Fight for Perfection

Moving (blogs, not in the real world)

2010-02-11T15:13:00.000-08:00

So I was checking out Tumblr, after much time spent pointedly ignoring it, and I've decided that the short-post format that a lot of the designs seem to encourage was more suited to my tastes. Also, this blog was started very much to focus on weight loss, and my thinking as transformed so much that it felt appropriate to have a fresh start. Anyway, here is my new blog:

http://kirstentraining.tumblr.com/ (be warned, it's a bit chaotic.)

I'm awesome!

2010-01-23T22:41:00.000-08:00

Ok, I'm probably just normal, but I'm feeling awesome. I think it really is all the sleep I've been getting. Today was just out of control in terms of my productivity... I cleaned the whole apartment, and afterwards decided to do a workout... After that I headed out to the grocery store where I eventually ran out of steam, but now I'm feeling great again.

So while it's been great getting so much sleep, I now need to figure out how to keep it going on the sleeping front but also get some serious training in. So I've set some goals for myself for the next 9 weeks... but fundamentally, I just have to get myself to the gym. here's the plan:

Sleep bare minimum 7.5 hours per night, preferably 8-9 hours.
Get to the gym every day of the week except Wednesdays and Saturdays. if I miss a day make it up on wed or sat.
On 4 of those days per week do a strength workout, follow the Crossfit Football "Novice" programas closely as possible.
On all 5 of those days do a metcon workout, probably trying to stick to the most recent Crossfit main site metcon workout.
Ultimate frisbee games can replace metcon for the day, but I still need to get my strength training in.

I think a big part of this will be getting better at wrming up quickly and efficiently. I've improved somewhat, but I still often feel like I'm not doing a good job getting my upper body warm.

I don't really have firm goals in terms of specific exercises, mainly because I honestly don't even know just how far I may have slipped. I know I've lost strength in my back squat though, so a definite goal will be getting back to my old PR of 165lbs. I know also that I want to get my kipping pullups solid again, so I'm going to try and see if I can match my old Cindy PR of 10 rounds. This may be difficult, as the pullup bars at the gym are not the greatest. I'm thinking maybe of taking some chalk with me so that I can at least work up some callouses...

carbs! :(

2010-01-20T12:44:00.000-08:00

Weight: 142.0

So I finally accepted that I'd re-addicted myself to carbohydrates. For the past month or so a normal day sees me snacking on "just a piece" of candy multiple times per day, or eating the fries that came with my burger, or a "small" serving of ice cream at home. My breakfasts have been the one place where I've managed to maintain good habits. Every morning pretty much without fail I have 2-3 eggs, some bacon, and a cup of coffee with coconut cream.

Yesterday I suddenly realized mid-morning that I really wanted to eat something, but not only was I not hungry, I was actually feeling a bit full. That was the catalyst that forced me to admit my relapse. So taking quick stock of how I was feeling, I decide right then and there to just fast for the rest of the day. And.... it worked! I'm generally quite bad at fasting, but I think I've realized that I do the best with a solid breakfast/brunch, go the rest of the day without food, and sleep out the end of the fast overnight. Anyway, I was only normal-hungry this morning when I broke my fast, but now after lunch I'm back to craving food even though I'm not hungry. I think the soup I had for lunch was too carb-y for my current state. Well I'll eat my fill today and try to keep it healthy, and maybe I'll feel ready to try another fast tomorrow.

On the fitness side... well I haven't been to the gym in over a week, but that was semi-deliberate. I've been really focused on getting a lot more sleep, and that means if it's a bit late and I have the choice of going to the gym or going home, I'll go home. Last night was awesome, I was in bed by 9pm and asleep by 9:30pm. I popped out of bed this morning at 6am. Hopefully once I get my system more in line I'll be good to go to bed at more like 10pm. And hopefully I'll make it to the gym today or tomorrow.

oops!

2010-01-11T21:27:00.000-08:00

Weight: 143.6

Back Squat:
5x 110 lbs
5x 110 lbs
5x 95 lbs

I was sharing the bar, and forgot to add the weight back on for the final set. And then things got silly...

Shoulder Press:
1x 60 lbs, followed by push press x5
1x 55 lbs, followed by push press x5
5x 50 lbs

I actually had decided on 55 lbs, but forgot about that when I started. And I think I need to do a much better job of getting my shoulders warm.

Gym again

2010-01-09T19:16:00.000-08:00

Weight: 143.0

I've been battling a pretty nasty cold... mostly just coughing up a ton of phlegm, but I've been fortunate enough to avoid the sinus infections that are more usual for me when I get a cold. I've been worrying about what medicine and supplements to take, and what food to eat, because I'm not normally sick this long. Then yesterday I finally had a lightbulb moment when I realized I need to get way more sleep. Durrr. Not only have I been waking up in the night because of the coughing, but I've also just been super busy and not even getting into bed until really late every night. No more! I'm in bed at 9pm every night until I'm feeling 100%.

I finally felt well enough to head back to the gym today. Both lifting rooms were very eerily quiet, they don't play music and there weren't too many people. I'll definitely have to bring an ipod or something in the future.

Back Squat:
5x 105 lbs
5x 105 lbs
5x 105 lbs

I think I can go up another 5-10 lbs next time. But I need to keep taking it slow or I'm going to pull something.

Bench Press:
5x 85 lbs
5x 85 lbs
5x 85 lbs

Pecs felt strong, but all the stabilizing muscles felt really wobbly. Up 5 lbs next time.

Finished with a scaled-down WOD from CrossFit Football. Got my heart rate up, but it's tough doing metcon by myself.

Happy new year

2010-01-04T22:10:00.000-08:00

Ah new year's, that magical time when gyms waive their initiation fees to lure you in. Anyway, we now have a membership at the local Y, and it was especially nice to not worry about the initiation fee because we'll probably be moving in a few months.

Anyway, I haven't figured out exactly what my fitness plan is for the next few months, but I'm contemplating following the Crossfit Football strength training, and mixing up the metcon, at least for a little while because I'm not feeling very enthusiastic about sprinting workouts right now.

I went really light on the squats, and goo thing as I can already tell that I'm going to be very sore.

Back Squat:
5x 115 lbs
5x 95 lbs
5x 95 lbs

Shoulder Press:
5x 45 lbs
5x 50 lbs
5x 55 lbs

Why hello there!

2009-12-10T11:39:00.000-08:00

Weight: 142.0

Well there seems to be a strong correlation between me not following through on my goals and me not keeping this blog updated. Perhaps... I feel guilty and don't want to admit failure? Surely not! :) At any rate, I went away for a weekend, succumbed to a nasty head cold, took a long time to recover, and then immediately following that I fell into some serious stress and anxiety in my personal life. Anyway, everything is happily resolved, (except for some lingering phlegm from the cold) and I'm ready to take stock of my health and fitness.

On the one hand, I haven't gone to Kung Fu/San Shou in 3 weeks, and I'm pretty certain I won't renew in January, so that's pretty much a giant failure. Well, no, it was a great experience that I hope to build on in the future, so that's good. I have managed to make it to my weekly ultimate frisbee league game, so I haven't been completely inactive. Also, I've been doing daily sets of jumping pull-ups in our doorway pullup bar, and I can now consistently do a single deadhang pull-up completely cold, no warmup required. In fact, a few days ago after feeling good and warm I managed two consecutive deadhangs! I haven't managed to replicate that performance yet, but I think it's really just a matter of time now. I haven't been keeping up as well on the handstand pushups though, and I doubt I've progressed much there since I'm not getting the added benefit of extra regular pushups at San Shou.

On the food front, I succumbed to the holiday sugary latte drinks for a brief stint, (Coinciding with when I got sick. Cause? Effect? Correlation? Ah well, good reinforcement to eat well, I guess.) but I shook that off and am sticking to yummy unsweetened teas when I'm feeling cold. I've also been eating somewhat smaller lunches and not snacking as much throughout the day which has been working out fairly well for me. I'm really enjoying focusing on the quality of my food, even despite the added expense and limited restaurant options.

So with San Shou getting tabled I am once again contemplating gym options. I'm leaning towards the local Y, as it looks like a really nice facility and is within easy walking distance for me. Plus a friend already has a membership there, which makes for great motivation. The biggest thing before I decide will be scoping out the free weights and other exercise equipment.

I was supposed to update my pull-up and hand-stand pushup progress this week, so hopefully I'll get that done today or tomorrow.

Daily log

2009-11-10T10:39:00.000-08:00

Weight: 143.2

Just gettin' my carbs in.

Carb Log (44g):

coffee and coconut cream - 2g
greek yogurt - 5g
jerky - 2g
almond meal muffins - 11g
burger toppings - 1g
cashews - 10g
red wine - 8g
broccoli - 5g?

Stocking up

2009-11-09T09:38:00.000-08:00

Weight: 143.6

I went to Costco yesterday! I stocked up big-time on fish oil capsules, but ended up passing on vitamin D capsules, as they are reasonably priced and sans-soybean oil at my local grocery. They had raw chicken breasts in convenient 2-breast packs, great for freezing and then thawing two at a time. I ended up passing on the large packs of nuts as the bulk bins at the local grocery again work well. Costco had very nicely priced 18-packs of omega-3 eggs, which is enough right there to get me going back there more often. (Still digging around for a source for eggs from pastured chickens, but no luck so far.) Anything else? Oh, I got a big box of sweet potatoes to try the spiced sweet potato slow-cooker recipe that I found... of course I'll only be able to have like a tablespoon of it a day to stay within my carb limit. :) The only greek yogurt they had was fat-free, so boo to that. I almost got it anyway, as I'm not eating it so much for the fat, but it wasn't really cheap enough compared to what we normally get. I'm sure I got other interesting things that I'm forgetting at the moment, but those are the highlights.

On the downside, I hadn't eaten for many hours before going, and after being there for about an hour and not really being anywhere near done I was feeling a bit dizzy. Shopping is hungry work! But considering my success with low-carb and fasting, I wonder if the shopping somehow spiked my insulin or something... You know I didn't really start feeling faint/hungry until we cut through the carb-alicious aisles. Maybe just seeing all the sugar was enough to raise my insulin and crash my blood sugar? Ah well, so we went to the uber-cheap greasy restaurant in the store, and I very foolishly ordererd a "chicken bake" instead of a hot dog. There was no way to avoid the bread when eating the chicken bake the way I could have with a hot dog, and thus I had way too many carbs yesterday. I topped off after returning home by eating a ton of strawberries. At that point I decided that trying to guess at how many carbs I had was a losing proposition, so I will just update yesterday's carb count with "a lot" and move on.

I made cheesy almond meal herb muffins last night...

Carb Log (36g):

coffee and coconut cream - 1g
almond meal muffins - 15g
Cobb salad - 10g?
dark chocolate - 8g
jerky - 2g

4-week check-in

2009-11-08T11:48:00.000-08:00

Weight: 143.4

Today is my 4-week check-in. My benchmarks are the bodyweight exercises- pull-ups and handstand push-ups. I've been getting in a set or two of 5 jumping pull-ups pretty much every day, with occasional deadhang attempts. A few times I've gotten my chin just over the bar on a deadhang.... but today I warmed up and got a full on deadhang collarbone-to-bar pull-up! Woot. I rested a little and managed to do another with a bit of kicking my feet in a spastic manner.

On the handstand push-up front it's a bit harder to tell how much I'm improving, but I'm getting tons of push-ups in every time I go to a kung fu class, and can tell I'm improving there. Anyway, I tried getting a handstand push-up touching my forehead to a stack of 4 DVD cases, but no dice. I did manage to complete one to a stack of 5 cases, which is 3 inches, so that's still solid. Anyway, I'll keep getting sets in to a 7 or 6 case stack, and try again in a month.

I didn't really keep track of my carbs yesterday but I kept them fairly low.. at least under 100g. today I'll try to start keeping track again.

Carb Log: (a lot)

daily update

2009-11-06T07:16:00.000-08:00

Weight: 144.0

So get this, pickles have carbohydrates in them! Normally I don't count pickles for anything, but I guess if I'm trying to keep my carbohydrates really low and I'm eating a lot of pickles, I'd better keep track.

I've been contemplating sources of probiotics in my diet, and it inspired me to have a bit of greek yogurt this morning. I need to look into non-dairy sources of probiotics though, at this rate I'm never going to manage eliminating dairy. (to see if I'm sensitive to it.)

Carb Log (51g):

coffee and coconut cream - 1g
greek yogurt - 5g
coffee and half & half - 3g
dark chocolate - 20g
pickles - 4g
almond stuffed olives - 6g
balsamic vinegar - 2g
kale chips - 5g
cashews - 5g

Mmmm....

2009-11-05T14:47:00.000-08:00

Weight: 143.0

I think I may be eating too much chocolate...

Carb Log (35g):

coffee and coconut cream - 1g
Dark chocolate - 28g
burger toppings -1g
almond stuffed olives - 5g

My Vibrams

2009-11-04T13:27:00.000-08:00

Weight: 143.6

A few weeks ago I ordered a pair of Vibram Five Fingers. (The "classic" model.) After a bout of colder weather and a rather sad realization that they don't provide much in the way of heat retention, I've finally started to wear them more regularly. On work days I generally walk about 1.5 miles total there and back, plus whatever wandering I end up doing during lunch time. (not very much, generally.) At first the arches of my feet were a bit sore, but the main thing I feel now is my pinky toe on each foot. It's splayed out and I can feel that I'm actually using it while walking. It's exceeding odd. Anyway, I'll keep wearing them in moderation as I apparently am still building up muscle in my pinky toes. Who knew? Oh, and I definitely haven't tried running in them yet.

I'm glad the people in my office are generally supportive, though I have told everyone that they are "therapeutic" to hopefully stave off anyone thinking I'm too weird. :)

Carb Log (27g):

coffee and coconut cream - 1g
McD's grilled chicken wraps, minus the tortillas - 15g
Dark chocolate - 11g

Just a daily update

2009-11-03T09:13:00.000-08:00

Weight: 142.6

Well, I seem to be feeling better. Did my pull-ups and handstand push-ups. My left hamstring is pretty sore from when we went out and threw for a while on Sunday. I want to really focus on my low release flick... well, really just my flick in general.

I'm cutting my coffee back to just my single mug first thing in the morning. If I want hot things and/or caffeine I'll stick to tea.

Carb Log (31g):

coffee and coconut cream - 1g
dark chocolate - 18g
burger toppings - 1g
almond stuffed olives - 3g
balsamic vinegar - 4g
bell pepper - 4g

Sick sick sick

2009-11-02T19:19:00.000-08:00

Weight: 144.2

Well... I woke up today with a pounding headache. At first I thought it was bad dehydration, but I wasn't feeling very thirsty, and I'm pretty familiar with waking up parched. (Dry mouth, super-concentrated urine... yay...) Anyway, I was pretty nauseous but ended up eating a little so I could down some ibuprofen, and then just slept it off. I'm feeling mostly better now, but am left just hoping that there isn't a repeat. At least since I slept for much of the day my carb count is nice and low...

