By Cadence Alexia

26.5.12

A skinny Sunny Saturday.



Today was a total heatwave, I felt like I was in Ecuador or somewhere equally as scorching, I now have bright red shoulders and a Rudolf nose to prove it. Not the coolest look I've ever rocked.

Today was also the first day I have properly cursed the rudest of words to the god of Rawleo for making fruit so damn carb heavy! 



I bought three mango's from the market because they were cheap and ripe and massive, 1 euro for three. BONZA! I then stared at them in a haze wishing every cell in my body wasn't telling me to throw them down my shoot in one go.  

I'm trying to lean out pre show, 5 more days of being pretty strict with myself. Mango is not a lean out friendly fruit, liquid mango in a smoothie is even worse. So I summoned all my will power and came to a compromise. I would treat myself to a more sensible fruit smoothie. 

And some new summer pumps! ta daaa!

5 little liquid strawberries, half a small liquid banana, 150ml coconut milk, and this ridiculous bit of mango hanging out on the side of the glass, so I could sit on the roof with Anni koops and feel like I was in some sort of 18-30's holiday cocktail bar. It worked a treat actually. I can forgive myself the liquid fruit, as everything else I chowed down today was dead skinny.


1 massive hunk of steak, 40g Raw chocolate, 20g cashew. My pie chart so far is pretty spot on rawleo, 40, 30, 30. When I get home later I will eat 125 grams of prawns to up the protein a little but spare on the calories. 
They slept a night in coconut milk and curry powder ! yum
I also did an hour weight training at the gym in a totally fasted state before my Raw choc love choc breakfast, this is the best way to get the fat to shift. Heavy weight, low reps, hungry belly = smaller ass and thighs.
A neato way to do an extra skinny extra sunny Saturday!
I also think I got sun stroke a bit, because while I was trying to say the words sun stroke to Anni, I said skunsmoke instead. Four times. While wetting my pants with laughter.

24.5.12

Bigger fish to fry.

When food imitates life........


Spinach, lightly fried in coconut oil, (cos of the oxalic acid I told you about), raw tomieos, raw orange pepper. Plus one mahoosive load of free fish that sat soaking in curry powder and coconut milk over night. There was so much fish here I could have made two meals out of it, but I'm a greedy little piggy so I threw it down in one. Surprised? I doubt it.

This was a proper lekker breakfast, tasted even better on this beautiful new plate I got for 1 euro at the bonkers may market. 

So much protein, so little carbs = so happy Cadence. 

Now let's go running round the whilemina park in just my mini shorts and wife beater vest!


Summer is here!!!


19.5.12

The Anti pickel solution

How did I live in The Netherlands nearly two years and only recently find out that in Dutch a spot is called a pickel!!! Hilarious! Nobody want's a face full of pickels now do they.

Thank you to all the people who noticed my skin has been all fresh and clean and nice these days, not that it was ever very pickely but I did get more than I would have liked, especially every 21 days or so, every girl knows about this!

Anyway, if you can't go all out with this super clean lifestyle I understand, but if you are prone to a pickel face and can't seem to get rid of them, I would say this.

stop eating sugar, and I mean all of it, just stop it, it's actually not that difficult.

ok, sometimes it's difficult.
Drink a shit ton of water.

stop using chemical moisturizers, use coconut oil on your face daily, give it a rest with foundation for a while and dare to go bare.

Eat an Avocado every day.

Take a zinc supplement every day.

Result! ok, I know everyone looks slightly hotter with instagram but honestly not a pickel in sight!

move along now! nothing to see here!
If your pickels don't clear up or get at least 50% better I will eat all of the above typing, then my top hat.
A compliment from my favorite Italiano Franzi really made my week........"you don't look like you're nearly 30 Cadence, you look like a virgin"

BAHAHAHA, marry me, please, and keep saying things like that.





15.5.12

Leaning while not machining!

Yikes! I got fat again and I hate it! I know I know "Cadence, you're so skinny, waa waa waaa" SHIT OFF!! If I say I feel fat, accept it, I feel fat, and I'm going to do something about it.

I've hardly been sleeping and I eat way more when I'm tired, I'm hardly training as we're in creation for a show, I went a bit wild on the fruit smoothies recently because I've been in a great mood and it's what I want when the sun comes out. I'm hardly surprised my gluteus got a bit more maximus.

