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EAT LIKE A BEARWOLF
BEARWOLF TRAINING
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Copyright © 2018
EAT LIKE A BEARWOLF
FLEXIBLE NUTRITION FOR ANY LIFESTYLE
EAT LIKE A BEARWOLF
BEARWOLF TRAINING
The information presented in this book is by no way intended as medical advice or as a substitute
for medical counselling. The information should be used in conjunction with the guidance and
care of your doctor. Consult your doctor before beginning this program as you would with any
exercise and nutrition program. If you choose not to obtain the consent of your doctor and/or
work with your doctor throughout the duration of your time using the recommendations in the
program, you are agreeing to accept full responsibility for your actions.
The contents of this book are copyright and should not be duplicated without permission from
BearWolf Training
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Copyright © 2018
EAT LIKE A BEARWOLF
BEARWOLF TRAINING
UNDERSTANDING YOUR FOOD 5
SKILLS 9
HOW TO USE THIS BOOK 11
MEAL EXAMPLES 15
START WITH THE PROTEIN 16
BEEF AND BEANS 17
PORK AND LENTILS 20
LAMB AND HALLOUMI 23
CHICKEN, TURKEY AND TOFU 26
WHITE FISH AND QUINOA 29
PINK FISH 32
PRAWNS 35
EGGS 38
PREPARING OTHER FOOD CATEGORIES 41
EASY VEG 42
BASIC CARBS 45
STRAIGHTFORWARD FAT 48
COMPLETE MEALS 49
BREAKFAST OPTIONS 56
LUNCH OPTIONS 59
THE EVOLUTION OF THIS BOOK 61
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EAT LIKE A BEARWOLF
BEARWOLF TRAINING
This isn’t your normal recipe book.
We use typical recipe books as a ‘jumping off point’ and end up using our own knowledge to
adapt recipes to meet our own preferences.
•
Our portions.
•
Our effort.
•
Our return.
Our portions need to adhere to our goals. This means we might need a little more protein, or
perhaps a wider variety of vegetables.
Our effort will vary, so we can change the recipe when we don’t want to chop, slice, dice and wash
up a load of pans.
Our return needs to match or exceed our investment, both in time and money.
We realised that many of the clients that we coach didn’t have the understanding of food to do
this - so this is our solution to a common problem.
We are not chefs, we are coaches.
This book is our way of coaching you to eat in a way that suits your lifestyle and your goal. The
food can and will taste great, but its not the only thing that matters. In some circumstances the
return will prioritise time, cost and function over flavour. The difference is, you will be in control
and consciously making that decision.
This information can be adapted for any goal.
•
Those that want to lose fat whilst holding onto muscle.
•
Those that want to build muscle without increasing fat too much.
•
Those that want to increase how they perform in the gym, at work or with their health and
cognition.
The recipes are intentionally simple. Use packaging or the suggestion from who you buy your
food from as to specifi c temperatures and cooking times. Make notes and build up your own
understanding around the foods and meals you enjoy.
But First, we need a basic understanding of food.
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EAT LIKE A BEARWOLF
BEARWOLF TRAINING
UNDERSTANDING YOUR FOOD
Essentially, food tells your body and mind to perform certain actions. You can consume foods and
fluids to help you concentrate, balance your mood, improve your sleep, be stronger, build muscle
and lose fat. Thats the best case scenario, but it can also make you lazy, lethargic, capricious,
restless, weaker and fatter!
The food you eat tells a great deal about you. Some people really care about what goes into
them, they select foods that demonstrate their culture, upbringing and past experiences.
For example, coach Ben fantasises about a thick cut steak of beef because not only because he
enjoys the taste, but he like the idea of being a protein driven wild BearWolf. He
orders
a pint
Sam Smiths bitter
if it’s available
because
he
used to go to school near the brewery.
He eats
vegetables because he cares about his body and goes crazy with carbohydrates after a workout to
replenish his muscles.
We all contribute to ‘our story’ with our food, sometimes consciously and other times not so
much.
See this book as an opportunity to better craft your own story so it is an honest reflection of who
you are. You obviously want to change something, thats why you are reading this, we just need to
fi gure out what and how.
