i take em home and remove all meat and put it into tupperware and dump the rest. bananas and apples, steak, eggs and recently burgers(just the meat bit) ive been lazy wit fish recently

Cheats include ice cream, chocolate raisens, toast when at my girlfriends(its her only food source), and at work i often end up with weetabix cause i dont have time for much else but it depends.

sugar intake has gone WAY down over the last month or two though

I was paleo before I went zone, and to be honest for me going weigh-and-measure zone was the point at which the lightbulb switched on. At this point having done that with varying degrees of strictness for almost a year I am kind of gravitating more towards an eyeball approach. I suspect I can get away with that to some extent now because my shopping, eating and food preparation habits have changed so radically. I have a more intuitive sense of how on target I am on a given day, because I’ve had that experience of being strict weigh-and-measure.

As far as good deals for people who are on the zone goes-

Butcher’s Block on the top floor of the Dundrum town centre is the place to go. The meat there is adequately fresh, there’s lots of it and they do different weekly deals. I will usually buy whatever is in the weekly deal. Last week, for example, it was four strip sirloins for 12 euro… The week before whole chickens were half price… This week it’s 2lbs of mince for 6 or 7 euro (so I made chilli).

Beyond that depending on how fancy you want to get with your fruit and veg you can go wherever… Tesco, Lidl…. I used to go to Marks and Sparks for crunchy grapes but then they pissed me off.

As far as meal plans for the zone goes, I think there are some of mine up in the diet log. Generally I eat alot of chilli, omlettes, steaks, burgers, bacon, protein shakes with milk and banana, sausage for protein and then for the carbs I’ll eat fruit or some vegetables. Or if it’s very high fat content meat then I’ll work out the ratio and sometimes no carbs if it’s extremely high. For fat blocks I eat nuts or almonds, since Will ruined peanut butter for me.

In general terms I would regard myself as ‘eyeball’ zone at the moment, albeit with a fair few cheat meals during the week. I go strict for days at a time and then relax a bit. I’m definitley not paleo when it comes to dairy.

The only other observation I’d make is that I cook my food to eat it barring chilli and stuff like that. I don’t like cooking chicken, steak etc. and then eating it much later. Then again maybe I am lucky to have the time for that, I’m not in a 9 to 5 job. If I’m not working I like to cook meals fresh, even small ones. If I am at work then if I don’t have the time to cook I might not eat, but so be it. More blocks go in whenever I do have the time.

My boyfriend Chris is visiting Dublin from Chicago this week and he’s looking forward to visiting your gym this week/weekend!

Our gym (CrossFit Arlington Heights, IL) is on day 43 of a 100 day burpee challenge… please feel free to hassle him about it, OK? heh heh…. he missed yesterday (42) and probably today (43)….. our coach and I -we are having a good laugh thinking of all the burpees he will have to make up!!

Not sure if you can see the pic from the link I posted but that’s me 4th from left & he’s 5th from left. Wish I could go to your gym too but couldn’t get a flight

OK bye! Thanks! Have a great week! Julie