaked almonds, lightly toasted (optional)

Directions:

If using gelatine sheets, follow the preparation instructions. Usually it involves something like laying out in a flat dish, covering with cold water (must be cold or the gelatine won’t act properly) and soaking for about 5 minutes until a little expanded and starting to wrinkle. If the sheets are overlapping then move them about from time to time to make sure the water is getting to every surface.
Meanwhile, put the mascarpone, yoghurt, honey and vanilla essence in a large bowl and beat together until smoothly combined.
In a small pan, put a couple of tablespoons of water (enough to cover the bottom). If using the gelatine sheets, squeeze them out of their soaking water, or sprinkle the gelatine sachet over the water. Stir over a low heat until the gelatine is dissolved.
Pour the gelatine liquid over the cream cheese mix, add the strawberries and stir together until well combined.
Spoon the mixture into 6 glasses, smooth the tops and refrigerate until set.
If you’re feeling artistic, sprinkle some toasted almond flakes over the top to decorate before serving or add a small whole strawberry (or a quarter of a larger one).

Powerlifting progress 2012: week nineteen

Ammi — Mon, 14 May 2012 20:00:04 +0000

An excellent week! Nothing in particular happened except that I felt really strong in the gym for both my workouts. It’s just so good to be feeling so great everyday and feel lively enough to do something the day after a workout too.

Plan and results for last week

All completed as planned although the RDLs really hurt the palms of my hands on Monday. Perhaps because I’d already done several hours of gardening that morning and the tools had been grinding away at the palms of my hands.

Workout 1: Monday

RDL: 102kg – 8×1
Hip thrusts: 90kg – 5×9 (30s rest)

Workout 2: Thursday

Back squat: 82kg – 8×1
Concept 2 intervals: 5x30s (30s rest) – 500m split times are now down to 1.59.4-8

Plan for this week

Workout 1:

RDL: 102kg – 1×2, 6×1
Hip thrusts: 90kg – 5×10 (30s rest)

Workout 2:

Back squat: 82kg – 1×2, 6×1
Concept 2 intervals: 5x30s (30s rest)

Blog-watch: stress and body fat

Ammi — Thu, 10 May 2012 20:00:07 +0000

One of the biggest reasons I gave up my desk job was to reduce the stress in my life. I would like to live as healthy a lifestyle as I can manage and decided that I could arrange my life so that I didn’t need the level of income that came from a five-day-per-week high-hours high-responsibility desk job. Without the desk job I hoped to be both happier and healthier.

One of the other potential benefits I expected was to finally get rid of the lump of fat that has sat on my upper hips since I was in my teens. Despite some really hard and effective fat loss diets over the last few years this stubborn fat area wouldn’t leave me. My suspicion was that it was related to the stress in my life and that it would never go until I got rid of the stress.

Can I lose my stubborn fat area by taking more time to sit, think and relax?

There are links between hormone cortisol (often triggered by stress) and body fat levels. However, before I move into an article next week to explain my own cortisol and body fat experiment, I thought I would do a blog-watch to pull together some resources about stress and body fat. This should provide a huge amount of information and background reading on the topic.

