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!!!