Thursday 29 March 2012

Crossfit session 48 (Thursday)

This is the first week where I've gone to Crossfit back to back, usually I do Monday, Wednesday and Friday to give myself some recovery time and to get other things done, like cleaning and uni work, but this week I went Tuesday, Wednesday Thursday.  I expected to be really sore, but surprisingly I wasn't!

Warm-up


10 x strict pull-ups (no kipping)
10 x tricep dips
Handstand holds

x 3

WOD 1


I quite it like it when we have two workouts, they're not as long and you don't get sick of doing the same exercise for 5 rounds or whatever.

1 min max front-squats (20kg, my squats suck)
1 min max push-ups
1 min max sit-ups
1 min rest

Repeat for 3 rounds.

I have no idea how many of everything I did, the front-squats and the push-ups sucked, so the sit-ups felt like rest!

Here's a front-squat - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOLc4MAx23Q

WOD 2 


1 x lap of the block (600m run)
50 x kettle-bell swings (12kg)

Repeat for 3 rounds.. that's 150 kettle-bell swings! Crazy. Here's a kettle-bell swing - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YAi2TAbHbc

I think I did it in 21mins 12 seconds.. maybe, or 12mins 21 seconds.. I forget. I'll have to check my book.

I was expecting it to suck, but it was actually pretty easy and for my first round of kettle-bell swings I did 45 swings in one go, which seemed to make the trainers really happy!

I had to swap my 3rd run for a 750m row though because my knee started feeling dodgy again towards the end of the 2nd run, it's really annoying, I'm clearly going to have to go to a physio or something. I have no idea what's wrong with it but it only starts feeling weird when I'm running, and only after about 800m.

Afterwards one of the trainers was asking me what I'd changed in the last couple of weeks cuz he said I'd made huge improvements and it just seemed to click with me now, he asked if it was diet and I said I was doing paleo, which he seemed surprised at, so then we started chatting about that and intermittent fasting (IF), which he highly recommends and said it helped him lose 5kg really easily, so I'm going to give that another go next week. I don't know what has changed in the last couple of weeks, but I do feel stronger and it's nice when even the trainers pick up on it, means I'm not imagining it!

Here's a muscly guy with a kettle-bell.. totally relevant!






Wednesday 28 March 2012

Crossfit Session 47 (Wednesday)

Woo deadlifts today! I like deadlifts, they make me feel strong. Maybe not as strong as this guy though:
















Warm-up

Max hollow hold
10 x back extension

x 4

Then we worked on our deadlifts to our 3 x 3 rep max.  I worked with my usual deadlift partner and we started at 40kg and went up from there until we did 3 x 3 for 65kg, woo personal best!!  One of the other girls was lifting 100kg though.. so we still felt weak!

WOD

"DT"

We've done DT before, but in pairs. This time it was solo. Here's the story of the soldier that DT was named after - http://www.crossfit.com/mt-archive2/004622.html

12 x deadlifts 
9 x hang power clean
6 x push jerk

x 5 rounds

You have to pick the weight based on what you can push-jerk overhead, so I chose 25kg and damn did it feel light for deadlifts after doing 65kg!!! It was awesome! Not so awesome for push-jerks, but at least one bit of the workout was easy.

I did it in 10mins exactly.


Then to finish we did a 500m row - took me 2mins 10 seconds.




Tuesday 27 March 2012

Session 46 (Tuesday)

I was asleep on the couch last night when I should have been at Crossfit, so I forced myself off the couch tonight to go and sweat it out and see if that would improve my mood. It kind of did, even though I was dreadful at everything.

Warm- up 


10 x push-up
10 x air squat
10 x hanging knee raise

x 4

WOD 


250m row
25 x double-under
15 x wall ball
2 x rope climb

20min AMRAP

I only got through 2 full rounds of this because they won't let me do normal skips now, I have to do the double unders and I'm still not very consistent with them, so for the first round it took me about 10mins to actually do 25 of the bastards.

My rope climbs also weren't great, I didn't get more than one metre up the rope I don't think, but I guess it was good practice.

Then we worked on our power cleans. Apparently my technique was getting worse instead of better, awesome.

I was doing it at 30kg, I tried 35kg but that was not happening.  Here's a powerclean - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCUmi2oqlvA

Because I didn't go Monday and I can't go Friday because I have work drinks for someone who is leaving, if I want to do Crossfit 3 times this week, I have to do Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday in a row. Yay.. I can see myself being really sore by Thursday!