ENERGY BALANCE
While we won’t be counting calories, it’s important to know what they are.
A food calorie is a unit of energy that you take on when consuming food and drink.
W
e can adjust
your portions to manipulate how
many
calories you
consume through foo
d.
We do this in accordance with the Law of Energy Balance.
In other words, and simply put:
-
If you consume more calories than you burn off, you put on weight
(ideally muscle)
.
-
If you burn off more calories than you consume, you lose your weight
(ideally fat).
-
If you roughly level your consumption and expenditure of calories, you stay
approximately
the
same weight.
It
’
s worth mentioning that some foods are more dense in calories than others (these tend to b
e
processed foods, but not always). For example, 100 calories worth of chocolate has much less
volume than 100 calories worth of broccoli.
Therefor the chocolate, while giving more instant
gratifi cation, would do a worse job at fi lling you up. This is worth noting if you are often hungry
and unsatisfi ed by meals.
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EAT LIKE A BEARWOLF
BEARWOLF TRAINING
Fats are a useful food category to include in your diet. However, they have just over double the
calories per gram than protein or carbohydrate, making them easier to overeat. If you are trying to
lose weight, you will need to play close attention to your fat portions. If you are trying to increase
weight, these can be an easy food source to reach for.
Veg is typically super low calorie and very dense in nutrients like vitamins and minerals. This
makes them diffi cult to overeat, so go crazy and free up some brain space instead of meticulously
portioning them.
Some sources of calories provide little to no nutritional benefi t, these are known as 'empty
calories' and are often seen in alcoholic beverages
, soft drinks etc
. Though they can provide
mental and social benefi ts, they can slow down your results. That means reducing (not eliminating
entirely) these calorie sources would be a positive step for a fat loss goal.
QUALITY
The quality of your food can have a huge effect on your goal, wellbeing, mood and flavour. Simply
put, the better the quality of your food, the better the results.
It’s diffi cult to exactly quantify the difference it makes. For example, We don’t think anyone will be
able to tell by looking at you, if you eat organic or not.
This is because it works on a continuum. A scale, as opposed to a binary good or bad.
The shelf life of a product will often rely on chemicals that can add a bit of confusion to the mix
when it comes to digesting and absorbing our food.
This means that a
butcher, grocer, fi shmonger or baker will likely supply better quality produce
than a supermarket
, as they have less shelf life concerns. It’s also good to support local businesses
and they tend to be more sustainable than huge supermarket chains.
Aren’t they more expensive though?
Sometimes.
Try striking some deals. Give them your budget and see what they can provide.
Because the food quality is better, you often get more nutrition per bite, and the products don’t
suffer from as much shrinkage when cooked due to a lower water content. There is often less
waste as you can be more specifi c with your purchasing on account of the produce not being pre-
packed.
This means you can sometimes actually save money from shopping outside of the supermarket!
It is however, often less convenient. Thats where supermarkets reign supreme.
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BEARWOLF TRAINING
The only way you are going to fi nd out if this works for you is to try them out. Go to your
independent shops and test them out. If the journey/cost/confusion doesn’t work for you, then
the supermarket isn’t a bad alternative, its just not quite as good.
Remember - the perfect thing you don’t do, is never as effective as the decent thing you actually
do.
This works on a smaller scale. Think of something like pasta. It is undoubtedly a more quality
ingredient if you make it from scratch than if you buy a packet. But if you get home from work
late, can you be bothered to get rolling out some fresh linguine? Grab the packet and don’t worry
about it. In this case, for a person like us, the trade off in quality is far less signifi cant than the time
difference.
As a personal example, we hate cooking rice - we buy the microwavable packs instead. We are
nicer people to be around because of it. Even good food sources can vary in quality, say a piece
of chicken fresh from a butcher and the chicken found in a KFC. While they are both chicken, the
farmer is more likely to have reared a quality, more nutritious version of our feathery friend.
The same can go for seemingly ‘bad’ foods. Something like bread. If you buy a branded loaf from
a supermarket, you will get very little nutritional content - it lasts suspiciously long before it goes
off and is obviously mass produced. Go to a baker on the other hand, and fresh bread has been
more lovingly made and with better ingredients. This results in it being better for you per bite in
every conceivable way.