Here's how I'm going to solve the problem.

Meeeeeaaaaaaatttt!!

Basically, I will be super high protein, low calorie (around 1000 daily), medium fat, and very little carbs. For three entire days. I'm probably going to feel a bit shitty, but at the end of it I'll be able to fit back into my jeans. Problem solved. Super lean again! It's the way to go on calorie restriction route whilst saving as much muscle mass as you can!

It's not going to be easy, but I find that things worth doing never are. I hope I can stay my usual happy and positive self during, feel free to slap me round my own personal chops if I turn into a moody cow.

13.5.12

The international Breakfast club.....

I love the Bacho breakfast club, any sign of the sun and we're outside at the table, lots of food, coffee, smoothies, steak - well, just mine, cigarettes - just theirs, and basically lots of love for sunshine and eating outdoors together.

Sunny for the most part anyway!

What an awesome way to start Sunday. I love that I sit at a table with Spanish, Polish, Belgian, American, Greek, French, German, and English (me)! We all have one thing in common, we proper love eating food together and hangin' out!!


I ate a whopping steak, and a mango/banana smoothie with a shed load of coconut milk to make up the good fat, obv! If you're trying to lose weight, I would stay well clear of liquid fruit. But I'm not trying to lose weight, I am enjoying feeling happy and amazing, if I want some liquid fruit, god damn I'm gonna have it!

So, pretty healthy start actually, as per normal I guess, but then, Kostas and Anna announced they went to Venlo yesterday and have us all a present............hhhhmmmmmm what present??? a small ripple of excitement went round the table, everybody waited with baited breath, they wouldn't tell us until all the food was gone. 

This is the present from Venlo.........


SAY WHAAAAAAAAT!!!??!?!?!
ok ok!! Yes of course I ate one!!!!.........ok, you got me, I ate a second............then a third! ssshhhh!

So did everyone else!!!!!



I can say this, eating healthy and not eating sugar is cool. But refusing to eat this because you're 'Rawleo' or whatever is just a bit schtoopid, I think healthy living is about making the right choices, this was the right choice. My taste buds had a little party, and I'm sure I won't die. Thanks Kostas and Anna for loving us all enough to bring these back with you!!


Go on, try telling me you wouldn't!!

Danger! Danger! Raw spinach............



I'm going 50/50

So, the raw food deal, you know I love it because when I went raw my life went totes amazeballs. So I stayed raw, sparkly and happy.

Then I hit the steaks and bacon and realised 100% raw has it's downsides, you can miss some important stuffs by not eating meat. So I went Rawleo. All the meat sent me from amazeballs to supermazeballs. - sorry for my choice of language, I'm too sleep deprived for intelligence.

I've been doing my reading on the raw v's lightly steamed/cooked issue (when I have time, my skedge is beyond a joke right now)

Here's the thing - and I'm so lazy today I'm just copy 'n' pasting some info sent to me ages ago in an e-mail from a guy who also did a fair amount of research, I'm sure he won't mind.

 "Lectins, saponines and phytates are the problem proteins in plant food. The cooking process destroys a lot of them but not all. Some foods are highly poisonous without being soaked and or cooked because of these chemicals." 

All right clever cloggs, I'll see what I can find out
.
Oxalic acid overdose!
 Then I found this clever lady linked below, she seems to only have a problem with a few veggies, mainly spinach and the likes, ok, so no more raw spinach. deal. 

Why the raw way aint always the best way. 

- by the way, I'd like to meet any fucker who eats raw potatoes. That's beyond bizzaro.

I'd noticed some more cooked veg had been sneaking in my face anyway, so I'm going to go 50/50 on the veggies for a bit. If I get less sparkly happy I'll go back fully raw, if I start to feel improvements I'll maybe take in some more lightly cooked stuff. I mean, if raw veg is so poisonous, the ammount I was putting away you think I'd feel like horse shit, I felt more like a thoroughbred race horse than it's shit so I wasn't really convinced about these dangers.

The thing the raw foodies will say is that cooking destroys live enzymes and nutrients, I do believe this to be true, so I'm skeptical, but I also believe the above quote from Glenard to be true. So, I guess this is why I'm experimenting.

