Hey world, I’m back.

Fuck losing weight. 

Fuck it all.

My new goal is to get my athlete back. The person who can walk around holding her head high, knowing that she could take any comer.

Last week, I went to yoga every morning, and ran 2 miles to and from CrossFit each day. Best week ever. This weekend I’ve been working hardcore on giving myself more stretch marks with all the junk I’ve been stress-eating as I study for finals that are this Tuesday and Wednesday, but that’s life. 

I know I need routine. I know I need to push myself. Week after this one, I start a “Maymester” intensive class that’ll be three hours of class per day. This just begs for order, schedule and routine. Sweeeeet. Also, I’m not going to buy a parking permit, so it’s either take the bus in or ride my bike the 9 miles. Hopefully I’ll be doing the latter more often. 

Paleo Summit: 23 Expert Presentations Over 8 days

So, I’ve made it clear that while I may find benefit in eating paleo for periods of time, I think it is an arbitrary and unsupported set of rules. When people ask if I would recommend that they try it, I usually say no. Without doing it as part of a group, I think there are better ways to get the same benefits with less cost and less risk.

That being said, I am all about discourse :). I don’t mind listening to things I disagree with, as long as they get me thinking. So while this specially selected group of “experts” will almost certainly all be more pro-paleo than you average industry expert, I bet they’ll have some points I agree with. And in the end, that’s my health goal.

I want to feed my body the food that will allow me to live a healthy life, accomplish my goals, and make me happy. I may end up following some rules from paleo, some ideas from the vegan-encouraging “Forks Over Knives”, some advice from my parents on Weight Watchers. Maybe Tosca Reno will have some thoughts that will be useful as well. I’m not looking for A way to eat- I’m working on MY way to eat.

Small setbacks are not the same as failures.

So, I didn’t make it to WOD or strength yesterday. M-W-F I go to the 11:30am WODs, but on T-Th I have to go to the 5pm. Yesterday I got home from class and was too overwhelmed by all the things to do around the house, that I spent an hour cleaning (seemingly barely making a difference) instead of working out. Then I devoted some time to getting wedding ideas together to send to the planner.

I was/am sad about it, but in the the end I’ll just do my best to get some progress in this weekend, and be glad the dishes are done and I have clean towels now. I also got all our plastic bags to the recycle bin at the grocery store, and a big bag to Goodwill. So yay for that :).

And, I got enough done wedding-planning-wise to get to sleep feeling on top of it all. Even if it meant spending several hours doing seemingly (and a little actually) unproductive bridal magazine flipping looking at things like this:

However, worth noting that I am TOTALLY ON TOP OF IT with my eating this week. Aside from Wednesday’s adjustment for the chocolate hearts, I have eaten exactly as planned, and felt completely satisfied the entire week. I plan on trying to be conservative but unplanned for the weekend and then planning ahead next week the same way I did this week. 

But I know myself. The temptation will be there to relax just a bit too much and let things like portion control and good decision making slide just often enough to take a step or two backward. I should probably impose some guidelines, or come up with a way to keep my brain on track. Anyone have good ideas on how to keep focused and not end up treating the weekend as a “days off” free-for-all?

And it’s like it was Christmas.

Things that arrived via FedEx today:

  • Tosca Reno’s “The Eat-Clean Diet Stripped: Peel Off Those Last Ten Pounds”
  • New teapot
  • TWO pairs of barefoot running shoes that were each $100 OFF (Thanks The Clymb!)
  • Valentine’s Day box from my future mother-in-law
  • New makeup from Sephora

The first three are excellent boosts to my current goals. The last one… not so much :). Although, knowing that we’re working on being healthy, she did only send one small box of six chocolates, a box of shortbread cookies, and hot cocoa mix. And I’m totally excited for my new eyeshadow + freebies!

Now, having done such an excellent job following my food plan for three days, I decided to swap part a part of my dinner for three 64-calorie chocolate hearts. Necessary? No. Helpful? No. Harmful? Also no. I think it was a good little mid-week reward.

Today, we did Angie at the box. 100 each pull-ups, push-ups, sit-ups and squats (shouldn’t they be “squat-ups”?). I did jumping pull-ups, and knee push-ups. This evening when I was done with classes, I went to the gym, ran for 30 minutes and then lounged in the steam room for a bit. Not much of a workout, but better than just the steam room :).

Check it out! So, I’m ignoring the scale until the end of the challenge (25th), and just focusing on being consistent with food and workouts. Looked down though, and noticed these jeans are even getting loose in the thighs- when I’m sitting, no less! Granted, they need to be washed, but they’ve never been this way before, so I’m going to take it as motivation, and work my way to NEW jeans post-challenge! :)
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Check it out!

