Days 8, 9, and 10

It's been a few days since the last post, but I'm still "on the wagon." And the "wagon"--and the fridge, and the freezer, and the pantry, and, well, me--are completely brimming with food. My shelf of the fridge has now become a 3-D Tetris game of Pyrex-ware containers, egg cartons, and random pieces of fruit.

As mentioned in the last post, gone are the days of slicing everything, such as my last non-PCP meal, in half like John Belushi's Samurai Delicatessen:



(Full disclosure--since it was my last day, I did in fact go to Five Guys. I also got my occasional dessert: Italian gellato. Downsized, of course, for the 1/2 diet:


)

Now it's down to business:



Yes, that is a FULL-sized plate.

Honestly, the biggest challenge has been finding and managing time--to shop, cook, do dishes, eat, shop again (out of eggs!), work out, and, last but not least, eat. And eat. And eat. (I'm quoting Patrick here). And starting the new diet--and the new, longer, more intense workouts--in the middle of the work-week was definitely a shock. Like someone fired the starting gun while you are still lacing up your track shoes. On the bench.

It's been great having Saturday to just play catch up, especially on sleep and cooking. (As the latest e-mail from Patrick details, sleep is important. My roommate, who is much more of a natural athlete than I, also reminded me that staying up too late would deprive me of the fruits of all this labor).

Now that I've got a few days worth of lunches and dinners waiting in the fridge--and a new blog post--I feel "caught-up." Which is awesome, because Week 2 got off to a rough start. Thursday morning, my jump rope broke after 80 jumps. (If I ever attempt to taking my roping skills pro, I'm definitely thinking twice before accepting any endorsements from GoFit. They've got only one more chance with me, with their resistance bands.) There's a fitness store 1 block from work, so I was able to find a replacement--and a back-up--the same day. But my work-outs ended up rotating to evenings, which I was really hoping to dedicate to creating works of art like the one in the photo above.

Speaking of which, here's the funny thing--by the time of any given meal, I'm actually HUNGRY again. Working out has been the key; I feel like my body is actually burning off or using the mounds of food I keep shoveling into it. In fact, since last Thursday:

-I've slept like a baby--even last night, through the cacophony of my drunken roommates;
-My energy levels have been way up--I practically bounce up flights of stairs;
-Again, I apparently have no trouble putting away three times the amount of food I would "normally" eat, and six times the quantity of food that I ate just last week.

For example, normally, I would usually eat just one of these 2 Cup containers-full of food; now I'm doing 3 at a time:



As far as food strategies go, I'm planning on doing 2 big cooking sessions each week (most likely Saturday/Sunday and Wednesday), allowing me to heat-up pre-cooked lunches and most dinners. Since eggs don't do well as left-overs, breakfast will be from scratch.

Breakfast today (Day 10) was scrambled eggs with veggies, oatmeal, and milk. Lunch was smoked salmon, steamed veggies, and rice. Dinner tonight was ground bison with Moroccan spices, steamed broccoli and carrots, some avocado, and quinoa. Starting Day 11, Workouts will be rotating back to mornings.