Carb Log (38g):

Cheesecake - 25g
dark chocolate - 9g
red wine - 4g

Ah temptation

2009-11-01T06:30:00.000-08:00

So a while ago I tried making a "primal" (plus dairy) cheesecake using this recipe. As was more or less expected, it wasn't very sweet... Actually it ended up tasting pretty much like strawberry cream cheese, which while I enjoy, isn't really cake-worthy. The one thing we did really like was the crust, which was surprisingly excellent despite no added sugar. So we decided to try a "traditional" cheesecake filling (using this recipe) with the "primal" crust next time. Anyway, we've had the ingredients for a while but finally got around to it last night. It was excellent! The primal crust worked very well with the filling. We may try reducing the sugar a bit next time... I guess by replacing some of the sweetened condensed milk with evaporated milk... Not sure how that will work... I'd also like to get rid of the wheat flour... i was thinking of trying tapioca flour, but am worried it might end up a little too chewy.

But in the meantime I'm left with a yummy dessert in my fridge just as I start my personal very low carb challenge. :( Here are the carb counts of the ingredients:

crust:
Almond meal - 20 g

filling:
Sweetened condensed milk - 230 g
flour - 25 g
cream cheese - 24 g
sour cream - 16 g
lemon juice - 2 g

But we used a regular pie pan instead of springform, so we only used about 2/3rds of the filling and even less of the sour cream... so I'm guessing the whole cake has about 210 carbs. So if I only eat a slice that's about 1/8th of the whole thing that's just 26 g carbs... Maybe if I eat nothing but meat for the rest of the day it'll be okay. :)

In other news I got back on track doing jumping pullups and handstand pushups yesterday. On the handstand pushups I've removed a DVD case so I'm now doing sets of 5 lowering my head to a stack of 7 DVD cases. yay.

Carb Log (56g):

Coffee and half & half - 4g
Cheesecake - 25g
pineapple salsa - 10g
bite of banana bread (d'oh!) 5g?
dark chocolate - 6g
red wine - 6g

Time to fix my diet

2009-10-31T11:03:00.000-07:00

Weight: 144.2

So my carbohydrates (especially SUGAR) intake has gotten out of control in the past few weeks. Because of that, and also just in honor of the holiday season, I am going to spend the month of November being very strict about my carbohydrate intake. I'm aiming for 50g or less per day. And of course to keep myself honest I'll be logging my carbs hopefully every day on this blog thingy. :)

Actually, I'm unofficially starting today, because I had an unfortunate run-in with a whole lot of halloween candy yesterday, and I'm STILL feeling the effects of it.

Update

2009-10-24T13:42:00.000-07:00

Weight: 143.6

Well, it's nearing the end of week two, so it's past time for a progress update. San Shou is awesome, though I've only been managing two classes a week so far. Hopefully in another few weeks I'll have time to start making it to Wednesday night classes. I'm going to have to buy gloves soon, and I'm probably going to get Windy brand sparring gloves as they seem to be the most affordable while still being good quality. (Still a lot of money though... *sniff*) But currently 'm just using loaners, which is fine for now. I definitely need to pick up hand wraps before my next class though, as I'm starting to actually punch things! Speaking of which, I am definitely pleased to learn how to punch correctly. For now I'm not hitting things very hard and am only being half-way successful at keeping my guard up and such. But I've been very focused on my footwork, which I'm hopeful will be for the best in the long run. Back to the gloves though, the Windys come in black, red, and pink, and I'm really tempted to get the pink ones, but it's really just too much of a statement for me. If there were baby blue gloves I'd get them in a heartbeat though.

What else? Well right after my last post I completely forgot about my PT and pullups/hand stand push ups. D'oh! I finally remembered this morning, so I'm starting those up just a bit belatedly. I'm starting the hand-stand pushups at 8 DVD boxes, doing sets of 5 or so. I had a deep tissue massage on Thursday, and my therapist said I really need to start using the foam roller on my IT bands, so that will be commencing soon. My Vibram FiveFingers arrived and I've worn them twice so far. So combining everything I'm very pleased at my progress on correcting my various imbalances and having a better whole-body thing going.

I've received my first shipment of beef... it's totally awesome. 4 lbs of ground beef, and about 6 lbs of various steaks... all 100% grassfed. I will have to get a bit better at planning ahead so I can thaw the right amount and not have any go to waste. The CSA produce boxes start the first week of November, and I'm stoked about that too.

Anyway, that's all for now!

New plan

2009-10-13T09:46:00.000-07:00

Weight: 144.2

I feel really high-energy right now, and have been doing my best to get involved in waaay too many things for the fall/winter. I think part of it is even though I loved playing competitive ultimate all summer, I felt like I didn't really have time for anything else besides that and, you know, working and sleeping. Probably also some of this is prompted by the sudden temperature/weather change from summer to fall, and realizing that I don't want to spend this winter at home every night depressedly huddled in a blanket. So, in the mean time I've probably overbooked myself, but presumably the things that turned out to be boring will probably fall by the way side as I figure out the right balance.

The one thing that I don't plan on dropping is Kung Fu/San Shou! After going to a few classes in June I had to drop it because it conflicted with ultimate. But I've committed to it now, showing up for my first class yesterday and paying the 3-month membership fee. Each class has an hour of strength/flexibility/form training, and then 45ish minutes of boxing drills. The form training is phenomenal. I love love love it because it emphasizes slow movements in really deep stances, I end up spending a ton of time with my thighs parallel to the ground. Amusingly, that part isn't so bad, as I have pretty good strength and flexibility, but my balance is just terrible, so I tend to fall over when I try a slow-motion kick. sigh. I have yet to do much in the way of boxing though, really I'm going to have to learn how to jab and the rest correctly before I actually try to hit something.

Sooo... to keep me entertained I've set up my usual 12-week "plan", with the martial arts being the main focus. The start date is 10/12/09 and the end date is 1/3/10, though that last week will be a rest week. since I'm not going to be doing much in the way of lifting weights, I've set some benchmarks to track my progress of bodyweight exercises, namely handstand pushups and pullups. The handstand pushups I'll stack DVD boxes to touch my forehead to and try to remove one DVD box per week. The pullups are tougher, as I still can't do one unassisted, but I've started doing jumping pullups in the mornings and evenings, and I'm really close to having a deadhang.

For now I'll be shooting for going to san shou 3 times per week. Ultimate Frisbee winter league weekly games will be starting around week 5, so I'll reevaluate at that point. Also, I did manage to tweak my shoulder a few weeks back, so I've restarted my PT exercises. All that, plus the daily pullups and handstand pushups should keep me busy. Oh, and I've found a good massage therapist so she's doing some deep tissue massage work... ouch ouch ouch. But my knees are already so much happier for it.

And finally, on the food front, I've signed up for a CSA to get a small box of produce each week, and they will also keep us supplied with eggs. Separately, I've found a group that will ship us 100% grassfed beef once a month for a very reasonable price. Hopefully our refrigerator/freezer can handle the influx. I've transitioned from low-carb "whatever I can get ahold of" to much more quality REAL food. I hardly venture into the middle aisles of the grocery store at all these days, except to ocasionally pick up olive oil or vinegar or the like.

I'm still eating a fair amount of dairy, but I'm trying out unsweetened coconut milk in the coffee. It's a bit bitter... but right now I'm going with half coconut milk, half half'n'half, and it's pretty good. If I can wean myself entirely off the half'n'half I might try going no dairy for a month to see how it feels.

Snap out of it

2009-09-23T09:33:00.000-07:00

Weight: 144.2

So I somehow got myself into a massive funk for the past month. I'm not really sure what happened, I guess I just got super busy for a while and then just wanted to do nothing but lie around and read all day whenever I had time to myself. Of course mid-funk I didn't even realize that anything was wrong, it's only looking back that I can see that I was off balance. In some ways it's good that this happened during frisbee season, because even though I skipped track workouts and practices, I still made it out to tournaments, and my team is so supportive and fun to be around that I think it helped me snap out of it. It's really tough though, because when I'm not feeling great I tend to not eat right and not want to do anything physical, which then adds to my not feeling well.

Anyway, we had sectionals this weekend, and despite not doing much physical stuff this past month, I'm playing the best defense that I've pretty much ever played, and when I occasionally find myself cutting on offense I'm getting open and timing it a bit better. On the flip side my throws are probably the worst that they've been, though I'm not really trying anything fancy when I get the disc, so it's not really hurting anything. My team doesn't really need me to break the mark or huck the disc, so as long as I can still take advantage of what my mark is giving me, I'm fine. And honestly, of all things, throws are probably the easiest to improve, at least for me.

Regionals are in a week and a half, so I'm feeling pretty good about focusing on frisbee for the remaining time until then. I'm also thinking a lot about what I want to do once the season is over. I'd really like to start up kung fu again, but the classes are only Monday/Wednesday/Friday evenings. I'm not sure if it'd be better to have more flexible times to be active... I really want to have physical activity that keeps me motivated though, so I think kung fu is a better option for me than a gym that's open at all hours.

On the food front, I want to work on eating only when I'm hungry. This is tough, because my body is pretty strongly conditioned to expect food at the usual times, and my work day lends itself to that as well. I have a much easier time on the weekends, I get up whenever, generally don't have anywhere to be so I don't feel any rush to eat at particular times. For now I think I'll focus on occasionally skipping breatfast on weekdays, or maybe making breakfast and taking it in with me, and not eating it until I feel hungry. Anyway, should be interesting.

Where my weight has been

2009-08-13T13:24:00.000-07:00

Weight: 141.6

Ahh... Nothing like yet another new low to inspire me to post. This totally amazed me though, because I was feeling very hungry yesterday (despite almost no physical activity) and ended up eating all the remaining almond meal muffins (almond meal, butter, eggs, cheese, herbs) that I had made. I believe all told I ended up eating 9 yesterday? Mmmmm. According to my iphone calorie-counting app I ate about 3,000 calories total... but only 74 grams of carbs. Normally if I have a high-calorie day the scale is a few pounds higher the next morning- generally water bloat, or maybe even straight-up extra mass in my digestive tract. I guess since I didn't pig out on carbs I wasn't retaining any extra water.

Anyway, very nice to see 141... it inspired me to look back over my records and try to figure out my highs and lows... Well the easy one to locate was October 2006, the only time I ever got below 140 lbs. (just barely, and I cut my hair short in celebration.) That was probably also the least muscle mass I've had, because it was after moving out here and before restarting ultimate or discovering Crossfit. Anyway, my weight slowly crept up to a well-muscled max of 157 lbs in July 2007. Honestly, it probably wasn't very much of a bodyfat percentage change, as I had put on some serious muscle from having started Crossfit 3 months earlier. And I started tracking my weight, so I can show this nifty graph:

I was pretty religious about updating it daily for a while there. Based on this I got down to 141 in July 2008. And now I'm there again! The big difference this time is, unlike my previous lows, I did not strictly limit my calories to get here. Really I have a whole lot more knowledge and am making much much better food quality choices, so maybe I'll break past 140 again, and this time without feeling constantly deprived. I don't think I'll cut my hair this time though. :)

I should mention that I know body weight is just a number and really I'm not obsessing about it as much as it may appear. :) It's just a nice easy number to track for a geeky analytical sort like me.

Anyhoo, tonight we will be attempting to make breadless crab cakes. I finally managed to procure a cookie cutter as the recipe calls for, though I'm tempted to try just using an onion ring slice... sounds kinda delicious.

New low

2009-08-12T13:07:00.000-07:00

Weight: 142.8

New low today, so that's cool. Other than that I don't really have much to report... My defense continues to improve, and we focused on man D last practice, which let me focus a lot on tweaking the angle that I guard from.

The coffeemaker arrived. :) and I got a large slab of beef on Monday that I'm slowly working my way through. Ok, that's all for now.

Lots of Lunges

2009-08-05T12:25:00.000-07:00

Weight: 144.4

Well, it's a week later than planned, but I finally re-did the walking lunges, and did them nearly 5 minutes faster.

6/16/09 - 19:25
8/4/09 - 14:35

In some ways I can't take away too much from this. The time in June was on the beach, barefoot, in much hotter/more humid weather. This time was on a concrete sidewalk with knee pads. On the one hand the knee pads definitely helped, there's a tiny bit of time saved on each lunge as I don't have to be extra cautious and worry about banging my knee on the sidewalk. Does that time add up to 5 minutes? I doubt it. Also, and most tellingly, I felt strong and energetic right up to the end. My muscles were fatigued, but I didn't feel at all like they were about to give out on me entirely the way I did back in June.

Incidentally, I sifted through the Crossfit archives, and I did the workout on 12/16/2007 in 16:04 minutes, and on 8/28/2007 in 19:01 minutes. Both of those were on the same stretch of sidewalk (not the stretch I used yesterday though).

Anyway, I'm feeling pretty good physically. Food-wise, I'm having some issues due to the fact that I'm trying to dine out a whole lot less. Suffice it to say that broiling a steak doesn't take nearly as long as I thought it did. (It still tasted good medium-well instead of rare though.)

Tournament!

2009-07-27T09:07:00.000-07:00

Weight: 147.4

A successful tournament this past weekend. Well, mostly successful. One of my big goals for the season, always hitting the first open look and not holding on to the disc to "wait for something better", was mixed success. A big part of it was the whole team learning how to play offense with each other in a real game situation. It got a lot easier to hit people early later on in the tournament as I got used to cutting styles and timing. Another big part of it was often times the first open cut I got was a break-side cut. I need to contemplate that some more. On the one hand I tend to not try for breaks unless I've just caught the disc in flow and my mark hasn't had a chance to really set, or I'm making a really short throw. I generally feel like that works the best for my playing style. On the other hand I still have plenty of room for improvement as a handler, and there are some amazing handlers out there that are great at starting the offense moving with a break throw. I guess for now I'll focus a bit more on my breaks (I've been getting pretty lazy) and see if I perhaps just start hitting those looks more often when I'm feeling more confident in that area.

I was fairly happy with my defense the whole weekend. Actually, I didn't even think about it at the time, but my cardiovascular endurance really was not a limiting factor for me pretty much at all this weekend. That's partly from the conditioning we've been doing fairly consistently this season. But a big chunk of it is that really and truly now I go into a point expecting to play hard for that one point and then sub out when the point is done. Occasionally I end up staying on for another point, but at least for this tournament it was only if I didn't have to do much on the previous point anyway.

I guess if my fitness keeps improving the next step is to finally learn how to be a cutter. I'm not rushing this one though. :)

I'm sore today, but only to a reasonable degree. The only thing that caused issues this weekend was my knees. They were mostly fine, except that between games an occasionally if I was on the sideline for a bit too long during games my left knee would... tighten up is the only way to describe it. There would be pressure and tightness in the back of the knee, and it would be a bit tight/painful to try to bend the knee very far. I found out through trial and error that going through several rounds of a lower quad stretch followed immediately by a lower hamstring stretch loosened it back up without too much trouble. Still, I think I'll do some internet research to see what's up. My right knee was fine all weekend, but today it was actually the one hurting on my way to work. Go figure. I really really need to remember to ice my knees after tournaments.

