I had been neglecting the 10ish pounds of ground beef that came with my cow share - it was a lot more exciting to make, say, a t-bone steak, or a roast, or fabulous green curry with beef cubes, than it is to start something with ground beef. Especially when you ALSO get 10ish pounds of pre-shaped burger patties, which are tremendously convenient.
BUT, rumblings have started about it being high time to get a second cow, and so I need to be more diligent about using up what I have so that I can re-up when everyone else does. So, the other day, I pulled out two pounds of ground beef in the morning before work, so that I'd be forced to make something with it when I got home that night.
I settled on burgers. First, I sauteed up an entire onion in some grassfed Icelandic butter.
While the onion cooked down, I seasoned the ground beef. There's no fat percentage on the cow share labels, but I'd guess it's around 80-20, maybe 85-15.
My old go-to burger recipe called for soy sauce and brown sugar...neither of which are among my current nutritional choices. So, I scoured my favorite new cookbook...
...and used the spices from their recipe for buffalo burgers. I tried to keep the patties relatively small, and I ended up with more than ten burgers. I cooked them in the same pan I sauteed the onions in, after taking out the onions. Didn't need to add any extra fat - the first round of burgers may stick a tiny bit at first, but they'll release more than enough fat to cook in without an issue.
I set the burgers aside to rest while I sauteed collard greens in the drippings.
Tasty. Two pounds of beef yielded dinner for PhillyGuy and I, plus three or four leftover patties for lunches and dinners that week.
And now, as promised, the whining.
This round of the CFCC BCCC is a little draining. It was discouraging to not perform to my expectations at the Total last weekend, and I reassured myself by trying to focus on the fact that I'm going to cut the last bit of body fat. However, as I'm entering my fourth week of black coffee, no dark chocolate, weekday salads without that handful of bacon bits or avocado, and rationing my sweet potatoes to long metcon days...it's getting a little old. Other than the occasional 30 minutes of cravings here and there, I haven't felt too deprived, and it hasn't been HARD...but I'm struggling because I'm not seeing the results I feel that I should be seeing.
Part of this is because I had so much success with the first challenge. Fat seemed to just melt off - the scale consistently went down, and by the end of the challenge I had lost two inches off of my waist. Two inches! In 30 days! The first challenge also wasn't as restrictive for the entire time. I had chocolate a few times a week for the first two weeks and had cream in my coffee until the last ten days.
This time around, I'm just not seeing that same progress - and I understand that it's a different ballgame to lose pure "vanity pounds." This time, the scale's just not moving. I'm consistently within a 151-152 pound range, having started the challenge at (by my scale) 153.X. I don't actually care what I weigh, but I'm definitely not putting on muscle mass (as evidenced by my inability to PR two of my three lifts at the total), and I still have enough body fat that the scale should go down as I lean out. I took a quick measurement of my waist last night and I think I've gone down about a half inch - but I'm not sure, since I didn't take my first set of measurements.
All this to say - if I'm going to keep NOT eating that bar of Green & Black's 85% dark that's been sitting in my pantry, I want to see something from it. I try to keep reminding myself that my bodyweight stuff is getting stronger - pull ups continue to improve and all that - but damnit, if I can't have cream in my coffee 5 days out of the week, I'd really like to be a size 0 for my troubles.
Whining over. Workout recaps:
Monday, 1/23: Squat Elizabeth. 21-15-9 squat cleans (135/95), ring dips. No option to scale dips with a band - if not RX'ed on ring dips, sub push ups. 19:06 with RX'ed weight and pushups. My squat cleans continue to improve, in that I was able to actually squat clean most of these instead of power cleaning and doing a front squat, which is SO.MUCH.HARDER.
Tuesday, 1/24: strict muscle up work. False grip ring pull ups with mini band; close w/o band but still not there. Metcon: 10 rounds for time, 1 muscle up/5 handstand pushups/10 pistols/15 unbroken double-unders. 25:05 with strict pull up (bodyweight), inverted pushups from a box, single leg squats to box, 15 unbroken DU's. Shit, this was hard.
Wednesday, 1/25: intro to oly. Spent the entire 90 minutes working on my snatch (FNARR FNARR, as Modern Paleo Warfare would say). Lots of drills, followed by sets of 2-3 at 53 and 60lbs. Snatched from blocks at 53 and 63lbs. Drilled the overhead squat at 53-73lbs. Not my strongest performance ever.
Thursday, 1/26: split jerk, singles. 45x3 to warm up, then 65-80-95-115F (oops, this was supposed to be 105)-105. 2lb PR from prior max of 103. Metcon: 10 handstand pushups, 20 pull ups, 30 kettlebell snatches (1.5/1pood), 40 wallballs (10'/8'). Option was to RX everything or scale everything - I don't do HSPU's yet so I chose to scale. 6:25 with inverted pushups from a box, pull ups with mini band, American kettlebell swings and regular wallballs. I went through the first three movements very quickly and then took the wallballs unnecessarily slow.
Sunday, 1/29: gymnastics followed by intro to oly. Back extension rolls to plank; bridge work; handstand limber. Skipped metcon to save my shoulders for oly. Snatch drills; back and overhead squatting; snatch balance; hang snatch. Snatched from boxes the entire time and worked with kilograms for most of class. 53lbs/24kg up to 66.2lbs/30.2kg. Clean, also in kilograms: 66.2lbs/30.2kg up to 45kg/99lbs for doubles, then singles at 49kg/108lbs, 51kg/112.4lbs (2.4lb PR over prior max of 110 and VERY easy). I tried 55kg (121.25lbs) three times and was SO CLOSE - first shot my elbows were too slow; second try I got under it, but got stuck at the bottom; third try my jump was huge and I should have had it, but those slow elbows get me. Next time I'll get this.
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