Whole30 Day 6-7: Throwing Down wi' my Peeps! (CFW Open 15.4)

My favorite day of the CrossFit week is Saturday mornings. I try never to miss a Saturday. Today (and every Saturday during the CF open season) we did Open WOD 15.4, scaled and Rx. My kids did the kids' competition, and I participated in the scaled division. The best thing about Saturdays is the people. You get to see everyone, and people aren't in a big rush to get somewhere else, so they hang out and chat. My closest friends are here, and this is the place where I have measured significant physical changes in my health. It means the world to me.. 

3...2...1...

Go Molly!

Push Press, not even sweating. yet.

Got home and prepped dinner tonight. Normally on Saturday evenings we have gluten free pizza and a movie, but since that wasn't an option for us, we decided to go with totally legit, paleo chicken wings, complete with homemade dressing. The next best thing.

I find it very helpful to have a vac-seal machine that can speed up the marinating process.

We've been using Tessamae's for a while. They put nothing offensive in their sauces!

Dinner is served

Log:

Saturday, Day 6 

B - BP Coffee, Smoothie

S - Larabar

L - Salad with ham, eggs, avocados, tomatoes, cukes, dressing

D - Chicken wings

WOD - 15.4

Sunday, Day 7 

B - BP Coffee, smoothie

L - leftover chicken wings

S - Almonds

D - Salad 

WOD - rest day

Really feeling the strong desire for something sweet. ugh.

Whole30 Day 5: The Sand in the Hourglass

Today is the first day I felt like I was missing out... The first day that I thought, "Oh, 25 more days feels like forever." And tomorrow I face more of the same. I will go to the box to participate in the CrossFit Open WOD 15.4, and afterwards everyone will have a beer and some yummy snack that won't be on plan. I am determined to be totally okay with this situation.

This morning I sat with two friends at tea. I took hard-boiled eggs with me so as not to be hungry while they sat and ate coffee cake and something like Indian donut-holes that smelled wonderful. All of it clean, or nearly. Certainly not bad stuff as these girls know how to cook real food, and have become quite adept at making food that reminds you of the good old days but actually tastes much, much better. In fact, it's kind of a new paradigm. The bad stuff doesn't appeal to me anymore, but who can resist a perfectly clean piece of coffee cake made with palm sugar or honey? Ugh.

Then this afternoon some friends came over and watched Henry V with us as part of their Shakespeare unit in literature. It was a lovely way to spend an afternoon, but we made popcorn for the kids and it smelled so wonderful, and I couldn't eat a bite of it.

I griped a little about it, and as soon as I did, my friend who is currently on the autoimmune protocol (AIP), which is even more limiting than Whole30, offered a bag of something absolutely amazing...Jackson's Honest sweet potato chips with nothing other than coconut oil and sea salt!

I was tired, cranky, and a tad bitter that I couldn't have anything everyone else was having. I'm not sure if it was "legal" on a psychological level, but anyway, it saved the day.

I jumped online and bought a case for myself the minute they left.

Also today I hit a bit of the moody, tired, feeling that I was hoping to sidestep. It wasn't severe. It just felt like a dreary day all the way around.

In other news, I did officially ditch the scale. Hid it in the back of my closet. I may decide to check it again at the end, but for now, it's off plan. I will still have a smoothie after my WOD tomorrow.

Today's Log, Day 5: (believe me, there is nothing to be excited about on this one)

B - BP coffee, 2 hard boiled eggs
L - leftover steak. no time to prep veggies
S - sweet potato chips and a legal cherry pie LARA bar. I can say that I was unprepared for how much I would need something just a bit sweet. That fit the bill perfectly.
D - leftover artichoke chicken, salad, 1/2 sweet potato

Whole30 Day 4: Pancake Salvation and the Timeline

Right, I get it. There are no pancakes for Mom today. There are grains and honey and all kinds of psychological no-nos associated with this breakfast classic, so I'm not consuming. Don't think I fell off the wagon that fast! Buuuuuuuuut....

