Something's awfully fishy about today......

So I ended my first day yesterday of official Coach George "Meal Planning" successfully; I did not deviate from our meal plans at all. Not going to lie though; although dinner was filling (Salmon & Collard Greens), I was craving a dessert afterwards. But, I did not deviate.

Today's breakfast and lunch both have me trying new foods and thus far, I've been pretty happy! George apparently knows what he's talking about....

Breakfast:

Smoked Salmon, Sliced Tomato and Sauteed Spinach



I was very happy with my breakfast; very little prep, especially after my Crossfit class and it was so damn yummy.

Lunch was a salad consisting of leafy greens, green bell pepper, tomato chunks and cucumbers.....plus sardines. (*insert screwed up face here*) I honestly never tried these before and I'm a big seafood fan but fish in a can? Well, I dumped a can of these bad boys in my salad with some EVOO and balsamic and shook it like a polarid picture. You could hardly taste the fish; it was very mild and pretty good.

Tonight's dinner is more turf than surf; grilled flank steak with grilled eggplant and kale. Not going to lie, I'm pretty excited :)

On on to Day 2 of a healthier, fitter me. :)

Taking charge of my meals....Day 1!

I'm not a prideful person, and I've accepted the fact that every now and then, everyone needs a little help. Last Fall, my diet was right on point and I was able to lose pounds and inches but still make strength gains. I got down to 150.5lbs in order to make a specific weight class for a local OLY Meet in Chicago and was pretty happy. This was mid-December; shortly after that, I fell off the wagon.

Or should I say, I took a big nose dive off the damn thing. The holidays hit, a bad break ensued and well, my team went to the Superbowl, baby! So December and January were a big huge ol' months of faileos, left and right, and I got back up to the mid-160s. And lets be real folks, it was not all muscle. :)

I've been fighting with myself for the past few months, on and off paleo as much as my self discipline would allow. In the end, I know what to eat and what not to eat but I feel like I eat too much of a good thing. (*cough* Almond Butter *cough*) And alas, the weight is not really coming off.

So I decided to take advantage of the awesome coaching at Crossfit Invictus and signed up to talk with someone about nutrition and meal planning. I had my first meeting with Coach George yesterday to go over my goals, what has worked and hasn't worked in the past, and to take measurements. Which was motivating all on its own; there's nothing like someone taking measurements of areas you are ashamed of to kick your ass into gear.

In the end, we came up with a meal plan for this week; a beautifully organized excel spreadsheet listing out what I'll eat for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks for each day this week. The meals vary every day, other than leftovers, to give me variety and it is all paleo. After I fill out a questionaire and we dig deeper into how my body reacts to certain foods, we will end up tweaking the plan to be more specific to my needs and goals.



For today, my breakfast consisted of a yummy egg fritatta with spinach, asapargus, sundried tomatos, bacon and olives. Lunch will consist of leftover paleo chili that I had for dinner last night (recipe: http://crossfittravels.blogspot.com/2011/02/chili-for-when-its-chilly.html) and dinner will consist of Broiled Salmon with steamed broccoli and collard greens.

I'll try to post every day this week what my meal plan is and how it's going for those interested in some new paleo recipes and ideas.

DL for time!

Think about your most hated, dreaded WOD. We all have them. Most will say Fran or Murph. We all have our goats, our weaknesses.

Well, I have a new most hated, dreaded WOD that is now in the #1 spot on my list; I call it the 'Forced Rest by Injury WOD'.

I guess I can consider myself somewhat lucky; I have been Crossfitting now for about a year at 4-6x a week and I have yet to injure myself during a WOD. (I don't count sore muscles or torn hands) And an injury of any kind has been pretty much #1 on my most feared list, as it would drive me crazy if I was not able to Crossfit or even go for a run for an extended period of time.

Le sigh. Enter stage left: A dropped empty 35# barbell on my left foot.

So I was in the middle of a chipper yesterday at Mile High Crossfit; very nice box, awesome friendly group and I even stayed 30 minutes after class to shoot the shit with the owners. Anyways, back to my story. So I'm in the middle of this chipper and if you read my blog a day or two ago, you'll know that my hands are pretty tore up right now from kipping pull ups on Tuesday. So my grip -- not so good. As I was finishing up some good mornings in the middle of this chipper (40 to be exact), I popped the empty bar off my back, into an overhead, and then went to bring the bar down in front of me to gentlely, nicely set on the ground. Momma doesn't drop empty bars, if you know what I'm sayin. :)

Well, my hands had something else in mind and as the bar lowered past my eye level, my hands literally gave out and boom! Dropped the damn empty bar on my ankles, which rolled onto the top of my left foot. Both coaches/owners immediately ran over to see if I was ok and of course, right away I say yes, because lets be honest; the most pain was first felt in my pride. I could not believe that I dropped a damn bar.

