Look at those buns!

The question I always ask people when they say they are on the paleo diet is what do they miss the most? The answers are pretty split up; half the people miss the sugar (such as myself) and half the people miss the grains. I could easily go the rest of my life without eating rice, grain, pasta or white potatoes ever again and it will never be a problem. But I'm not gonna lie - I don't get the same satisification when eating a burger with a knife and fork. Sure, I could always go the In-N-Out "Protein Style" route (burger wrapped in lettuce) but still, it's just not the same.

As I was scrolling around Jen's Gone Paleo's blog, one of my favorite stops for tried and true paleo recipes, I found her recipe for Paleo "Sliders", including buns. The ingredients looked simple enough; I already had all of them minus the arrowroot powder so I decided to give it a try. Again, I don't really miss bread that much, and if this recipe had a) complicated ingredients that cost a fortune and/or b) was complicated to make, I wouldn't have given it the time of day.

But I'm super glad I did. You can find her recipe here: Paleo "Sliders", and below, with my notes of modifications.

Paleo "Slider" Buns:
3/4 Cup Coconut Flour
2T. Arrowroot Powder
1/2 tsp. Baking Soda
1/2 tsp. Sea Salt
6 Eggs, beaten
1T. Braggs Raw Apple Cider Vinegar
1/2 Cup Melted Ghee (if you don't do ghee, try coconut oil...but, know that I haven't tried it, so don't know how it will work)

For topping:
1 Egg, whisked
1 T. Sesame Seeds

Preheat oven to 325F.
- Sift coconut flour, arrowroot powder, baking soda, and sea salt into a bowl.
- Add beaten eggs and mix to combine.
- Add melted ghee and vinegar, mix until smooth.
- Scoop batter onto a silpat or parchment paper- lined baking sheet, in 1 T. balls (I used a small ice cream scooper). You should have about 30 buns.
- Brush the tops of the buns with whisked egg and sprinkle with sesame seeds.
- Bake for 15-20 minutes, until golden brown and slightly puffed.
- Remove from oven and transfer to a baking rack, to cool.
- Slice in half and serve with "slider" patties and toppings.




My modifications....

1) I didn't have any vingear or baking soda, so I didn't include those. And I forgot the toppings instruction
2) I used 1/2 cup of melted coconut oil instead of ghee
3) Right after mixing everything up, in the correct order, my batter resembled more like pancake batter, so that's what my 'balls' looked like on the wax paper; big pancakes. Which worked out great, as you can see in the picture above. I had some leftover and had to cook in shifts, and I found the batter that sat resting on the counter for 20 minutes was much thicker than when I first mixed it up. So if you want to form the 'buns' ball form that Jen did, let your batter sit for a bit.

So how did it taste? It was amazing, and guilt free! I plan to try this with almond flour/meal next.

And yes, that is mayo on my burger. Don't judge :)

Also in the picture is Every Day Paleo's Purple Cabbage Slaw.

Look Mom, one hand!

I know, call me crazy (or stupid). 30 hours after almost losing my thumb, I was back in the gym. In my defense, the first 12 hours sucked with pain but when I woke up yesterday morning, I had virtually no pain. Also in my defense, I chose to attend the 530pm class, which is taught by CJ, so that I can ask his personal permission to work out, out of respect. (CJ Martin is the owner of Crossfit Invictus and is a genius)

The WOD involved heavy deadlifts and tall box jumps as the strength component, and pull ups, kb swings and running as the MetCon component. CJ showed me how to modify the first part as a one handed, one legged KB dead lift. Basically, I was balancing myself with my injured left hand on a rack and of course would use my right hand to lift the 53# Kettlebell. I started with standing straight up, then I would bring my hips back and as I squatted down to grab the kettlebell, my right leg would go straight back and up in the air so that I felt my left hamstring engage. Hence, why it was one legged as well as one handed. For the MetCon, we subbed out 20" box jumps for the pull ups, and I did all of my kettlebell swings as one handed.

The result? I learned that I can do 25 unbroken kettlebell swings with only one handed at 1 pood weight in all 3 rounds - heck yeah. As for today....such a weird feeling! My left butt cheek is soooooooooooooooooooo sore and my right leg is just fine so when I'm walking, it feels really weird and off-balanced. One legged/one handed KB deadlifts are now one of my favorite things, as I am pretty aware now that this is one helluva strengthing movement for the glutes.



No more hitchhiking for me until this baby heals :(

You can't have goals without obstacles.....

....or atleast, it seems like I can't. Just when I was finally getting rid of my below the knee injuries and getting back into full-blown motivation mode, I decided to go and try to cut my thumb off. Well, it didn't exactly happen that way but close enough.

