CrossFit? A Cult?

Since I started at CrossFit in November 2009, I have had many people tell me that I'm involved in a cult.  It happened again this past weekend.  Don't worry, you know who you are and I'm not mad at you.  HUGS!  I think it's interesting that people say that CF is a cult because of the following reasons:
1) You all hang out together
2) You all eat the same
3) You post pictures on Facebook of working out at CF
4) You go there all the time
5) You encourage your friends and family to work out there

My reply is always:
1) I love the people that I workout with.  We have a blast while in class, and while out of class.  Why wouldn't I want to hang out with people who are healthy and have the same interests as me? 
2) Our coaches promote healthy eating so we can lose weight, be healthy, and live long healthy lives.  What does the coach at your gym do???  Oh, that's right, you don't have one...
3) Are you jealous?  Are you mad that you don't look like the people who do CrossFit?  I sure as shit like to look at myself while lifting weights.  I'll like it even more after I lose some weight by the healthy eating tips I get from my coaches.
4) Exercising AND having fun??  Sounds like a freakin' blast to me!!!  What do you do?  Go to the gym and run on the treadmill??  Sounds awesome....NOT!  KILL ME!  Been there done that...haven't succeeded.  I've been at CF for 15 months and I'm still going 4-6 times a week. 
5) Of course I encourage my family and friends to go there!  Why wouldn't I want them to exercise, lose weight and be healthy. 




If CrossFit is a cult, and Bill and Jennie are David Koresh and his hot, pregnant wife, then I'm drinking what they're drinking.  They are the strongest couple I know, physically and mentally.  Living healthy and exercising.  Eating healthy.  Making friends.  Working out and having a dance party at the same time.  Wow...  Sounds pretty horrible and cult like. 

Instead of defending CrossFit from now on, I am going to challenge people to come in and take one class.  Just one class!  Tell me you hate the fact that you have people encouraging you and cheering you on through the hardest workout you've ever done in your whole life.  If you still feel that CrossFit is a cult, then you are the one that has problems.  Go @&$% yourself. 

Burpees: The Mortal Enemy

Let me start out by saying that I hate burpees.  For those of you who don't know what burpees are, check them out: burpees.  They are probably the most horrific movement that we do at CrossFit as far as I'm concerned.  They are hard, taxing on muscles and cardio, and just plain awful.  Our workout was three rounds of:
7 pull ups
14 burpees
21 sit ups
Because I suck so bad at burpees, I decided to scale the workout to 7/11/15.  I'm super glad that I did because this workout took me a long time. 

Strength workout was deadlifts.  I felt pretty awesome deadlifting yesterday, which surprised me because I was pretty sore from Monday night.  I did more reps at 75 kilos (165lbs.) than I've ever been able to.  Hopefully I'll be moving my single rep max from 85 to 90 kilos in a few months! 

I've been eating great also.  My energy levels have stayed up, and I feel great working out (with the exception of burpees of course!).  I've been starting my day with an apple and almond/flaxseed butter and sticking to proteins for lunch and dinner.  Not too much going on with me other than that!  Looking forward to a rest night! 

The Perfect Meat

At night, I am so tired after CrossFit and eating dinner, that I just can't keep my eyes open long enough to put sentences together!  So, I've decided to do my blogging on my lunch break from now on.  Yep!  That's what I'm doing!

