Day 12 - learning more about the zone and getting sad news about my breakfast...

Today we had a meeting at the Box about the diet and the challenge. It is 2 months long, Starts Monday, and involves sending in pictures and measurements weekly.

I also learned ways that this challenge is going to be harder and ways it will be easier than I thought given my current living/eating situation in the evenings. First of all, it will be easier because of the addition of Protein powder to my evening meals when I go to my room after dinner means that I can manage to almost balance out dinners like what we had tonight (Tarte au roquefort and pâtes au carbonera...eg. 10 tons of unfavourable carbs and fats, zero healthy fats and almost no protein)... however bad news is I am not measuring the things like crème fraiche and grated cheese that are going into these types of dishes, so I actually have NO idea of the proportions I'm eating to be able to accurately get the 40/30/30 balance of (respectively) carbs, proteins, and good fats.

I did get a handy list of foods and their zone block amounts so that I am not constantly having to bring my computer into the kitchen to cook, and we chatted a lot about different things - including how to calculate your block needs for the day:

Sedentary:  weight in Kg x 0.75 = _____, then /7 = # of blocks
Moderately active (2-4 workouts a week or so): Kg x 1 to 1.5, then /7  = # of blocks
Very active (5-7 workouts a week or so) Kg x 1.5 to 2, then /7  = # of blocks
Insane: (8+ workouts a week) Kg x 2 to 2.5, then/7  = # of blocks

(the workouts numbers are just my guesses based on the categories... you may need more or fewer blocks depending on workout intensity, the rest of your daily activities, etc.)

Anyway, I have calculated myself around 14.5 blocks using 1.3 as my 'activity' number, so we'll say about 14.

Sad news about my breakfast...We also talked about fromage blanc, which is what I have been using as my breakfast protein. As it turns out it is not just a pure protein block - depending on the composition (eg. say your FB is about 7g protein, 4g carbs, and 3g fats), you have to take into account the other nutrients as blocks as well (eg. that FB would be 1P, 0.5C, 1F)... which means tomorrow morning I'll have to take a look at my brand of FB and adjust my daily accompanying foods accordingly.

Anyway, looks like this is going to be QUITE the challenge after all....especially with the aforementioned lack of control over dinner... but one quote in the Zone presentation struck me particularily today, and that was the following:



Coupled with the new Crossfit Montpellier NO EXCUSES shirts I'm seeing all around town (natually, as I go all around town with montpellier crossfitters), it made me realize that if I don't even try I won't have the chance to be surprisingly successful, or even just half successful... so I'm gonna try everything in my power to control what I can and manage what I can't as best I can, and hopefully I'll still see some results over the next 2 months!

Some food for thought for all of you too I guess... now speaking of food, my last cupcake before the challenge starts awaits! (Juuuuust kidding...after all that pasta and cheese at dinner I already feel like I ate a sponge)

And so, talk to you folks tomorrow!!

Ah, and ps. ce blog va aussi être de temps en temps en français  pour que les autres BAMs (Bad Ass Montpelliérains) sur le mission 'Défi Dièt' puissent aussi le lire et apprendre de mes obstacles et succès en essayant de manger Zone sans viande ni poisson. Pour ces lecteurs francophones, svp ne me jugez pas trop pour les erreurs grammaticaux, les phrases un peu maladroit, ou les mots inventés... Je vais faire de mon mieux, mais je suis à base bien anglophone!