Week 3

How YOU doin? With the holidays coming I am starting to fall apart here and there. I did not log my food in everyday and calculate how I was doing. I am looking forward to a new approach using excell to set up a week's worth of meal planning ahead of time. This will make it much easier to plan, follow and share. There were also a few in the presence of so much good home made food and sweets. That being said I still feel very positive. I am eating a much higher volume of vegetables and am making sure I am getting a balance of protein. On the new food front, I must say kale is awesome. I love it raw or cooked. Its sweet and the tips of the raw leaves feel really neat in your hands. I'll admit it I tend to eat my salad with my hands. Avacados are very interesting. I like it and can see how it would make a great garnish. I need to find a no sour cream guacamole recipe. The mango I tried was funky. I don't think it was ripe and smelled kind of piney. I'll have to consult with someone who has actually eaten one. My next plan is to stock my freezer with more frozen vegetables and maybe a couple frozen berry treats. This will allow me to make up a meat and vegetable lunch the night before. A little weekend or night before prep sure goes a long way (i.e boil up a dozen eggs and cook a few chicken breasts on Sunday).

Workouts went good this week. I think I missed 2 (split jerk and 800 meter runs). Things feel great. Tonight, after two days straight of snow blowing and shovelling I blasted out a personal record on a pullup/pushup/squat routine out in the cold on an icy bar, wearing an extra 10lbs or so of boots and sweaters and hats, and the pullups were uphill too, both ways. It felt awesome to just fall back into a foot of snow and rest there for 20 minutes!

Still trying to figure out what format my goals will take, and what I'll put in my December final reflection.

On a side note I think I'd like to learn a little more about the symbol that we used on the upper corners of the blog post. Its a tree of some sort and probably recognizable to many. I think there must be some really cool stories of hope that would go along with it. I have an idea what this research would entail and its kind of a big project for someone of my reading capability. I don't know, I'll think about it. Time to hit the hay.

Happy Holidays to all!!

Week Two

At the beginning of this week I weighed 158 lbs, which is 3 pounds lost. I don’t know how to explain it, but I feel less “swollen”. I am amazed at how quickly this Zone Diet strategy is working. Although I may not have all the correct foods just yet, simply getting the proportions dialed in has made a huge difference. I have cut out a lot of grains and added many vegetables. I will say though it takes a lot of vegetables to get the carbs I need so often I’ve cut the grains to a half cup and added as many veggies as possible. In addition to the body change and huge amount of energy I have after two weeks, I feel like I can breathe and smell better. When I opened up a can of macedemia nuts the other day, I sat there and smelled it for a while strangely enjoying it more than I would normally. This week I also took on the job of shopping for some more food variety. I came home with broccoli, cauliflower, kale, avocado, tofu, asparagus, macedemia nuts and a mango. Next week I’d like to get some “seeds” but I’m not sure what seeds to get besides sunflower. Also note I had some cheats spread out over a few days (a hamburger, 3 beers (not all at once) and some pie samplers). Three days were also non-logging days where I just followed the basic plan of getting the proportions mentioned in week one. It was pretty easy after two weeks of really learning about and recording what I was eating.

On the way to and from work this week, my commuter friend Sam and I listened to “The Zone” by Dr. Barry Sears. I was really impressed by the way he explained the use of food as the most powerful drug in the world. His focus isn’t so much about calories and losing weight, that comes naturally. He speaks more about how the foods you eat and the proportions within each meal regulate your body’s physiology. The way he described the effects of food on insulin levels and all that proceeds from that really hit me and I think, makes this book well worth the read. I enjoyed listening to it first and now intend to buy the book in order to create a nice journal page of notes. I would like to be able to explain to people why I am eating this way and the benefits it can offer towards athletic performance, obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and cancer. This may take a while. Four weeks ago I was hopped up on Thanksgiving sweets and a solid two candy bars a day.

Clearly my focus has been on food both in thought and action. On the gym front things went very well and I have stayed on Cross Fit main page schedule 100%, scaling as needed.

I’m not so sure what I did about spirit this week. One lecture that Q gave me talked about choice and how it can have such a profound effect on everything we approach. I can’t tell if I have really made the choice each day to really get this going or if I’m being driven by other forces unknown to me.

If anyone is interested I could use a meal planning buddy.

