How to Feed a Ninja...

I'm introducing a new segment today. I'm calling it "How to Feed a Ninja" I might actually just change the whole blog over to nutrition and health. But I'll deal with that later.

Some of you may know, I'm married to a Ninja. Not like from the movies, more like from the heart. My husband has been training at the Boston Martial Arts Center in Allston MA for about the past 10 years. He also is a CrossFitter. Soooooo he get's hungry, a lot...

When I use to pack him lunches I would honestly just grab any food in the fridge and fill his lunch bag. I never really thought about what I was putting in it till we got more involved in the CrossFit world and the Paleo diet. Now a days I'm much more Primal then Paleo. The difference being I don't mind having cheeses and dairy from time to time. Check out Whole9 for some great info about all that stuff.

Back to my Ninja, he needs to eat and to all you who might be wondering, he can make his own lunches and such, I just like doing it for him :). Since I have some time off I figured I would delve deeper into what I'm giving him vs. what he needs. My first challenge was to figure out how much he needs. I found a handy calorie calculator here. I'm sure there are more advanced ones out there, but I'm just starting out, so this one will do. Turns out hubby needs 3145 calories a day, not 2000.

But what does that mean? How much food is that? I decided to reverse engineer the amount of food he needs. Starting with what I gave him for lunch today. I got the numbers from CalorieKing.com:

Coffee 2
Two eggs 34 with turkey bacon 35
Salad 15 with Turkey 66 and Feta 45
Apple 53
Banana 105
2 Clementines 70
Almonds 164 with raisins 42
Celery 1 with Carrots 30

total calories = 662 (roughly)
Leaving a difference of 2483!! o_O
Thankfully tonights dinner will run about 1080 calories.

But unless I give the poor guy a can of crisco for a snack I might need to rethink the breakfast/lunch plan!! But how important are the calories? Enter science (or Wikipedia). Short answer very. They give us the energy to function. But what about other nutrition factors like protein and such. Well taking the same lunch we get the following for protein:

Coffee 0g

Two eggs 7.2g with turkey bacon 2g
Salad 1g with Turkey 18g and Feta 2.4g
Apple 0.5g
Banana 0.9g
2 Clementines 1.3g
Almonds 6g with raisins 0.4g
Celery 0g with Carrots 0.5g

total protein = 40.2g
He "needs" 78.3g/meal (based in 3 meals a day from the Calorie Calculator - Macro nutrients)

Bottom line he needs more food. So what do I give him? What do you feed a CrossFitting Ninja?

Over the next few weeks I'll be posting about my attempts to fulfill his nutritional requirement in the healthiest why I can. I'll be making regular post about nutritionally dense foods that aren't imposable to make. And even some short cuts when I come across them. 

I hope some of you found this helpful with your own nutrition questions and will check back to see how much I can fit in a lunch bag :) 

Where did you go?

Hey Mindful Distraction Peeps!!

I'm back. Sorry for the long stretch between blogs. Been a busy summer. Hubby and I opened a CrossFit Gym in Winchester MA. It's kinda cool you might want to go check it out. Also we're having a baby! Right now I'm 33 weeks along and doing fine. I've learned so much about our health system and what you go through when you're prego.

Now I'm not knocking the docs. They went to school and gots the education to learns me how to take care of my body and baby. Buuuuuutttt I'm not a fan of how some implement their learning. Lots of tests and just too willing to scare you instead of explain to you.

I'll start at the beginning. I need to find a baby doc first. So I called all the highly recommended ones. None where excepting new patients. Sad face. So I went with #2 on the list thinking "how much of a difference could there be?" Now you know if I asked the question the answer is a lot. This women ran me through every test, about half of which were unnecessary and half that were never explained to me. I was told I had a tumor... o_O I don't she just explained it wrong and never bothered to correct herself. I was told I had to eat and pee every two hours or I could cause an infection, which could hurt my baby.  All I know is I've never given so much blood in my life. So when we moved closer to the fam, I jumped at the chance to change doctors. Found some really nice ones and have since been on the right track to healthy baby time. These people fully explain everything to me and trust me I ask a lot of questions!

I recommend the following documentary for those not faint of heart Pregnant in America

For those who want an interesting documentary without the terror I suggest Babies. It's just freakin cute!

So what else??

Oh the garden went really well over the summer. I'll write some more on that later. But we learned a lot about what to plant and how.

I'm pretty sure I'll have some more to blog about once Baby Bean Borgatti gets here. So stay tune and thanks for hang in there with me :)