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Weekday Vegetarian – Week 4 And 5 and Summary

September 9, 2010 By Leave a Comment

I wanted to wait until I had spent a week eating meat again to truly compare the difference.

Week 4

Week 4 was my final and best week of the Weekday Vegetarian study. By then it was quite easy to manage a meat free lifestyle. Energy levels also seemed to normalise although training motivation was extremely low.

I lost a bit of weight on the scales, although now I wonder if my weight loss was mostly muscle.

Week 5

Being back on meat has made a huge difference to my energy levels and how I feel.

I guess eating meat for the past few thousand years has caused some kind of adaptation in the human body or perhaps it’s the fact that I grew up with a large meat diet like most Australians.

Conclusion

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Weekday Vegetarian – Week 3 Wrap Up

August 16, 2010 By Leave a Comment

This week was the best so far in terms of how I’ve felt and how I’ve managed my meals. Here is a quick run down on the highlights.

Eggs and milk are my friends

I could in no way to Vegan. Being able to add a few eggs or a glass of milk to my meals makes eating a balanced diet so much easier. I really recommend going laco-ovo vegetarian if you are planning on trying the Weekday Vegetarian.

If I could do it over again

Next time around I would probably start out with just a couple days a week. This would also be a great way to try out some recipes before going the full 5 days a week.

Anyway, last week coming up. So far today I’ve had veggie stir fry with chopped up omelette and spinach quiche. I must admit, I have been eating well over the past 3 weeks.

Stay tuned for the final wrap up next week.

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Weekday Vegetarian – Week 2 Summary

August 8, 2010 By Leave a Comment

This will just be a quick one to let you know how week 2 of my 4 week Weekday Vegetarian trial has been (three ‘week’s in a sentence *facepalm*).

I put on weight

If you remember last week I mentioned that I lost a kilo so I was going to up my calories. Well I put that back on this week and then some (around 1.5 kgs total). This may have been because I seemed to have kept being offered cake this week and I just couldn’t say no. Overall this is not a bad thing as I’m pretty happy with my current weight.

Not tired so much

My energy levels seemed much more stable over the past week despite only having around 5 hours sleep on Thursday night. I have been eating more complex vegetables like rice and potato. I have also been including more omelettes and nuts to bulk up the protein intake.

The balanced energy could also be because I have taken up Eat Stop Eat again, I just feel a lot better with a 24 hour fast these days. Then again I did ESE on Thursday so that would only account for part of the week.

I went against the high GI nonsense and ate more of these

Back to 3 days a week training

I’m currently in week 2 of the Book of Muscle advanced workout. I’ve never done the advanced workout before and I wanted to try out some of the strength techniques. Having 3 set workouts a week also means that during these next few busy months I will continue to weight train at least 3 times a week.

Cross country running. For bad asses only.

This week I’m going to start running, but not on a treadmill, running track or even a footpath. I’m going to tackle the mountain bike trails that wind along the edge of the Yarra River. The reason I’m choosing to go off-road is because I find uneven ground and bushland much more stimulating. You have to pay attention to where you place your feet and the run feels a lot more like an adventure rather then boring exercise to make my heart stronger.

I’m just gonna start off with one run per week. Previously, when I have started a running routines I’ve tried running several times a week and have burnt out too quickly. This time around I just want to enjoy it so I’ll ease into a lot slower.

Until next time, peace!

Image: FotoosVanRobin

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Weekday Vegetarian – Week 1 Summary

August 1, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Ok, so I set off to a great first week of eating vegetarian just during the week especially considering that stupidly I hadn’t really planned very much about how I was going to approach it. Rather I thought I would just wing it.

I’ll start off by covering the good things.

Lost 1kg of bodyweight

Well if you want to lose some weight, apparently vegetarian is a great way to go. I ate some many fibrous vegetables last week that my digestive system went into overdrive. The weight loss was also probably related a little to less calories, although as I said at the start of last week I did not follow Eat Stop Eat this week so there alone is around 2000 extra calories.

Back into cooking

One of the things I loved this week was that I started cooking again. I hit up Dave’s site for some recipes and made the vegetarian pizza’s, the Eggplant Parmesan (which was amazing) and an egg version of his Shrimp Stir Fry.

And the one bad thing so far:

Not enough protein and not enough calories = lack of energy

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