To start off here’s an overall reminder on stress and cortisol. Last year I did a blog-watch on stress. Chris had been very strongly affected by some research he’d done into stress and how it impacts on health. He did a long series of articles on his own website about this and I pulled these together in a summary.
Staying with Chris for one of the specific studies from that previous blog-watch, here’s an article looking at why stress makes you fat. In this article Chris explains how elevated cortisol causes gluconeogenesis – in other words, if you are chronically stressed (in a state of cortisol production from stress all the time) it creates a similar effect on the body as if you were eating piles of sugar all the time. Chris also refers to a fascinating study that implies that the stress doesn’t need to be that stressful in the traditional sense to create a state of chronic stress.
Next up is an article in Science Daily that refers to a study published in 2000 (I believe that the study is Stress and Body Shape: Stress-Induced Cortisol Secretion Is Consistently Greater Among Women With Central Fat by Epel E S, McEwen B, Seeman T, Matthews K, Castellazzo G, Brownell K D, Bell J, Ickovics J R, found free here). This study was one of the first to look at cortisol responses in lean women rather than overweight women and identified that the lean women with greater abdominal fat also had higher levels of life stress and exaggerated responses to cortisol. The focus on lean women rather than overweight women will have made the differences clearer – in overweight women I would imagine that it is harder to pinpoint which of the fat is connected to the cortisol. I find it interesting that the article explains that the cortisol causes fat to be stored centrally around the organs as part of the protection mechanism. My cortisol fat was very definitely around my upper hip, which is lower than the traditional abdominal area.
Len Kravitz has published on his University of Mexico site an article co-written with Christine Maglione-Garves and Suzanne Schneider looking at the links between stress and weight. It’s a well-written article that is concise and each to read while being better-researched than many articles you might find on the internet. I particularly like the simple-to-read explanation of what happens at a tissue level with the cortisol and why it creates the fat stores. If you want to know a bit more about the enzymes then this is the article for you.

There should be plenty of reading for you in those links. However, if you want to read a bit more and are feeling in a technical mood then there are a few studies that might be worth looking at too:

Stress and Body Shape: Stress-Induced Cortisol Secretion Is Consistently Greater Among Women With Central Fat; Epel E S, McEwen B, Seeman T, Matthews K, Castellazzo G, Brownell K D, Bell J, Ickovics J R. Psychomatic Medicine 2000; 62:623-632. (Copy of study available free here.)
Glucose but Not Protein or Fat Load Amplifies the Cortisol Response to Psychosocial Stress; Gonzalez-Bono E, Rohleder N, Hellhammer D H, Salvador A, Kirschbaum C. Hormones and Behaviour 2002; 41:328-333. (Copy of study available free here.) – a particularly interesting study since it was looking at whether all energy availability had this effect on cortisol responses to pscholsocial stress or if it was only glucose. They found that the cortisol increase was greater in the glucose group than in the other groups.
Is visceral obesity a physiological adaptation to stress? Drapeau V, Therrien F, Richard D, Tremblay A. Panminerva medica 2003; 45:189-195. (Abstract here.) – an interesting-looking study that, among other things, raises the question of whether it is just stress causing the visceral fat or if the visceral fat also then causes some stress. I think they’ve probably got a point there, that once you get into this cycle it can become a downward spiral without some serious action to reverse the process.

That’s all I’ve got time for this week (this is already 10 minutes late – I went for a pre-dinner walk with Chris which is all part of my own de-stressed approach to life) but hopefully there is plenty of interesting reading to give you something to think about. Next week I’ll be revealing the graphs and details of what my own body shape looked like before and after giving up the full-time desk job.

Is more sleep and time outdoors (perhaps even combining them, like Jake the cat) the way to a leaner body?

Paleo recipes: Normandy pork casserole

Ammi — Tue, 08 May 2012 20:00:59 +0000

I stumbled across this recipe online.

I had a joint of shoulder pork. Shoulder is quite a “bitty” joint, it doesn’t tend to carve into nice slices and the skin has virtually no fat on it making it not particularly good for crackling. As a result I tend to chop shoulder joints up into casseroling meat or do other non-roasting things with it. I searched online for “pork casserole recipe” and this is one of the first ones that came up. A few paleo tweaks later (although I kept the dijon mustard since I just can’t get that excited about excluding mustard from my diet), and a tweak for a pint of stock rather than using half stock and half dry cider, and we ended up with what was the most delicious pork recipe I’ve ever tasted.

It was amazing. None of us could get enough of it. Even the cat, who was on empty-bowl-licking duty, polished the first bowl to a white shine. He then bounced across the room faster than I’ve seen him move in some time just to get at the second bowl as it was put down for him.