Last Friday I had a really bad food day.  When I say bad, I don't mean I ate too many almonds or too much dark chocolate...  I ate BAD.  I started off the day with a mocha from Starbucks and a lemon loaf (shout out to Nicole H.!  She's the only other person I know that is as obsessed with the lemon loaf as I am!!!), got to work and ate a gigantic Bears sugar cookie.  Since it was Bears/Packers game on Sunday, our CEO decided to order pizza for everyone, so I ate four pieces of pizza (thin crust, small squares...not that it matters).  Later in the day, my friend mentioned ice cream, next thing I know I have a blizzard in my hand!  Not a small, a medium....  With chocolate ice cream and oreos with mint.  My mouth is watering right now just thinking about it.  It was delicious.  Needless to say, I was jacked up for the remainder of the day.  I got to the Fort, and had an awesome workout.  I even did pull ups on the purple band for the first time and knocked out three!  I could have done more, but I was so excited I stopped!  Not to mention that I have sweaty hand syndrome and I was scared I was going to fall off the bar, as usual.  Hopefully I'll have a cure for that one day because chalk just isn't enough.  After all that food and a workout, I was still hungry so I went home and had a good paleo meal...Jennie's pork tenderloin and sweet potatoes.  I've been pretty good ever since!  I guess faltering once in three weeks isn't all that bad...  Once the BBC (Better Body Challenge) starts, there will be 10 weeks of meat, greens and water! 

I decided earlier last week that I was going to go to the OLY class and Team Saturday.  I am out of yoga classes, and I can't renew right now.  My exercise habit has become a little on the expensive side.  I guess it's better than most habits!  Needless to say, I wanted to workout on Saturday so I went to the Fort.  I walked in, and Steph looks at me and says---Alicia, you know it's Saturday, right???--- There is one simple reason that I don't normally go to Team Saturday, and that's because I'm scared shitless.  Saturday you work in teams and try to win a belt.  It's a silly plastic belt, but it means something to us Forters.  You will work so much harder on Saturday than you do during the week because other people are counting on you to win that belt.  I was paired with three great guys, and we all played off each others strengths.  We didn't win, but we weren't last.  In fact, we were right in the middle.  I was super happy with that!  I ended up doing 107 kettle bell swings in 4 minutes, and I haven't been able to lift my arms above my head since!  I think that I'll go back to Team Saturday next week=)! 

Jennie gave me another new recipe to try, and just like everything else she's given me to try, it was amazing.  Take a three pound tip roast and cover it with Jennie's mixture of spices and olive oil.  Roast it in a pan at 350 degrees for one hour and TA DA!!!!  Perfect meat!  This meat deserves a picture! 

No More Hiding!!!!

Unintentionally, I've been hiding behind my hair.  Five years ago was the last time I cut more than a half an inch off my hair.  It's been growing and growing and growing for five years.  It was down to the middle of my back.  I kept saying that once I lost weight, that I would cut it.  Well, I cut it tonight and decided to stop hiding behind my hair!!  I cut off five inches.  I'm on my way to the new me in 2011, and this is another step that I had to take!

Today, I rested.  No CF, no yoga.  Just a night at the salon with my sister cutting and highlighting my hair...a process that takes hours.  I ate great again today, and went to lunch with an old friend. 

That's it for tonight!

Lesson of the Day: How to Piss Off Your Coworkers

Oh boy, did I foul up at work today!  No pun intended....  Sticking to my Paleo diet, I brought pork tenderloin and cauliflower for lunch.  I snacked on the pork in the morning, and come lunch time I wanted to eat my cauliflower.  As I'm in the kitchen heating up my cauliflower, I noticed people walking by and looking at me funny.  I'm thinking, "WTF are they looking at?"  I walk out of the kitchen, and people are following me asking me what I made because it smells like dirty diapers, toilets backed up in the bathroom, a garbage dump.  Before I know it, people from all over the very large building I work in are calling me to complain about the stink!  My Director of Administration even called me to tell me I was fired.  Luckily, she's also a good friend of mine so she said I could stay if it never happened again.  Needless to say, that will never happen again.  NO CAULIFLOWER AT WORK! 

I was feeling very tired today.  It's the time of the month where I feel warn down (is that a good way of saying it??) for a few days.  I am taking a rest day tomorrow so I went to the Fort to workout for the third day in a row.  We worked on back squats for the strength, and I set a new PR (personal record) for myself!  Yay!  The workout was box jumps and kettle bell swings.  Even though I was feeling tired, I decided to use the 16 kilo kettle bell (35.2 pounds) even though I typically use the 12 kilo.  One of my goals was to start using that kettle bell, and I won't look back!  Box jumps blow, but I used the 20 inch box as prescribed.  I want to stick with the 16 kilo kettle bell and the 20 inch box from here on out.  I can't let myself digress.  WAIT!  I just realized that I did a CF workout prescribed!  It was an easy one to do, but I did it!