Scrimmage, dump cuts

2009-07-24T12:07:00.000-07:00

Weight: 145.6

Well the cosmic justice gods caught up with me in response to my complaint that I didn't get enough playing time at last week's scrimmage. As in, I probably played a bit too much last night, if my body's complaints this morning are any indication. :) Actually all in all I think last night was a good experience for me, and in terms of personal fitness, I seem to be on the right track. My knees were actually more of a limiting factor than my stamina was. Then again it was pretty cold, which tends to hurt my knees faster... And while I did play a lot, I was mostly hanging out at dump so I get a lot more rest than most. But my downfield defense stayed pretty strong (for me) through to the end of the game, even on longer points. The knees are definitely a bit stiff and tender this morning, but not horrible. The rest of my muscles are stiff and sore, but to a reasonable degree.

I've noticed that I've been focusing a lot on dump cut strategy of late. I don't think it was really a conscious decision to focus on it, it's just a position I play a lot so it's an easy thing to focus on. I've been working a lot on setting up my cuts to get the disc with momentum and an open look to hit someone else right away, rather than just cutting to be the reset/bailout and then waiting for cutters to start up again. I've also been focusing a lot on which hand the thrower I'm cutting for uses, or which breaks they prefer, so I can tailor my cuts to hit a spot that they can get the disc to cleanly and quickly. Probably the biggest thing I've noticed is just how often I don't get the disc. It's tough because sometimes I definitely make a cut and clear because I know someone else will get the cut beyond me. But sometimes I think I'm open and I'm not sure why I wasn't hit. It's not like I can stop mid-point and start quizzing the thrower. Was I not open enough? Was there someone wide open behind me that I didn't see? Was the thrower holding out for a better option or not feeling confident that I'd catch the disc and/or take care of it once I got it? Some of these I can infer or ask about later, but a lot of this is a guessing game, and it makes for slow progress.

The tournament this weekend should be interesting.

Obligatory comment on diet: I've been sneaking a bit too many carbs again. Chocolate is a treat, not a daily necessity!

Raspberries

2009-07-18T20:13:00.000-07:00

Weight: 143.2

Rapberries and heavy cream. My new favorite "dessert". One cup of raspberries. One quarter of a cup of cream. 15 grams of carbohydrates. 22 grams of fat. delicious.

I'm very pleased to discover that raspberries now taste sweet with just the right amount of tangy. For the longest time they always just tasted sour to me. Hopefully this is a sign that my body's definition of "sweet" is finally readjusting, but even if it's just placebo or "mind over matter" I'll take it as a win. :)

Also, I've discovered that the best way for me to take a sweet snack is to make sure there's more fat in it than carbs. This was originally figured out when eating dark chocolate. If I got 85% "extra dark", it was easy to enjoy a square and not feel the urge to eat more. but with 70% cocoa it was really difficult to keep from finishing off the whole bar. I keep looking for flavored dark chocolate (I love the slightly spicy chile flavored chocolate that I've had) but it's very hard to find with anything higher than 70% cocoa, and many just don't label the % on the flavored bars. So the rule of thumb regarding more fat than carbs has really helped me there.

I'm excited for my new low weight. I did end up going a bit high on carbs today, so I'm not too hopeful that I'll see 143 on the scale tomorrow. But still, a very good week for eating.

New low, plus pullup work

2009-07-17T10:54:00.001-07:00

Weight: 144.0

So, while I didn't actually go see the Crossfit Games, (thought I wouldn't be interested. what was I thinking?) I ended up following it pretty religiously throughout the weekend, on twitter, on the website, and watching all the videos. I gotta say, it was super inspirational and made me seriously want to workout a lot. I've actually started doing negatives on our pullup bar again, and my pushups have gotten better. I'm not going to be headed to the gym to lift anytime soon :( but I have once again started to dream of one day putting together a garage gym. :)

Other than that things are chugging along. I'm really happy with how well I've been avoiding sweets/carbs, and except for the days when I'm not getting enough sleep, my energy levels have been solid.

fuel for practice last night

2009-07-14T17:00:00.000-07:00

Weight: 145.8

I had ultimate practice yesterday, and it was noteworthy because normally when I have a weekday evening practice I'm tired and have no energy, but yesterday I felt great and energetic right through to the end of practice. It's quite possible that a lot of that was mental/mindset, but because I found it so interesting, I thought I'd note what food contributed to my energy-full practice.

First I should mention that I got about 7.5 hours of sleep the night before, 10:45pm-6:15am.

Breakfast: (~7:00 am)
3 large pieces of bacon
2 eggs fried in bacon grease
coffee w/ half'n'half

Snack: (~12:00 pm)
20g of 85% cocoa dark chocolate

Lunch: (~2:30 pm)
McDonalds:
1 McDouble minus the bun
1 grilled chicken ranch snack wrap minus the wrap

Snack: (~3:30 pm)
iced espresso with about 1/4 cup of whole milk and 1/8 cup half'n'half
handful of mixed macadamia nuts and filberts

Dinner: (~6:30 pm)
About 5 breaded chicken tenders dipped in ranch dressing
half of a big juicey cheeseburger, minus the bun, topped with avocado and bacon
small handful of french fries

and then practice was from 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm (ish). i should also mention that I had my multivitamin in the morning and fish oil capsules totaling 1200mg of Omega 3s throughout the day. Anyway, the big dinner didn't remotely slow me down! And interestingly, even though I had a bit more carbs at dinner than usual for me, I didn't feel an energy dip at any point afterward (or if I did it was before practice really got going, so it didn't seem to matter.)

Anyway, things are going well and I hope to keep it up!

healthy eating pays off

2009-07-10T13:51:00.000-07:00

Weight: 144.4 (yesterday's weight)

So I got a calorie-counting iPhone app with the intent of just using it for fun and not actually letting it affect my diet, but of course I can't help myself and have actually been eating a bit less (especially fewer carbs) because of it. And it paid off with the lowest weight on the scale that I've seen in a while. :)

I survived the tournament this weekend and I thought my knees would be a lot worse off, but they seem about the same as they were last week. I am however still recovering from a pulled upper hamstring, which I'm annoyed about but it seems to be nothing serious. I'm totally failing on my shoulder PT, but I'll try to get in my exercises tonight at least. We have an ultimate practice tomorrow and we had a track workout on Tuesday, good good. Obviously my eating has been good and I'm also remembering to supplement as planned... Oh and I will keep trying to update this thingy more often. Maybe next time I'll include real content instead of a super-quick summary. Who knows?

Track workout!

2009-07-01T12:45:00.000-07:00

Weight: 146.6

Well I have certainly jumped right in on some of my goals, though right off the bat I forgot to do my PT exercises yesterday. (Note to self: do them tonight before I go to sleep!) I've been remembering to take the fish oil supplements much more consistently. I went to practice on Monday, which was largely just one long bout of frustration as I wasn't happy with my throws and cuts, but then again adversity is good for you. :P

Yesterday's track workout went really well. We worked on footwork using an agility ladder for a while. I always feel like I'm accomplishing nothing on those, but really I'm going fast and occasionally stumbling over my feet, so presumably with repetition it will be helpful. The conditioning was pretty tough, one of those workouts on which I probably would have just stopped halfway through if I didn't have teammates there. It was 2 miles of running interspersed with burpees, mountain climbers, sit-ups, and rest periods. Unfortunately it really is glaringly obvious how much more out of shape I am than pretty much all of my teammates... I was the last one to finish. And I finished further and further behind after each new rest period. (One could argue that it's because I had a shorter rest period than everyone else since we started each new section together, but really we all rested until we felt like we could do more running, so really my endurance just sucks.)

In general I'm feeling pretty good today, though I'm not looking forward to being stuck in a seated position for pretty much the rest of my day. Also, I need to keep an eye on my knee, it's been bugging me a bit now and then, especially if I'm sitting or lying and try bending it, it feels like the kneecap is occasionally misaligning.

Diet-wise still doing pretty good on the carbs. Had a small frosty after the track workout, but I figure I was pretty depleted at that point, so it's ok. :)

Reboot

2009-06-29T12:02:00.000-07:00

Weight: 145.4

Imagine my surprise when I realized that I haven't posted a thing in a month and a half. Happily I didn't just sit around and do nothing that entire time, fitness-wise. I started taking Kung Fu classes, which I then had to stop when I realized just how much time Ultimate was going to be taking. I think those classes would be great though, so I plan on trying again when the Ultimate season is over. I went to the beach for a week and mostly goofed off, but managed to run around a play in the waves and even did a pretty intense workout out on the sand which left me sore for several days afterwards. ultimate practices started up and I've gotten a bit less rusty. On the down side, I haven't been to the gym at all, and I'm probably losing some muscle because of it. Also, probably the worst thing, I completely stopped doing my shoulder physical therapy exercises, probably contributing to a pretty bad moment playing Ultimate a few weeks ago. My shoulder popped out and it was a good 30 seconds before I could relax enough for it to shift back into place.

Diet-wise, my eating started to deteriorate as I started letting more sugary things back into my diet. I also fell off the gluten-free wagon and started munching on bread if there happened to be some in front of me. (i.e., at restaurants.) However, after coming back from the beach I've totally buttoned down and feel pretty good about my diet right now. I'm really not craving sweets at all.

So, in the spirit of always having a fitness plan, there's about 3 months left in the ultimate season. In that time my goals are to:
1. Post to this blog regularly, I'm shooting for 3-4 times per week.
2. Do my physical therapy exercises every day
3. Attend my weekly Ultimate practices- 2 per week plus a scrimmage
4. Attend my ultimate team's weekly track workout sessions
5. Limit sweets to maybe 1 dessert per week and keep working to limit carbs in general
6. Get 7.5 or more hours of sleep each night, go to bed early, and wake up early
7. Supplement with daily multivitamin, fish oil, and vitamin D

I also recently did a good benchmark workout- 400m of walking lunges in 19 minutes, 25 seconds on June 16th. I would like to do that workout again on or around July 28 (6 weeks later) and on or around September 8. (12 weeks later)

Feeling Phlegmy

2009-05-13T12:20:00.000-07:00

Weight: 145.2

Let's see, I had Ultimate practice on Saturday. It was warm and sunny, and now I'm sunburned. I felt pretty good, though clearly I still need to get my stamina up. I ran hard and played some good defense so I'll take it. We're still figuring out our final roster so I was playing with a lot of people whose playing style I'm not familiar with. My Offensive play therefore was a bit crappy, but one of my goals this season is to improve my handling especially so it doesn't depend so much on me being on exactly the same page as whoever is cutting for me. I want to be more adaptable. It's a work in progress. At the start of practice my right calf was feeling a bit strained, and then as practice progressed I was feeling it mostly in my right hamstring and by the end of practice it was almost all my right glute that was hurting. Not quite pulled I think, but not just sore either. I guess those deadlifts last week were a good wake-up call.

I'll try to get to the gym today if I'm not feeling too crappy after lunch. This week is supposed to be an evaluation week for me, but I'm thinking I'll keep it light today and then test my max lifts on Friday or Saturday.

I've been contemplating my diet, and I'm very happy with the whole low-carb thing, I'm feeling full and satisfied and not at all deprived. But I can't help but notice that I'm not losing weight! Hmm. Well perhaps I'm still a bit insulin resistant, but starting a few days ago I'm moving to a little more of a "dieting" mentality. A very gentle one, I don't intend to get into a mindset of feeling seriously deprived and miserable, and I'm honestly not even planning on counting calories. I'm instead trying:

a) Eating breakfast first thing after I wake up. It's been quite a while since I've done this, but so far Day 3 it's feeling pretty good. I'm eating eggs and avocado, and generally getting coffee on my way to work, and then I'm set until I finally get around to eating a late lunch.

b) Drinking less coffee. I was going pretty nuts there for the last month or so. I'm cutting back to one cup in the morning and maybe a cup of decaf in the afternoon when I feel the strong "coffee break" urge. Tea just doesn't seem to have enough bite for me.

c) Getting hungry between meals. Feeling satiated is all well and good, and I'm glad I took the time to really get to enjoy it without my weight creeping up, but I really don't think I'll do myself mental or emotional harm in the short term if I deprive myself a little now and then. I've been down that road enough times to be pretty good at recognizing the signs when I hit that point. Honestly my biggest concern is that I keep myself fueled enough to stay active, so I'll be watching myself closely.

I also want to refocus on one of my goals that I've been neglecting- getting more sleep! Hopefully cutting back on the coffee will help with that. In fact I really want to move towards getting to bed much earlier, so that I can wake up and take my time in the morning. My lofty goal is to start waking up without an alarm in the mornings, that would be crazy!

gym report

2009-05-07T19:42:00.000-07:00

Weight: 146.4

Assisted Dips:
5x "4"
5x "4"
5x "4"

Try for "3" next time.

Dead Lifts:
3x 165 lbs
3x 170 lbs
3x 175 lbs

start at 175 next time.

My physical therapist gave me more exercises and says I can scale back to every other day. The new exercise routine is still internal and external rotations with the theraband, but now starting out with my elbow at my side and working my way up to my arm being out at 90 degrees through the course of 20 reps. She also admonished me again to hold off on the pullups, even though I didn't mention that I was doing them again! tricksy.

Ultimate practice scheduled for this weekend and the weather forecast looks good.

rain rain

2009-05-02T17:53:00.001-07:00

Weight:146.2

Practice today was cancelled due to rain. So we went to the gym!! Fantabulous. Really though it was quite nice except I developed a headache while foam rolling/stretching and it refuses to go away. I'm a bit concerned about these headaches, I feel like I'm getting them with some regularity, like once a week or so, when I used to really only get headaches when I had a cold. Then again I do feel like I've been fighting a cold off and on for a while now (feeling phlegmy) so maybe that's what it is. I'll start paying closer attention now.

Single Leg Decline Press- I've avoided machines for so long, but all the squat racks were being used and honestly I kinda wanted to give my back a break anyway. Also, in the spirit of switching up how I work my legs, this was an interesting experiment. I definitely was feeling it a lot more along the outside of my quad, as opposed to back squats when I tend to feel it in my groin. I don't think I pushed this quite as hard as I could have, I was a little nervous about my non-working leg, which was just chilling in the middle, probably not the safest place for it. If I do this again I may try a different leg press machine.
5x 90 lbs
5x 90
5x 90

Assisted Dips:
5x "5"
5x "5"
5x "4"

I'm working on plank holds! I'm doing 2 with a break in between each time I go to the gym. I'm up to 1 minute 30 seconds on each. Gar, I used to be able to do 3+ minutes.