I’d actually made the casserole the day before and then it did the 2 hour cooking in the oven the next evening – it works fine done like this and it means it’s a great one to have ready and then just pop into the oven on the timer setting if you’ve got guests staying and want to go out for the day with them. The final simmer stage is just long enough to cook some accompanying vegetables.

We served this up with mashed celeriac. Celeriac has a very strong flavour and can overpower a lot of things, but it works brilliantly with this casserole. Try it!

Paleo Normandy pork casserole

Ingredients (serves 3-4):
2 tbsp olive oil or 50g butter, depending on whether you use butter or not
1kg pork, cut into casseroling chunks
200g lardons or chopped streaky bacon
16 shallots, peeled and left whole
1 small onion, chopped
2 celery sticks, chopped
600ml (1pt) chicken stock
2tbsp dijon mustard
2tbsp fresh tarragon leaves, stripped off the stalk but left whole

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 170C.
Heat/melt half the oil/butter in a flameproof casserole dish. Put half the pork into the pot and fry for about 10 minutes until well-browned. Remove from the pot, put the remaining oil/butter in the pot and brown the second half of the meat. I actually did all the meat in one go, but my casserole pot was massive.
Meanwhile, in a separate pan dry-fry the bacon/lardons until crispy.
Remove the bacon from the pan, set aside, and use this pan to fry the shallots, onion and celery for a few minutes to soften slightly.
Transfer all of the pork, bacon/lardons, shallots, onion and celery in the casserole dish.
Pour over the stock. Make sure everything in the casserole dish is covered with the stock – if necessary add a little more water until the meat is just covered.
Cover and cook in the oven for 2 hours.
When finished cooking transfer the casserole back to the stove top. Stir in the mustard and tarragon and then heat over a medium-high heat allowing the sauce to reduce until it has thickened. The celery and onion will completely pulverise, helping to thicken the sauce.

Powerlifting progress 2012: week eighteen

Ammi — Mon, 07 May 2012 20:00:38 +0000

It turns out that Chris was right. Don’t you hate it when you have to write something like that on a public site like this? (Only kidding – Chris is a genius and I love it).

You might recall that last week I had a really bad workout after three days when I’d been staying away and had seen virtually no protein. We’d discussed how muscles need a supply of amino acids as well as glycogen to operate properly. We wondered if the very low protein in my diet meant that while I still had the muscular strength there was just nothing left to fire the work with.

After the Friday workout I’d eaten a big bowlful of protein and fat (tuna, mayo and avocado). I followed it up with lots of steak and more beef mince and tuna. What would be the result?

I went into the gym on Monday with some trepidation but it was a miracle. I was able to do the workout I had always intended, feeling as strong as ever. So it seems that it was a lack of amino acids rather than anything more serious.

And just to note, my bodyweight remained constant through the whole process so it wasn’t just a case of being underfed and not having eaten enough.

I had hoped to get three workouts done during the week but came down with a stomach illness on Tuesday night that I couldn’t kick until Friday morning so my workouts are now turned upside down from where they were before.

Plan and results for last week

All completed without incidence. Hurrah!

Workout 1: Monday

RDL: 101kg – 4×2
Hip thrusts: 90kg – 5×8 (30s rest)

Workout 2: Friday

Back squat: 81kg – 4×2
Concept 2 intervals: 5x30s (30s rest)

Plan for this week

Workout 1:

RDL: 102kg – 8×1
Hip thrusts: 90kg – 5×9 (30s rest)

Workout 2:

Back squat: 82kg – 8×1
Concept 2 intervals: 5x30s (30s rest)

What’s going on?

Ammi — Wed, 02 May 2012 20:04:20 +0000

For the first time since I started writing this blog you may have noticed that I missed putting up a post last week and yet there was no post to explain my absence or to put up a late post.

Part of the reason for this was that I was away on a trip and just hadn’t got round to writing anything before I left, but I’ve also been thinking a lot about this blog. It’s original purpose was to help other women out there who wanted to lift or do other activities that were traditionally believed to be activities from the male domain. Thanks to the feedback I’ve had from some of you, I’m going through a process of change – it seems that many of you were thinking similar things to me.