Best. Weekend. Ever.: The Mexican Fiesta and the Train Crawl!!!

I had a long, amazing weekend.  Friday started out with a great dinner with great friends.  To be successful eating Paleo, I've decided that I can't just eat plain steak, plain ground beef with a few salads and nuts thrown in.  I'm going to have to be a little bit creative.  I LOVE Mexican food, and was wondering what I could do to mimic a real, authentic Mexican meal.  Nothing says Mexican like chips and guac, tacos and Mexican rice.  So I made chips and guac, tacos and Mexican rice for seven people, and luckily, everyone loved it!! 


Thursday night I went to Bed, Bath & Beyond and bought a food dehydrator.  I put zucchini, yellow squash and sweet potatoes in the food dehydrator overnight.  And what do you know, in the morning I had Paleo chips to dip in delicious guac!  We also had orange, red and green peppers to dip in the guac. 


For the taco shells, I bought organic butter lettuce and romaine hearts.  We cooked chicken and flank steak with Mexican spices.  The kicker was the Mexican rice... I sauteed red and orange peppers, Mexican spices, cilantro, onions and jalapenos for about 15 minutes.  Then I (here, when I say I, I mean Charlie) grated four heads of cauliflower into a bowl.  When the onions and peppers were soft, I added the cauliflower and let that set for another 10 minutes.  That was my faux Mexican rice!! 


Mexican food and several bottles of red wine rounded out an awesome night, but I was excited for Saturday!  I got up and went to two yoga classes, which I really needed because I was super stiff.  After three hours of yoga I went home and got ready for the train crawl!  30 CrossForters got together and tore up the town....well, several towns.  Since the Better Body Challenge is starting on February 7, I decided that it was ok to go out and have a few beers.  I haven't had a beer in a while, and I'm down eight pounds from January 1.  I want to go all out for the BBC, so I justified in my mind having some beers.  BOY was I glad I did!  It was a rowdie night of fun!  I'd tell stories, but I've written enough already. 


So I've lost 8 pounds, gotten back my energy, feel great exercising at the Fort, been sticking to my four days a week at the Fort and two yoga classes a week, eating great and feeling good.  Nothing but good things to come in the future! =)

Bad Days and Good Days

Yesterday was a bad day...  Another day of dragging.  Another day of crying at the gym because I was so exhausted I couldn't see straight.  Then there was today.  I woke up on the wrong side of the bed, but throughout the day it got better and better.  Is my body finally getting used to my diet??  Or was it because I decided to eat dark chocolate organic cookies that had more sugar in four of them than I've eaten in the last 10 days.  Who knows! 

Today was supposed to be my rest day, but I ended up going to the Fort anyway.  I decided several months ago that I was going to go to the Fort four days a week, and I realized that I can't go Friday so I had to go today.  I was really glad I did!  We had a small class and I killed the workout!  It was a workout that I really liked and was actually good at.  I finished minutes sooner than I thought I would.  Yesterday one the other hand, was terrible.  We had to 1 min 30 sec. to do 15 burpees and as many pullups as we could do.  Since I suck at burpees, I sucked at this workout.  I ended up in tears before the end of the workout.  I stayed after class and talked to my amazing coach Jennie, and she said that maybe I should add a serving of fruit in to my daily regimen.  I am going to go shopping tomorrow and grab some fruit for myself.  Hopefully that will help.

As far as tonight's workout goes, we did walking lunges, kettle bell swings and sit ups.  I killed that shit!  Felt good to finish fast.  That hasn't happened for me in two weeks! 