I did not get to attend SoCal regionals this past weekend as I was instead in Springfield, IL for my best friend, Debra's, wedding. But of course, as everyone at the wedding will attest to, I was glued to my phone the whole weekend. Before leaving town, I modified my twitter settings to get a text message of whatever the SoCal regionals twitter account was tweeting about. So between a million text messages from them plus friends who were actually there giving me live updates, I knew how awesome Crossfit Invictus was doing as soon as they were doing it. My Crossfit brother, Craig, was attending the Regionals up in the North East so we were swapping updates as well.

All of this, of course, left me super motivated, just as anyone who watched Regionals or participated in them would be. After indulging in wine and wedding cake on Saturday and taking Friday-Sunday off from Crossfit, I jumped right back onto the paleo eatting train on Sunday and planned to hit Crossfit at lunch today (Monday).

Alas, there is no rest for the clumsy. As I was cutting into a spaghetti squash this morning, I actually reminded myself to slow down, take it easy so I don't nick a finger. So I did. Which had the total opposite effect. I don't know exactly what happened, it happened so fast, but the knife slipped and sliced up the outside of my left thumb. I saw bone right away, grabbed a towel as blood came, literally, pouring out and realized that in the 2 months that I've lived here, I never once took the time to find out where the nearest ER was.

Long story short, I called my scientist roommate, he told me how to quickly wrap it, I went to the urgent care by my house, which then rewrapped it and directed me to an ER, where I sat for almost 2 hours, crying in pain and frustration until it was finally determined that I am one lucky son of a gun who somehow, by the grace of God, missed my tendon and I will eventually be just fine. Seriously, I almost lost the use of my thumb.

11 stitches and a vicodin prescription later, here I am. I won't post any gore pictures on here but if you are interested in seeing the damage, check out my tumblr: http://supervixen13.tumblr.com/

The stitches should come out in 7-10 days, which if you think about it, is not a long time at all. Just a week, really. But that means I'm very limited in what I can, exercise-wise, for this week. Which pisses me off, especially since I'm all back to being super motivated. I emailed my coach, CJ, to see what he recommends in terms of modification. Fingers crossed I can still participate, as I love my CF Invictus crew and will hate to be away from the gym for 2 weeks.



On a sidenote - it is extremely helpful to have a scientist as a roommate. Granted, he's not a doctor or even a paramedic/EMT, but he had a whole stock of medical supplies already in our bathroom and he knew how to undress and redress my wound. I'm already starting a list of other things he can do for me around the house while I'm "injured".

One round at a time.....

I found out late Thursday night that we would be doing "Murph" on Saturday at Crossfit Invictus, so after such a wonderful but exhausting week in Austin and my first ever attempt at "Murph" on deck, I decided to take Friday as a rest day and chill at home for the night. One of the movies I had to watch that night was the new "Hubble 3D" documentary; little did I know that this short film would be a source of inspiration and motivation for the weekend.

Let me explain. The baseline for the documentary follows one of the last crews that had to visit the Hubble in order to do repairs before the every day wear and tear became too much to cease function. Since they are were up there, they had some upgrades to install as well. Of course, I don't have to tell you that any of this was not an easy task and some of the documentary consisted of the interviews that they did with the astronaunts, describing afterwards what they had to do and the dangers they faced while this or that.

The way one of the astronaunts described a task really stuck with me, and it was just a great coincidence that I watched this the day before doing Murph. The astronaunt had to replace two mirrors within the Hubble, and in order to do this, he had to oh so carefully remove 20 tiny screws in an almost impossible way. When asked how he handled the stress of such a difficult task, he stated that he looked at each screw as it's own separate task and concentrated on just one screw at a time. As he was unscrewing the tiny pieces of metal, he wasn't thinking to himself how many he had done or how many he had left to do; he just conquered one screw at a time.

Going into Murph on Saturday, I had the same mentality and same line of thought when facing this monster workout. I had already decided that I was going to partition the WOD into Cindy; 20 rounds of 5/10/15 for the pull ups, push ups and squats. So once it was game time, I told myself I was not going to agonize and concentrate on how many rounds I had left throughout the work. After round 5, I wasn't going to think about how I still had 15 rounds left. I had a post-it note on the rack and pen near by and after each round, I did my tick mark on the paper for tracking purposes and then just moved on to the next round. I tried hard to think of each round as an individual task, just something that needed to be done. And when I was done with that one, I was just going to move on to the next, and not agonize over how much work I still had left to do. 5-10-15, done. Tick mark. Breath In, breath out. Repeat.

And for me, it worked. Before I knew it, I was finishing round 15 and still going strong. It's easy to get intimidated and even a little scared right before performing some of Crossfit's work outs; everyone is guilty at sometime or another of overanalyzing and overthinking a WOD, and over planning how they are going to tackle it. Sometimes it's better to just not think about it at all. Turn off your mind and just do it. Don't think, just lift. And sometimes when you do that, you'll find that the work out wasn't as bad as you thought it would be.

