This Is How I Eat

Here’s some pictures of the food I’ve been eating lately. I’m no master chef, but really, if I want to save money and eat well in Japan, I’ve got no choice but to cook most of my meals myself. For the last 2-3 months or so I’ve tried to plan my meals around John Berardi’s 10 Habits, and it’s worked well for me so far; I’ve got plenty of energy to train, I feel healthy, and I do believe I’m gaining lean muscle mass, but I’m still comfortably close to my competition weight (181lbs).

I never really thought that much about nutrition other than the scraps of random facts I collected hanging out with friends who were into weight training and BJJ. Most of it consisted of “eat lean protein” and didn’t talk so much about the effects that a full, comprehensive nutrition plan could have on one’s performance. I knew I was supposed to eat often, and eat well, but exactly what those meant weren’t really very clear to me. Only relatively recently in my training career have I started doing things like reading forums (Sherdog’s D&S, mostly) and, from there, looking for more comprehensive texts on sports nutrition. For me, personally, the difference is night and day – and it’s not like I ate horribly unhealthily before I read this kind of stuff. So I recommend it.

On the left we have a kind of miserable-looking attempt at a pasta carbonara, with salmon and spinach. This was an attempt at MacGyver-cooking – I had planned to wait until the day after to go pick up groceries – so I cooked it up out of what I had lying around – salmon filets, pasta, spinach, and a sauce made with butter, egg, and whole milk. Probably not the best meal for me, and it could have used more spinach, but at least I ate it after a workout so the pasta gets used well. Didn’t take very long, either.

The middle picture is what most of my breakfasts look like: oatmeal with raisins and a scoop of Vanilla protein powder in whole milk, scrambled eggs, spinach, and some fruit, usually an orange or an apple. This also only takes a few minutes to whip up – scrambled eggs probably take less than a minute, the oatmeal only needs to be microwaved for about that long, and by the time I’m done with those two I just throw some spinach on the contact (George Foreman) grill to finish it all off. Mmmmm.

The rightmost picture is a pretty standard lunch affair, except for the chunk of French bread, which is kind of a treat for me. Otherwise – more fruit, spinach, yogurt, maybe a carrot, and either a pork chop or a salmon filet. The spinach and the meat are both cooked on the contact grill, so it doesn’t take very long or dirty any dishes.

Yum.

pat m.

Goals 4.13.08

BJJ:

-Hit a sweep from butterfly guard.

-Hit a sweep from spider guard.

Exercise:

-Add finishers to the workout schedule.

Striking:

-Throw more combos. Finish them with kicks.

Other:

-Try drinking protein + carb workout drink during training sessions.