Anyways, I stood there and walked a bit on it for a few minutes, and the pain subsided. I decided to finish the chipper, which had some DUs and that was about it in terms of using my legs and feet. (The rest were sit ups, wall balls, slam balls, and rope climbs). Mistake #1 - I shouldn't have continued, even if the pain did subside, just because the inital pain was horrible.



Later on that night, I went about my business with little to no pain so I thought I had dodged a bullet. When I went to bed at 10pm, I set my alarm for 5am because I was super duper excited for my 6am Olympic Lifting class at Method Crossfit the next morning. Mistake #2 - I should have iced my foot and took a pain killer anyways.

Two hours later, around midnight, I'm awoken by horrific foot pain. I tried to get out of bed and found that I couldn't even walk or put pressure on my left foot - what. the. eff??!!! As I start to tear up from frustration, I hobbled to get some Advil and a frozen water bottle I just happened to have and crawled into bed assuming the worse. Obviously I was going to get more sleep in the morning since OLY Lifting was out of the question. (I'm STILL pissed about missing that class)

This blog was actually written yesterday but stupid blogspot was down. As of yesterday and today, my foot is much better and I no longer have a limp, just minimal pain. Looks like in the end, I did dodge a bullet. Phew!

But, just to be smart and safe, blah blah blah, I'll continue with the rest days and start back up on Monday :)

Getting High off High Altitude at Crossfit Arsenal

Yep, I'm at it again....all of this travel bullshit I call life...I mean, work! :)

This week I have the honor of being in Denver, CO to, pretty much, become even more nerdy then I already am. I'm taking a Cisco UCCE/CVP Bootcamp. (Say what?) Basically, I'm sitting in front of a computer in a classroom all day, every day, for five days, listening to a guy tell me how this and that works. BORING.

So how am I spicing up my long....boring....days? Getting my ass kicked by high altitude Crossfitting, that's how!

First off, I would like to say that I sent emails to three boxes outside of Denver last week, requesting permission to drop in to their boxes. Yeah, I'm polite like that. All three boxes promptly sent me back very friendly, very welcoming emails. To quote, "Please come to as many classes as you'd like." & "My drop in policy is come in and play!". Sweet.

I dropped into Crossfit Arsenal's 530pm class tonight and I was greeted by a friendly bunch. (Box #45, State #14 or something)



The workout:

10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1 reps for time of:
Thrusters
Sumo-deadlift high pulls
Pull ups

The weight is Fran weight, if you can RX that. This was a big night for me for two reasons; this was the first WOD that I was going to attempt unassisted kipping pull ups for the whole thing. I saw this WOD posted this morning on the website, and sat daydreaming about RXing this bitch all day long instead of paying attention in class.

The second reason, which I extremely underestimated, was that this was my first high altitude WOD. Yeah, I've been to a bunch of Crossfits but none were ever high altitude.

The result? I did the WOD, completely RX, in 21:06. I had every pull up down and I can say that I felt strong and awesome doing every one. It has taken me a year to get here and I couldn't be happier.

But um...yeah...did you see that time?!? 21:06?! Breathing felt useless the whole time; I felt like my lungs had holes in them. I was sucking in air as fast as I could but it wasn't 'sticking' and my heart was beating so effing fast. Half way through, Coach David had to show me a breathing technique to help try to slow my heart rate. My muscles weren't tired at all during the WOD, so not being able to breathe for 20 minutes was very frustrating, yet humbling. It will be interesting to see how the rest of this week goes!

And on an ending note....those pull ups came with a dear, dear price; I tore my hands in three spots and decided to try liquid bandage for the first time. Have you ever tried it? If not, I'm not going to spoil the ending of this suspenseful flick for you -- just let me know after you've tried it. ;)

Back to (Paleo) Life....Back to (Paleo) Reality.....

Here I am! Sunny Southern California. I've been here for 9 days now and it has been pretty crazy; I've had over a dozen friends visit me, I've aquired six new Crossfit/WO shirts and um.....I don't know how many pounds. I'll let you know later. :-/

Anywho....I'll blog about my awesome WODs Gone Crazy weekend later tonight, which was a total total blast! (Miss you cats already!) But now it's time to get back to getting serious.