Week One

Mind: I spent a lot of time logging down what I am doing and what I am eating this week. I have one journal that is only for my workouts which allows me to track how I do and compare it to months and weeks before. My other journal is all about the food I am eating. After reading a bit about the Zone diet by Barry Sears, I decided to give it a try and see what I could start with. Each day has its own page and each page is broken down into each meal for which I record what I ate and its nutrtitional content in terms of Protein Carbs and Fat. For any one interested my body supposedly needs "16" blocks a day (small male). Let me break that down into grams of stuff. Breakfast (28g protein, 36g carbs, 5gfat) Snack1( 14g protein, 18g carb, 2.5gfat) Lunch (28g protein, 36g carbs, 5gfat), Snack2( 14g protein, 18g carb, 2.5 gfat), Dinner(28g protein, 36g carbs, 5gfat). That works out to about 1240 calories a day which sounds crazy to me. Fat content seems a little low and I do remember Randy T the trainer saying that he and his crew were actually doubling the fat amount. In the end it should come out to a Protein/Carb/Fat makeup of 40/30/30. I have come close to that this week but like I said I did up the fat. Overall I feel great. I've been drinking water like a fish. Oddly and immediate boost in energy, maybe due to just being psyched up? Gym energy level felt really good. Calories for the last few days were (1309, 1529, 1380, 1310, 1193, 1555) overall I think I'm due for a 2000 calorie day. Also noticed I didn't sleep so great this week. Too excited? At the start of This week I weighed 161 and was feeling kind of bloated and bulky from thanksgiving.

Body: Followed Crossfit for 1 week straight. Hit a PR on "Fran" of 7:35. First time I did this with 20lbs less at 14:05! My goal is to stay on, even if I have to scale it to puppy level. Friday's workout was huge in helping me recover from Thursday and is a much better idea than my typical "I need another day off attitude", which leads to more soreness which leads to a third day off.

Spirit: Just did wide angle vision exercise once.

Moving South

In the beginning a lot of time is spent listening and learning about really cool stuff, trying a lot of new things (new job, skills, dance, jiu jitsu, nature study, different workouts etc). My overall conclusion is that personally I have spent a lot of time in the “East” the area of beginnings and inspiration. I’ve noticed that many of my thoughts on what I do involve anger and resentment. I can’t communicate any of the things I’ve learned about because I don’t really know what I’m talking about. I have not spent enough time in the next area the “South”, the area of hard work. There is a reality or a truth that is burning in my brain and creating nothing but self pity. I can talk about new fitness routines, but it means nothing if I ate three candy bars that day and am only working out twice a week. I can buy a lot of books and talk about relaxing and getting outside more, but if I don’t actually ever go out to my thoughtful spot it means nothing. It’s empty. From a wide angle view, this challenge (for me) will be focused on creating and improving the behaviors of hard work over a good amount of time.

Some of my random ideas on my goals to come:

Mind: Continue learning about crossfit and the movements by reading, subscribing to journal to get videos etc. Consider starting up in Jan at SECT again 2x/week for 3 months. Instruction could be worth it especially on Olympic lifting stuff and would give me more time for nature study. Read and implement learnings on eating, so far I have references that I’d like to get from iConn (CT interlibrary loan program) they are Enter the Zone, the Paleo Diet and the Paleo Diet for Athletes. Crossfit Journals 15 and 21 also list a lot more. Read more into mind mapping and try to use it. Finish Kamana 2 Nature Home Study Program (great tool to incorporate all). Is this all too much?

Body: Feel like I did when I was 147lbs @ 7% body fat (strong, fast, flexible willing to try any kind of workout) My gut tells me that I’ll need to drop some body fat to feel like this again and get my diet tuned up. Methods will mainly follow crossfit main page. Plenty of measures will naturally be created due to the structure of the program (timed workouts etc). Personal goals? Run a fast mile? 5:30ish, but without really training in running too much. Try out some Parkour training with Terry? Wish I had time and money to go back to BJJ or try Kung Fu but I don’t see that happening soon. How am I ever going to get to the “Standard” class at Tom Brown’s Tracker School? Find something small (weekend) and go there? Get back to playing around with skills and actually doing stuff…others want to as well…Terry, Adrianna, Eric…

Spirit: What is spirit? Getting a better foundation in some routines (being thankful first, thoughtful spot, wide angle vision) is what is calling me. I don’t have words for what I expect the result will be.

Let the Games Begin!

Randy