By the time January was over on Friday last week, I was pretty excited to ease the pressure to stay at 4p/w with my side slowly turning to steel. It literally froze last week; I probably just pushed myself a bit too far, too fast - but it was satisfying to really test my limits.
This January challenge made me feel like I could get to that level of intensity that you just don't get by pushing yourself alone. You get asked to do things you really can't do or don't want to try doing, and sometimes with a little practise (or a lot of practise in the case of double unders), you may get there sooner than you think.
The best way to learn was to jump in feet first - I was overwhelmed, nervous, and out of my comfort zone but it was the best thing for me. I met lots of good people by just doing workouts I wouldn't normally have done -- Gymnastics WOD especially, just because I had to rack up my 4 p/w, and just knowing one person made all the difference (thanks BJ!) in being confident enough to rock up alone, once I was in the swing of it.
It's set the benchmark for the year, which was really the point of the whole exercise.
Right... so onwards with February.
To give you an idea of what I'm eating:
garden vegetables (especially greens)
lean meats and a bit of bacon
some fruit (1 - 2 servings a day max)
no refined sugar (minimal natural sugars)
limited dairy other than yoghurt
This is the recommended Crossfit nutrition plan: note, this is not 'Paleo', I'm still maintaining some starch through limited whole grains, brown rice and quinoa, I'm aiming to stick to 100g-200g carbs derived from natural sources per day. If you're not sure how much that is...
If you're interested in why I'm doing this rather than paleo, read here for self monitored twin study done recently that compares body responses from a >%2 fat diet (extremely low, will maintain base minimum body requirements only) versus a 0g sugar diet (none at all). Both have their positives and negatives (roughly equal weight loss, though that's not really the point). I'm more interested in getting a healthy balance.
The basis relates to eliminating processed and refined food, and being as close to package free cooking as possible. This gets difficult with sauces. I'm avoiding the obvious ones like sweet chilli, tomato sauce and chutneys (way too high in sugar) but checking every packaging can be a bit exhausting. Useful habit though, when you start checking it's quite frightening how much stuff is riddled with sweeteners, preservatives, flavour enhancers etc etc.
Week wise, this week actually started out a pain free non event. I turned down a multitude of things I wasn't allowed without thinking twice; a date scone, cookies, lollies, chocolates and an amazing looking birthday cake. Then I hit a major wall... Terrible Tuesday. I had a pretty low carb start to the day (bfast: 2egg omelette with spinach and mushrooms, lunch: vege bake salad with smoked salmon, some hazelnuts and a coffee, and a nectarine) - and at 2.54pm my head started to pound. All I could think about was carrot cake, cookies, or would even have killed for a spoon, peanut butter from the jar and pretzel MnMs. I was grumpy, tired and useless and working was almost impossible. I had to do something, so I substituted with coconut water and a protein bar (18g protein, 6g carb) to get me through but it was pretty ugly.
The rest of the week has been completely manageable. I've definitely come to appreciate that it's not sugar that I'm eating at meals that's problematic, it's the mindless eating like snacks, chips or drinks that you just eat because they're available and people offer you that's the real challenge. We had a BBQ at our flat on Wednesday - the biggest thing I struggled with was not eating a piece of garlic bread, the Rocky Road I turned down easily.
I've started to feel my blood sugar levels stabalizing. I'm not getting that extreme high/low swing any more that makes you ravenous before meals, and because I'm just not allowed desserts, I don't even think about them. I've taken all my baseline measurements so I have a body change comparison for end Feb, which I'll post results at the end.
My flatmate Jenna is becoming an amazing kitchen wizz at making refined sugar free treats (she's joining this challenge with me!), and makes these incredible Ginger Cookie Dough Truffles which are gluten free with all natural sugars - highly recommended! Click here for the recipe, it's a Petite Kitchen gem.
For those of you who are still keen to hear my Crossfit tales - this week has been awesome so far. I've been every day this week, and am excited to report I can now do double unders! I even did 75 (not unbroken) yesterday. It's like a switch just flipped in my brain and I suddenly got it. Other than that, we did Death by 10m on Monday morning (urgh), followed by a 5min plank with push ups every 20sec (double urgh) topped off by a 1.6km run (no words for how I felt after all of that), but I'm definitely hitting a point where I've noticed a significant fitness improvement, I could not have done that in December by any means. Tuesday was a hectic weights session with OH weighted lunges, split jerks and pull ups, and yesterday was a LOT of skipping and wall balls. Good buzz!
It's a short week in New Zealand with Waitangi Day, and I'e been given Friday off from work (yeeeow!) so plenty of recovery time ahead. It's also my birthday on Sunday (which I somehow keep forgetting about) - I'm going to The Little Unbakery in Ponsonby which is a raw food cafe to stay on track. Always room for a treat though, the Apple Crumble Cake with Fig & Ginger topping and coconut cream... well, there's always room for more :)