So, I’m ignoring the scale until the end of the challenge (25th), and just focusing on being consistent with food and workouts. Looked down though, and noticed these jeans are even getting loose in the thighs- when I’m sitting, no less! Granted, they need to be washed, but they’ve never been this way before, so I’m going to take it as motivation, and work my way to NEW jeans post-challenge! :)

WOD + yoga

Today’s WOD was 3 rounds for time, of 40 stick jumps, 30 abmat sit-ups, 20 35# OHS, and 5 wall walks.

It went crappy. Worst workout I’ve had in weeks. Low energy, low focus. BUT, it got done. So congrats me :).

This evening I did an hour class of sort of power yoga/vinyasa (called “Yogaworks-inspired) and it was lovely. 

Before and After pictures, and the timeline for achievement.

I am a mature, well-educated and intelligent woman. That doesn’t mean however, that I don’t sometimes succumb to misconceptions.

Yesterday I found myself frustrated with my progress over the last few weeks. I did a lot of research, rethought my nutrition, and then had a realization:

Wasn’t this week when I commented that I was finally being able to push myself during WODs? Wasn’t this week when it would have been easy to lose balance, but I put in the effort and brought things back on track? Haven’t I already achieved two of my three six-week goals?

Begging the question: Where was this feeling of underperformance coming from?

I thought about it. I ignored it. I thought about it some more. Then scrolling through my Tumblr dash it hit me: Before and After pictures. I am not on a timeline, I do not have a deadline for self-improvement. But here are all these photos of one individual looking like two totally different people over the span of six or eight weeks. Thinking about it logically, there’s a reason I’ve seen those. It’s because they’re UNusual. Somewhere in my subconscious, part of me was swayed, and thought that I have only the six weeks of this CrossFit challenge to change myself. I’ve called “bullshit” on that.

Scale stagnation: The question of calories

So, it’s been two weeks since I saw any progress on the scale. Or felt like I was leaning up. What was working is no longer. Scale read 147 this morning. I’ve been really good with eating (one evening of paleo-time-off pigging out for the Super Bowl is not responsible), but now I have to decide on a course of action. Do I:

  1. Continue as I have been and assume that progress is being made even if I’m not seeing it.
  2. Cut back on calories further.
  3. Bump up calories.
  4. Other.

Right now I’m going with 4. Today and tomorrow I’m going to eat with a goal of about 1800-2000 calories, and try not to eat anything that had been my routine (or at least at a different time of day). Today I’m going to try to go for comparatively more fat (good fat- nuts etc), and tomorrow I’ll try to do heavy carbs (veggies here I come!). Sunday, I’ll start alternating between 1300 calorie and 1600 days instead of 1450 across the board.

The tricky thing is that 1450 feels like it should be right. It’s just enough that I feel well fueled to work out, and don’t ever feel hungry. I feel like If I were to try for 1300 or so on average (option number 2) that I won’t be functioning as smoothly. And I don’t particularly like the idea of number 3, because where I am now seems like enough, and the idea seems like more of a gamble, in that less deficit would equal less weight loss.

Also going to try for MORE consistency. Read: more focus and precision on weekends. And MORE water. Because that can never hurt anyone. And MORE cardio. Woot.

So I could totally go for some RELIABLE info and ideas on leaning out (no pills, no about.com, supplement systems etc). I know there is no “right way”, but the more info I have the more I have to work with as far as finding what will work for me. Anyone out there in Tumblr-land have some good resources for losing that last 5-10 pounds?


Today’s WOD was lovely :)

15, 12, 9, 12, 15: wall ball (10# for me), burpee box jumps, knees-to-elbows, shuttle runs across the box.

Could have done heavier for the wall ball, but the next step up was 16, and… oh shut up me! I totally should have tried 16#. I’m sorta stoked at the moment that things are improving a little (it’s all you can ask for right? Just a little). I feel like I’m slowly reaching the point where I can think about pushing myself during WODs instead of just dragging myself to the end.

Post-WOD grocery shopping was not exactly efficient though. Hungry and tired, I wandered for nearly FORTY minutes, when I originally went in with a list of four items. Some of the time was due to a lot of label reading, but I think most of it was used up by regular old spacing out. Woop.

How to succeed in life:

 

  1. Studying for each of my classes. [CHECK]
  2. Cleaning the bedroom (It’s actually still pretty clean! But it’s right at that threshold where there are just enough things out of place that it could start to go downhill. [CHECK]
  3. CrossFit + yoga (even if it’s just 20 min yoga) [HALF CHECK]
  4. Posting more on Tumblr! I need to scan the dash for like 15 minutes for a little information, post and get out though :) [CHECK]

So I wasn’t able to work the yoga in, but otherwise I made a little bit of progress in every area I wanted to today!