What it was like then

When I started lifting I felt very alone.

While I had Chris to help and support me, I felt like I was fighting an uphill battle whenever I spoke to other people about what I did. In addition to that I also find it difficult to learn more. The resources just didn’t seem to be that widely available with most internet information being aimed at men or avoiding the more female-specific issues, such as menstruation cycles and how that might impact on lifting weights.

While female-specific information was available, mostly through women like Krista Scott-Dixon and Gubernatrix, the information was limited and I felt that the only way to really understand what training would work best for me without years of trial and error would have been to pay out for a good coach who really understood their stuff. Which just didn’t seem fair when the men had huge amounts of resource on sites like T-Nation.

As my interest in Paleo diet grew I found there were only a few sites posting up regular information about that too. Mark Sisson’s site was probably the most active and the choice of sites disseminating information to the active heavy lifter who also wanted to eat a Paleo diet was particularly limited.

The situation now

These days the information available is much better. While there is still an enormous amount of misinformation about the best way to train out there on the world wide web, especially in relation to women, there are also an enormous number of websites with good information and they aren’t hard to find.

No longer do I feel like I’m one of only a few women who train with heavy weights. Instead it feels like there is a huge community of women out there, all having a go and supporting each other through sites like this, even if we all live in different places.

We share our experiences of training or body changes when we change our diets and as a result we all learn together. These days any woman new to lifting or Paleo diet can almost certainly find an account of someone else having the same issues and how that person resolved it.

As an example, I found that menstrual cycles were very rarely mentioned on the internet in relation to training and diet – not with the sorts of training and diet I used anyway. It’s one of the reasons that I have frequently come back to the topic of the menstrual cycle. It is the one thing that I felt really separated me from Chris when I started training and which really impacted my strength levels in the early days of training.

Now I understand the technical aspects of what is going on and sharing and exploring this with my readers has revealed that we have all noticed different patterns of strength and health around our cycles. That’s fine, at least we all know that we have to find the natural patterns for our own bodies and anyone new to it is likely to find that there is someone else experiencing the same things that they are. There might also be some good suggestions on tweaks they might try.

Changing Not Just a Man’s World

As my knowledge and needs have changed, the content on my site has also changed.

Paleo cooking

Early on in my Paleo days I started sharing recipes. As time has passed and my skills in the kitchen have improved I have found myself actively seeking out or creating Paleo-friendly recipes and these are now a regular weekly feature.

These recipes will be continuing and will hopefully be becoming ever more inventive. While it’s completely against the grain of what we eat regularly at home, I’d like to crack the Paleo pudding thing so that I don’t just have the virtually-Paleo chocolate mousse as my fall-back when friends come to dinner.

Training logs

I started sharing my training as I was hoping to eventually compete at powerlifting and I felt that by sharing the highs and lows of my training I would not only be forced to continually assess and be honest about my performance but might also support others who struggle through the tough times. Making myself publish the reality of my training has definitely kept me honest and has also, unexpectedly supported me as many of you have shared with me advice or suggestions when I’ve hit problems.

My training has taken a slight back seat in the last few months as I address adrenal fatigue, get used to a more relaxed lifestyle and adjust to a more physical day-to-day activity level since I gave up my desk job. However, the training posts will remain as they do help me progress forwards.

I may still compete at powerlifting – I’d like to do one season of competition – but my health comes first. After all, that’s why I got into this lifting business in the first place.

The rest of the time

Over the years the rest of the content on the site has varied from specific, highly-researched articles or summaries and discussions on research papers to compilations of links on specific topics or the weekly random links. This is where things will change.

I have a few projects I’d like to work on.

Some of my old articles need reviewing and updating, especially the early ones. Research and learning never stops, so I’ll be doing some writing on those topics to bring them up to date or just to put a new spin on them, given all the other things I’ve learned in the meantime.