Blog? What blog?

2009-05-01T10:33:00.000-07:00

Weight: 145.8

Sorry sorry sorry for the lack of posts. I'm pleased to say though that it's not because i've fallen off the wagon. Well I need to get to the gym more, but I'm eating well, doing my shoulder exercises, and getting lots of sleep, so I can't complain. Did manage to make it to the gym yesterday:

Assisted Pullups:
5x "9"
5x "8"
5x "8"

I'm glad I'm tracking these, as I'm definitely getting better. My shoulder rehab exercises are getting stronger too. Cool.

I've been taking bags of macademia nuts and hazelnuts to work, I munch my way through them pretty fast. They're delicious.

First ultimate practice of the season last weekend. Another one this weekend. Should be awesome... Except it's going to rain.

Front Squats

2009-04-24T16:46:00.000-07:00

Weight: 147.6

Well I managed to go to the gym today. I actually have been feeling really energetic in the middle of the day, but am generally completely unmotivated at the beginning and end of the day. Anyhoo, I've been getting pretty annoyed at my laziness, so it felt pretty good. I recently read an interesting post on front squats (can't find the post now, sigh) and I was a bit suprised about how sore my back was after the Crossfit Total on Saturday, so I did front squats today.

Front Squats:
5x 105 lbs
4x 105 lbs
3x 100 lbs

It's pretty amazing how quickly I ran out of gas. They were great though, I really enjoyed keeping upright. If I leaned forward at all I would almost lose it, a very good enforcer of good form. My wrists were killing me though, and I realized I'd forgotten to stretch them out beforehand. Well I'll remember next time. I finished up with my shoulder exercises, then foam rollered my legs for a while. T'was a very pleasant gym visit.

Goal Lifts

2009-04-18T12:44:00.000-07:00

Weight: 147.4

A little late, but I did finally get around to testing my1-rep maxes.

Back Squat:155, 165, 170 lbs (fail)
Shoulder Press: 50, 55, 55 lbs
Dead Lift: 185, 195 (fail),185 lbs

A bit depressing, but not bad especially considering I haven't been to the gym in 2 weeks.

My shoulder is strengthening up nicely. My PT is still having me do the exercises from my first visit, and on alternate days I instead do a new set of exercises (all done with a thera-band):

Upright shoulder external rotation
Upright shoulder internal rotation
cross pull (similar to the picture, but starting low and pulling diagonally upward)

Weird happenings

2009-04-16T14:19:00.000-07:00

My goodness, I have a lot to report. First of all, I haven't done anything physical in 2 weeks. It's in a large part due to life getting in the way, but that's really more of any excuse for just really not wanting to go to the gym and work out. Actually, I've been doing a good job of keeping up with my physical therapy exercises for my shoulder, so it's not a total bust. Anyway, yesterday I thought about it for a bit and realized that I haven't really been eating enough to maintain an active lifestyle, so it makes sense that my body would be responding by feeling very lethargic. The not eating enough is interesting by itself because in the past when I'm stressed I tend to be a bit impulsive and make bad food choices. It's a good sign that I've come so far along in terms of removing the emotional component of eating. So I'm concentrating right now on getting a bit more food in me.

I finally got my bloodwork done, and the cholesterol results are crazy!

For reference, I'm a 25 year old female with a 9-5 desk job but a fairly active lifestyle. My BMI puts me just barely overweight depending on the time of day that you take the measurement, but I have a decent amount of muscle and am decidedly pear-shaped with very low abdominal fat. My mom (57 years old) recently started taking medication for high cholesterol, but my family has very little history of heart disease. Ok, with that in mind...

Blood Pressure: 118/69 mmHg
Total Cholesterol: 334 mg/dL (!!!)
Triglycerides: 59 mg/dL
HDL: 66 mg/dL
LDL Calculated: 256 mg/dL (!!!)
Fasting Blood Glucose: 85 mg/dL

Oh, and since my doctor was concerned:
TSH: 1.20 uIU/mL, so definitely no hypothyroid for me. yay.

So yeah, everything looks really good except that my Total Cholesterol/LDL are insanely high. I haven't heard from my doctor yet, though I'm expecting a call any time now. I'm more than half-expecting her to tell me to retake the test to double-check the results. (I swear I was fasting!) If she tries to put me on cholesterol-lowering drugs though I'm just flat out going to say no. It's much more important to me to keep my HDL high than it is to get my LDL lower, especially since I have zero other risk factors. And I've been looking, and every study that specifically looks at women shows a much stronger correlation between triglycerides and heart disease and an inverse correlation between HDL and heart disease- Total Choletserol and LDL seem much more weakly correlated, if at all. Anyway, I'll see if my doctor thinks any other tests- direct measurement of LDL, VLDL, ApoA/ApoB, C-reactive protein- would be worthwhile.

I know I've been going a bit nuts on the saturated fat front since I had been denying myself any real amount of fat for so many years, so I think I'll focus a bit on getting more mono-unsaturated fats and see if that doesn't help. All the bacon I've been eating is starting to get boring anyway. :) Also, I know I've been drinking a lot more coffee, so I did a little research, and it looks like 6+ servings per day of espresso or french press can raise LDL, but I'm mostly having filtered and am not drinking anywhere near 6 cups/day. (dear lord I'd be bouncing off the walls.) The other thing I've slacked off on is the red wine. I want to make sure I'm getting close to a glass per night, and see if that doesn't get my HDL up a bit as well.

Even with all this reassurance to myself, I still keep having to remind myself that I'm completely healthy and have no other risk factors, and my lifestyle changes of the past few months have been positive both physically and mentally. Yikes, the urge to be "normal" can be powerful.

I haven't even talked about my shoulder rehab, but I've typed enough, so I'll just say I'm making progress and that my PT gave me some more exercises to do.

ETA: Really I'm getting a lot more saturated fat from cream and cheese than I am from bacon.

Physical Therapy

2009-04-02T20:50:00.000-07:00

Weight: 147.2

Well my physical therapy appointment went well I think. She checked my shoulder out, gave me four exercises to do once or twice a day, and told me to lay off the heavy weights for a while. I have my next appointment in two weeks and I have every intention of doing my PT every day until then. Anyway, she confirmed that I'm hypermobile, which I knew, and said it was extra important that I have strong support muscles to protect my joints. She said in particular it's important to actually engage/activate muscles while stretching, otherwise I'll be hurting my joints. I had somewhat figured that out just from trial and error, but I'm somewhat annoyed that I hadn't actually heard/read that particular info before. Anyway, my PT exercises are:

External Rotation w/ 5 lbs, 3 sets of up to 15. This one is super weak! my poor shoulder. I'm managing to get 10-12 each set.
Internal Rotation w/ 10 lbs, 3 sets of up to 15.
Lateral Raise, arms 45 degrees out from front, w/ 5 lbs, 3 sets of up to 15. I keep wanting to raise my arms too high apparently, the physical therapist kept correcting me. They aren't supposed to go even to horizontal.
Wall pushups. sigh. Well she said I need to get my form right. My elbows are supposed to stay close to the body on these, my shoulder blades should be back and down, and my back needs to be less arched than I tend to let it get.

Light gym day

2009-03-31T15:22:00.000-07:00

Weight: 148.4

Tournament this past weekend, will perhaps post about it later this week. Today though, I got to the gym despite wanting more sleep. I'm glad I went, I kept things light but still felt like it was very worth my while. I definitely need to push my assisted pullups/dips a bit more to see strength gains, as evidenced by the fact that I lowered the assist weight on the final set for each and still got all 5 reps.

Assisted Pullups:
5x "10"
5x "10"
5x "9"

Assisted Dips:
5x "6"
5x "6"
5x "5"

(I finally noticed a label explaining the assist weight. "10"= 52 lbs, with the weights incrementing by 6 lbs for each "1".)

I ran through my shoulder rehab exercises last night and then got through most of them again this morning at the gym. Then I grabbed a foam roller and worked my legs over. I think deep down I've always been a bit skeptical of the true utility of foam rolling, but I've been doing some more reading and I think I'll try to do it a bit more regularly. I think foam rolling is in line with my recent focus on improved flexibility, both are directed at bigger picture body wellness- always a good thing. Anyway, my outer lower quad (Vastus lateralis, Wikipedia informs me) is really painful to roll, so I'm hoping for some improvement if I manage to do this regularly.

Bleh.

2009-03-27T12:33:00.000-07:00

Weight: 148.0

I took the day off yesterday to get some doctor-related stuff done. I was supposed to get my blood drawn but I ended up nixing it because I couldn't go first thing in the morning and I wanted to eat. Ah well, it's first come, first serve so I'll go next week sometime. I did meet with the orthopedist for my shoulder. She said my issue was shoulder subluxation and gave me a page of rehab exercises and a referral to a physical therapist. Yay I guess, though apparently the physical therapy in Oakland is so busy that she recommended I get an appointment at their branch in Richmond. Anyway, I also got a tetanus shot, and my arm is very sore today.

I thought taking the day off yesterday would be a good de-stress-er, but I just feel more stressed about work today, so I think I failed. Also I ended up pigging out on dried fruit yesterday, and I feel really crappy today. I thought it was just midset, but I think I'm actually feeling a bit physically ill. I don't know if it was the crazy amount of sugar or if I'm actually coming down with something or what.

Oh I did go to the gym yesterday, so:

Back Squat
5x 145 lbs
5x 145
4x 145

Bench Press
5x 90 lbs
5x 90
1x 90
5x 90

The 1x was just a mental error or something. I took a minute of rest and then did the whole set. 145 feels good for the back squat for now. for the bench press... I think I'll probably move up to 95 next time, see how it goes.

Two workouts to report

2009-03-24T11:22:00.000-07:00

Weight: 147.8

Whoops, I keep forgetting to post. Good thing I still remember all the weights I did. This morning I finally did a deadlift workout. Man it's been a long time, but I don't seem to have lost too much strength. The weight I did was too easy, will definitely do more next time. My shoulder press more than made up for it, as I still can't get 50+ lbs over my head consistently for more than a rep or two. Gar.

Dead Lift:
5x 165 lbs
5x 165
5x 165

Shoulder Press:
5x 45 lbs
5x 45
5x 45

Sunday I went to the gym and my quad finally seemed to be feeling completely better, so I did back squats, felt strong. I was going to do bench press but none of the benches looked like they were going to be freeing up any time soon, so I did assisted dips. I kept reducing the assist weight, but I think the final weight I used is a good starting place for next time I do them. And my chest is definitely sore today so clearly I managed to do enough work anyway.

Back Squats:
5x 140 lbs
5x 140
5x 140

Assisted Dips:
5x "8"
5x "7"
5x "6"

Looking back over my lifting posts from late summer last year, I really haven't lost much strength in my legs, but clearly have lost a ton in my arms. I guess this isn't surprising, as I kept using my legs over the winter for, you know, walking, and the occasional frisbee game. Meanwhile I haven't been using my arms for anything really except typing. I have my shoulder appointment on Thursday, and I'm really hoping I get a referral for a physical therapist instead of being told that I need surgery. My coworkers seem to think I might need surgery, though possibly they were only messing with me...

Feeling good

2009-03-20T10:10:00.000-07:00

Weight: 145.8

Tried a different crock pot chili out yesterday. It involved several different kinds of stew meat and a tub of salsa, along with the more usual things. I'll be having it for lunch. We messed around a bit with the spices, it was tough to tell since the salsa already had a lot of flavor. I also picked up some different cheeses, as Brie was getting a bit boring and I'm feeling braver. I've discovered that when it comes to eating cheese straight, I really like blue cheese and swiss.

I got lots of sleep last night and then dragged myself to the gym this morning. My quad seems to still be bothering me. on Tuesday it felt fine with no extra weight, but felt tight/pulled with 45lbs. Today it felt completely fine at 45 lbs, but felt tight/pulled at 95 lbs. So I guess it's healing. Anyway, I went and did more back/hip extensions on the GHD, this time while holding a 10 lb weight. It felt pretty good. Then I went to do shoulder press and after warming up barely managed to complete an ugly set of 5 at 55lbs. I think I'm still having some trouble pushing through my heels and core, so I switched to push press. That was a brilliant idea if I do say so myself, I felt strong and gave my legs/core a bit more of a workout. Each set felt better than the last too.

Shoulder Press:
5x 55lbs (ugly)

Push Press:
5x 75 lbs
5x 75
5x 75

And looking back over my lifting posts I once again forgot that I was only doing 5x 55lbs at my very best last summer, so I don't feel nearly as bad. I think I'll try at 50 lbs next week.

Victory!

2009-03-18T10:10:00.000-07:00

Weight: 147.4

I declare victory on my 4 week "monitoring" program. I feel focused, I feel good, I feel annoyed at how much strength I've lost over the winter! For the most part over the past 4 weeks I've managed to keep my carbs nice and low without feeling like crap. Even when I "binged" I was mostly keeping my carbs under 100g per day. Additionally, focusing on getting more sleep has been positive across the board. I'm pumped and I'm ready to start a serious strength program. I've updated my "Current Fitness Plan" sidebar, but overall, I want to hit my goal weight (135 lbs) and my goal lifts (1.5xBW Back Squat primarily) in 3 months. Normally I think attempts at seriously increasing strength while simultaneously cutting bodyfat are a bit unrealistic, but WHATEVER! I like lots of goals. If I miss one I can still get one of the others. :) And especially when I lay out my goals in one-month increments, they don't look too unreasonable. Well, maybe. Basically, to hit my goals I would need to, on average:

lose one pound of bodyweight per week
add 5 lbs to my max Back Squat per week
add 2.5 lbs to my max Shoulder Press per week
add 5 lbs to my max Dead Lift per week

I know that more realistically I'll make more rapid progress early on and then the improvements will slow down, but I'm ok with that. :) I'm actually just guessing on my current 1RMs, but I'm okay with that too. I've put little reminders on my calendar to do a CrossFit Total every 4 weeks, so I'll know for sure then.

Here's the stuff on my sidebar so I don't forget:

Start Date: 3/18/2009
Starting Weight: 147 lbs

Self Assess Date 1: 4/13/2009
Goal Weight 1: 143 lbs
Goal 1RM Lifts 1:
- Back Squat: 165 lbs
- Shoulder Press: 65 lbs
- Dead Lift: 195 lbs

Self Assess Date 2: 5/11/2009
Goal Weight 2: 139 lbs
Goal 1RM Lifts 2:
- Back Squat: 185 lbs
- Shoulder Press: 75 lbs
- Dead Lift: 215 lbs

Final Goal Date: 6/8/2009
Final Goal Weight: 135
Final Goal 1RM Lifts:
- Back Squat: 205 lbs (1.5x BW)
- Shoulder Press: 85 lbs (0.6x BW)
- Dead Lift: 235 lbs (1.75x BW)

Other Goals:
- < 50g carbs per day
- > 8 hours sleep per night

Mmmm pie.

