Finally Friday!!!!!

Man, this week went by really quickly but I was really really anticipating Friday!!! This weekend is gonna be a busy weekend, but hopefully it'll also be relaxing. Mike is coming up to visit!! I wanna go see the movies The Ugly Truth and Funny People. CrossFit Central is holding a ton of events this weekend!!! Friday: Women's happy hour.. it is going on RIGHT NOW, I am at work =( Saturday: UTB free workout for adults AND kids, Indoors workout, and "The Movement." I am going to try to make it to happy hour after work cuz it's really close to my office. I am also going to try to make it to the UTB WOD, but it depends on if I wake up. I want Mike to come with me, but he is a night owl and doesn't go to sleep til 2 or 3am, so there's no way he would wake up and be able to do a CF WOD at 8am!!! Anyways, if I make it to the UTB WOD, I'm gonna try to hit up "The Movement." If I don't make any of these awesome CF events, I am gonna try to go to hip hop class Saturday afternoon and meet up with Bonita on Sunday for the usual weekend CF WODs!! So clearly, my weekend is up in the air, but filled with plenty of things to do. =) I've got tons of errands to run and things to do around the condo as well. Ahhh, as I am writing this I am realizing that I have soo much to do this weekend and there is just sooo little time.

Well I hope you all have a fabulous weekend!!!!

Oh and I am no longer lil miss grump =) This morning I woke up and I finally didn't feel bad!!! I felt great!!! YAY!!!! Thank God!!

My Maggie is leaving...

Maggie is leaving for Mexico tomorrow morning and I am sooo sad. This means she will not be at boot camp on Friday, not be at happy hour Friday, not be at the Under the Bridge workout Saturday, not be at The Movement, not be at hip hop, not be at not be at boot camp next Monday, and worst of all, not be able to hang out/go downtown all weekend and all next week!!! I am sooo BUMMED!! But on the bright side we found out she will have access to the internet!! WOOO HOOOO!!!!

Today was a rest day and I am glad. I've been feelin like a grump this week and I am sooo ready for the weekend. I am also sick of this hot hot Texas weather. grump grump grump. Tomorrow is a new day and it begins with 545am CrossFit!!!

To eat or to not eat before super early morning WODs

So I do my CF workouts early in the mornings. On Mondays and Fridays (sometimes on Wed too) I do Crossfit Boot Camp from 6:30am-7:30am. On Tues/Thurs, I do Crossfit Indoor class at 5:45am-6:30am. Woooweeee eeaaarrrlyy. It's funny to think about how early I wake up now vs. just a couple years ago. When I was in college, I would complain about having an 8am class LOL!! Anyways, I have gone back and forth with trying to figure out if I should or shouldn't eat before I workout. I have been doing CF since March and I didn't eat before my WODs for a few months, then noticed my energy was low, so I started drinking advocare's spark and taking catalyst. This seemed to work great, however for three reasons (not in any specific order) I decided to stop using/depending on these:
1) I was spending waay to much $$$, it gets pretty pricey
2) I was becoming very dependent on these and I think it was more of a mental thing
3) I wanted to go 100% paleo, and spark and catalyst have some ingredients in them that are no-no's for paleo

While trying spark and catalyst, a few times I've also tried eating before my WODs. I tried almond butter, coffee, grapes, and some other random stuff. But for the past 2 months, I have not been eating prior to my WODs and after my crappy perfomance on Monday, I started thinking....'maybe I should eat pre-workout, but how do I work out the appropriate timing of eating and not having to wake up an hour or more before my class??' (I'm the kind of gal who likes to push it and sleep til 6:10am, be dressed and out the door by 6:15am to make it to my 6:30am class LOL)

I've asked other CFers and my coaches whether to eat or not before such an early morning workout because I know digestion time is important, and it seems to really be a personal decision. Some ppl get sick if they eat before a CF WOD, some ppl NEED to eat.

On Monday at boot camp, I was draaaggggiiin ass... BIG TIME. It was terrible. I thought it may be due to lack of sleep or that I need to eat pre-wod?? Since I knew that gettin up for my class this morning (Tues) was gonna be rough (gettin up at 5am is waaay harder than 6am for me), I started to think about how I could prevent another ass draggin WOD. I am on thyroid medication which I am required to take at the same time everyday and I cannot eat until 1 hour after I have taken my medication. Thus, I started thinking about what time I would have to take my medication in order to be able to eat before my WOD and also allow for appropriate digestion time. Time time time.. bla bla bla. bedtime, wakeup time, medication time, eating time, wod time. So I decided last night... just try it, just do it. Decision made: medication at 4am (yes, I wake up in the middle of the night and take meds and then go back to sleep, it use to be 330am! then I changed it to 530am and now I'm gonna try 4am) So I took my meds at 4am and then went back to sleep for about 1hr and woke up at 5am. At 5:30am I had some coffee with 1/4 cup coconut milk and about 1/4-1/2 cup mashed cauliflower. I drove to the CF gym and was PUMPED!! Again, I duno if it was mental, but honestly, I don't think it was.