Some of the old blog-watches also need a refresher to share the latest news that has appeared.

When I find a study that I think might be highly relevant to many of you I will still do an in-depth look at that study, but that will be an occasional rather than regular feature. I was finding that doing those weekly was taking more time than I was prepared to devote to my blog writing.

I’ll also continue to share my own personal experiments, including the hair saga as it progresses and I continue trying different things, directed by all your wonderful comments!

A time and a place to write

I write because I enjoy it, but since I stopped working I have also had the time to devote to many other things. Previously the blog was my outlet – it was semi-portable as I could write anytime I had my laptop with me. But now I can dig on the allotment, ride out on my bike, spend time with friends, play violin and piano and do numerous other things I previously couldn’t routinely find the time for. The blog has definitely taken a back seat, especially as the weather improves and I can be outdoors more.

I’ll still be here and if you want to get in touch between posts I’m always happy to correspond by email – just contact me through my contact form. In the meantime, I will keep writing, just leaving it until I have something to write about!

No related posts.

Paleo recipes: nut butter

Ammi — Tue, 01 May 2012 20:00:33 +0000

I’ve been having fun with nut butter recipes over the last few weeks.

I started showing some severe gluten and sugar intolerances on cheat days a couple of months ago so I’ve moved to spotlessly clean Paleo eating. There’s no more hiding those days when I fall off the diet wagon since Chris can clearly see it the next morning – I’ve started developing a blotchy rash across the middle of my face when I have even the smallest hint of a cheat day with non-Paleo foods so, clearly, the only sensible answer is to just be 100% clean 100% of the time. No more cheesecake unless I make it myself… that or look like an acne-attacked teenager.

So, back to the nut butter. I decided that I really do enjoy a teaspoon of this every so often and having a jar of it in the house would help me resolve those sudden fat-craving moments I get when, on a really bad day, I feel on the verge of jumping in the car to the village supermarket to buy cream buns or caramel shortcake slices. Interestingly it’s rarely the carbs my body is craving but the fat content, hence the love of cheesecake with all that nice silky-smooth creamy and fatty topping, or licking the centre out of chocolate eclairs (which would be fine if they didn’t go and mix a load of sugar into the whipped cream and I didn’t react so badly to eating lots of cream). Nut butter is therefore a great go-to emergency snack food and comfort food.

My problem is that non-peanut nut butter is generally only available in health food shops or online in the UK and where you can get it, it costs a small fortune. To add insult to injury, postage is normally pricy on the online sales and to get to a health store I have to double the price of the nut butter by adding parking or bus fares. In comparison peanut butter is widely available everywhere and costs less than half the price, but I’m eating extra-clean for now so not even eating peanuts. How to solve the puzzle?

Well, thanks to living near an area with a high Asian population, I can get catering-size bags of almonds for an almost-acceptable price at my nearest over-sized hypermarket (contact me directly through the contact form if you want to know the brand of supermarket, I don’t really want to advertise them here). 800g bags at £5.99 for unadulterated almonds is better than the £2-3 for 200g of almonds (often salted) available easily in most UK stores. I decided this had to be cheaper than buying nut butter ready-made.

Having been given a food processor last year I decided I should take on the challenge of making my own nut butter. How hard could it be?

It proved to be incredibly simple actually. Admittedly the taste wasn’t quite the same, although I’ve tried a few variations, all detailed below with my thoughts on them. It wasn’t even that messy once I got past the initial dusty phase (which spurted out of the two tiny air-holes on my food processor lid until I found them and blocked them with my fingers).

The first time I tried it I used 200g of nuts, which actually made my life harder. There wasn’t enough in the food processor and I ended up continually having to scrape it off the bottom and sides so that the blades could actually reach it. I therefore recommend making a decent size portion for ease of blending.

I have the website Healthier Eats Almond Butter to thank for both the basic method and some of the variations. I was wary that I might need to add something other than nuts, such as a little additional oil, but this lady is obsessed with nut butter (a perfectly reasonable state of affairs – it’s lovely stuff) and her blog gave me the comfort I needed that I could just blitz away.

