What do you eat for breakfast on a regular basis to give you enough fuel to make it through workouts? That seems like the toughest meal of the day since it rules out things like steel cut oatmeal and the like.
I am experimenting with a somewhat laid back version of the Paleo diet. I do eat some grains; usually some brown rice or barley with lunch or dinner. For breakfast, I do a big bowl of fruit with chopped walnuts or almonds and some organic nonfat yogurt (for protein). I follow most of the Paleo rules, but still think that some grains can be beneficial for after-workout recovery (which is why I’ll usually have some at lunch and/or dinner). The Paleo diet gets almost all carbs exclusively from fruit. You just have to eat a lot of volume.
Sample breakfast from today:
1 apple
1 banana
1 pear
~8 strawberries
Handful of blueberries/rasberries (mixed)
Handful of red grapes
Chopped walnuts
Enough yogurt to mix the whole deal together
I end up eating most of my meals out of a salad bowl. I find the fruit breakfast quite satisfying; give it a try.
I eat more or less of these combos depending on how much time I’ve got to digest before working out:
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A bunch of fruit + a hard-boiled egg (cook up 3 or 4 ahead of time - then they’re easy in the morning)
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A bunch of fruit + a slice of turkey breast
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A bunch of fruit + protein shake
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Take a mango and puree it with several scoops of vanilla protein powder. (Makes enough for several breakfasts, depending on size of mango, etc.) Awesomely good. Tastes like pudding. Keep in fridge.
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Unsweetened applesauce mixed with protein powder
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If I’ve got less than an hour before my workout, I usually skip the protein. Maybe not wise, but it just feels too heavy.
I’ve just read about the diet and am curious about how it makes you feel. Energy levels, hunger between meals, recovery time from workouts, gain/loose weight. Is it a difficult plan to follow? I wouldn’t think that oatmeal was a bad thing. I’ve ate oatmeal 5-6 time a week for 5+ years now. Why do they cut it out?
Thanks, those are some good ideas. As for how it feels I would say the challenge for me so far has been variety and it takes a lot more planning when it comes to meals. I try to cook something and then eat leftovers of a couple of different things.
I don’t find that I miss the grain/starch stuff except for breakfast when I was so conditioned to eat a healthy bowl of cereal, granola, or stell cut oatmeal with fruit. I have a hard time eating that much fruit. I find myself going to the farmers market every day to reload.
I just got back from a 1.3 mile ocean swim on the Kona Ironman course and ate some pre swim carbs and I did feel a definite good sort of buzz from ingesting carbs just prior to exercising. Definitely more so when I would eat carbs throughout the day.
Greg - I am with you on this. I have been incorporating the paleo principles into my own diet, but have taken a pretty liberal approach with regards to grains. I look at it as changing my approach to the more positive principles of eating more lean meats, fish, poultry, fruits and vegetables. But I still eat some starches labeled as “whole grain” to try to maximize the nutritional value. I think these foods in moderation is acceptable.
yogurt?
maybe my anthropology is all wrong, but yogurt doesn’t sound very ‘paleo’ to me…
It isn’t. But to quote myself, “I am experimenting with a somewhat laid back version of the Paleo diet.”
that sounds healthy.
the pure paleo diet sounds hard on the digestive system.
I don’t think I could eat that much volume.
I also loooooove bread too much to give it up.
does this diet give you the shits?