Crossfit session 45 (Friday)

Warm-up


15 x air-squats
Max handstand hold
10m duck walk

x 4

The handstand holds were the ones we did last week with people holding your legs, I managed to stay up there but I wasn't straight by any meaning of the word I don't think!

The duck walks were incredibly undignified.. you get into a very low squat position and then have to walk along in that position.. and you do look like a duck. Here's a video of a hot chick doing it, I can tell you now that I looked nothing like this when I was doing it - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DNxEWow99E

WOD 1


500m row
21 man-makers
500m row
15 man-makers
500m row
9 man-makers

This is a man-maker - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEKveKv0alE

We didn't have to do a full-squat though, just a dip and then a push-jerk to get the weight overhead. They were freaking tough and you had to really concentrate because you can't let your body turn when you do the rows. It's an excellent full body workout though!

WOD 2


Max kettlebell swings in a minute 5 times with the aim of getting to 30 swings in the minute. For each of those 30 swings that you didn't get you had to write that number on the board and then at the end they were tallied up and that was the number of burpees you had to do!

1st round - 26 (so score of 4)
2nd round - 26 (score of 4)
3rd round - 27 (score of 3)
4th round - 23 (score of 7)
5th round - 27 (score of 3)

So then after all that, I had to do 21 burpees. Fun!

Wednesday 21 March 2012

Crossfit session 44

I love it that the post where I used a picture of some incredibly ripped chick doing muscle-ups got double the amount of hits as normal, you're all pervs!

Here's your buff picture for today, I was trying to find a ripped guy climbing a rope but I couldn't find a good one, they all had bad hair or something.

I totally looked like this




















Anyway, back to reality. My thighs have been so sore since Monday's 150 wall ball extravaganza (aka 150 squats) and I was going to go to Crossfit on Tuesday after uni, but I couldn't really walk properly so I didn't think there was much point. Tonight they were a bit better and stretching them out a lot before the session helped, but then we had to do more squats, so my squats were total rubbish and were also not helped by the fact that I went too heavy on the barbell weight.

Warm-up


Max push-ups (or handstand push-ups if you're good enough)
10 x strict pull-ups (no kipping, blue and thin orange band)

Repeat 4 times.

I think my push-ups were 15, 15, 12, 9

So in total 51 push-ups and 40 strict pull ups.

WOD


1.6km row (everyone else was running but I gave it a miss because of my knee) - took me 7mins

Then 5 rounds of:

6 x squat cleans (30kg, should have done 25kg)
9 x hand release push-up
12 x sit-up

Then after all that was done, we practiced rope climbs and I'm very pleased to say that I actually got halfway up the rope!! The last time I tried it I couldn't even get up on the rope at all. Hopefully we'll do it again soon and I'll get to the roof!

In total we did: 30 cleans, 45 push-ups (on top of the ones from the warm-up) and 60 sit-ups.

Here are videos of the moves:

Squat cleans - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46cCnuFPG8w (she doesn't get going til about 45seconds and she makes it look damn easy, I was in serious struggle-town and my form was rubbish, I wasn't getting low enough in the squat at all. Oh well, next time I won't be fooled by the low number of reps!).

Here's another video of them - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Czg1KKte-9o

Hand-release push-ups - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHOyjml6dv0 (These are a total bitch).

Diet stuff


Stupidly, I weighed myself yesterday and noticed that I've put on 1.3kg since I finished my Whole30! Bad Emma! I know I've been eating way too much junk on the weekends again, so I'm going to cut that down to one or two meals only, not the whole weekend. I think I just have to go back to taking my own food to Glenn's, cuz his house is full of evil things... or no food at all, which ends up in take-away binges.

 It's probably also a lot to do with adding alcohol back in as well.. but I don't think I'll cut that out completely any time soon, I might try cutting down on it and making better choices though.

It could also just be increase in muscle from doing Crossfit or just random daily variation. My clothes don't feel like they fit any differently, so I guess that is the main thing. Either way, I'm going to try and be a bit more mindful of what I'm shoving in my mouth so that I don't undo all the good work from the Whole30.