Will keep you posted. I hope that made some sense, I can hardly keep my eyes open right now to read it back properly.

I'm hitting the hay before my forehead hits this laptop. Nighty night.

4.5.12

Cool beans! Natures little anti-depressants............

When it comes to helping with depression, the first answer I found when I looked to nature along side modern medicine, was this little lady..............

ok, not so little, and clearly never been on a diet in her life, but when I smush my face into that giant furry belly, hear her purring, and have her pat me on the head with her lion paws, of course I feel instantly better. I got her six years ago and named her Prozac, she's natures little anti-depressant and I love her more than Goji berries and coconut milk.

These days I look to nature without the modern medicine (and without Prozac she lives with my Mum), I've had less depression than ever, but I think I need a little more help to stay on track than a fat lazy cat. I personally think nature has more helpful answers than modern medicine. There is the vitamin supplement answer, I would recommend niacin to anyone suffering the blues, along with some B12, B6 and magnesium to help with sleep. I would also recommend dark chocolate, raw chocolate, fruit, bright raw veggies, and these bad boys............

Raw Cacao Beans!!!
Finally they got a raw food super food section at the Eko Plaza! I did a little inside squeal of joy when I saw these, I might have even done an outside squeal, who knows I had my headphones in. They were shining out like a little bag of gems, next to the goji berries and pumpkin seeds! I've wanted to try them for ages! psyched!...........

They taste like crap. Smell like a mixture of dark chocolate and sweaty feet. They're Slightly more palatable than coffee beans, if you like eating coffee beans I'd say these taste like mocha beans if they existed, to me that's still a bit unappealing. Well, I found putting them with goji and macadamia makes them taste pretty good, the more I eat the more I like.  

But who cares what they taste like, they are the highest whole food source of magnesium and tons of other magic stuff. Cool!!! 

I found the below article quite informative if you want to know more. Warning! it contains words like  'oligomeric' and 'procynanidins' and 'epicatechin', it might boggle your mind.
  
An article about them being superdooper




I'll start with a mush filled heart.........


Yesterdays pie chart inducing mishap involving the king size Twix marked the end of my two week vacation from giving a shit. Things have been starting to slide, I've been saying yes way to often when people offer me cookies, and saying yes to myself when the cookies are just sat there minding their own business. Life isn't as easy as I'd like it to be right now, but I don't want to let stress ruin my good eating habits. I should be being extra nice to myself, and actually, being nice to yourself means walking away from the cookies. 

No sugar, no dark chocolate, minimal to no fruit, super high protein, medium fat, low carb, hopefully some good sleep, the gym, the sauna, and a massage from the Chinese massage place opposite AlbertHein to get some of this tension out!!! That is my Saturday treat for my back and I'm psyched.


Today went like this.


Bio burger, eggplant, tomato, broccoli


Ok, so I know it looks like someone threw up at an overly twee kids party, but this actually tasted really good, Roxana inspired me with it last week but hers turned out nicer because I forgot the red onion. 


Was cold sitting still at my laptop all day, I wanted hot food. So, got massive eggplant and fried it (coconut oil obv.) with garlic and 'erbs, added raw chopped tomato and whizzed it with the whizz stick in a bowl. Fried burgers, chucked broccoli in, and proceeded to make the most disgusting looking meal in living history. I'll be eating it again though, I really liked the mush, next time I'll add a red onion.


After that, I sat working like a busy bee for hours, had a break doing boring businessy admin to slice some waves out of a map again, in a vain attempt to save my sanity, until it made me cross eyed.


Then a fresh air break, walk to the supermarket via Whilemina park to buy a steak!!! Boom!

Steak, salad, left over mush
Me getting distracted while cooking meant this looks pretty well done, but was actually the rarest steak I've ever eaten. Maybe slightly too rare. I felt like a lion.

So, that was it for what is now yesterday as it's 12.24am and I'm done eating. 

Overall balance for the day 63% protein! 28% fat, 9% carbs.

786 Calories!

I know, seems a little skinny, but I have literally been sat at my lap top or laying on the floor moving only my hand and a very small blade, I've used about 12 calories. I'm carrying an extra 3 kilos in flab I don't need and have eaten enough in the last two weeks to know I'm not going to drop dead.  in a few days, I'll up the calories and down the protein, just want a kick start and a bit of a detox. It probably would have been better to drink a bit of coconut milk, but I forgot. I drank water like a motherfucker all day though.