2009-03-17T11:48:00.000-07:00

Weight: 149.2
Sleep: 7 hours

Haha, guilt keeps me from posting. Ah well. Friday night ended up being not bad on the alcohol front at all. I kept my food in line and only really had sips of sugary alcoholic beverages. The real issue was Saturday, I went to a rather long ultimate practice/tryout thing and kept snacking on other people's carby foods. I had chinese afterwards where I kept it reasonable, but then got home and proceeded to have some pie. mmmm pie. Then Sunday I was just feeling more of an urge for a day off, got a sugary latte, had more pie and some ice cream. The pie was excellent. I have to admit I think I was secretly hoping my body would have an adverse reaction to so much sugar, but really I felt fine other than feeling a bit heavy with water-weight the next day. My weight remained a bit high today but I think it's because I had chinese last night which was pretty high in sodium.

I managed to drag myself to the gym this morning and from there went straight to work. Hopefully we can make this a bit of a habit, though I'll have to contemplate the best way to deal with the whole shower/towel/toiletries thing. I ducked the issue today by not really getting sweaty. Anyway, I started warming up my squats but my left quad seemed pretty unhappy, and not in a good DOMS way, so I ended up doing hip/back extensions on the GHD instead. That felt fine, and my posterior chain probably needs some extra work anyway. I don't think my quad is bad enough to keep me out of commision for more than another day or two, especially because it doesn't hurt at all when doing normal things like standing up from my chair.

Assisted Pullups: (I feel like I should track the assist weight, except it's one of those machines with unhelpful numbers listed. Perhaps they're 5 lb plates?)
5 x "12"
5 x "11"
5 x "10"

Bench Press:
5 x 75 lbs
5 x 80
5 x 80

Daily Carb Count (69g):

half'n'half (8g)
lunch meats and cheese (7g)
greek yogurt (4g)
greek salad (10g?)
french fries (40g?)

To the gym again

2009-03-13T16:10:00.000-07:00

Weight: 147.2
Sleep: 7 hours

Lifts from yesterday-

Back Squat:
5x 135 lbs
5x 135
5x 135

Shoulder Press:
2x 55 lbs
5x 45
5x 45

Oh man my shoulders lost strength. Well actually I think there'll be some quick nerve/muscle remembering going on, I felt like I wasn't really getting power through my core, and I feel like that's something I'll re-learn how to do pretty quickly.

I finally scheduled a doctor's appt for Monday, hopefully I can get blood work done and get a referral for my shoulder. I did some assisted pullups yesterday and it definitely was not happy with me. Nothing bad happened, but it felt like it wanted to pop out whenever I got to the bottom of the pullup. Bleh.

Daily Carb Count (17g):

half'n'half (4g)
green beans (5g)
pot roast (4g)
spinach and artichoke dip (4g)
(To be added to - am going out drinking so it'll probably add up fast)

Hip function

2009-03-12T13:56:00.000-07:00

Weight: 147.8
Sleep: 7 hours

Dave made it to the hip function clinic, I did not. He did manage to pass a good number of tidbits of wisdom to me though, most notably: I now know that my legs do not have nearly enough inward rotation, but more than enough outward rotation. Oh and I should be able to do side-splits, which I've never been able to do ever, despite overall being very flexible. I imagine this is related to the inward rotation thing. I'm trying to remember to stretch while chilling at my desk, and I guess I'll start looking into doing narrow-stance squats. yeesh. And I still need to work on my lower-hamstring tightness that I learned about from the last time Dave went to one of these clinics.

And I really should go see a physical therapist sometime. I guess for my shoulder, but really just on general principals.

Daily Carb Count (43g):

half'n'half (6g)
pot roast (4g)
spinach and artichoke dip (4g)
green beans (10g)
dark chocolate (14g)
milk (5g)

Wait, what?

2009-03-11T21:01:00.000-07:00

Weight: 148.2
Sleep: 7 hours

My weight spiked up the past two days, even though my carbs have stayed fairly low. Is it perhaps related to me finally getting to the gym? I was really sore the past 2 days, still a bit sore even today, so perhaps there's a bit of water retention/swelling going on. Well I guess I'll know in a day or two. I wish I could say it was 3 lbs of muscle gain. ;)

When I was little I really loved liverwurst, but it was nixed when I went low-fat "healthy" in college. I've rediscovered it and am very excited!!

Daily Carb Count (41g):

milk (6g)
half'n'half (6g)
lunch meats (4g)
spinach and artichoke dip (4g)
bell pepper (8g)
greek salad thing (8g?)
dark chocolate (5g)

More fitness planning

2009-03-10T12:38:00.000-07:00

Weight: 147.8
Sleep: 7.5 hours

I'm working on a "fitness plan" email for the team. The captain told me flat out that not everyone will have access to weights, so I need to come up with alternative ways to train for those people. yeeesh. Last year we didn't start talking workouts until mid-June, so we just taught everyone how to do tabatas and left it at that. This year... I'm saying that absolutely everyone should be focusing the next 2 months on strength training. A lot of the team (especially the women) can get a good upper body workout just doing pushups and pullups, no weights needed. Lower body though... we're a team of sprinters, bodyweight squats aren't going to cut it. So I basically plan on suggesting that people without access to weights do work sets that involve lifting one end of a couch or bed. I almost typed it as a joke in my draft email, but I'm becoming more and more intrigued. I think I will go home tonight and do a set of couch lifts to see how I fare. My only other idea was to fill a backpack with books and do squats with that. Not great, but better than nothing. I think I'll try that out today too. I haven't sent the email yet, so if it's all a waste of time I'll just think of something else. I really want to start planning jumping/sprinting/plyo workouts, but it's too early, and if we can all get stronger first it's going to be all the more awesome. I've read that you should be able to back squat 1.5 times your bodyweight to really benefit from plyo/agility training. That would be like 215 lbs for me!! The most I've ever done was in the 175 lb range, and that wasn't really to full depth.

Daily carb count (56g):

half'n'half (6g)
chicken and artichoke soup (20g)
cup o' fruit (15g?)
potatoes (15g?)

Ultimate pre-season

2009-03-09T20:08:00.000-07:00

Weight: 144.0
Sleep: 7 hours

I'm totally psyched about the upcoming ultimate season. It's so nice to already have a team to play with. It's not official but it sounds like I might be functioning in a somewhat formal capacity as the team workout leader or some such... which is awesome! Conditioning/workouts on ultimate teams tend to be really haphazard, stuff like "I've heard I'm supposed to do plyos". Hopefully I can convince the team to lift. It'll be tough... a lot of the team doesn't have a gym membership. >:|

And in a sad twist, I was planning to go to the gym today, but I failed!! I'll try again... tomorrow night?

Daily Carb Count (63g):

half'n'half (6g)
milk (15g)
spinach dip (8g)
burger toppings (5g)
artichoke dip (10g?)
salad (15g)
red wine (4g)

Yay gym!!

2009-03-07T19:00:00.000-08:00

Oh man, so glad to get back to the gym. I felt good, and seeing the strength I've lost is good motivation.

Back Squat:
5x 135 lbs
5x 135
4x 135

Bench Press:
3x 85 lbs
5x 75
5x 75

Daily Carb Count (39g):

half'n'half (5g)
milk (15g)
dark chocolate (4g)
tomatoes (15g)

Measurements 3/2/09

2009-03-07T18:53:00.000-08:00

(From Monday- I kept forgetting to post)

Height: 5' 5.5"
Weight: 144.0 (-4.2 from 10/6/08)

Left bicep flexed: 11.5" (-0.25")
Left bicep unflexed: 11.25" (+0.25")
Bust: 35.5" (-0.75")
Waist: 27.25" (-1.25")
Abdomen: 30.5" (+0.25")
Hips: 39.0" (+0.5")
Left Thigh: 24.0" (-0.25")
Left Calf: 15" (+0")

Not really sure how to interpret, other than I know I've lost muscle. And I need to measure myself more often.

Swamped no more

2009-03-06T13:04:00.000-08:00

Weight: 145.0
Sleep: 9 hours?

big deadline this week left me crazy busy. Luckily I had the fridge at work well stocked and stuck to the low carb plan really well throughout. Stress did not help though, but I finally got to come up for air today. I'm still behind on everything, but it all feels much more manageable now. We're going to try again to get me set up with a gym membership today after work, so hopefully I'll have a gym to go to tomorrow for my workout.

Daily Carb Count (27g):

half'n'half (5g)
burger topping (5g)
baby carrots (12g)
spinach dip (5)
(to be added to)

Back on track?

2009-03-03T12:28:00.000-08:00

Weight: 146.0
Sleep: 8 hours

I'm trying to evaluate my body and my mood... I don't think that the extra carbs yesterday had a noticeable effect. But really it's so hard to evaluate those sorts of things. Am I feeling hungrier than normal? did I sleep any worse? I dunno. At any rate, no mexican food for me today. I made more crock pot chili, and if anything it's even meatier than the last batch, so I'm guessing the bowl I had was around 10g of carbs from the tomatoes and sauce.

I tried to get a gym membership, but to get the spouse deal I need to actually prove I'm a spouse, so we'll be going back sometime later this week with appropriate documentation.

Daily Carb Count (25g):

half'n'half (5g)
no-bean chili (10g)
turkey meatballs (10g)
(to be added to)

mexican food... whyyyy?

2009-03-02T16:59:00.000-08:00

Weight: 144.0
Sleep: 7.25 hours?

Had trouble sleeping last night, then had Mexican for lunch and was hungry, so ate the side of beans that I had intended to disdainfully ignore. Oh well. I really have no idea how much was actually there, but I don't think 30g of carbs is a bad guess.

I'm very sore from the weekend, but it looks like all my muscles, especially the stabilizing muscles, are just the good kind of sore. My knees were giving me a bit of extra pain this morning, but seem to be doing better now. Also my knees were actually feeling good enough during the entire weekend that I actually didn't take any ibuprofen at all, a pleasing development.

Daily Carb Count (74g):

half'n'half (6g)
fajita veggies (10g?)
black beans (30g?)
guacamole (10g?)
mango salsa (8g?)
no-bean chili (10g?)

I Survived

2009-03-01T17:42:00.000-08:00

Weight: 145.4
Sleep: 8 hours

It was rainy today. We played anyway, as the fields are artificial turf. I had ham and eggs for breakfast, and really the only carbs I had before we started playing was some half'n'half in my coffee and then my tea. I played fine through my first game, but before the second game I was feeling weak and hungry. So I ate various carby snack foods and felt somewhat better. Sadly food could not reverse the fact that I'm a bit out of shape and it was the 5th game of the weekend. But yes, the weekend was a success.

Daily Carb Count (55g):

half'n'half (6g)
1/4 clif builder bar (8g)
craisin trail mix (15g?)
handful of tortilla chips (15g?)
clementine (9g)
burger toppings (2g)
mozzarella cheese (5g)

low-carb ulti tourney

2009-02-28T20:08:00.000-08:00

Weight: 144.6
Sleep: 8 hours?

We had our first day of the ultimate league tournament. It was just 3 games to 13 so it wasn't as exhausting as some tournaments can be, but it's been months since I played a tournament so it was plenty exhausting for me. I kept my low carb plan, though I snacked on some random stuff between points. All in all though I've definitely demonstrated that I'm ok without multiple bagels/bananas/what I usually eat at tournaments. I assume it worked out ok because I took the time to adjust to very low carb. And I guess I'll have to see how I hold up tomorrow before I say anything final anyway.

Daily Carb Count (52g):

half'n'half (4g)
meatballs (12g)
half a Clif builders bar (15g)
small handful of Craisin trail mix (15g?)
couple of french fries, burger toppings (6g?)

Yesterday: ultimate, ice cream, not enough sleep

2009-02-27T12:16:00.001-08:00

Weight: 145.4
Sleep: 6 hours

My winter league game yesterday was... cold... I didn't play very well in that I barely ever touched the disc. I played pretty heads-up D though, and I don't think I was a liability on the field. Afterwards I went home and had a serving (which is apparently like 3 spoonfuls :P ) of ice cream. It felt nice to cheat a little. I'm still feeling out how my new nutrition affects athletic performance. For one game it seemed like my current diet works ok. The big test will be the tournament this weekend, I guess.

Daily Carb Count (59g):

half'n'half (8g)
carrots (15g)
spinach dip (4g)
meat sauce (5g?)
sauteed veggies (10g?)
salad w/ dressing (5g?)
chocolate (12g)

Grocery shopping is dangerous!

2009-02-26T13:21:00.000-08:00

Weight: 146.4
Sleep: 8 hours

I bought some turkey meatballs, but then noticed they had BREADCRUMBS in them. EWWWW! Hehehe. I'll eat them anyway. it's obviously not very much grain, but what's the point of putting food off limits if I don't actually stick to it?

I'm contemplating my sadly delayed dance lessons. Some of the bloggers I've been following (read: stalking) have mentioned taking salsa lessons. Let's see if Dave can be convinced to take some classes with me. :)

I have an ultimate game this evening that I won't be skipping for a change. It's almost tryout season, the women's bay area mixer is is two weeks away. More on that later.

Daily Carb Count (57g):

half'n'half (7g)
turkey meatballs and cheese (12g)
spinach dip and celery (3g)
dark chocolate (12g)
ice cream (23g)

Mmmm laptop

2009-02-25T13:52:00.000-08:00

Weight: 145.6
Sleep: 8 hours

Mexican restaurants are fun for me now. I'm pretty sure my choices are primal-ish... not sure on the total number of carbs... I don't think 25 is a horrible guess though. I felt a little blah this afternoon, but I'm really busy at work and teetering on the edge of what I would call "stressed". bleh.

I got a lovely new laptop though. I like it a lot.

Daily Carb Count (50g):

whole milk (10)
sweet pepper (7g)
dark chocolate (8g)
fajita chicken w/ peppers, tomatoes, guacamole (25?)

Steak trial 1- ok, but room for improvement

2009-02-24T16:58:00.000-08:00

Weight: 144.8
Sleep: 7.5 hours

The steak was so-so. Dave pan-broiled it, and the temperature was up a little too high, so it was a bit burnt on the outside. And I think now that he knows what he's doing we'll try some sort of rub next time. yum.

Daily Carb Sources (52g):

half'n'half (8g)
no-bean chili (20g?)
chocolate (8g)
apple slices (6g)
meatballs (5g)
kale (5g?)