Today starts back at 100% Paleo. I figured, I don't really know anyone here yet so it can't be too hard to resist going out drinking or eating badly. Plus, I now belong to the kick ass box Crossfit Invictus, which will make it easier for me to kick my work outs up a notch. I figured, awesome programming by the master CJ Martin plus a few 5ks weekly in my hilly SoCal hood and I'll be good to go!

Plus....motivation from my Chicago chica, who I already miss dearly...Ms Kelsey :) Check out her new blog!! http://kelseystrainingblog.blogspot.com/

Goals - my undoing?

Le Sigh. It seems to happen every time. I can tell myself that I'm going to be strict paleo for the next xxx number of days, or stop doing this or stop eating that. But the minute numbers come into play, in terms of my 'goals'....well, I go a bit mental.

Lately I've been pretty strict during the weekdays, more relaxed on the weekends. And it hasn't caused me much thought or stress. But then today, I made the declaration on twitter that I wanted to lose an inch off each thigh. Well, I want to lose multiple inches off my thighs....and my hips and my waist, etc etc, but I wondered how long it would take to lose an inch off each thigh.

So of course, I started thinking about my diet, about my Crossfit regime and about adding in running. And then I thought about my diet some more. I've been losing a few pounds and a half an inch here and there each week so I figured I was doing good and didn't really need to change much. You know, just a few more strict tweaks here and there.

Then this afternoon hit. The afternoons are the worst for me. I usually get up early and do Crossfit in the a.m. I hate WODing with food in my stomach so I usually work out without breakfast, and then my post WOD shake or meal is my first meal of the day. Of course, I'm starving when I'm done with Crossfit but usually my chicken & veggies or my Progenex is enough to keep me full until lunch time. But sometimes it seems no matter what I eat for Meal 1 and Meal 2....the afternoons are met with famish hunger, as if I hadn't eatten at all.

Normally, I try to do 3 on, 1 off in terms of Crossfit and running but today was Day 4 on for me and I pushed pretty hard this morning. So of course, after making these new goals today....dropping inches here, dropping pounds there....with the desire of doing it in the next week or two....when the afternoon famine hunger hit, I started to panic. Of course, I've been eating when hungry and not depriving myself. I've tried protein, I've tried healthy fats. Nothing is keeping me full today.

Enter - distress! Panic! Oh no, how do I plan to lose inches when I can't stop eating?????

I think really the question I need to ask myself is, how do I plan to lose inches when I can't stop stressing????

WODs Gone Crazy in 2 Weeks!!!

Happy Friday!! Not only does today rock because it's Friday and I'm alive and healthy, but because it's also the official 2 week countdown to WODs Gone Crazy!!




What is WODs Gone Crazy? At the end of 2010, I was running my mouth on twitter as I always do, and I said something to my buddy Travis Schefcik (@uncmnwellness) about visiting him one day soon in SoCal to throw down some WODs together. From there, people started chiming in that they wanted to as well, and a big tweet up was born!

Thanks to Jarret Streiner (@jarret23), we started organizing who was going to attend and what dates would work best for everyone, since the group consists of people from coast to coast, north to south. He started this awesome blog and got the ball rolling! (Link to awesome blog)

The official plan!

Thursday 4/28 PM WOD at Crossfit East County with Mr. FuncThat himself! (@FuncThat)

Friday 4/29 is a triple whammy day! We are starting the morning off at Crossfit Counter Culture at 8am.....possibily the last Games Sectionals WOD, maybe? And of course, since this is the headquarters of the awesome brand Life As RX, I'm sure there will be a lot of post WOD shoppin goin on!

Our 2nd WOD of the day will be thrown down at the awesome facilities of Crossfit Invictus. Many thanks to both of these places for graciously hosting us!

For our last WOD of the day, we have been toying around with the idea of a ladies vs guys beach WOD.....should be interesting!

Between the nine of us, I'm sure lots of video and photos will be captured during this wild weekend. Stay tuned for blog posts and tweets before, during and after the craziness that will be WODs Gone Crazy.



Not only have we secured kick ass venues to show off our Crossfit skills, but we've also picked up some sponsors along the way! Many thanks to Progenex, Fashletics and RxJumpRopes for their support in making this Coast to Coast Crossfit TweetUp an experience any Crossfitter would enjoy.

Also a huge thanks to Life As RX for designing special shirts just for this trip.