Soon after I started giving up grains and eating a more paleo-style diet, we still found that we missed our Saturday morning routine of pancakes and sausage or what-have-you (read BACON).
I started experimenting with recipes for gluten-free or grain-free pancakes, and have developed this recipe that the whole family loves. We have never missed crummy, nutrient-void pancakes loaded with pseudo-maple-flavored-can-you-even-call-it-syrup again. This recipe will help the other members of your family make some positive changes while you are doing the same for yourself. If you have kids, these may well save your sanity.

The secret is not in the stack of flap-jacks dripping with syrup, but in the leftovers. I made a huge batch of these this morning for two hungry kids and stowed the remaining pancakes in a container. Now tomorrow, for breakfast or snacks the kids can grab a pancake, smear it with almond butter or peanut butter, a drizzle of honey and bam! Tummy is full. It saves me a whole lot of suffering when they have a really healthy alternative to turn to and I don't have to be involved in the "Mom! I'm hungry!" thing. My kids are not eating a completely paleo diet. I do permit gluten free, nutrient dense (clean) foods such as this.

I didn't really feel tempted by the pancakes. Today. I had another hard-boiled egg. This could get annoying, but since I'm already not a huge breakfast person, hard-boiled eggs are normal fare for me anyway. I don't need a lot in the early part of the day. I'm also finding that adding a teaspoon of coconut oil and some unsweetened coconut milk to my coffee almost negates any need for breakfast. Today I was not hungry until 11:30 AM, at which point I ate the egg. But that's just me. I suppose for some it may be a very challenging meal to have to constantly negotiate.

So, it's day 4 and I feel like I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. Whole30 is kind enough to publish a timeline that tells you what to expect, and so far I'm having a very easy time of it. Day 4 is the "Kill all the things" phase. I didn't want to kill anything today, so I think that's, you know, pretty good. Maybe tomorrow something will die, but honestly, I felt pretty amazing. I felt a bit sluggish during my WOD and apparently forgot how to count to ten, but never mind. It happens. Here is today's log entry:

Day 4:
B - BP coffee, 1 egg
L - Chicken broth with gelatin added YUM! Steak and spinach
D - leftovers, so another taco sweet potato. no guacamole. sad.
S - almonds, 2 slices ham

WOD:
2 RM power clean 105# (lame-o. It's all in my head!)
3 rounds with 9-minute time cap
   5 cleans
   10 knees to elbows
   15 KB swings
max burpees in time remaining: 17

Whole30, Day 3 - Oh, the Sleep, the Sleep, the Sleep!

That was my first thought waking on the morning of day 3. And for that matter on day 4 since I am writing this a morning late.

I had forgotten how sweet and deep a sleep I get when I'm not ingesting toxins! As much as I hate to say this, I know that wine is my biggest culprit, and two glasses of wine, if not timed perfectly in the evening will wreck my sleep pattern, causing me to wake at 3-4 a.m. and lose hours of sleep. Then why do I insist on continuing to do this? Which is more valuable?

There are these ceremonies in life, little markers of the day that on a psychological level, help me to pass the time. The first is my coffee ceremony in the morning. This is perhaps the greater addiction. I have clung to my coffee routine since my sophomore year in college. The problem that I have with this is that I cannot stand black coffee. In my younger years I needed coffeemate or loads of sugar (blech!) Since starting to eat a healthy diet I have gone to organic half and half or raw milk and stevia. Now I am learning to like bullet-proof coffee made with coconut oil and coconut cream. It's actually pretty good.

The wine routine is a little easier to deal with, but I still feel the loss. When I start to cook dinner in the evening and my husband gets home for work, I love the atmosphere of relaxed conversation, food on the stove and a glass of wine. There isn't really any substitute for what goes in the glass...pellegrino? meh. I'm okay with it, but yesterday for the first time I had to steel my resolve a bit and just allow myself to miss the wine. But when I wake in the morning, realizing that I slept so well and didn't wake even once in the night--the payoff is worth it. Everything is clearer and easier to deal with when I'm rested. That alone is going to be my motivation when I miss my little routines.