The WOD was tough...it was a KettleBell WOD!!

50 KB lunges
25 KB squat cleans
10R/10L KB snatch
5R/5L KB push press
X 2

We had a huge group this morning, so Coach Crystal (yes, the 9th place winner at the CF games is my coach!!!! I know ur jealous!! ;) ) split our group up. I was in the group that started with doin KB snatches, then push press, lunges, squat cleans, repeat. I used a 10kg KB. There was a 16 min time limit and when she called time, I had gotten through 36 lunges of my 2nd round. I had a good amount of energy throughout the workout and after our class, I grabbed the KB and finished the WOD!!!

So, I think eating before is a good choice and I'm gonna try to do it from now on... I'm just wondering, what's the best pre-workout snack/meal and how long before I workout do I need to eat it?! I don't think a lot of ppl read my blog, but if anyone out there has any advice/suggestions/experiences to share, please post!!! Thanksss!!!

Tired...

This weekend was a very busy and fun weekend!!! Friday night Maggie, some friends, and I went out and had quite the night!! Great friends, great food, great everything!!! Saturday I went to Hip Hop class for the first time!! I've been trying to go ALL YEAR and I finally made it!!!! I gotta admit that I started to get super frustrated because its been years since I've learned choreography, so I felt like I was just not pickin up the dance as fast as I should've. But in the end, I got it down and it was a lot of fun!!! Gotta keep practicing the dance tho so I don't forget it!! LOL Well I guess the change in my sleep routine from Friday night caught up to me cuz on Saturday I took a nap from 840pm-1240am!!! I was gonna go out Saturday night, but I did not hear any of the text messages I had received!!! Not a single one made me flinch!! HAHA!! I guess I was wayy more tired than I thought. I didn't fall back asleep for about and hour or more and I had fallen asleep on the couch, so I woke up and stumbled to my bed. Then on Sunday I woke up way earlier than I wanted too but not early enough to meet Bonita and some other CFers for the Sunday 9am WOD, I woke up at about 850am!!! Def was a lose-lose situation for me. But I got up and started to try to do all the errands I've been putting off. I did tons of grocery shopping, bought a food processor and came home and had a cooking experiment extravaganza!!! I made Explosion of Bacon, Carrot Cake Caveman Cookies, and I tried to make Squash Fries. I used ground turkey and turkey bacon for the explosion of bacon. It smelled sooo yummy while it was in the oven!!! It tasted even yummier!! However, the turkey bacon is a bit too salty for me, so I'm gonna try to find some low sodium bacon or turkey bacon. I think I am destined to not have any kind of veggie chips/fries. I have been trying really hard to make homemade veggie chips from zucchinni and yellow squash, kelp and swiss chard and I constantly FAIL!! They are always either too burnt or too mushy. I duno what I'm doin wrong. So I tried butternut squash fries.... holy moly... cutting up a butternut squash is a total workout!!!!! I was totally sweating and cutting up just half of that squash was exhausting!!! Well, I put them in coconut oil, followed the steps of the recipe, and they burned.... some were still okay, and they tasted pretty good, but they sure weren't very crunchy, well either they were TOO crunchy and tasted like charcoal, or they were still kinda mushy. Why can't I just make some darn veggie chips?!!!! I'm veggie chip making impaired. Then came the Carrot Cake Caveman Cookies. I tweaked the recipe a lil so it wasn't sooo much fat. I used 2 cups mini carrots, 1 cup almonds, 1/2 cup coconut, ~2 tsp vanilla, 2tbsp coconut oil, 2 eggs, 1 egg white. When I first tried them I thought they tasted waaaay too "carroty". I was like YUCK. Then, all hell broke loose and I couldn't stop eating them!!! Omg, they were yummy!!!! Definitely plan on tweaking the recipe to decrease carrots, maybe add some cinnamon? I'm not sure, but all I know is that I ate waaay too many of them. They were great though~!~~ So cooking was a lot of fun!! 2/3 recipes turned out awesome!!!! I still am really trying to grasp the concept of "eat fat to lose weight." Don't get me wrong, I understand it, all the metabolic aspects of it and what not, but what I don't understand is how do you know when you're eating too much fat?? Almost all the paleo recipes I have found have a LOT of fat. So what I don't understand is how can people be eating that much fat and getting lean??? I wish someone could really explain this to me. My coaches and fellow CFers have advised me to paleo/zone. I have been doing this since I started paleoing. Not measuring PERFECTLY, but doing it as best as I can without it consuming a significant amount of time. But how the heck do you zone these paleo recipes??? They all are sooo high in fat, I think half of them wouldn't even bake correctly if you tried to zone the recipe. You can't even really portion it out either simply because the blocks of fat are significantly more than proteins and carbs. I'm so confused as to what to do. I usually just eat my pros, carbs, and fats separetely (i.e., 3oz turkey burger, 1-2 blocks carbs (i.e., 4 cups spinach, 3 cups shrooms), 1-2 tsp almond butter). But I want to start having more "complete meals." Something like a single main entree. Or a few different small entrees that fit together well. All in all though, the weekend was a success!! I am super tired today though and was dragging ass at boot camp this morning. It was pathetic. I thought all that fat I had yesterday might help me with energy today, but that was a negative. I think I'm still in need of sleep, so I'm gonna crash out early tonight!!! Wow, this is a really long post, guess its my way of makin up for slackin off so much on this blog.