Intermittent Fasting


Today I'm trying intermittent fasting, I've wanted to try it for ages as it's something paleo people always go on about, but I didn't really have the motivation not to eat and I wasn't convinced that I wouldn't end up being a grumpy bitch during it.

Today though I needed to get to work early and I couldn't be bothered getting up extra early to make breakfast or think of something to take in with me, so I decided it was the perfect time to try it. See, laziness is good for stuff!

There's lots of different ways people do it, but I've read that about 16-18hrs is a good amount of time, so I've skipped breakfast and will eat a late lunch. I'll see how I go with it, I think I've been paleoish for long enough now that my body should be pretty okay with running on fat and I won't get the same kind of crazy, grumpy hunger I used to get when I was running on carbs. There are lots and lots of good reports about it on the internet, so I'm curious to see how I go.






Monday 19 March 2012

Crossfit Session 43

You know last week when I said that we wouldn't have to do the Crossfit Games Open workout 12.4 because it had muscle-ups in it and was just overly too hard for us lowly group 2 people? Well I was totally wrong, we had to do it tonight. They'd swapped the muscle-ups for chin-ups, but we still had to do the 150 wall-balls and the 90 double-unders!  Here is the official video for the workout - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMJYvetSHvk

I was convinced that there was no way I could do 150 wall balls in the 12 minutes, let alone the rest of the exercises, but the trainers said at the start that there wasn't one of us who wouldn't be able to get through the wall balls.. and of course, as always, they were right.

So I got through the 150 walls balls and was up to the skipping when the clock ran out. I knew I could do 90 double-unders in theory, because I'd done 100 last week, but after the wall-balls my legs were just not cooperating and I couldn't even do one, so I swapped them for normal skipping and got through 65 of those in the 12mins.

I'm pretty amazed that I could do 150 wall balls and I probably could have gone harder at them too, because after we did the 12mins the rest of the time was spent practising hand-stands, so it wasn't very strenuous.

Wall-balls




















Warm-up


5min row (I did about 1.12km in 5mins)

Then 4 rounds of:

10 x stick rolls
10 x leg swings each leg
10 x inch worms

WOD 12.4


12min AMRAP

150 x wall ball (6 pound ball for me)
90 x double-unders (or 200 normal skips)
30 x chin-ups

As mentioned above, I got to 65 normal skips before time.

Then we practised handstands in groups of 3, with one person doing a handstand with the other two holding their legs if necessary. This wasn't as scary as I expected because the others stop you from falling over, so maybe one day I'll actually be able to do a proper hand-stand! It was quite fun actually.

Then to finish we did 65 sit-ups (adding to my ass-crack rash).

Some of you might be wondering what my actual gym looks like, so I've found a couple of videos that people have taken of it to give you a bit of an idea of where I spend 3 evenings a week. I might have posted one of these before, I can't remember.

The first one is the promo video from the website:

http://vimeo.com/12664586

The next one is one I found on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1gPYdroANo



Saturday 17 March 2012

Crossfit session 42

Friday was the day for doing the 4th Crossfit Games Open workout, so the gym was super packed and there was barely enough room to swing a kettlebell when I got there but luckily the 6pm class was way less busy than the 5pm class so we had some space. We also got to watch people doing the Games workout, it looked crazy! I'm so glad I'm not good enough to be thinking of trying that kind of thing. 150 wall balls themselves would suck, let alone rest of the work-out.

Muscle-up, one of the exercises for the 12.4 games workout




































Warm-up


10 x dips
10 x kb swings (12kg)
10 x ab mat sit up

x 4

WOD 1


1 minute AMRAP of:

3 x power clean (25kg)
3 x burpees

1 min rest in between

So for 1 minute you did as many rounds of 3 x power cleans and 3 x burpees as possible and then you got to rest for a minute before doing it again.

I think we did it for 10mins total, so 5 mins actual work. It doesn't sound like much but we had to go as fast as possible in the minute and burpees always suck so we were still sweating at the end.

The most I got through in a minute was 2 rounds, so 6 power clean and 6 burpees.

Here's a burpee video, although at our gym girls are NOT allowed to do push-ups on their knees, it's toes all the way! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21dvQyNiTjM

Here's the power clean - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCUmi2oqlvA

WOD 2


16 x lunges with 24kg (8 lunges per leg)
250m row sprint
Max handstand hold

3 rounds, not for time.

