TIGER FIT!Nutrition, Moves & Motivation!

What you got cookin’, Good Lookin’? Performance foods!

If I’m going to eat clean, I’m going to have to eat something GOOD!!!

Just as we delay gratification to obtain a higher quality in other areas of our lives, it is good for us to appreciate what kind of food we are choosing. For Pleasure or Performance? If you start too sweet or end too sweet, you may feel sluggish all day. All week! If you withhold eating until late in the day, you tend to eat more and burn less because you have hardly given your metabolism any rev up for the day. If you save your indulgences for the weekend, you might not indulge all the time. …eh! That’s up to you, clearly!

During your work week, choose performance foods.

For example:

1st Meal after morning weights and run:

My favorite Protein shake right now is

MuscleMeds™ Carnivor™ – Chocolate

I just use one scoop, add some mint extract then shake it up with ice cold water. It blends well and hits the spot- most importantly, all those freshly worked muscles!

2nd Meal when I get to work:

I keep the Chia Seeds, Almond Meal, tub of Fage 0% and frozen fruit at work. You can guess I got this from Trader Joe’s.

Fage 0% is my pick because it is filling, high in protein and low carb. Fruit is high carb so its best to have that mid day and the nut fat balances out all that protein.

The Stevia I use to cut calories is NuNaturals Pure Liquid™ Clear Stevia™. This is the best tasting that I have found. The liquid form does not use the extra maltodextrin and just a couple drops suffice the craving for something sweet in foods and your coffee.

Occasionally, I buy fresh fruit or I might throw in sliced almonds for a new texture but I try to contain my portion to 2 heaping tablespoons.

3rd Mid day snack: (Yes, I’m constantly EATING!!!)

Celery and Hummus

My favorite right now is Trader Joe’s Mediterranean Hummus. This is best as a 10:30 snack because Hummus is as carb loaded as some fruit!

I will scoop out (and sometimes warm up via the mic) 2 tablespoons of hummus and have as many celery sticks as I like.

From this photo, you can see that I cut the stalks and placed them in water in a Pyrex bowl so that it stays fresh and crunchy!

4th Meal- It’s LUNCH TIME, PARTY TIME, EXCELLENT…

So here is my trick. I have a choice between:

Summer Artichoke Salad

1 cup baby romaine or arugula or mix

1/4 cup chopped up carrots

1 tbsp of sun dried tomatoes (jarred or bag)

1/4 cup of kidney beans (or you could try chick peas)

3/4 jarred artichokes

Use the juice from the artichoke jar as a dressing. Finally, add a sprinkle of Gargonzola cheese. (Ok, I admit I got all “Chicago snow storm” about it but I do try to not to dump so much. Think ABs!

Optional/Switch-outs:

• Tiny bit of olive oil
• Olives
• sliced banana peppers

Less is more so long as you have the artichokes, carrots, cheese and lettuce, you will probably be licking your lips with glee and surprised you don’t feel the need to add meat in this one.

OR

Simple Tomato and Cucumber Salad (Salt, pepper and olive oil optional… I opted!)

“Is that all?” Yep. That’s all.

In this weather of late, it is so refreshing! I occasionally add a few olives but not too many.

Just take it easy on the Sea Salt, people. It is still salt!

I can’t stand that my stomach stays all thick because I’m overdoing the salt in my life. That’s just as bad as going nuts on sugar!

5th Meal… Shut up? More food, Tiger?

It hits me at about 3pm. I’m hungry, Papa Smurf. Feed me, Seymour!

This week, I got Raw Almonds. Trader Joe’s has some great nut mixes but often they overload the mix with cranberries or other dried fruit. What I like to do is buy those Ziplock 1/4 cup containers, pour in extra raw almonds and sprinkle their mix in.

Portioned nuts is key because once you start snacking a “grabbable,” you will want to just keep grabbing some more. Next thing, you have an IV bag of nuts at your desk going straight to your arteries. Nuts are high in fat and can satiate you if you stop. If you keep going, you might as well have had two meals at a restaurant!

Just a grab size will do ya! Eat it away from your desk or work space if possible.

(Yep, I know. I opened the bag upside down. Deal with it.)

6th Meal… Yes, I’m eating again!

It is a hodge podge scramble. I’ll give you that!

First a chop up onions, Trader Joe roasted yellow and red pepper then fry with olive oil.

Next, I add a 1/4 cup of egg substitute, sprinkle cheese, some garlic powder and some shakes of lemon pepper.

*Gargonzola, 3 Cheese blend work. They are low carb but watch the sodium!

Mmmmmm… Did I mention water? Here you go.

I had to sneak past Charlie sleeping to get this image.

Instead of hoping that I’d opt for coffee instead of water, I decided to buy a bottle for each day of my week.

This way, I see how much I drank the whole day and will still down it by the end of the night.

Choose your favorite tasting water. Just get some!

Good lookin’ Cookin’ is often Good Thinking Ahead.

The ideal is to eat small meals every 3hrs and stop eating 2hrs before you go to bed. Have your high carb foods earlier in the day and your low carbs in the evening.  The snack meals should be smaller- maybe 200 calories. Cut sugar, sodium, starchy foods and taper back on cheese and meat where you can. Switch-out the starch for veggie.

Most books on nutrition recommend that you get your protein in every meal. Yet if you are like me and might mistake that for fried chicken, burgers, and sausage every other meal, then, be content with nuts or just going all veggie.

Remember, this is performance food. This fuels and repairs your workouts, affects your concentration for work and has to digest while you sleep. Your protein shake with your veggies might be a safer bet then lettuce wrapped Carl’s Jr burger.

When you shop, think of 2 alternative lunches, 2 alternative snacks, same breakie, same shake/bar, and finally, same dinner. It’s dinner time when we can overdo it and undo all the great work we did earlier in the day.

I myself cut all noodles, rice, white potatoes and bread. If I opted for Wasa crackers or Tortilla Factory tortillas, I’d choose 2nd or 3rd meal for it so I could still burn it off by my next work out.

This menu is still in need of tapering right for those abs I desire but going extreme quickly makes a person go extremely the other direction too. Eventually, I cut the fruit in my yogurt, the cranberries in my nuts and the cheese and sodium in my later meals. One day at a time, people!

Created by MyFitnessPal – Free Calorie Counter