I’m going to set out the basic method below but please do go to her site to see pictures of what each stage looks like. That should give you some comfort as you blitz the nuts in the food processor, especially if you’re as paranoid as I was.

Paleo nut butter - 100% raw almond butter

Ingredients (makes gram for gram, or ounce for ounce, exactly the quantity of nut butter as the nuts you put in):
Nuts of your choice, of the weight you want out at the other end (I recommend a minimum of 300g which is a medium-size jar-full)!

Directions:

If you want to use roasted nuts, first lay the nuts out on a baking tray in an oven set to 175C (350F) for 12-15 minutes until golden brown and lightly toasted, shifting them about a couple of times to prevent burning. This step is not essential, it just alters the flavour of the nut butter slightly and also makes the blitzing process a bit quicker by a couple of minutes because the nuts are drier. Personally, after trying several flavours, I would go for the roasted nuts option every time!
Place the nuts in a food processor, put on the lid and blitz… until you have nut butter… about 12-15 minutes later… Okay I’ll explain in more detail.
Start to blitz at max speed. At first you’ll get lots of dry powder. The powder might crawl up the sides. If it does that, stop the food processor and scrape it back down with a spatula.
After the dry powder stage it’ll start to look a bit gungier but will also spray about quite a bit. Scrape the fine spray of nut gunge off the inside of the lid and the sides back down to the blades.
Continue to blitz with the food processor and the oil will start to leach out of the nuts. The butter will get smoother and start to clump together better. Keep blitzing on a high speed until the ball of butter collapses again and you get a smooth oily paste in the bottom of the food processor.

I actually find that my food processor is efficient enough that if I do these on max speed I can ignore the nut powder starting to slide up the sides until the stuff in the bottom is getting pasty. It actually only takes about 4-5 minutes to get to that stage. I’ll then take off the lid, scrape all the bits off the lid and from the sides (usually just that fine spray) and give it 1-2 minutes on high speed again to get those bits properly incorporated.

Flavour options

Here are my thoughts on a few different flavour variations I’ve tried.

100% Raw almond butter – the first flavour I tried and bear in mind that I didn’t manage to get it quite as smooth as I would like because I’d not put enough in the blender. I found the flavour of this a bit too bold for my liking – it really did taste like I’d put too many almonds in my mouth at once and had chewed them all to a pulp. It was also very thick and a bit drier than I like although my under-filling of the food processor might be to blame for that. It wouldn’t have spread easily and I suspect most people’s preference would be to add a little oil (just a little) while it is blending, but I’m going for the 100% pure approach here and it does work.

100% Roasted almond butter – this was actually the last one I tried and it is by far my favourite. The roasting gives the flavour a whole new depth of flavour and also makes the butter creamier than working with raw nuts. The flavour is suddenly more subtle and the colour is beautiful too – a deep dark golden brown.

50% raw cashews, 50% raw almonds – this was a nightmare to blend and I’m not sure about the flavours either. I think I prefer it to the 100% raw almond butter but there was something a bit “off” about the flavour. I’m not sure I can explain it. The cashews softened the boldness of the almond but the whole thing was a bit hollow in flavour.

50% roasted cashews, 50% roasted almonds – this is much better than the raw butter. It is still quite thick (I was amazed to learn as I did this experiment that cashews actually contain far less oil than almonds – who’d have guessed). The colour is darker than the raw butter, closer to the colour of standard peanut butter with a yellowy-brown colouring to it. While it is delicious I would rank it behind the much oilier and smoother (and nuttier) roasted almond butter.

Raw mixed nuts – this is the classic unsalted mixed nuts selection most easily available in the UK. They tend to contain pecans, brazil nuts, cashews, almonds and hazelnuts. This made the tastiest of the raw nut butters and the pecan flavour in particular stood out, however it tasted a bit gummy which I’ve now established is caused by the lack of roasting. I’d like to try it roasted now and I’d also like to try a pecan butter given the moorishness of that pecan flavour.