The lunges sucked! My ass is still sore today from them. The trainer wanted me and the other girl to do them with 32kg at first but when it became clear we couldn't even do one at that weight he let us go down to 24kg.

Then to finish off we had to do 100 ab mat sit-ups.

I had a rash on my butt a few weeks ago and had no idea why, I worked it out after tonight, it's from the bloody sit-ups! I'm hoping that eventually I'll get abs out of this and it might make up for ass-crack rash.

Thursday 15 March 2012

Crossfit session 41

I don't usually go to Crossfit on Thursdays, but it was really good because it was very quiet as the group 1 people had a rest day, so we had 3 three trainers looking after us, which meant they were really able to focus on everyone's technique.

Warm-up


15 x kips (just the movement, not combined with pull-ups, it's harder than I thought it would be!)
15 x hollow rocks (us girls did hollow holds though cuz we're not good enough for the rocking yet)

Repeat 3 times

Here's a kipping tutorial - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWXY2KaUO54
Here's a hollow rock explanation - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxMtbEQFpnw

WOD


1km row (everyone else was running 800m but one of my knees has been playing up so I got to row)
100 x double-unders
20 x chin-ups

20min AMRAP

Usually if there are double-unders  in a wod and you can't really do them then the trainers usually scale them,  so you might only have to do 20 attempts at double-unders and then do 120 normal skips or something like that. Today however, we had the gym owner as one of our trainers and he made us try and do the whole 100 and amazingly enough, we did! It took 15mins of the whole 20min AMRAP for me to do them, but I did them, which is awesome seeing as the most I've ever done before was about 26.  It even got announced in front of the whole group that us girls had got through the whole 100 for the first time and we got clapped by everyone, woo!

He also made me try and do chin-ups with just the blue band, which is 2 or 3 bands less than I normally use. I managed to do 2 but couldn't get up for the 3rd, so he let me add a thin orange one as well, so I guess at least I know I'm getting stronger with those as well because I usually use a blue and a thick orange band.

That meant though that I only got through one full round and the 1km row from the second round in the 20mins.

Then we worked on our 5 rep max for deadlift, which was quite challenging after doing all the double-unders and rowing.

I was paired with another girl who can lift the same as me and we wanted to try for 60kg, which would be a personal best for both of us, so we did:

5 x 40kg
5 x 45kg
5 x 50kg
5 x 50kg
5 x 50kg
5 x 55kg
5 x 60kg

We did so many at 50kg because the trainers were trying to get our form perfect and we kept not keeping our shoulders back, I swear it must be a million times easier being a boy and not having boobs dragging you forward! Anyway eventually they were happy with us and made us try for 60kg, which we did. Fuck it was heavy though, both of us swore as we lifted it.

This is what my hands looked like after today:

Man-hands


Tuesday 13 March 2012

The death of snacking

Back before I started Whole30 and then for the first couple of weeks of Whole30 I was eating 3 main meals plus two snacks a day and some fruit with meals, or if I was doing Crossfit then 3 main meals (and fruit) and 3 snacks a day. My day looked something like this:

Non-Crossfit day

Breakfast 7:30am - Eggs, tomato, spinach, avocado
Snack 11am - Nuts
Lunch 1:30pm - Protein + veggies, then some fruit
Snack 3:30pm - Protein + veggie snack (usually a chicken drumstick and some carrot)
Dinner 7:30pm - Protein + veggies and then maybe some coconut milk or fruit after

Crossfit day



Breakfast 7:30am - Eggs, tomato, spinach, avocado
Snack 11am - Nuts
Lunch 1:30pm - Protein + veggies, then some fruit
Snack 3:30pm - Protein + veggie snack (usually a chicken drumstick and some carrot)
Snack 6pm - Almond butter usually
Dinner 8:30-9pm - Protein + veggies and then maybe some coconut milk or fruit after or some sweet potato before dinner

Then a couple of weeks into my Whole30 I noticed that I was getting really hungry within an hour of lunch, so I decided to cut out the fruit and see if that helped, which it did. Later on I decided to cut out the nuts and nut butter because I was eating far too much of them and although they're good for you, they're also really high in calories.

Both of those things seemed to have worked a charm. I no longer have a mid morning snack and I often find that I don't need my afternoon snack either, or won't be hungry for it until after 4:30pm.