This goes for any ingredient! There will be good versions and not so good versions. Sometimes it
is negligible, other times it can make the difference.
The only thing you want to be careful of is heavily processed foods. This book doesn’t stray into
that territory, but be aware that you can undo good work by snacking on some crap. Avoid it and
instead fi nd alternatives.
BE THE EXPERIMENT
You are now on a mission to understand how your body reacts to the food you eat.
Make steady changes and monitor how they effect your progress towards your goal, your mood,
your energy and your performance. Pick the factor that means the most to you, fi nd a way to
measure it and assess it over time.
What works for others, doesn’t always work for you. We have lots of subtle variations in our body,
brain and lifestyles from each other. Thats a good thing! It makes you, you. So roll with it!
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BEARWOLF TRAINING
EXPECTATIONS
This experiment will take a while and sometimes the data that comes back can be frustrating. You
can work hard on your food and training for a week and not put a foot out of place with your plan,
step on the scales and see that you haven’t lost any weight.
Good!
You may have not lost weight, but you have collected some useful data. You are smarter and
better prepared for the journey ahead. Other than learning from them, never dwell on elements
that don’t go your way. Don’t moan or blame - simply adapt and overcome. This is your journey
and you need to own it by focusing on the steps that get you there rather than the outcome.
•
This is a long term goal to being better, and being better is never measured on a single
attribute.
•
We are not interested in helping people get thinner if the process makes them less happy.
•
We don’t care if you can deadlift more, but your energy levels make your job more diffi cult.
Things like this can happen every now and then, but this is only short term. We have all heard of
people suffering for a small period of intense restriction to lose weight fast. Sometimes they
succeed, but they never ever sustain. It’s a tactic you might see in professional sports as a
conscious decision with known consequences. If you aren’t a professional athlete, don’t try to live
like one.
When we look long term, we understand that the way we eat is there to enhance our lives and
help boost other factors in our day as well as achieve our goal. You will need to be disciplined,
but only in the service of giving you the freedom to accomplish this.
HYGIENE
Three rules
1.
If in doubt, wash your hands.
2.
Careful with raw meats, poultry and fi sh. Make sure you wash your hands after handling them,
clean surfaces that they touch and with the exception of good quality sushi and some rare red
meats like beef and lamb - don’t eat them
3.
Clean up after yourself.
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EAT LIKE A BEARWOLF
BEARWOLF TRAINING
SKILLS
If you really don’t know how to cook at all, start simple. Roasting and frying are typically the best
places to start and will give you the widest range of possibilities.
CHOPPING
Knives are sharp and can really hurt you so be careful. Speed isn’t worth it if you cut yourself. Take
care, go slow, build competence fi rst. I actually did a cooking class on knife skills to get the basics.
If you don’t want to spare the time or expense, there are plenty of great ones on Youtube.
ROASTING
This is our favourite way to cook pretty much anything. Get a solid baking/roasting tray and you
can simply throw a load of ingredients that go together in there, whack it in the oven and end up
with something decent! You can cook in big batches and have plenty left over.
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EAT LIKE A BEARWOLF
BEARWOLF TRAINING
FRYING
This is the process of cooking in a pan over heat, typically a hob.
Whenever you fry something, you will likely need some oil/butter to stop the ingredient from
sticking and to add additional flavour or nutrition. Be mindful that the oil you cook in, will
contribute to your portion of fat. An alternative to this, would be to use low cal spray - which I am
okay with.
You can use many types of oil for many different tastes. We suggest you experiment. Olive oil and
coconut oil are good places to start.
Heat your pan fi rst then add the oil, closely followed by whatever you are frying.
Personally I like to oil the ingredient rather than the pan as I tend to waste less oil, but it doesn’t
make a huge amount of difference.
STEAMING
This is the quickest way to cook veg. Either buy a steamer or use a colander over a pan of boiling
water. I like my veg pretty crunchy, so quick 5 minute steams suit me best.
BOILING
Short oil the odd potato (for mashing) and pasta, I don’t tend to boil very much as the nutrition of
the ingredient can get lost in the water.
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