I've been great with food.  Haven't cheated, except for the dark chocolate cookies I had today.  The chocolate is dark enough for me to eat without feeling guilty, but I'm sure there is some flour in the cookies.  All in all, really great.  I can't wait to weigh myself on Saturday morning.  Hopefully I'll be down a few pounds!!!

There's No Crying at CrossFit!!!!

Sometimes there are days when you just aren't in it to win it...  Today was one of those days for me.  I'm still not feeling quite myself since I started eating Paleo, but I'm not going to use that as an excuse.  Today's WOD at the Fort was "Isabel".  Isabel is 30 snatches for time.  I started out with 30 kilos, and after the 17th snatch I had to take 3 kilos off to finish.  My form is super shitty due to my height and my inflexibility, so those two factors along with my tiredness, I sucked.  After I dropped the 3 kilos, it only took me about 45 seconds to do the last 12 snatches.  It's amazing how heavy 6.6 pounds can be!  After I finished, I was in tears.  There's only one other workout that does that to me, and I don't even want to write it's name because it's EVIL!  PURE EVIL!!  Then I thought, there's no crying at CrossFit!  I can always try again and improve the next time.

Ok...  Enough with my sob story.  I'm doing great with my food intake.  I haven't had any cravings at all.  When I am in the mindset that I need to eat clean, I eat clean.  It's all or nothing with me.  Today I ate:
1 Polish sausage
1.5 cups smashed cauliflower with butter
3 slices Paleo meatloaf
3 oz. flank steak
25 almonds

I'm still not feeling 100% myself.  I was hoping this week I would feel amazing, but it's taking a little longer than I want it to.  All I can do is think about the future, and what is to come.  Better body, better performance at the gym, and better overall health. 

The Weekend of Food!!!!!!!!!!!

Let me start out by saying that I do NOT cook.  Never.  I am lucky that Charlie likes to cook so I can't mess anything up and we can actually eat!  This weekend, that all changed.  Friday night I cooked dinner for my mom, my sister Andrea, and Charlie.  Saturday I cooked dinner for friends and Charlie, and tonight I tried two friends recipes and they were a great success!  Not to mention, everything I made was Paleo!  I'm pretty stoked about my newly found talent.  I guess good recipes go a long way!! 

Friday night I went to the Fort and did an AMRAP (as many rounds as possible) of:
Double Unders (I substituted single unders) and snatches (27 kilos)
Four minutes of rest
AMRAP burpees and pullups

I felt great with my snatches and jumping rope, but I still can't get the frickin burpees.  Hannah and Tommy Mo were showing me how to throw myself on the ground so I can do them faster, but that is going to take some time and practice for me!

Saturday morning I started out with three hours of yoga...yes, three hours.  I took two classes at Total Body Yoga with my friend Kristin.  I had different instructors for each classes, and luckily they both felt it necessary to focus on hip flexibility and stretching.  At CrossFit, being able to "pop" your hips, and open them up is necessary for so many movements.   Having pain and lack of flexibility in my hips is something that I struggle with, and ever since I started yoga my pain is gone and I am comfortable doing movements at CF that I wasn't as comfortable with before.  For me, the combination of CF and yoga has been more than amazing. 

I am going to try and remember everything I ate this weekend to share!  Hopefully I can!  I ate several things on more than one occasion.  Remember, all I have eaten this weekend has been Paleo!!
Ribs (thanks Jennie!)
Meatloaf (thanks Brad!)
Steak (twice!)
Smashed Cauliflower with lots of butter (twice!)
Sweet Potato Chips
Egg Muffins
1/2 Turkey Burger (homemade)
A few glasses of red wine
Coconut ice cream (only a few bites because I wasn't a fan)

I don't think I'm forgetting anything!

Last night I went to bed around 12:30 and for some reason I didn't get out of bed until 12:15 pm this morning.  I don't know what that was all about, but I haven't done that in forever....well, when I'm hung over that's normal, but I wasn't!  I think that my body is still transitioning to fueling off of fat instead of sugar and I'm a little drained.  I'm excited to see what this week brings!!

Egg Muffins, YES PLEASE!!