I've also cut out the pre-Crossfit snack and haven't been eating any sweet potato either, unless it's a Friday and I need to make it through until a late dinner with Glenn. I still have a lot of energy and my workouts have been getting better and better, weird huh!

This is my weekday eating habits now:

Breakfast 7:30am - Eggs, tomato, spinach, avocado (and bacon sometimes)
Lunch 1:30pm - Protein + veggies
Afternoon snack 4:30ish - Protein + veggie snack
Dinner 7:30-9pm (time depending on whether it's a Crossfit day) - Protein + veggies

It is so much less food!! Sometimes I do eat a piece of fruit at some point during the day, but I never feel overly hungry any more and often I'm so full from dinner that I don't even want dessert! This is quite big for me, because I've always been someone who has eaten lots of snacks and been hungry between meals.

The answer to appetite control really is less sugar and more fat and protein, this is evident by how badly I ate on the weekend after I'd started giving into sugar, I ate tons more food than normal and felt out of control with my eating the whole time.

I wish someone had told me all this 10 years ago!  Here's a great diagram on the problem with carbs, based on "Why We Get Fat" by Gary Taubes, which is the book that started all this off for me (thanks Tim!):

http://www.fastcodesign.com/1668916/pasta-not-bacon-makes-you-fat-but-how





Crossfit session 40 and the weekend of carby doom

I think I managed to undo all of my Whole30 results in one long weekend!

It was just a carbtastic free for all and really highlights the fact that I cannot control myself when I eat bread etc. I can't stop, even if I'm full or wasn't really hungry in the first place. So I'm back to clean eating as much as possible this week, although I'm going out for Mexican tomorrow so that won't be clean. Hopefully the 3 days won't screw up my weight loss too much, although I'm a bit scared to weigh myself and find out!

So, just how badly did I break it? Well, over the course of the 3 day weekend I ate the following hideously non-paleo items: Maccas (Boston deli bagel is just too awesome), KFC (twister and regular chips, made me feel sick), a small garlic foccacia, some white bread, a can of minestrone soup, pancakes, some rice, a bit of a choc chip cookie, cheese and biscuits, some milk chocolate and some Continental packet carbonara pasta.

So yeah, I broke it goooood!  I think one of the main issues was that I wasn't prepared, I didn't really have any good food that I could easily eat and I was up at the farm, so it was just quick junk food. Today I got home from Uni a bit earlier than normal and did my weekly cook-up - baked chicken drumsticks, paleo meatloaf and some turkey mince taco stuff, so I have no excuses this week!

So onto Crossfit..

Woo 40 sessions of Crossfit! Today was a good one too, we did the Crossfit Games open workout 12.3. The official video explanation is here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMU4_evJHKA
I usually do Monday, Wednesday and Friday, but I was lazy yesterday, so I'm really glad I went today and got to do this workout.

Warm-up

1km row

Then 10 x stick rolls and 10 x leg swings, repeated 3 times.

WOD 12.3


15 x box jumps (20 inch box)
12 x push jerk (25kg)
9 x hanging knee raise (toes to bar if can do it)

18min AMRAP.

I got 5 full rounds and 4 box jumps of the 6th round done. I was quite pleased with that, especially seeing as I was using a higher box than I normally do for box jumps (I was freaking out that I'd bang my shins the whole time!) and I was doing 25kg for push-jerk, which I haven't done that much. I also got praised for my push-jerks by one of the trainers at the end, so that was awesome. I even got a high-5 type thing, woo!

So in total - 79 box jumps, 60 push-jerks (plus another 10 to warm up), 45 hanging knee raises.

Then we were supposed to run 1.6km for time, but I got to 400m and my knee started feeling weird, it's been doing this thing when I'm running where it feels like it's out of place or something, it doesn't hurt, it just doesn't feel right, so I stopped and walked back, which sucked cuz I was feeling generally really good today!

If you watch the official video I posted above it has all the moves, but we do push-jerks differently, ours are like this - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwiOOPD-fHY . I think I've posted this tons of times, soon you'll be totally on top of it!




Wednesday 7 March 2012

Crossfit session 39

In an attempt to sort out some crazy emotions I've been having, I've reined in my sugar intake again. It seems to have fixed the crying, but I'm also really grumpy and impatient at everything, it might just be because I seriously hate my job, but I hate applying for jobs more, so I feel really stuck in a rut, or my other theory is that it might be that I need to increase my carb intake to make up for doing Crossfit, so I've started eating sweet potato again (as of last night). I'll see how that goes.