Day 3 Log
B - Bullet-proof coffee, 2 hard boiled eggs much later in the morning
L - 1 chicken thigh, green (leftovers from day 2)
S  - almonds (as usual!) though I allowed myself to get a little too hungry in the morning and ate a few too many almonds. When I saw that I was eating more than my serving size I quickly prepared lunch so that I wouldn't snack too much.
D - 1/2 sweet potato taco. This is a half sweet potato stuffed with chili (no beans), ghee, guacamole, tomatoes, cilantro and jalapeño. It is an old standby that we have made since our first paleo challenge, and it is one of our favorite meals. 

WOD - Baseline WOD with my son. Had planned to get to the gym, but also wanted to do a simple baseline bodyweight WOD to measure any progress at the end of Whole30. Together we did:

3 rounds for time:
25 push-ups
25 sit-ups
25 overhead squats with a PVC pipe
time: 11:31

Whole 30, Day 2

Oh my aching back! This has nothing to do with Whole30 except that I did a WOD yesterday and 40 heavy-ish deadlifts and 1000m rowing later--I'm a tad sore. Nothing injured. Just sore.

Today I decided to mobilize and rest the tired back, and will hopefully get into the gym tomorrow afternoon.

Dinner going in

Day two of Whole30 has been good. Slept really well last night and from past experience, I can say that this is the thing I look forward to most in the coming weeks.

Breakfast: bullet-proof coffee made with coconut oil and unsweetened coconut milk
(This must have satisfied me for a while because I wasn't hungry for anything else until about 11:00 a.m. when I had a hard-boiled egg.)
  

Just out of the oven!

Lunch: ate fairly late and had leftover sweet potato and steak from dinner last night. Mug of organic green tea

snack: handful of almonds

Dinner: Baked chicken thighs with artichokes and kalamata olives with herbed lemon and olive oil, green beans, and salad.

This was really, really good.

I thought the biggest challenge would be not having half and half in my coffee, but that is not it. It's the SCALE!!! I am not sure why Whole30 doesn't want any stepping on the scale for 30 days--No, I get it, this is supposed to be about much more than weight loss, but come on! I want to get to see some progress along the way. I know it will happen, and it's kind of fun and inspiring to see those numbers go down. I'll admit that I couldn't resist the urge to see if maybe, just maybe, even after only one day...pleeease? I won't say what the outcome of that was because I don't want to tempt you.

So now we have two slight points of contention: smoothies and the scale. 

Whole30 Live Blogging...Go!

Today my husband and I started Whole 30 - a month-long challenge to eat a strictly paleo, completely unsweetened diet. There's no wine either. Or half and half in my coffee. I can live without sweeteners. I can live without wine. I have a really hard time not having half and half in my coffee, but there's coconut milk, so I'll make it.

We've been tossing around the idea of doing Whole 30 for a while. Our box had a similar nutrition challenge in January, but I wasn't ready...What? Not ready? Our coach asked me today why I hadn't participated (I had even expressed interest at the time it came up), and he gave me that "oh, c'mon look" until I explained...

I just realized that my last post on this blog was nearly a year ago, in April 2014, when I talked about what I want out of CrossFit. It was a milestone of sorts, and it was timely. I didn't know that I was about to walk through a very difficult season.

That said, from that time until now has been a difficult season. My mother, who had suffered for some time with Alzheimer's endured some very rough medical issues, and then passed away in early October. Around the time of her death, in the midst of supporting my family, continuing to homeschool, and grieving, I found myself going through life at about half-speed. In November I injured my foot and have been walking around with a nice case of plantar fasciitis. Ugh. Just...ugh.

So I continued my workouts with about half my heart and brain caring. Then last week something snapped, and I realized that I'm done living a half-life. Weight that I had worked so hard to keep off has definitely caught back up with me, and I am not at all what I'd call in "fighting form." My strength is up, endurance is down, and I look and feel like I'm overweight...it is time to start Whole 30. 

I chose Whole 30 because I learned of it when we did another paleo challenge as a gym during my first year called Whole Life Challenge. I did really well on Whole Life Challenge, but there was too much stuff you had to do to earn points, and competing with others for weight loss is not something I enjoyed. At all. With Whole 30, all I have to do is mind the food and read stuff. I don't have to log my minutes of mindfulness, mobility, workouts, etc. Just the food and drink.