Crossfit Central aka PR Central!

After many, many false alarms and cancelled trips, I finally made my way back to Austin, TX on a work assignment. The last time I was out there was in August 2010 and I had the pleasure of dropping into Crossfit Central. Since that trip 10 months ago, I've met a dozen people on twitter who either are affiliated with Crossfit Central or work out in boxes around the Austin area. So needless to say, I was pretty stoked for this trip!

Last week was Crossfit Total at Central, and due to the class size and limited 45 minute duration, we ended up breaking up the movements per day. It had been roughly 6 months since I had done my last Crossfit Total back in December 2010, so I was ready and excited to max out.

On Wednesday 6/1, we started with back squats. Previous 1 RM in December was 185lb and in February, 189lb. With much joy, I was able to bust out a 200lb back squat for my 1 RM! It felt pretty good too and I am pretty sure if I had time for one more rep, I could have tried for 205-210. Nevertheless, I was ecstatic to finally be part of the 200lb back squat club!

Side of humor: During warm ups, Coach Big Mike introduced me to the class by saying, "Everyone say hi to Jaimie, she is visiting us from Crossfit Invictus; they are kind of a big deal...." Funny, as that is what CJ and I said about Crossfit Central as well.

Me & Holly before our back squat attempts:



With such great results on Wednesday, I decided to drop in the next day so that I could test out my Deadlift. Previous Deadlift 1RM back in December was a disappointing 215lbs, so this time around I was only expecting to maybe get to 225-230lb, if I was lucky.

Coach Jefe was also my coach the day before, so when he saw me warming up my deadlifts, he pulled me aside and asked me what the previous 1RM was. I told him it was 6 months ago at 215lbs and since he saw my back squat the day before, he instantly made me throw alot of weight on the bar and start my first of the 1-1-1 reps at my previous max. The 215lb was easy peesey and I started getting that mixed feeling of excitement but nervousness of the unknown, like I knew something great was about to happen.

With the amazing motivation and instruction from both Coach Jefe and Coach Zach, my rep/weight set ended up being 1-1-1-1, 215-235-245-255. Yep, that's right - I ended with a 255lb deadlift. It was one of the most amazing feelings of accomplishment I've had during Crossfit, ever.

I didn't get a chance to test out my shoulder press (previous in Dec 10 was 95lbs) but my two new PRs were satisifying enough. My next goals, of course, would be a 225lb back squat and a 300lb deadlift. I know that if I work hard and keep at it, I'll see those goals met before I know it.

And, of course, to top off a fantastic week, I finally got to meet Diego! I usually shoot the shit with Diego on twitter on an almost daily basis, he's an awesome member of the SICFit crew and a fellow Progenex rep. I can't wait to party with his crew at the Games in July.

Finding new motivation.....part 1.

It has been a week since my last blog post and I feel like so many positive things have happened! So here is a quick recap.

A few Saturdays ago, Sage Burgener (who is an OLY coach at Crossfit Invictus) put on an OLY Meet at our box; it was open to all athletes who wanted to sign up. I really haven't done any snatch technique practice since the Windy City OLY Meet over 6 months ago, so I decided instead to just volunteer to help out Sage and Jen. I know, such a cop out. It was a relatively small meet but it packed a big punch with some amazing females lifting some amazing weight. You want some motivation? Watch a 19 year old who weights 116lb cleaning and jerking 150% her body weight. It was amazing.

Although being surrounded by awesome guys and gals pick up heavy weight all day was a cherry all in it's own, I will say that the highlight of my day was meeting Kris Clever. I was pleasantly surprised when she walked in the door before the meet; I didn't realize how close Valley Crossfit was to San Diego plus I figured she would be resting before any Games competition. Not only did I get to watch her lift, I also got to shoot the shit with her afterwards as we discussed the aforementioned amazing 19 year old who's name I can't remember to save my life. Even Kris found her motivating.

This past weekend also marked 2 weeks since I started my meal planning and nutritonal discussions with Coach George, and it was time to take some new measurements and pinching. Pinching hurts, by the way. I didn't think my jeans felt any looser but atleast they weren't feeling any tighter, so I wasn't all that optimistic going into the measuring session. He took some quick measurements and then, as if he was a doctor running tests, he told he would let me know how it went.

Later that night, I got this email from him:

"So you're weight didn't change, but your measurements did...4 out of 8 sites were significantly lower, to include the umbilical and supra-illiac (right about your hip). Your umbilical site went from 34.4 to 28.2!"

I don't know exactly what he was measuring as I know he didn't mean my waist is now at 28 inches but either way, it was motivating to see that my work is paying off.