On the job thing, why do they make it so unattractive to apply for jobs? There is not one job I've found recently that I think I could actually do based on the requirements listed in the job ad. They want years of experience doing this very particular thing, yet they're only willing to pay you 50k to do it. WTF!  I'm also really bad at selling myself, which is not very helpful for applying for jobs. Ugh, I think I'm going to be stuck in this hell-hole with a manager that refuses to talk to me for the rest of my life.

Anyway, enough of that.  Onto something that does make me feel good about myself, Crossfit!

Warm-up


150 double-unders, but for every time you stop/fuck up you have to do 5 push-ups. Now, I can barely do double-unders, so if I followed this warm-up as prescribed then I would have done 150 push-ups and 5 double-unders. Luckily the trainers were sympathetic to my plight and just told me to practice double-unders and then do some push-ups at the end. Woo.

I'm getting there with double-unders, I can't string them together but I can do a few with normal skipping in between.  Here's a video of someone doing double-unders, making it look easy - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TfjmxeUsIs

Push-ups I did 4 or 5 rounds of 5 reps.

WOD 1  - Crossfit Games Open Workout 12.2


I think I mentioned a few weeks ago that the Crossfit games open is on at the moment and there are a bunch of people from my gym competing in it, mostly group 1 people (ie. not me). Today we got our own chance to give the 2nd workout a go, personally I would have been fine not to be given the chance because it was power snatches and I hate snatches!

I just don't understand how they're supposed to work and I always feel like I'm going to smack myself in the chin when I'm doing them because you have to keep the bar really close to you. Today I drew blood on my shins trying to keep it close to my body, but I was still not doing it right.  You're supposed to use your legs and not your arms to get the bar up, but given you're holding the bar, I dunno how this is supposed to work!

After Crossfit I watched a lot of videos of people doing them and then had a bit of a practice in front of the bathroom mirror and I think I understand it now, it's kind of like a deadlift for the first bit (so using your legs) and then you just lift your arms up, but I'll have to wait until we do them again to see if I'm right.

So the workout was a 10min AMRAP of:

30 reps @ your first weight
30 reps @ your 2nd weight
30 reps @ your 3rd weight

So as it was an AMRAP you have to do as many of those 90 as you could within the 10mins. For the games open the weights were prescribed, but as none of us could snatch that much, the trainers prescribed individual weights for each of us.  I got given 20kg, 25kg and 30kg, however because my form was sucking when I was practising, I ended up doing 17.5kg and 20kg (I never made it to the 3rd weight before the 10mins were up).

So 60 snatches total.

Here's a snatch - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvu5krlKwdM

Then after that was done we did a hero workout in pairs.

WOD 2 - "DT"


12 x deadlifts
9 x hang power clean
6 x push jerk

5 rounds

Luckily this was in pairs, so one person would do their first round then the second person would do their first round while the other person rested, etc. We also had a 20min cut-off for time, so I didn't actually make it through my 5th round before we ran out of time, I got to the 8th power clean of the 5th round.

As you're doing all this in one round, you have to use the same weight for all exercises, which means you need to use your push jerk weight and stick with that for everything, so the deadlifts were really really easy!

We did 25kg because that's about all we can push jerk after doing all the other stuff.

I was going to post separate videos for each move, but here's a video of someone doing the exact same workout as we did, but not in pairs. I can assure you I was not that fast at it! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dv5jjeJ2DQM

It was a fun session, no cardio for once, just weights!









Monday 5 March 2012

Sunday, Monday and Crossfit session 38

I've decided to keep up the weekly cooking until I get sick of it because it's just so much easier than trying to cook during the week when I'm going to Crossfit and not getting home until almost 8:30 and just want to sit on the couch.

Yesterday I cooked roast pork, pad thai and pork and vegetable casserole, all still Whole30 compliant! Ooh I lie, the roast pork had a tablespoon of honey in the sauce, but other than that, all clean.

Last night I reaaaaaaaaaally wanted chocolate but at that stage I hadn't remembered where I'd hidden the chocolate before I went on Whole30 (found it now!), so I decided to make paleo banana bread instead because I'd seen the recipe on a blog last week and had been thinking about it ever since. I totally didn't need it and then felt way too full after I'd eaten some. I knew I shouldn't have made it because if there are things like that in the house then I just eat them mindlessly, so after eating some for breakfast today, I've put the rest in the freezer for another day.