Powerlifting progress 2012: week seventeen

Ammi — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 20:00:55 +0000

As expected, I didn’t get much lifting done this week. I went to visit friends and spent large amounts of time playing with and lifting 16 month and 3 years olds about instead (all the friends I visited have small children).

I did get back on Friday in time to go through the gym so I did manage one workout for the week, but I had a bit of a problem. To start with I’d spent 4 hours or so that morning in the car driving home. I’d also had an unusual diet for the second half of the week – from Wednesday to Friday the only protein I had came from three eggs, a small piece of haddock and a tin of tuna. I’d mostly been on root veg, risotto rice and potato for three days.

I lost reps off my squat but it was strange. I felt strong, my movement patterns were good and the bar didn’t feel particularly heavy. Yet despite that I managed a first rep and after dropping into my second squat I just couldn’t stand up again. It didn’t feel like I was weak, it was more like my muscles just couldn’t fire the messages correctly.

My first thought was that I might have lost weight but my weight was pretty much the same. I’d eaten plenty and hadn’t lost much weight but was definitely missing out on the usual protein side and was also quite low on dietary fat too. Exploring the issue with Chris we discussed the fact that muscles need a supply of amino acids as well as glycogen to operate properly. The likelihood was that the very low protein in my diet meant that while I still had the muscular strength there was just nothing left to fire the work with.

The first thing I did on getting out of the gym on Friday afternoon was mix up a bowlful of protein and fat – two tins of tuna, a couple of spoons of mayo and an avocado in small pieces all stirred together. Yum! I’ll be finding out if the large amounts of steak, tuna and beef mince I’ve been eating since I got back has worked when I head into the gym on Monday.

Plan and results for last week

Workout 1:

Back squat: 81kg – 4×2 – I managed 1×2, 3×1 and had to de-rack the bar to move it back to the top and re-rack it after failing to get out of the hole on my second rep for my second set, so I really was trying my hardest!
Concept 2 intervals: 5x30s (30s rest) – Chris watched these for the first time and fixed my form which wasn’t right for sprints (I’d previously only done long slow row sessions). As a result I rowed slower but hopefully long term I can row faster.

Plan for this week

Workout 1:

Back squat: 81kg – 4×2
Concept 2 intervals: 5x30s (30s rest)

Workout 2:

RDL: 101kg – 4×2
Hip thrusts: 90kg – 5×8 (30s rest) – new weight!

Paleo recipes: green chicken curry

Ammi — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 20:00:37 +0000

I made up something very similar to last week’s green fish curry recipe for Chris but with chicken instead of fish. So many people dislike fish that it’s helpful to be able to adapt fish recipes to work with meat and I find that chicken and pork are usually the best alternative meats to white fish.

Chris thought that the coriander was too much of an overpowering flavour. I didn’t think that was a problem but I was eating the fish version and having tried a piece of his chicken it definitely did taste different, but not in a bad way. I think it is very much down to personal preference – which flavours you prefer – but Chris didn’t dislike it, just commenting that if given the choice he wouldn’t select this recipe again. I think he prefers my Rogan josh.

In its defence, the original recipe called for a much larger quantity of fresh mint (instead of the limited dried mint I used here) and also wanted chopped fresh chives. Neither of these were available in my supermarket and anyway, buying excessive amounts of fresh herbs can be expensive if you don’t have a herb garden of your own, so this is a slightly cheaper alternative with a few tweaks to other ingredients to make up for these herb defects.

Whether it would have been better with the extra fresh herbs I don’t know – if the herb garden takes off this summer I’ll try it again and let you know.