So...here we go: Back to the Accidental CrossFitter, if the name still applies. It's been 2 1/2 years nearly since that first fateful post. I am not the same person in many ways, and CrossFit is a big part of that.

TODAY:

Coffee w/ coconut milk

Breakfast (Post WOD): spinach, carrot, some berries, 1/2 banana, diluted coconut milk, egg, and gelatin smoothie. (had to eat it on the run, so while they discourage smoothies, I'll just have to live with myself and break that not-quite rule sometimes.)

Lunch: Cobb Salad over mixed greens using this dressing, which is really, really good!

Snack: handful of almonds, 1 clementine

Dinner: Steak, 1/2 sweet potato, broccoli

WOD:

2 RM back squat (high bar) 180# (PR)

4 rounds (scaled from double under because of my foot) 

- 250m max effort row

- 10 deadlifts at 155# (Rx)

Time: 9:41

What I Want out of CrossFit

So I've been doing CrossFit for a year and a half now. The honeymoon is over. I've had the week when I was too sick to go in and WOD and had to fight to get back into the groove. I have had bouts of insane jealousy and have wigged out from comparing myself to others to the point that I felt like quitting altogether. I have come to terms with my hips and with the reality that I will always have them. I have strained my back (not doing CrossFit, ironically) and have had to work back up to strength and still haven't reached my PRs again. I have competed and finished at the bottom or near-bottom 9 times and concluded that I am better for the experience because I gave it my all.

Then the other day I PR'ed my 5 RM dead lift at 195 lbs. and that was my goal going in. I would have liked to get 200, but it was a PR and I was happy with that. I did not miss on my form and did not strain my back, however, after that lift and the WOD that followed, my lower back muscles, glutes, and hamstrings were so tight that I could hardly get up off the floor or get in and out of my car. No fun. Yes, I stretched. Yes, I rolled out. Still...that night I couldn't turn over without waking and groaning. I tried to stand up the next morning as I was getting out of bed and promptly fell over. It was pretty hilarious, so don't try not to laugh. I laughed out loud at my poor self, and didn't feel bad about doing it. I wasn't even insulted.

Even so, I had to ask myself, "Is this really worth it? What am I, a 44 year old woman, trying to accomplish here? Is it worth all this pain and suffering?"

Today my husband and I really pondered that question, as we have undertaken this journey together. He asked me what I really want out of CrossFit, and surprisingly the answer was so easy to give:

1. After not being athletic or even using my body properly for most of my adult life, I am retraining it to move well.

2. I want to have the stamina and strength to take a 5 mile hike, go kayaking, or ski with my family and not be sore and exhausted.

3. I want to be able to play, run and enjoy life with my kids.

4. I do not want osteoporosis, Alzheimer's, or any other manner of degenerative disease that comes from an unhealthy, sedentary lifestyle. I want to keep active both mentally and physically until my dying day.

5. I want to be strong enough to be able to pick up my grandchildren. I didn't have kids until my 30s so I won't be a grandma until my late 50's or early 60s. I want to be fit enough to be able to hold my grandbabies for as long as I want and not be exhausted from chasing them when they are toddlers. I want to be the best grandmother ever, so you'd better believe I'm training for it now.

As I read over this, I realize that none of these goals had anything to do with achieving a certain dress size or keeping up with any person at the gym. None of them had to do with what I see in front of a mirror but what I see from behind my eyes, from within my heart. If I never looked in the mirror, or stepped on the scale, if I never looked at Facebook, if I never measured anything, would I think that I wasn't doing enough? If I only go based on how I feel physically and mentally, would I know that I was improving?

(Of course it is a rhetorical question. Insert "duh" here)

So, is it worth it? Without a doubt. My greatest competition is the race against time, and every improvement I make is a milestone in that race. I don't need to PR my dead lift every time. I don't need to do 30 strict pull-ups this year, or maybe even ever. It's just not that important to me. As long as I am lifting as heavy as I can, moving as fast as I can, building skills and improving myself in mind, body and spirit, I am winning that game...