Monday morning and doin' ok

2009-02-23T10:45:00.000-08:00

Weight: 145.2
Sleep: 7 hours

Last Week:
I saw huge success in demonstrating that I can keep my carbohydrate intake very low while still feeling generally very good. I haven't yet tried playing ultimate, but I'm hopeful that I will feel energetic even with a very limited amount of carbs. I've been getting really good at finding ways to avoid unecessary carbs, like eating sandwich fixings off the bread with a fork, or ordering fajitas at mexican places and ignoring the tortillas. I did not get enough sleep though, and am still dragging myself out of bed in the mornings to get to work. Oh, and my friends think I'm strange, but they're used to me having odd eating habits. :)

This Week:
My big goal this week is to get more sleep. I'm really going to be working hard to get to bed by 10pm at the very latest every night. This is going to be tough because I'm going to be working pretty late probably every day this week, so my awake time at home in the evenings is going to be cut a bit short. Hopefully I can make up for it by having more awake time in the mornings. I also plan to keep up the low-carb eating. I have plans this evening to broil that steak I bought, hopefully that's not a disaster waiting to happen.

Daily Carb Sources (37g):

half'n'half (6g)
no-bean chili (15g?)
chocolate (8g)
green beans (8g?)

Quick One

2009-02-22T17:44:00.001-08:00

Sleep: 8 hours

Daily Carb Sources (20g):

milk (10g)
burger toppings (10g)

Learn something new, feel sheepish

2009-02-21T15:20:00.000-08:00

Sleep: 7 hours

I was informed yesterday that trans fats occur naturally as well, and scoffed, and then felt like an idiot when I looked it up on Wikipedia. Apparently vaccenic acid is actually not "bad for you" like the processed trans fats, and occurs naturally in meat from grazers and dairy products. Sigh. But I guess it still has to be included in the nutrition facts labeling? Oh well. I have no idea how I missed this, I need to pay closer attention.

We're visiting friends in LA for the weekend, so far I haven't had much trouble keeping my eating on track.

Daily Carb Sources (51g):

milk (8g)
tomatoes (6g)
carrots (15g)
sweet pepper (7g)
hummus (15g)
chocolate (15g?)
mexican plate w/ chilis and mango salsa (15g?)
(to be added to as the day progresses)

Ewwww trans fats

2009-02-20T11:22:00.000-08:00

Weight: 147.4
Sleep: 8 hours

I had a rather distressing moment yesterday. I was feeling like eggs for lunch, so I got a Denver Bowl from Jack in the Box, which I've had several times and I like it a lot for the price. Anyway, I get back and go to their nutrition site to get the number of carbs, but then see that it has 7 GRAMS OF TRANS FATS! I almost spit egg all over the keyboard. After some comparison with the separate listing for hash browns, I determined that pretty much all of the trans fats were from the hash browns at the bottom of the bowl, which I was going to skip yesterday anyway. (Although I do normally eat them.) Anyway, after that I went through a bit of a flurry looking over the rest of the Jack in the Box menu, and then McDonalds and Wendys. It seems like the trans fats are limited to the breakfast options, milk shakes, and a tiny bit in the burgers for all three. Jack in the Box has the biggest trans fat totals, but I'm not feeling obsessive enough to see whether that's just because they serve bigger portions. I guess I'll limit Jack in the Box breakfasts to "Breakfast Jacks" in the future.

Yesterday I bought a sirloin steak, which I will attempt to broil sometime soon. That'll be a new experience for me. It's amazing how little I know about cooking meats with actual fats in them. Yesterday also I made my first big-ass crock-pot chili. I had a big bowl of it for lunch. I was pretty much throwing stuff in at random, so it ended up a little soupier than I like, but was very very meaty. I'm having a pretty sad time trying to guess how many carbs were in the bowl I just ate though. The original ingredients were: 2.5 lbs ground turkey, 1 can tomato sauce, 2 cans stewed tomatoes, 4 roma tomatoes, 2 bell peppers, 1 carrot, 1 onion, garlic, spices, 1 bottle of beer. Next time I think I'm going to go for less stewed tomatoes and more real ones. I'm not sure about the beer, that was a random addition after adding everything else when it looked too dry. I have the chili episode of "Good Eats" on the DVR, and will be watching it sometime soon, so hopefully I'll have better ideas after that. Anyway, I had about 3 cups of it for lunch. I think I'm going to guess it at 20 grams of carbs, though it could just as easily be 30. There was a LOT of meat, and I feel quite pleasantly full, so at least I'm not getting carb cravings out of it.

I was quite proud of yesterday's carb intake, and glad that I didn't feel lethargic at all, really I was pretty energetic all day at work. Though I did skip my ultimate game, so I don't know if a bit more physical activity might have exhausted me.

Daily Carb Sources (78g):

half'n'half (4g)
whole milk (6g)
no-bean chili (20g?)
burger toppings (6g?)
cup o' fruit (15g?)
strawberries (12g?)
chocolate (15g?)

Mmmm Rooibos

2009-02-19T09:51:00.000-08:00

Weight: 147.6
Sleep: 7.25 hours

I've been told I'm somewhat strange because I don't like tea straight, it just tastes watery, but I love tea w/ half'n'half. (Whole milk works in a pinch but still tastes a bit watery to me.) I put half'n'half in black tea, green tea, herbal teas (though fruity teas taste a little odd) and my current favorite, Rooibos. I struggle a lot trying to order it at coffee shops though. Starbucks has this Vanilla Rooibos Latte that I have to explain that I don't want. Peets sometimes puts 2 bags in, but not always... The little local shop I went to last night had both Red Rooibos and Green Rooibos... I didn't realize that was an option! Ah well, I live, I learn.

I'm not 100% sure on my carbs from yesterday, but I think I ended up somewhere around 100 grams. The single biggest source was the apple, so I think I will avoid those for now. The rest of the carbs were mostly incidental to me eating protein and fat, so I'm less concerned about them.

Daily Carb Sources (32g):

half'n'half (8g)
Jack in the Box Denver Bowl (Minus the hash browns) (9g)
cashews (8g)
kale (7g)

Tracking Sleep and Carbs

2009-02-18T09:40:00.000-08:00

Weight: 147.8
Sleep: 6.5 hours

So having finished Good Calories, Bad Calories, I'm actively trying to throw all of my preconceived food notions out of the window and just focusing on a) severely limiting carbohydrates and b) listening to my body. Yes that includes throwing out such preconceived notions as "I must eat lots of fruits and vegetables or I won't get enough vitamins" and "I need roughage to prevent constipation". (I'm still going to take my multivitamin for now though.) I firmly believe now that far more important than those things is keeping my insulin as low as possible, and so I'm going to spend the next 4 weeks watching my carbohydrate intake very very closely. I just too easily gobble down fruit, dark chocolate, carrots, etc and justify it with "they're good for me", when the real reason I'm grabbing them is I'm getting carb cravings.

I'm going to try to post daily, and list out my carbs and my hours of sleep, as those are the two most important things to me right now. I'm very curious about my bowel movements, but I'll spare anyone reading this the details of that, especially since presumably if things trend in a bad direction it'll be pretty obvious to me. :P I've set up a 4 week schedule because that's how I roll and that seems like a good amount of time to get a sense of where I'm at.

I've set up little workout reminders for myself to get active 3 times a week. Last night I did Tabata pushups followed immediately by Tabata squats. My pushups were kneeling, as I didn't feel like I could keep them high-intensity with real pushups- muscle failure would be too much of a limitation. My squat score was 14, disappointing, but a good place to build from I suppose. All in all a good workout, I can tell I'm going to be very very sore by the end of today.

Daily Carb Sources (105g):

half'n'half (5g)
whole milk (3g)
dark chocolate (18g)
bell pepper (7g)
pesto sauce (4g)
apple (25g)
american cheese (8g)
chicken donner (15g?)
side salad (20g?)

New motivation

2009-02-11T20:51:00.001-08:00

I need need need to get back in the fitness groove. Yes, in a strange twist, my eating now seems to be doing just fine under its own momentum, but I could definitely use some bloggy inspiration/discipline to get up and get active.

The weekly winter league games continue, I seem to be playing a bit better. Fewer memorably bad plays, and more good ones. The fact that I'm feeling so out of shape is becoming all the more noticeable.

I'm away this weekend, but I think I will sit down and plot out a modest workout schedule for the next four weeks. I'm aiming for working out 3 times a week, mostly short workouts like tabatas.

Fat Fat Fat

2009-01-28T12:28:00.000-08:00

Weight: 148.0

I went to the grocery store by my office and loaded up on food. At the moment I'm avoiding salad fixings because I get sick of salads really quickly. I picked up some bacon though, and a couple of dips that I can use to munch my way through more raw vegetables. In the picture I've got spinach and artichoke (and cheese of course) dip for my green beans and carrots, plus bacon and blueberries for lunch today.

I also got into a discussion with a coworker on how half-n-half is so much better in coffee than milk, so now I'm chipping in for the communal half-n-half supply instead of using milk in my coffee. My coworker pointed out that he could get heavy whipping cream at Costco for cheap, and then we could "milk" it down to whatever fat percentage we wanted. I'm intrigued. Perhaps I'll be able to completely remove carbs from my mornings.

I've finally really gotten into Good Calories, Bad Calories, and I'm alternatively appalled at how far bad science can lead us off-track, and worried about whether I'm being gullible and not looking at the book critically enough. Then again, just the fact that he's very carefully showing why the science/theory is flawed without trying to prop up his own theory in its place is a good sign. Even with all the eye-openers from the book, I still get nervous and twitchy when eating lots of fat/saturated fat (aka BACON) because I can't help the years of "it will clog your arteries" conditioning. As if the grease on my plate will be transported directly from my stomach to my bloodstream.

Project no-grain is going ok, I'm at around 90% compliance and am getting much better at ordering a sandwich and chucking the bread where appropriate. Pizza is still tough and one of my main failings. I think as I get more comfortable I need to be honest and stop eating potato products too, as it's a little counter-productive to order a burger and fries, toss out the bun, but then eat the fries. :P Baby steps.

I May Have to Reconsider Daily Logs

2009-01-07T17:22:00.000-08:00

Weight: 146.2

I keep forgetting to track my food as I go! I think I got everything down, but I may have left something off. >:|

In other news I need to get a little more fitness in. I had an ultimate game yesterday and felt weak. Not tired, though certainly winded, so at least my food seems to be supporting my activity level. The issue was clearly that I hadn't done anything physical in a while, and am losing some strength. We've pretty much decided that we can't afford to spend a whole lot on gym memberships though. *cries* I looked at the University gym and it appears that they have good deals fro spouses of students, so I'll probably be doing that. They have a big area and lots of free weights (and gravitrons!) but they also have big signs saying "NO OLYMPIC LIFTING". *cries some more* Hopefully we can buy some drop-in classes for Crossfit and go once a week or something. >:| And I'm going to get some tabata action on at home. woot.

Daily Food Log:
10:00 am - coffee w/ milk
12:00 pm - chicken and artichoke soup
3:00 pm - chai latte
4:30 pm - chicken sausage
(dinner to come)

Quick Post and Food Log

2009-01-06T11:10:00.000-08:00

Weight: 145.8

I published yesterday's post and then promptly forgot about logging my food. I think I got it all...

I have Good Calories, Bad Calories on my bedside table waiting to be read, but first I must finish the fun book I'm reading.

Daily Food Log:
11:00 am - coffee w/ milk, fish oil caps
12:30 pm - chicken and artichoke soup
2:00 pm - strange but yummy chinese candy, chicken sausage, apple, multivitamin
5:00 pm - coffee w/ milk
9:00 pm - Jack in the Box, complete with chocolate milkshake. sigh

New Focus? No Grains?

2009-01-05T11:39:00.000-08:00

Weight: 147.4

I'm contemplating new directions. For a long while I was focusing on fitness, and diet was only being considered for the short-term goals of getting leaner and fitter. So obviously I was looking more at macronutrients and total calories than actual food quality.

My realignment in thinking has been coming slowly for a while now, but was pushed into high gear when I visited my parents for the holidays. My mother, who has always scoffed at fad diets and "diet food", has been diagnosed with high cholesterol. So after some research she drastically cut back on sources of saturated fat in her diet (cheese and meat) and, as that was where most of her protein was coming from, started eating more legumes. My initial concern was that by cutting back on saturated fat she had also cut back on total fat, and was replacing it with more carbohydrates. But my brain tried to beat that down, because everyone knows that saturated fat is bad for you and beans are good for you.

Anyway, it's tough, because it's so easy to look at anything or anyone moving against the flow as a "quack", or someone with a political or financial agenda, but I think I've seen enough evidence to decide that fat, yes even saturated fat, is good and carbs are bad. And again, it still makes me twitch because it's been so indoctrinated in me that the vast majority of the whole "organic" craze is just a rip-off, but I'm now making sure that most of my fat is coming from wholesome sources- grassfed or free-range animals, organic produce if it isn't being peeled.

And I'm taking the long, scary plunge to completely eliminate refined carbohydrates. Last month I took No Added Sweeteners for a test-run, and I didn't suddenly curl up and die from lack of energy. In fact I felt really good while I was doing it. This month I'm ok with sugar, though still trying to limit it, but it's easier now because I've moved a long way towards unprocessed foods. The big challenge this month is No Grains. It's been going really well so far. I used to feel guilty about wasted food for leaving a side of rice or bread uneaten on my plate at restaurants, but it's just been a little twinge now and again when it's happened this month. I'm giving my husband (who cooks a lot) trouble because he likes to thicken sauces with corn starch or flour, but he seems at least interested in making this work.

My goal is to eliminate the grains permanently. I may have to contemplate claiming a wheat gluten allergy rather than making long explanations to people. hmm. That won't help with other grains though, I guess.

Also, for the time being fitness is largely taking a back seat. I tend to fall to old eating habits when I have a hard workout, and I want a chance to cement my new diet so I'm more comfortable with how it affects my energy levels.

And lastly, for this month I will start up the daily food long again, as it really helped me stay on track last month. (Note that when I stopped posting was when I went back to sugar. Cause or Effect?)

Daily Food Log:
9:30 am - coffee w/ milk, beef jerky, fish oil caps
12:30 pm - mexican chicken tortilla soup (sans tortillas), multivitamin
2:00 pm - 2 jolly ranchers (darn you boss and your tempting sweets!), beef jerky, banana
7:00 pm - apple, olives, turkey kale soup
9:00 pm - dark chocolate, red wine

CR W11D3: Go-kart racing?

2008-12-17T15:12:00.000-08:00

Weight 145.0

Today our office went go-kart racing in lieu of the traditional holiday party. there was definitely a learning curve, and my best lap time was right around the middle of the pack for the office, but I did get better on every lap. The first graph in the picture shows my times for each lap. (I'm the red line.) The last 3 laps were pretty much exactly the same, right around 43 seconds. By that time I'd figured out how to get around all of the hairpins without coming to a full stop. The fastest guy in the office had a best lap time of 34 seconds though, so I'd have to get much more comfortable with the speeds and turning to get close to that. The track was not slick at all, the girl at the front desk recommended all-grip driving to get the fastest time, but I did have one totally sweet drift on a hairpin, almost spun out but got it just right. hehehe. Interestingly the guy with the 34 second time rides a motorcycle regularly, which you might guess contributed to his skillz, but the other two guys in the office with motorcycles were way slower, slower than me even. Who knows?