Paleo green chicken curry

Ingredients (serves 2):
2 chicken breasts, chopped into small chunks
3 spring onions, chopped
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp coriander seeds
2 fresh green chillis, deseeded and flesh chopped finely
4-5 tbsp chopped fresh coriander (approx 25g fresh coriander when chopped)
1 tbsp dried mint (or 2 tbsp fresh chopped mint)
150ml coconut milk

Directions:

If using dried mint place this in a small pot, cup or glass and add two tablespoons of water. Stir together to get the dried mint wet all over and leave for 20-30 minutes to rehydrate a little (in an ideal world, we want to be using fresh mint or leaving the dried mint to soak overnight, but I’m rarely that organised and this just takes the powdery edge off it). I actually put it on to soak just before I started preparing the spices and chilli which took me ages but don’t start cooking until you’re 5 minutes off being happy with the mint.
Grind the cumin and coriander seeds using a pestle and mortar or whatever alternative grinding method you have available.
Heat a tablespoon of oil in a large frying pan or shallow saucepan, and add the chicken once the oil is hot and starting to smoke. Cook for 2-3 minutes, keeping the heat high and keeping the meat moving in the pan to stop it sticking to the sides or burning. The chicken should turn white all over and be starting to brown in places.
Add the spring onions to the pan and stir-fry over a medium heat for a couple of minutes until softening but not turning brown (we need to keep the ingredients of this curry green).
Add the cumin, coriander and chopped chilli flesh to the pan and stir in with the spring onions. Cook for a minute or two until you can smell the aromas being released from the spices.
Add the fresh coriander, mint (fresh or slightly rehydrated) and coconut milk to the pan and stir well to mix together.
Reduce the heat to low and leave to simmer for 10-15 minutes, until the sauce has mostly evaporated and the chicken is cooked through (take out one of the larger pieces and cut it in half to see if it is white through and doesn’t have a rubbery texture). Try to avoid letting it continue to simmer past this point as the oil will start to separate out again and you’ll end up with green chicken floating in an unpleasant green oil on your plate.

Powerlifting progress 2012: week sixteen

Ammi — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 20:00:02 +0000

Well this was all very interesting. After two weeks of very hard fat loss, dropping just over 3kg in the two weeks, I started to lose some strength in the gym. Last week’s reps were all bad quality and on the verge of causing me injury. Everything also felt unbelievably heavy.

I decided to move to maintenance for a period of 4-6 weeks, holding my weight where it was (between 55.4kg and 55.6kg) and getting my gym performance back where I’d left it before I caused irrevocable damage to my strength. The plan is to do another hard two weeks once my body has adjusted to the new weight.

Going into the gym on Monday to squat I expected to have to go back to an easier set/rep scheme than I’d used (badly) last week, but was amazed to find that I felt really strong, like I’d never had a weak week. My form was great and the weights moved to easily that I ended up doing the set/rep scheme that was next in the progression from last week’s workout. Just over two days of eating at maintenance level and all was great with the world.

Plan and results for last week

Workout 1:

Back squat: 81kg – 2×2, 4×1 – I actually did 3×2, 2×1
Concept 2 intervals: 5x30s (30s rest) – 500m splits: 2.01.6, 2.01.9, 2.01.6, 2.01.8, 2.01.5

Workout 2:

RDL: 101kg – 2×2, 4×1 – I actually did 3×2, 2×1
Hip thrusts: 85kg – 5×12 (30s rest)

Plan for this week

I’m going to be on a grand tour of Devon, Somerset and Cornwall next week. Well, it’s probably not grand, but I’m driving around visiting several old friends who I’ve not had time to visit for 5-6 years while I’ve been finishing off the desk-job period of my life. I’m also quite excited that I’ve managed to find a day to visit the Eden Project as well – something I’ve wanted to do for over a decade.

Since I won’t be at home I won’t be able to do my training. I might manage to fit in workouts before and after my trip and, if so, I’ll follow the workouts below.

Workout 1:

Back squat: 81kg – 4×2
Concept 2 intervals: 5x30s (30s rest)

Workout 2:

RDL: 101kg – 4×2
Hip thrusts: 90kg – 5×8 (30s rest) – new weight!