In order to keep moving forward, I want to keep the balancing/juggling act going. If I let something fall, I’ll lose a lot of forward momentum stopping to pick it up and get everything organized again.

Plus, being appreciably behind in even something as trivial as laundry brings on stress that becomes ever-present. And that, is no good.

Struggling right now.

Nothing dramatic, no particular setbacks- just general blase lack of motivation I suppose. 

I think the big thing is that I feel like a waste it I don’t get to CrossFit 5 times a week. I really really need that consistency. But my schedule has other ideas. I’ve been only going like 4/week, which really just doesn’t feel like enough to really progress. 

Also, for the first time ever on paleo today I slipped up. I started craving sugar, and ate FOUR Nimble Balance bars. After a great day of healthy, well-spaced food.

Action plan: Make tomorrow work for me. Aim to make Thursday a feeling-on-top-of-the-world day for all I accomplished on Wednesday. I will aim to make one big accomplishment in each of the following areas:

  1. Studying for each of my classes. 
  2. Cleaning the bedroom (It’s actually still pretty clean! But it’s right at that threshold where there are just enough things out of place that it could start to go downhill.
  3. CrossFit + yoga (even if it’s just 20 min yoga)
  4. Posting more on Tumblr! I need to scan the dash for like 15 minutes for a little information, post and get out though :)

Oh my GOD. I can finally locomote faster than walking again!

When I got back from winter break, I began hitting the treadmill for half marathon training the week before I headed back to CrossFit. While it was reeeaal slow, I was able to check off a 35 minute ‘easy run’ no problem at all.

Then I started the Cross-Fit/paleo challenge.

<NNNNNNEEEEeeeeeeee-rrrrrrrrrrmmmmmm PACHEW!> (that’s the sound of a missile spiraling down to earth and exploding)

All of a sudden, I couldn’t manage 10 minutes on the treadmill without my heart rate spiking to 180. I tried after rest days, I tried in the morning, I tried after a carb-heavy day, I tried after extra sleep and less sleep. Wasn’t. Happening.

Week 2 rolled around, and here I was, still unable to even jog a mile. I came pretty close to having a total holy-shit-I’m-never-ever-going-to-be-able-to-run-13-miles-by-April-at-this-rate freak out, but reined it in with the knowledge that I was still CrossFitting.

Then: Saturday. HALLELUJAH! Somehow, things came together and I was able to run for 30 minutes without difficulty. Yesterday I ran for 40. Still slow, but I’m relieved.

Barefoot running.  It&#8217;s the latest and greatest. Or, the oldest and greatest, depending on how you look at it.  When I visited my parents for winter break, I downloaded a few of my dad&#8217;s hundreds of audio books onto my new iPod before we left. On the drive back to Colorado we listened to The Inside of a Dog (awesome!), and when that was done we started listening to Born to Run. It was near the end of the drive, so we only got through a few chapters. I&#8217;ve continued to listen to it on the treadmill though, instead of my usual workout playlist. And it has convinced me, as it clearly has many others, that I should try out a minimalist shoe, and see what I think. I&#8217;m lucky in that I&#8217;m not generally plagued by running injuries and have a decent natural stride (ok, for a recreational runner). I&#8217;m looking for a new shoe to use for CrossFit anyway though, and pretty much everyone I know who&#8217;s tried CrossFitting in a minimalist has raved about it. Is it because they paid the same amount of money for a quarter of the shoe? Who knows, but I&#8217;d like to try&#8230; It&#8217;s also encouraging that the additional research that has come out since the &#8220;craze&#8221; started continues to add support to the benefits of it.
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Barefoot running. 

It’s the latest and greatest. Or, the oldest and greatest, depending on how you look at it. 

When I visited my parents for winter break, I downloaded a few of my dad’s hundreds of audio books onto my new iPod before we left. On the drive back to Colorado we listened to The Inside of a Dog (awesome!), and when that was done we started listening to Born to Run. It was near the end of the drive, so we only got through a few chapters. I’ve continued to listen to it on the treadmill though, instead of my usual workout playlist. And it has convinced me, as it clearly has many others, that I should try out a minimalist shoe, and see what I think. I’m lucky in that I’m not generally plagued by running injuries and have a decent natural stride (ok, for a recreational runner). I’m looking for a new shoe to use for CrossFit anyway though, and pretty much everyone I know who’s tried CrossFitting in a minimalist has raved about it. Is it because they paid the same amount of money for a quarter of the shoe? Who knows, but I’d like to try…

It’s also encouraging that the additional research that has come out since the “craze” started continues to add support to the benefits of it.

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