Every day gets better than the last.  I'm starting to snap out of my crabbiness and into a better state of mind.  I'll beat this sugar detox!  No doubt about it.  It's amazing how things affect you differently the older you get.  I remember when I was 18-19 and working for a roofing company, on average I would eat 4 donuts for breakfast, McDonald's or some other fast food for lunch, a couple candy bars for snacks, then drink my dinner.  I believe that Old Style was my beer of choice back then.  Gross.  I didn't gain a pound or feel terrible.  Now, I look at a beer and gain 6 pounds!  Not to mention the donuts and McDonald's which would add another 13 pounds!  Getting older isn't bad, it's great in fact.  We just have to learn to roll with the punches and realize that our bodies don't function like they used to when we were 18.  At 25, I started to realize the change in my body.  The weight gain that came along with my lifestyle.  At 29, I realize that I need to exercise and eat clean if I want to look like I want to look and feel like I want to feel....and I want to feel and look like I did when I was 18. 

I suck at cooking...  I'm on my way to learning with the help of a very special person in my life (my coach Jennie)!  Tonight, two of my girlfriends came over so I could coach them on their interviewing skills.  I am so excited that they both have interviews coming up!!  Being in recruiting for five years, I figured I would cook them some snacks, feed them some wine, and go over the essentials of how to succeed in an interview.  It was fun!!  I made Paleo Egg Muffins!  Jennie mentioned these muffins to me several months ago, but I never tried to make them.  I looked up a recipe online and they turned out great!  In the food processor, I chopped bacon, spinach and tomatoes.  I added that to 12 beaten eggs and put 1/4 cup in muffin tins.  They were really good!!  Not great because I'm not a huge fan of eggs, but it was nice to learn how to make something different and easy.  Sometimes I get a little sick of eating just meat. 

Speaking of eating, today I had:
50 almonds (2 oz.)
2 Italian sausages
5 Egg Muffins (equivalent of about 3-4 eggs)

Today I rested.  I worked out 4 times in three days and I felt that my body needed a rest.  I'll be back at it tomorrow!  I'm super excited to work out next week.  I'm already feel better from my sugar/carb detox and I can feel that by Monday I'll be 100%!!! 

Good night all!!

WTF is that?!?!?!

I worked out twice tonight.  Second work out was for Warrior Women Wednesday, and Jennie tells us that we are going to be learning how to do Turkish Get Ups.  WTF is a Turkish Get Up?!?!?!  I can't explain it, so here's a You Tube video of some dude doing one with a person:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDQUlshxO_8.  We did them with kettle bells, and it's actually pretty complicated to do.  Too much thinking about what foot goes where and when.  The first Wednesday of the month has become my favorite day of the month because I get to work out with all the girls!  It's a blast!  There's more dancing than working out though...which is awesome. 

My mood wasn't any better today than yesterday, and this carb/sugar detox is taking its toll on me.  I was still super tired and cranky.  Going to the Fort is the only thing that cheers me up for the last few days!  I'm looking forward to next week when I feel awesome and this has passed. 

Food for the day:
3 chicken breasts
1 cup greens with olive oil
1 oz. almonds
1 Polish sausage

I'm drinking water like nobody's business.  I'm so thirsty lately!  Hopefully I'm ridding my body of the toxins I've put in for the last few months.  I went to bed early last night, but couldn't fall asleep.  Tonight I'm going to bed super early in hopes I will fall asleep asap.  Good night!

And it starts....

.....the no sugar, no carb crash.  I went to the Fort today and felt like I was going to DIE during the workout.  A workout that I should have finished in 10 to 10:30, took me 11:30.  I know that doesn't sound like a long time to a non CrossFitter, but it's an eternity.  One of the things that gets me when trying to eat healthy is the down feeling that I get when I am weaning off of sugar, grains and bad carbs.  When I'm not at the Fort, I'm almost depressed.  I'm crabby and bitchy.  When I get to the Fort, I don't want to work out.  But I realize that I have to power through the feelings of weakness.  There's no room for weakness at the Fort.  Tonight, I didn't want to finish.  I wanted to stop.  But when Tommy Mo is sitting next to you telling you to jump farther and move faster, you can't stop!  He's yelling "Get that better body!" and even though all I can think about is falling down and crying, I keep going.  It's people like that at the Fort that keep me going back.  That's a whole other post in itself...