as a goodbye note.. our WODs today were:

warmup

21, 15, 9
thrusters with dumbbells (I used 10lb dbs)
dumbbell swings (total weight was 20lbs)
med ball cleans (6lb med ball)

my time: 12:41 disgusting. I finished last and just felt like crap the entire workout.

50,40,30,20,10
overhead med ball sit up
supermans
run (~400m)

I did the sets of 50 and 40 and got through 30 OH sit ups, but then we had to stop and stretch

DONE.

I felt like I was really really bogged down today at boot camp, but I pushed myself through it and I didn't give up!!! Gonna eat great paleo meals today and get a good nights rest and kick ass in my WODs for the rest of this week!!!

Hope everyone has a great day!!!!

I Love Paleo!!!

Paleo has changed my life!!! July 3rd was my first day of no dairy and no gluten!! I love it and wish I would've started eating this way sooner!! I am eating paleo and trying to also zone. My tummy is flatter, mental clarity, no more painful bloating, better sleep, more energy, no more constant thinking about food and portions!!! I'm in heaven!!!

CRAZINESS!!!

So on facebook there is an App. called "God Wants You to Know", and I try to click it everyday.. well today my msg was:

Lee got a message that on this day, God wants her to know...
... that you are what you eat.Food you eat becomes you, so take a good look at the food in front of you, - is this what you want to call yourSelf? What kind of food deserves to be called by your name?

How crazy is that? I just decided to go paleo and then I get this msg?? Just makes me feel even better about my decision to go paleo!!! woo hoo!!! (even tho its all prolly bogus... its still pretty bizarre how on target these msgs seem to be!!!)

anyways.. had to share this cuz it kinda freaked me out!!!

I have gone Paleo (day 2)!!!

After reading Melissa Byers' blog about her 30-day paleo plan, I have decided to go paleo to see if it helps my painful bloating go away and just to see if it helps me feel better overall!! Fortunately, this isn't too big of a change for me. I just have to remove the following from my eating plan: oats, stevia/truvia, gum, and lactose-free milk. Today is day 2 and I feel great!!! I really like the no measuring aspect of it, but I am still trying to zone it, but not stressing over it!!! My mind feels very clear and just after one day, I feel awesome!! I was extremely tired last night but I don't think it was due to paleo.. I think it was cuz I prolly didnt eat enough fats throughout the day and/or because I needed more sleep?! I will see how I feel today!

Woke up this morning and did the following WOD:

CFC Warmup

4 rounds of:
10 vertical jumps
10 push ups
10 sit ups
for time: 5:04

10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1 burpees and situps
estimated time: 10 minutes

Went swimming for about 30 minutes with my mom

Stretched

Laid out and chatted with my mom

The burpees were tough to get through, but it was a great workout!!! It is really difficult for me to workout on my own, but I woke up this morning with a crazy desire to workout, rare for me haha!! I asked my mom to join me, but I think shes still a bit intimidated by CF and opted to just swim with me.. I WILL get her to do a CF workout with me someday!!! I caught her watching me from the window so I know she is interested!!! Just gotta show her that she CAN do it!!

Its a great start to the wonderful 4th of July!!! Hope everyone has a safe and relaxing holiday!!