Daily Food Log:
1:30 pm - catered food: slice of pizza, random rolls and bruschetta-type things, some sort of meatball and veggie stir-fry that was very yummy
3:00 pm - coffee w/ milk
6:00 pm - small flatbread sandwich with chicken and cheese
6:30 pm - lemon cupcakes with purple frosting

CR W11D2: it's cold!

2008-12-16T17:09:00.000-08:00

Weight: 145.6

Daily Food Log:
10:30 am - coffee w/ milk
12:30 pm - Burrito w/ chicken, fajita veggies, cheese, sour cream, tomatoes
6:30 pm - Jack in the Box grilled chicken, curly fries, chocolate milkshake (bad Kirsten!)

CR W11D1: home stretch

2008-12-15T09:35:00.000-08:00

Weight: 145.0

I'm really excited to visit my parents for the holidays. I think it's been a year since we've last been back there. I'm a bit excited actually to see how my eating habits hold up. My mom normally scoffs at my "healthy" eating, especially when it was all lean chicken and tuna and egg whites. But I sent her an email mentioning what I've been eating of late, so if she felt so inclined she could stock up in preparation. :) And how the tables have turned. I mentioned how I'm eating a lot more cheese and eggs, long-time staples for her, and she wrote back that since her doctor has warned her about her cholesterol levels she's cut way back on those and eats a lot of beans now. And we keep going in circles.

Daily Food Log:
9:30 am - coffee w/ milk
1:00 pm - mexican chicken tortilla soup w/ cheese, fish oil caps
2:30 pm - almond meal muffins
4:30 pm - deli ham, olives
6:30 pm - peppermint hot chocolate
7:30 pm - big bowl of chili, red wine

CR W10D7: mmm big salad

2008-12-14T12:34:00.000-08:00

Weight 144.2

This is the salad I had for lunch, half-eaten. it was gigantic. I didn't finish it. :)

Daily Food Log:
12:00 pm - chicken sausage, almond meal muffins
2:30 pm - big ol' chef salad w/ deli turkey, chai latte, piece of pineapple
3:30 pm - peppermint hot chocolate
8:00 pm - cranberry turkey cheese crepe
9:30 pm - glass of red wine

CR W10D6: mmmm fat

2008-12-13T18:26:00.000-08:00

Weight: 144.2 !!!

This is probably the first time that I've lost weight when not actively trying to do so. Weird. Oh yeah, and man, so much fatty food today. All delicious.

Daily Food Log:
10:00 am - 2 eggs, 6 slices of bacon
1:30 pm - carrots and hummus
2:30 pm - spinach & artichoke dip, 3 slices of pizza
6:30 pm - apple, almond meal muffins
7:30 pm - bacon and kale, glass of wine
8:30 pm - green tea latte (ugh, very sugary)

CR W10D5: better eating today

2008-12-12T13:11:00.000-08:00

Weight: 146.6

Ultimate game last night was fun. I was expecting a bigger jump on the scale this morning, so that's cool. Food today was yummy. We need more wine though.

Daily Food Log:
10:15 am - coffee w/ milk
1:00 pm - "salisbury steak and asparagus" microwave dinner, coffee w/ half'n'half (only drank half of it)
3:30 pm - all-fruit smoothie, fish oil caps
4:30 pm - 2 slices of cheese, tea w/ milk
9:00 pm - chicken and apples cooked in cranberry sauce, broccoli

CR W10D4: FAIL

2008-12-11T13:38:00.000-08:00

Weight: 146.2

Oh man. Cake yesterday. Soup bread bowl and fast food today. Too much bad food. I must do better.

Daily Food Log:

10:30 am - coffee w/ half'n'half
12:30 pm - broccoli cheese soup in a bread bowl, multivitamin, fish oil caps
3:30 pm - deli turkey, turkey pepperoni, slice of cheese, coffee w/ milk
9:30 pm - Jack in the Box breakfast bowl, little bit of wine

CR W10D3

2008-12-10T13:11:00.000-08:00

Weight: 145.8

I've been amazingly not hungry all the time.

Daily Food Log:
9:00 am - coffee w/ half'n'half
10:30 am - coffee w/ half'n'half
1:00 pm - mexican chicken tortilla soup w/ cheese, multivitamin, fish oil caps
2:00 pm - slice of cheese, fruit/nut trail mix
6:00 pm - turkey and cheese sub
7:00 pm - small slice of chocolate cake
10:30 pm - glass of red wine

CR W10D2: Farmer's Market Fun

2008-12-09T10:46:00.000-08:00

Weight: 146.4

I checked out the farmer's market near work. Looks like a good place to get kale :) and other things, though I must figure out better ways to plan ahead on cooking. Right now I look at produce and think, "that looks good, but what would I use it for?" Much plotting in the works. In the mean time I picked up some fruit/nut trail mix and almond meal.

Daily Food Log:
10:30 am - coffee w/ milk
12:30 pm - roast pepper and goat cheese tamale, various samples at the farmer's market, multivitamin, fish oil caps
2:00 pm - chamomile tea w/ milk, fruit/nut trail mix, turkey pepperoni
6:30 pm - carrots w/ eggplant and garlic dip, chicken sausage, red wine

CR W10D1

2008-12-08T12:32:00.000-08:00

Weight: 148.0

We should really get some wine glasses.

Daily Food Log:
10:30 am - coffee w/ milk
12:30 pm - turkey, ham, and cheese sub, multivitamin, fish oil caps
2:00 pm - brie, banana
4:00 pm - olives, coffee w/ milk
6:30 pm - chicken enchilada w/ corn tortilla, lotsa cheese, green sauce, black olives
8:30 pm - red wine

CR W9D7

2008-12-07T11:23:00.000-08:00

Weight: 147.4

Daily Food Log:
10:30 am - fried eggs, milk
2:00 pm - salad w/ deli turkey and vinaigrette, coffee w/ half'n'half
6:30 pm - pesto chicken pizza, cheese sticks. mmm.

CR W9D6: being lazy

2008-12-06T20:10:00.001-08:00

Weight: 146.4

Had to say goodbye to my cat today, so took the excuse to sit around and do nothing for the rest of the day. Love you Scribble.

Daily Food Log:
10:00 am - brie
3:00 pm - chicken fajita stir fry, dried papaya
5:00 pm - milk, chicken sausage
8:00 pm - cheesy spinach casserole, spaghetti and meatballs, red wine
9:00 pm - more dried papaya

CR W9D5: Sweet temptation

2008-12-05T13:12:00.000-08:00

Weight: 146.2

Interesting... I inadvertently went pretty low-carb yesterday, so my weight drop isn't too surprising. What's surprising is that fact that I didn't even notice that I had eaten so little carbs until I went back and looked over my log. I had even put down eating a banana that I didn't actually get around to eating.

Well today more than makes up for it, as I went walking around during lunch (as opposed to my usual sitting and surfing the web) and ended up being lured in by the smell of fresh baked Specialty's cookies. I ended up settling for an all-fruit smoothie next door, but man. Walking around is dangerous!

Daily Food Log:
10:00 am - Coffee w/ milk
11:00 am - leftover cheesy chili relleno casserole
1:00 pm - all-fruit smoothie w/ protein, multivitamin, fish oil caps
5:30 pm - party food: pizza, Doritos, cheese, apples, veggies, hummus, red wine

CR W9D4: Coffee, old-school style.

2008-12-04T11:53:00.000-08:00

Weight: 147.4

In a further effort to not blow money on unnecessary food, I'm partaking of the office coffee instead of drinking lattes. I'm not sure whose half-and-half I'm using, but it's more than half-full and expires in a few days, so I figure they won't miss what I'm taking. ^_^; Really I should probably be trying out the office tea supply... I need to read up on health re: Coffee.

Also, if you haven't noticed, I've been having fun with the camera on my phone. I must try some with the camera turned sideways, see if that looks nicer in my posts. :)

Daily Food Log:
11:30 am - Microwave dinner beef pot roast/potatoes/veggies, coffee w/ half'n'half, fish oil caps
2:30 pm - deli turkey, turkey pepperoni, slice of cheese, coffee w/ half'n'half, fish oil caps
7:00 pm - apple
8:30 pm - cheesy chili relleno casserole

CR W9D3: Mmm Kale

2008-12-03T11:51:00.000-08:00

Weight: 149.6

First off, a quick report on my ultimate frisbee game last night. I kinda sucked. Well really I just felt like my brain was turned off or some thing. I was just a second slow on processing information and making decisions for the first half of the game, which left me flat-footed and lazy-looking on defense. A particularly bad point was when I was playing wing in our zone D, which is normally a strength for me. The disc was swung over to my side, and I could have cut off the easy continue down the line with a few quick steps, but instead I more or less just stood there blankly while the disc was thrown. And instead of rushing to recover and stop the bleeding, I moved to still the wrong spot and they kept throwing it past me and eventually scoring. good grief. Anyway, I pulled it together towards the end of the game and at least started to play better D, though I'm still constantly out of step on O with this team. At first I thought my lack of focus was food-related, but I don't think so. I really just wasn't in the right mindset for the game. I guess I need to take even a "laid back" winter league game a bit more seriously.

Onward. My food adventures continue to go well. I picked up some kale over the weekend on the theory that it is super food and therefore I should eat it. I know nothing about how one normally eats the stuff though, and it probably would have gone the way of most produce I've bought in the past (wilted and into the trash) had Dave not stepped up and found a delicious soup recipe. He used all of the kale as well as sausage, a bell pepper, and some celery. I stuffed myself last night and will finish off the leftovers for lunch today.

I have a tendency when I'm really enthusiastic about something to dive in too fast. In terms of diet, I tend to make too many changes at once. But I couldn't help myself on this one: I, an avowed non-drinker, have decided to start drinking a glass of red wine with supper. I've read too much on the health benefits, and while it still tastes nasty to me, I'm hopeful that I can acclimate to the taste without turning into a binging alcoholic.

Daily Food Log:
11:30 am - latte, fish oil capsules
12:30 pm - sausage and kale soup
4:00 pm - chili, red wine
5:30 pm - chicken lavash wrap

CR W9D2: the joys of daily food logs

2008-12-02T11:13:00.001-08:00

Daily Food Log:

11:00 am - deli ham, turkey pepperoni, slice of cheese, banana, olives, multivitamin, fish oil caps
1:00 pm - chili
3:00 pm - glass of milk
6:00 pm - brie, apple
10:30 pm - sausage and kale soup, red wine

CR W9D1: Change in focus

2008-12-01T13:20:00.000-08:00

Weight: 147.8

I've had some interesting shifts in thinking of late. The first motivating factor is that I just got back from my honeymoon in Hawaii, and although I'm about 5 lbs heavier plus some lost muscle from my all-time low in June, I was actually happy with how I looked. My second big motivator is the amount of reading and blog-following I've been doing of late regarding the importance of eating well for both short-term and long-term health. My final motivator is that due to a) the honeymoon, b) my sick cat, and c) the holiday season, I am a bit short on cash at the moment.

A little background, if you haven't figured it out from following my blog: I don't like cooking. I can follow a recipe just fine, but I have no interest in experimenting with different things, and I am notoriously bad at chopping vegetables, measuring spices, the whole shebang. So I tend to stock up on microwave dinners, and I eat out a good deal. Now, this is a health/fitness blog, not a personal finance one, so I won't go on and on, but unsurprisingly I've finally come to the conclusion that my food expenses are too high for the quality of food that I'm getting. So I am now making a concerted effort to stock up the pantry with cooking supplies and cook my meals. Now somewhat unfortunately for my bank account, because of the reading I've been doing I've decided to switch largely to produce falling under the loose definition of "organic"- grass-fed beef and the like. So while I may not see much of a difference in how much I'm spending, I have a lot more control over the quality of food that I'm eating.

In the past I've just tried to hit my macronutrient goals and have been more concerned with not driving myself crazy by denying myself food that I enjoy. Because of that my diet has always been pretty high in sugar. As of today, that ends. I'm doing a trial run for the next three weeks of NO SUGAR. well, no added sugar, so the only sugar I'll be getting will be from things like fruit and milk. Sugar is such an obvious bad food, not only in my energy level spikes, but for my teeth, and, I'm beginning to suspect, my skin. I'm well beyond the teenager hormonal excuse for acne, so I'm going to take a hard look at my diet to see if I can determine a culprit there. I'm starting with the sugar and after 3 weeks we'll see how my skin is holding up.

I'm still going to be skipping breakfast on weekdays and getting a decent protein source in every meal, but I'm not going to be denying myself food. I seem to be maintaining pretty well at around 147 lbs without feeling constantly deprived. Though I'll admit that I'm secretly hoping that getting rid of sugar will help.

Another finance-related issue is I can't really afford gym-stuff for the time being. :( So I'll be working out some at home, but really for the moment my focus is on my food.

And because it works:

Daily Food Log:
11:30 am - Chili, fish oil capsules
12:30 pm - Slice of cheese, tall latte
2:30 pm - Microwave steak and potatoes dinner (getting rid of the last of these), fish oil capsules
4:00 pm - 2 slices cheese
6:30 pm - turkey and cheese crepe

CR W6D2: double unders

2008-11-11T16:44:00.000-08:00

Weight: 148.0

So we are going to ignore for the moment the fact that I haven't posted in 2 weeks (and the more important point that I haven't really been to the gym in 2 weeks either...) and instead focus on the fact that I did real crossfit workouts yesterday and the day before, so my abs are finally more or less recovered. They definitely aren't at 100% and I have to be careful on everything from lifts to kipping pullups, but I had a pretty strong heavy lifting day (power cleans) on Sunday and they didn't take any hurt. I have yet to determine if they're hurting any more from yesterday's workout, (crazy inverted burpees and pullups and normal burpees) because at the moment everything just hurts, but in a good way I think.

On the eating front I'm still skipping breakfast on weekdays, it seems to be working ok. I'm getting closer and closer to finally really giving up grains and maybe even giving up foods with added sugar. *gasps* At the moment I'm eating my way through what's left of my food that fits in those categories and the plan is to not buy any more. We'll see how that goes.

This is a tough time of year for me. With the exception of last year where I spent most of the winter in a really good mood due to other factors that overrode my normal reaction to the weather, I tend to get pretty down when the sun goes away. And really in general if my body feels cold or achey or anything then I really lose all motivation to work out. But this totally feeds on itself, because if I don't work out for a while my body just feels crappy and achey. If I can just make myself do it getting a good workout in really helps to counteract the urge to sit on my ass all day and in general make's me feel good. So I'm going to work hard for the next two weeks, then go to hawaii (where it's warm!) for a week, then come back and work hard for another three weeks then go celebrate xmas with my family. I can handle that.