Today's workout was 7 rounds of (scaled to A):
6 burpees
6 - 5+ foot broad jumps
6 - 20 in. box jumps

As I said above, I really should have finished this in 10 to 10:30, but I finished in 11 min and 33 seconds.  I hated every second of it.

Today I ate about 2 oz. of summer sausage, a salad with chicken, avocado and goat cheese, and two pork chops.  It was a random food day. 

Now off to bed.  It's about an hour past my bed time.  One thing that I never have to worry about is getting enough sleep.  I always make sure to get in at least 7 hours. 

Day 1 - Paleo...UGH

As I sit here finishing my 1/2 pound of ground beef, and watching my three pork chops cook in the fat from my ground beef, I wonder...how in god's name am I going to get through this!  Again!  If I never would have fallen off of the wagon in the first place, this wouldn't be so damn hard.  It's my own damn fault.  My sugar withdrawals won't hit me until Wednesday or Thursday, so hopefully tomorrow is going to be a good day.  It'll be my first day back at work since Tuesday of last week.  Work is the devil for my diet, especially around the holidays.  I'm truly hoping that all of our suppliers and vendors will not be bringing in anymore cookies, cakes, brownies, candy, bagels or donuts for us to eat. 

I started off good today!  I had seven slices of really thick cut bacon around noon.  That kept me full all day, until I got home from the Fort (my CrossFit gym) and running errands.  So now, as previously stated, I am finishing my half pound of 85/15 ground beef.  I hate eating this late, but it is what it is!  At least I didn't cheat!

Today at the Fort I PRed (personal record) for snatching.  Go me!  WOD (workout of the day) was a bitch.  I scaled to option A which was 3 rounds of 8 knees to elbows, 12 pull ups and 16 kettle bell swings.  I sucked....big time.  I just can't get the knees to elbows!!  One day!  Something else to accomplish in 2011!

The Year of ME!

It's Sunday.  Today, I had a mocha from Starbucks, along with a bacon sandwich and a piece of lemon loaf.  Tonight for dinner, I ate McDonalds.  I had a Angus 1/3 pounder with fries and a gross chocolate shake that I had a few sips of then threw away.  When Charlie came home from ice riding, I had him pick me up a hot fudge sundae since he was also stopping to grab dinner at McDonalds.  Why the shitty food??  Because tomorrow is Paleo Monday. 

I have been on a food bender for the last two months, I and feel terrible.  In April 2010, I won the Better Body Challenge (BBC) at CrossFit Fire.  I lost 25 pounds in 90 days and won $550.  After the BBC, I ate clean on and off until October...or until my 29th  birthday.  After that, I decided to eat whatever I wanted.  I have a small addiction to food.  Sugar to be exact.  Lots and lots of sugar.  I am about 25-30 pounds overweight.  I'm 5' 9" so I carry my weight well.  I can lose/gain 20 pounds and I look about the same.  One thing that I have never done, is felt comfortable naked.  That is my goal for 2011, to feel comfortable naked. 

I workout at CrossFit Fire in Lakemoor, IL.  I've been working out there about 15 months, and it is the hardest, most strenuous thing I have ever done...but I love it.  I workout there three to five days a week, and I do yoga two days a week.   My coaches at CrossFit Fire are Bill and Jennie.  They are AWESOME!  They promote a healthy lifestyle of exercise and Paleo dieting.  This blog will be my food log, workout log, complaining log, and progress log.  I hope that by sharing my this information publicly, I will hold myself accountable to eating healthy, exercising, and hitting my goals for 2011...in October for my 30th birthday to be exact!!!