Paleo: Day 4

Only had 2 real meals today. Found some good recipes in my paleo book, so I tried out two of those. Paleo Meat balls and paleo meat loaf. Both are pretty awesome. But I made those for the week. Hello, lunches.

Breakfast/lunch: Flank steak, 2 turkey bratwursts, Asparagus, and some strawberries.

Dinner: paleo meat balls and boccoli, grape juice.

Anyway, I'm actually feeling really great today. However, tomorrow is Monday which means another week at the office. Fun times.

Paleo: Day 3

OK, Here's the run down of the day...

Breakfast: Grilled Halibut, broccoli, strawberries and apple butter.

Lunch: Sliced Roast Beef and grapes.

Dinner: 2 chicken breasts, broccoli, glass of OJ.

Today was quite a bit better. No headaches, no real feeling of hunger. Tomorrow morning, I'll weigh in and see how much I've lost thus far.

Paleo: Day 2

So here it is. My day 2 of the paleo diet. It started off somewhat rough as I had a headache until about 11am. And due to the fact that my eating has drastically changed, I'm suffering from food withdraws. More specifically, insulin spike withdraws. My body is calling out for the sugary-sweetness of the typical American Diet. Basically, as I eat a large meal full of foods that are really good for me, and eat until I am content my body wants more food after about an hour or two. As you can see, I'm posting this on Day 3 of the diet, and things are improved immensely this morning.

So here goes

Breakfast:

1 pork tenerloin, 2 cups of broccoli, 1 apple and 2tbsp of almond butter.

Lunch:

2 cans of Tuna, 4 oz of roast beef, 2 cups of celery, 2 cups of grapes/strawberries, 2 tbsp of apple butter.

Dinner:

1 top sirloin steak, 2 cups of broccoli, 1 apple and 2tbsp of almond butter.

Also yesterday I started my skill work. Did some bench presses (been a long time!) and some front squats. Got a few additional things to do on the power rack today, so I think I'm going to get started on that. I'll post again tonight.

Paleo: Day 1

April 1, 2010. A date that will live in infamy. A date that I walked into my office and there was a bake sale. And I had foldin' money in my pocket. But I kept walking. That's right, I kept walking.

That should be a song. or not. For those of you who are curious, here's what wikipedia has to say about the paleo diet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleo_diet.

Here are my meals for the day:

Breakfast: 3 eggs, scrambled. Bacon (have to get rid of it and I'm not one for wasting food. There are starving people in India, but they probably don't eat pork). 2 cups of broccoli. Yes, that's broccoli. For breakfast. 1 apple and some OJ.

Lunch: 4oz sliced roast beef, 2 cans of tuna and assorted spices and a splash of olive oil, 2 cups celery, and an apple.

Dinner: 2 pork tenderloins, 2 cups of broccoli, 1 cup of grapes, 1/2 cup strawberries and 1 tbsp of apple butter.

Thoughts: I think that the breakfast that I had this morning was one of the better ways to start off the day. I didn't sleep much last night and was awake for the first few hours of work. My energy level slipped off because I went so long without eating, but once I had lunch I immediately felt awake.

I also weighed myself this morning. 332.6 is the starting weight. The goal is 20 pounds by the end of the month. Hopefully about double that will really happen though.

refocusing

So things haven't been great as of late. I've really been lacking in the motivation department. I am not motivated to work out, eat right and it's honestly eating at me quite a bit. I only gave a 50% effort to a workout the other day that I was actually looking forward to (10 rounds for time of the couplet: 135# Deadlift-15 reps, 15 push ups). I came up with excuses, and only did 5 rounds.

I took today to get the bad out of my system. Didn't eat very well at all. Starting tomorrow morning, I'm only going to eat food that I prepare in my own kitchen for the next 7 days. I've got a stocked freezer and have no excuse not to do so. I've felt like crap all week long and I know it's because I've not been eating right. Now it's time to fix that. If I eat right I know I'll be able to get back in the garage and kick some tail.

I. Want. To. Die.

Short one today. Here was today's WOD:

Five Rounds for time of:

Row 500 Meters

135# Thrusters, 7 reps

And of course, the Matt-is-fat-and-out-of-shape-scale-down:

Five rounds for time of:

30# Sumo-Dead lift High Pulls-50 reps

60# Thrusters-7 reps

For those of you who are curious, here is a sumo-dead lift high pull: http://media.crossfit.com/cf-video/CrossFit_SDHP.mov (for you non-mac people: http://media.crossfit.com/cf-video/CrossFit_SDHP.wmv).

I'm still sore from yesterday's workout, and this one pushed my cardio to the limit. I intentionally avoided heavy weights because I would have lost good form (I'm still teaching myself some of these movements). Admittedly, I could have done the SDHP's at 45#. But 30# nearly beat me to death. Again, it became all about meeting that wall and pushing through it. I hit the wall at the end of the first round. I thought to myself, "You can stop at 3 rounds, man...it'll be ok." But I didn't, I pushed through it. Granted, I took some breaks. But I figured breathing was probably OK. I ended up finishing the WOD in a little over 47 minutes. That's a really long time for a CF WOD. I'm not proud of the time, but I'm proud that I did 5 rounds. At least that was as prescribed.

An unbelievable epiphany...

I had an epiphany while working out today. I'll get to that in a minute. First, the workout that was prescribed:

225# Dead Lift--15 reps

50 Pull-ups

225# Dead Lift--12 reps

40 Pull-ups

225# Dead Lift--9 reps

30 Pull-ups

225# Dead Lift--6 reps

20 Pull-ups

225# Dead Lift--3 reps

10 Pull-ups

And here is how I modified it:

110# Dead-Lift--15 reps

25 Pull-ups

110# Dead Lift--12 reps

20 Pull-ups

110# Dead Lift--9 reps

15 Pull-ups

110# Dead Lift--6 reps

10 Pull-ups

110# Dead Lift--3 reps

5 Pull-ups

My time: 15:50. I was pretty proud of that. Albeit I didn't do a single pull up. I completed all of my pull ups on the total gym, because there's no way I can pull myself up.

And now for the epiphany. Today I realized that these workouts are insane for a reason. In any workout that you complete on this program it's all about intensity and pushing yourself through the WOD. My intensity has been lacking, which I will freely admit. I do have some limitations on myself that prevent me from doing these workouts as prescribed, but I'm just starting out. And these workouts are designed to make you hit a wall. Today, I hit the wall at the end of the first round. I had to push myself harder to get it done. My body is not used to doing this kind of work and that makes my workout much harder. And in order to keep my heart rate in a safe zone I've got to take little breaks every now and then. But as I push forward, things get easier. I had to break up the pull-ups and DLs with the higher reps. I was able to knock out 12 DLs in the first set before having to take a break. I had to take the first set of pull-ups in a 10-10-5 form.

Another part of my epiphany is...EAT MORE. I know, I'm trying to lose weight and eating less is supposed to help that. But with these workouts, I'm burning through many more calories. And in order to complete these workouts, I need to eat more. I'm not talking about eating crap foods that no one should eat, but eating good foods. So, that's my task. I've been fairly paleo today, but I haven't had nearly the amount of vegetables that I should have had today.

Tomorrow, 0500, I'll be back in the garage doing some skill work. I think I'm going to try to do two-a-days this week as well as keeping a strict food journal. We'll see how that goes.