Oh yeah, and the double under challenge started yesterday, I'm adding 3 double-unders per day until I hit 90 DUs on day 30. But I won't be in the gym today or tomorrow so I'll have a lot to do on thursday. :P

CR W3D5: setbacks

2008-10-24T09:58:00.000-07:00

Weight: 148.2

So I apparently managed to pull my abdominals during the GHD sit-up workout last week. Not sure which exactly, though I'd guess the lower part of my rectus abdominus. It's weird because certainly with my legs I can generally tell right when I pull something, but I just felt super exhausted during the workout. I guess maybe I've heard a lot more about the potential for back injury on the GHD so I was paying more attention to that? At any rate, the first 2 days after the workout I was super-sore, but as far as I could tell it was just my usual really bad DOMS. then my abs actually swelled up and I had vague fears of xenomorphic aliens popping out and wreaking havoc on the populace. It wasn't actually until the swelling went down some that I could tell that I had actually pulled something. Though I guess I should have guessed since there was swelling to begin with. Anyway, it doesn't really hurt unless I try to actually use it for anything, though it seems like my lower back has been a lot more sore of late, so I suppose it's been picking up the slack. So I haven't done any workouts for over a week, but I think I'm ready to jump back in. Well, I'm ready to try body-weight workouts at least. No more sit-ups though. :P

I think I've more or less settled into a routine with the intermittent fasting. I generally don't eat anything later than 8pm as it is, so to have 16 hours of fasting I just skip breakfast the following day and eat at noon. This has been working really well for me. I definitely notice that I don't get cravings at all in the morning. I definitely get hunger pangs, but I've discovered that a lot of the time they're really just thirst pangs. And even when it's real hunger it isn't really unpleasant, it's a lot better than the psycological drag of a real food craving. Fasting has really been helping me isolate the effect that sugar has on me, for whatever reason I get pretty distinct head-achey feelings now when I eat sugary things.

CR W2D3: My abs hurt so much I can barely walk

2008-10-15T12:00:00.000-07:00

Weight: 147.2

Yup, I made it in to Crossfit yesterday. Possibly against my better judgment I was determined to the the workout as Rx'ed. I figured if anything I'd be failing at the bottom of the squat on the Cleans and I could always just revert to power cleans, though it seems wrong that power cleans would be more doable for me, but there you go. At any rate, it turned out that squat cleans weren't really an issue. I had a couple of failed attempts near the end, but it was more of a concentration issue than muscle failure.

No, what really killed me were the GHDs. It wasn't weird pains in my lower back that I've heard others have trouble with. I have good trunk flexibility so I guess that I've been spared from that particular torment. Nor was it all-out muscle failure, though that might have become an issue if I hadn't been slowed down by the actual culprit. No, my real issue was powerful bouts of nausea and light-headedness due to the fast inverted movements of a GHD situp. I got through the first 50 with only slight light-headedness, but for the rest of the workout it was clear that each situp was making things worse. But after getting through more than half of the GHD situps there was no way I was going to revert to an abmat, so I slugged it out. The main issue was going back to the cleans, because there's just no way I'm going to try a squat clean when I'm feeling dizzy/disoriented and a bit ill. So I took nice long breaks sitting and staring at the ground until I felt ready to attempt another clean. Anyway, while it didn't turn out to be much of a metcon workout I'm crazy sore today and feel pretty good.

On the diet front, I went from 10pm Monday night to 2pm Tuesday afternoon with no food, then proceeded to have two 3-block meals from 2pm to5pm because I was HUNGRY!! I felt pretty good after that and didn't end up over-eating or anything. I do wonder if the fasting or just the change in my eating schedule in general might have contributed to the issues I had on the workout. Well, I'll continue to experiment and see where this goes. I've made it this far today with no food, but I may give in pretty soon.

On the sleeping front things are going well. I resisted the urge to lie around watching TV for hours on the couch and instead got myself to bed by 10:30 last night. It's getting easier to get up on time in the morning.

CR W2D2: Whoops!

2008-10-14T12:35:00.001-07:00

Weight: 149.0

I skipped Crossfit yesterday. Ah, nothing like immediate failure to meet my goals. Well, I may have been a lazy bum, but I did play hard all weekend on top of spending 18+ hours in the car, so I'm not too upset at myself. Today I will have to drag myself to the gym because I'm dreading his workout, but I'm feeling pretty motivated so hopefully I won't wimp out at the last minute.

Goals for the rest of this week:

get at least 8 hours of sleep each night
fast, condensed-window style (ideally don't eat anything until I leave work)
hit the rest of the CF workouts

Measurements 10/06/08

2008-10-06T11:57:00.000-07:00

Height: 5' 5.5"
Weight: 148.2 (+4.4 from 4/30/08)

Left bicep flexed: 11.75" (+0")
Left bicep unflexed: 11" (+0")
Bust: 36.25" (+0.75")
Waist: 28.5" (+1")
Abdomen: 30.25" (+0.25")
Hips: 38.5" (+0")
Left Thigh: 24.25" (+0.75")
Left Calf: 15" (+0")

Of note: I had take-out Chinese food last night, which is very high sodium on top of everything else, which for me generally means extra bloat around the waist/abdomen. I'm curious about the thigh measurement, as normally the hips and thighs go up and down together. The optimist in me says that maybe I've put some more muscle on my thighs? My back squat one-rep max has inched up a bit, after all, and all of the running I've been doing seems to leave my quads and hamstrings sore more often than it does my glutes.

Crossfit Redux W1D1: Yeaah Buddy!

2008-10-06T11:16:00.000-07:00

Weight: 148.2

Oh man, I can not even begin to express how excited I am. I was in a total funk, too many goals, no focus, getting nowhere. My weight stayed pretty steady through the entire summer though and my ultimate game saw some definite improvements, so I'd say all in all it was a success. My weight shot up though in the past month, corresponding to a return to bad eating habits and general blah feelings that are the norm for me when summer ends.

So the best pick-me-up for me is to go into mad planning. I make a gazillion goals and then focus them down and even if I don't reach them I feel better just having made them. So I've set up more or less my standard 12-week schedule, with half-volume/recovery weeks at the end of October and the end of November, (I'll be in Hawaii the week of Thanksgiving, so that coincides rather nicely) and the final rest week falling on my annual trip to Virginia to visit friends/family for xmas. I've heard through various social networking tools that various high school friends whom I no longer really keep up with have started Crossfit, though doing it on their own. I believe that some have even invested in bumper plates and such. I'm going to try to meet up with them when I'm in VA to see if we can get a good WOD going. :)

This week is the easiest for short-term goals. Regionals is this weekend, probably my last ultimate tournament of the season, and my number one goal for this week is to not get injured, especially my hands. That means absolutely no kipping pull-ups- I've lost most of my callouses and I'm worried that any decent volume at all will rip my palms. I'm also going to be very careful of my shoulder, I might forgo anything that I've connected in the past with shoulder issues- jumping pullups and overhead squats primarily. For any metcon workouts I'm going to err on the side of reducing the weight too much, at this point I'd rather just get the blood flowing rather than risk pulling anything, especially on my nemesis the thruster.

Nutrition-wise this week I'm going to clamp down on my eating and get back on the 12-block diet. I'm expecting to drop 3 or so pounds of scale weight this week just from that. As I mentioned above my weight jumped in less than a month but my clothes are still fitting the same and my measurements (which I will post separately) indicate that I haven't really gone up in body fat. This makes me pretty confident that the extra scale weight is mostly just water/carb bloat and once I get the carbs back down to an acceptable level I'll drop a few pounds pretty fast before the real fat-burning begins.

Once the ultimate season is over (probably next Monday) I'm going to give intermittent fasting yet another try. I've made a few attempts with really no success so far, but I've been nervous about decreased performance mid-season and am much more willing to experiment when the only athletic endeavor affected is my crossfit workouts. I'm going to try out the "condensed window" method as described here. In my previous attempts I tried without success the 24-on/24-off method also described in that post. Condensed window appeals to me both in it's consistency and it's simplicity.

Fitness-wise, I'm not entirely certain where I'm at, as over the summer I've mostly been doing sport-specific running and jumping, along with intermittent heavy lifting days, mostly back squats. As such I'm going to say back to the basics for me, my initial goals are:

225 lb Deadlift
75 lb Shoulder Press
5 deadhang pull-ups
30 minute 5k Run

Can't get more basic than that, huh? And of course, the biggest goal of all, starting next Monday, (and excluding recovery weeks) I want to hit the CrossFit WODs consistently, 3 on/1 off.

And a meta-goal: review and revise my goals, and take new measurements, every 4 weeks.

Crossfit Redux

2008-10-01T09:55:00.000-07:00

Went in for my first CrossFit workout in quite a while, and it was especially appropriate because it was one with some quintessential CF moves. The workout was Nate. I subbed out the 2 muscle ups with 6 pull ups and 6 dips, I did the handstand pushups to a 2-abmats stacked target (I think about 5"?) and did the kettle bell swings with 1.5 pood. (24 kg) Finished 4 rounds, but I wasn't really pushing. Then again, this is one of those workouts where you get pretty sweaty and exhausted even when you aren't pushing. At any rate I don't seem to have lost max strength, but I think I've lost some work capacity. I could whip out relatively strong pullups and handstand pushups in the first round, but by the 3rd round I could barely get anything to work for me at all.

My vague plan is to jump straight in to 3 days on, 1 day off, with allowances for my last few ultimate frisbee practices and Regionals. That means CF tomorrow, rest Friday, then CF or practice on Saturday and Sunday. I think by Monday I'll be able to tell if that's too much too fast or not.

That's it, time for crossfit

2008-09-29T11:21:00.000-07:00

Oops, I've gotten a bit behind on this thing. We had Sectionals the weekend of 9/20-9/21, which was exhausting but good, and I had practice yesterday. I keep saying I'm going to go to the gym and lift but I haven't been at all for several weeks. I've also been falling back into old bad eating habits. Regionals is in just under two weeks and that will most likely be the end of the season, though I'll still try my hardest to help my team get to the championships.

Anyway, I've had enough. I've canceled my lame-ass gym membership and I'm starting up again at CFO for October. Unfortunately I'm busy both Wednesday and Thursday afternoon, so the current plan is to drag myself in bright and early Wednesday morning. Considering how bad my resolve in the fitness-arena has been of late, I have no idea if that will actually happen. I'm pretty excited though just at the prospect of starting up crossfit again, so hopefully that will be enough to get me there.

I've maintained my loads at the basic lifts with my infrequent trips to the gym, so mostly I'm curious to see how much I've fallen off with metcon and especially my bodyweight movements. I think I can still kip though I doubt I can do many chest-to-bar, and my push-ups aren't too much worse... I think...

CS W7D5: working on defense

2008-09-13T22:28:00.000-07:00

First off, my quad is healed! My hamstring on that side has been a bit sore so there are probably some residual things still going on, hopefully related to some final healing up. Also both my knees, but especially the one on that side are a bit painful. It's nothing a little ibuprofen won't take away, but I think they'll thank me when the season is over, though I still have every intention of delaying that as long as possible.

Let's see, well we scrimmaged a good team on Thursday, and I was fairly happy with my playing. I've had a bit of a break-through on the way I guard cutters when I'm playing defense, and I worked on it during the scrimmage. I'm still not fast, but I committed to playing defense on cutters by staying to the outside, and I think it made a difference. I'm getting a bit better at the footwork, which can be a bit tricky. The hardest part is not being able to watch the thrower. My biggest problems, aside from not being fast enough, stemmed from the disc moving to another thrower without me realizing it. Hopefully at tournaments with more people yelling on the sideline it'll be easier. There was a point early on where the disc ended up being thrown poorly, ending up bouncing off of someone's hand and being received by my girl with me only belatedly realizing that it had been thrown at all, if I had known I probably could have D'ed it. On offense I made some fairly good plays though I don't think I was much of a difference-maker. I only had one really bad decision, and luckily it ended up not being a turnover, though it really should have been.

Today we had practice bright and early. My knees were actually hurting a bit less, but I felt like my focus wasn't really there. Especially to start with we did a huck drill and every single one of my backhands went in a different direction than I had intended. My D wasn't horrible but it definitely wasn't great either, though I'm getting more and more comfortable with the new positioning. I feel like it was a good practice for our team though, and I guess this close to Sectionals, that's what's really important.

On the food front I actually ate really cleanly (for me) all week, then deviated quite a bit this weekend. I'm pleased overall though and will attempt to keep my eating more or less on target form now until Sectionals. My big goal this week though will be getting enough sleep! I think a prereq for that will be cutting back on the caffeine, so it's going to be a bit of a challenge.

CS W7D2: switching things up

2008-09-09T14:24:00.000-07:00

Weight: 143.4

Still taking it easy on my quad, definitely no track workouts, and I'm not doing any leg workouts at the gym either. I ended up going to the gym with a friend yesterday and doing his workout, which was a Body-For-Life upper body lifting workout. This was one of the first workouts I did consistently when I finally got comfortable with the gym back in college, but I haven't used weight machines in over a year, so it felt very odd to me. At any rate, I'm still waiting to see just how sore I'm going to be, I can feel it already so I'm betting pretty sore. Oh, and my triceps and biceps are both noticeably stronger than the last time I did isolation exercises on those muscles. My right shoulder was twinging slightly, which really is just disturbing. I'm thinking I need to get myself in for some physical therapy sometime soon, because it's not getting better.

The quad is feeling somewhat better at least. I iced it pretty liberally over the weekend. I'm hopeful that it'll be able to hold it's own on Thursday.

CS W6D5: injured

2008-09-05T16:37:00.000-07:00

Weight 143.8

I'm injured and annoyed. I tweaked my right quad a week ago at practice but kept playing, and then I played right through the tournament. I iced my quad a bit, but I was definitely feeling it on Monday. didn't do anything physical until practice yesterday, where I was hoping that it'd be feeling better, but alas, it definitely still hurts. I'm going to ice it more today, but I'm still planning on practicing tomorrow, I really can't afford to stop playing. And while it sounds like I'm hurting my body, honestly I'm not making it worse, I'm just not letting it get better. Hopefully the break between Saturday's practice and next Thursday's scrimmage will be enough for it to heal. But I'm not going to swear off all activity in there, I'm thinking I'll get in some upper body work at least. I think normal sit-ups would be bad, but open-knee sit-ups would probably be ok.

I only now appreciate just how injury-free that I've been up to this point. I think I can give lifting a lot of credit. Though I'm pretty certain my issues still stem from my quads being too strong for my hamstrings, and the imbalance sets me up for muscle pulls. normally before practice I static-stretch just my quads to deliberately weaken them a bit. the day of my injury I forgot to stretch them until it was too late.

I really want to focus on eating better for the next couple of weeks. It's really tough because the stress on my body from ultimate gives me such a strong knee-jerk reaction of "must eat carbsssss", and it's hard to resist. We got some clif builders bars, so if nothing else I'll try to eat one of those when I get the cravings, at least that way I know I'm still getting protein and fat. I'll endeavor to go to the grocery store this weekend and actually stock up on good stuff for a change, too.