I’m Ready For Something New. Introducing…Personal Trainer Food!

I still get excited when a package shows up at my door. And when a big package shows up, I get downright geeked!

This package had 60 pounds of food inside – everything I’d need for four weeks of healthy eating!

Let me back up a few steps. A few weeks ago, the kind folks at Personal Trainer Food reached out to me to see if I’d be interested in trying their program. Their inquiry came at a good time, because I was ready for a change. As my weight loss chart shows, I’ve gained 10 pounds in the past year. Even though 10 pounds isn’t catastrophic, especially compared to the 160 I’ve lost and kept off, I’ve been slowly sliding in the wrong direction, and I knew if I didn’t do something different, I might continue sliding and sliding up and up.

So I looked into the Personal Trainer Food company, and I liked what I saw. It’s a meal delivery service, and their food plan is low-carb and high protein. You can check it out, too – here’s the Personal Trainer Food website.

Meals come individually packaged. There’s breakfasts, and proteins and vegetables for lunches and dinners. The proteins and vegetables are packaged separately, so you can mix and match as you’d like. They send 4 weeks of food at a time, packaged with dry ice, so it’s still very frozen when it arrives (and allowing me to have some mad scientist fun with the dry ice!).

Sixty pounds of food is a lot!

I cleared out or consolidated half my freezer to make room.

And I needed every inch!

What you eat (and when) depends on which plan you choose. There’s a program designed for women called Rev, which has slightly more vegetables than protein, but I’m doing RECON, their men’s program, which has more protein.

I have a breakfast for breakfast (d’uh), 1 protein and 1 vegetable for lunch, and 2 proteins and 1 vegetable for dinner. I’m on Day 3 as I write this, and so far I’ve photographed most of my food from Days 1 and 2.

Breakfast: Egg patty with maple sausage

Lunch: Zesty tenders with Venice vegetable blend

Dinner: Monterey jack chicken sticks with broccoli florets. They also sent a bottle of sweet garlic sauce for the veggies, so I tried that too.

Breakfast: Frittata and bacon

Lunch: Meatballs with California veggie blend

Dinner: Apple and gouda sausage with Key West veggie blend.

A couple things:

If you have a keen eye, you may have noticed my dinners were short a protein. That’s because I decided to save one of those proteins and have it as a snack, to spread out the food. I photographed one of my snacks:

Nontaki Ginger Chicken Strips

All the food has been good. Nothing has knocked my socks off, but it’s flavorful, and there’s a wide variety of options (12 breakfasts, 29 proteins, 27 veggies), so I’m not going to get bored.

You may have also noticed that the portions may look small, and that’s because they are. There’s no other way to say it. But that’s okay, because I can supplement the food they provided with additional food of my own. There’s a 1-page list of ‘Dos and Don’ts’ – and since the program is low-carb, all forms of grains and sugars are on the Don’t list. No bread, pasta, potatoes, rice, sweets, etc. (This is why I cut back on carbs on my Mexico trip – to get in the swing of things!) The hard one for me will be no fruit, because I love it so much. (Although they do allow one apple per day.)

On the other hand, I can eat as much meat, eggs, and non-starchy/leafy vegetables as I want. They’re literally unlimited. Towards the end of Day 1, I was feeling hungry, so I took advantage of this and made a big skillet of ground beef, mushrooms, spinach, and pearl onions, and seasoned it with loads of turmeric and Mrs. Dash. I also threw in a package of shirataki noodles that I wanted to use up, which hopefully doesn’t violate the program – they’re made from a low-cal flour substitute and are carb-free, so I assumed they were safe.

Also, when I went to the movies, I snuck into the theater a bag of beef jerky and a 1.5 ounce bag of almonds. (Nuts are approved, up to 3 ounces a day.)

I’m gonna update you on my progress throughout the next four weeks, both on this blog and on my social media channels (links below). I’m excited to see how this works out! So far I’m enjoying it. I get to try new things, and the plan makes eating easy – all meals are ready in the microwave in 2 or 3 minutes, tops. I’ve noticed I’m a little more tired than I usually am, but that hasn’t stopped me from exercising, and I’m hoping that’ll change as I settle into the program. (It’s a common side effect of low-or-no-carb eating.)

I told the Personal Trainer Food folks that I’d do a Before and After photo – so here’s the Before one, taken a few days ago in Mexico…

…stay tuned for the after one!

Keep it up, David!

Disclosure: Personal Trainer Food provided me 4 weeks of food at no cost to me. My opinions and comments about their program are, and will continue to be, my own.

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