3.5.12

a non nutritional pie chart for Katey

I have a very inspiring and long serving friend back home who likes to make simple pie charts of thoughtsHowever ridiculous they may be.


This is for her.




 ......A king size fucking Twix!!! Have you seen how big they actually are?!?! The plot has been lost. Even when I ate sugar I didn't like Twixes....? Twixs? Twix? whatever. 

Moral, don't go to work on a bad mood and an empty stomach.

Check Katey and her doodles, she's one of a kind and I love her.

www.Kateyjean.com

Kateys Pie Chart of thoughts

1.5.12

For Emily, and the love of sweet potato.

Recently the lovely Emily Dixon said she wanted to try this paleo/rawleo shabang for seven days to see if she could. It's nice to hear things like that, I hope someone would listen to me and give it a shot. I would say, seven days is ok to try the food and see if you can fit this kind of eating into your skedge, but 30 days is what you need to note any major life changes, and see if you really can keep it up. After only seven you'll probably still have chemical sugar shit floating around your body, maybe you'll still crave it, and until it's gone, massive changes won't happen.

I'll try my best to explain it simple like, so you can skip off to an eko plaza of your own, know the rules, and make a few steps towards being a leaner meaner version of your bad self.

Today's Eko Plaza swag bag.
Things you can eat

Veg, fruit, lean meat, eggs, seafood, nuts and seeds, healthy fats (avocado, nuts, coconut milk/oil, fat from meat and such). 

Things you should not eat 

Processed food and sugars, wheat/gluten/grains, dairy, legumes, starches, Alcohol (sorry everyone for the last one, maybe moderation is ok).

I'm not going to start making weekly menu plans and such, everyone's tastes are different, find what you like and stick to it.


Here is my yesterday of eating

Breakfast
Omelet with 100g bacon, tomato, broccoli, spinach. 

Lunch
Pork with colourful veggies and a handful of nuts/berries thrown on top. Goji and crushed macadamia is my number 1 combo at the moment. Followed by half a mango swimming in coconut milk.

Dinner
Avocado, dark green veggies, steak, another glass of coconut milk, Followed by some dark chocolate. When I say 'some' I mean like 30g is ok, not the entire bar, but I can't seem to practise what I'm preaching on this one. 

Snacks
some pistachio and goji, a few more macadamias, some strawberries, 1 tbsp coconut oil - everyone should eat coconut oil at least once a day!

Some other rules I play by
Everything organic and chemical free. Where possible meat should be grass fed if you can get it. Try to balance diet at 40% fat, 30% protein 30% carbs. Over 85% dark chocolate and Raw chocolate are fair game, and good for you! Eat when your body tells you, not because the clock tells you, if you're really not hungry it's fine to skip a meal. Don't count calories, drink plenty of water and no liquid carbs, fruit juice is not as healthy as they'd have you believe.

you can find some nice Paleo menus and recipe books online, 

Click here for some good Paleo dinners 

 

Paleo Shopping list - find what you're gonna like here

 

As I stick mainly to eating 80% of my veg raw, I don't really go down the whole paleo cooking route. I tend to stick to quite an unvaried diet, which is varied enough to be really good for me. I don't get bored of it because I like what I eat and I'm a sucker for a routine. Going fully Paleo and cooking with veg is probably better for the more adventurous eaters, but, I like getting all the live enzymes from raw food, they make me glow, so I stick to just having certain veg on rotation and throwing it on my plate raw with my hunk of steak.  
I have tried some paleo cooking and it's proper nice, now I do it around once a week, I recommend around three cooked sweet potato a week, they are great for your body just after training, and taste amazing, they'd taste like shit raw though, sweet potato is my all time favorite vegetable, I don't really understand why normal potatoes have to exist when the orange ones have it all covered.

I recommend if you have any kind of smart phone, and I can't believe I'm one of those people who do, get a calorie counter app, not to count calories but to check your nutrient pie chart. a couple of days entering in what you're eating will give you a fair idea of portion sizes and how much of what is ok to keep a good balance. 
Right, that's either massively helpful or not helpful in the slightest. Let us know like if you have any other questions!

Longest. blog post. ever.