Tonight I discovered the chocolate I had hidden before starting Whole30, so obviously I ate it, it was dark cooking chocolate and really wasn't that nice! At least now I won't keep seeing it everytime I open the cupboard.

Today I was grumpy and kind of depressed all day, I have no idea why, it was similar to PMS but that was last week so I'm not sure what was going on, I'm wondering if it was because I re-introduced chocolate, sugar and alcohol over the last few days. Friday I also had a crying jag over nothing much, which was strange too. So tomorrow I'm going to rein in the chocolate and sugar again and not drink until the weekend and see how I go.

Although the last two days have't been great with the banana bread (still paleo though) and the chocolate, all in all I have been pretty much sticking to Whole30, with the exception of bacon. It's pretty easy now and it's what I'm used to, which is awesome seeing as I want to lose another 5kg, so it shouldn't be too difficult to stick to it most of the time.

All day I was really not looking forward to Crossfit, I felt tired and emotional and I was kind of dreading doing burpees, but by the time I left work I was looking forward to it and I'm glad I went because it was really fun and I felt good (and there were no burpees!)

Warm-up


21 x push-ups
15 x push-ups
9 x push-ups

In between each push-up set do hollow rock holds for 42 seconds, 30 seconds and 18 seconds. I didn't make it to the 42 seconds before I had to drop, I think I got to about 25 seconds and then for the second round I only go to about 20 seconds. They're harder than they look! Here's a video explanation http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QMpN9uFHeI

Then we warmed up our push-jerks and lucky me got to be the demo girl for the rest of the class, that never happens, usually I'd be the way not to do something! Luckily I seem to be okay at them and didn't get corrected much at all! They're fun, so I'm glad I don't suck at them.

So for the warm-up I did 3 x 20kg, then 5 x 20kg in front of everyone and then another 5 or so again in front of the class.

WOD


This was apparently the first workout from the 2007 Crossfit games open, seems way better than doing 7mins of burpees!

1km row - I've finally worked out the correct kind of rowing technique, it must have been from all the rowing I did cuz of my slow wall-ball partner last week!

Then 5 rounds of:

7 x push-jerk (25kg)
15 x chin-ups

So 35 push-jerks at 25kg and 75 chin-ups in total.

My time was 16mins 10 seconds.

I felt strong all the way through and I might actually have to go down another band for chin-ups soon, which is cool, although I will suck at the next level down. I've worked out how to do the kipping thing (or my version of it), so they're heaps easier once you've got that sorted. I wouldn't be able to do them so well if we were doing dead-hang/strict chin-ups. Here's a kipping explanation http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAZaHzd6qAY.

Then we had to do two timed laps of the block (600m) and if we didn't get within 10 seconds of our first time on the second run then we had to do 20 burpees. My first lap was 3mins 34 seconds and my second was 3mins 30 seconds. My knee was totally playing up on the second lap though, it feels like it's slightly pushing out of place or something, no idea what is going on with it cuz some days it's totally fine, if it keeps doing it I'll have to go to the physio or something.

Here is a push-jerk video, it also shows you power cleans - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHi-yn_tR5M. See, fun!

Pity there was no snatches today, then I could have made some dreadful innuendo about jerking and snatches.











Saturday 3 March 2012

First few days off Whole30 and Crossfit session 37 (Friday)

Whole30 is over, but the only off program thing that I had eaten/drunk until Friday night was some smoked trout for breakfast that had sugar in the ingredient list.

Friday night I drank some champagne, and I have to say that I was scared! It took me ages to drink even one glass, which is unusual for me. I got really drunk from 2 glasses of champagne and a margarita and ended up crying for ages, which I'm not sure is related, but who knows!

Friday night I managed to resist eating anything off program and had some paleo spaghetti for dinner and no snacks. Today I had yum cha for lunch with some friends and was pretty good, I peeled most of the dumpling wrappers off and didn't eat anything deep fried except some squid, but I tried to peel the batter off that too. I resisted the noodles, which are something I would have normally gotten stuck into, and I only ate the filling out of the bbq pork bun. I did have a beer, but only one and I drank it really slowly.

Tonight I resisted Glenn's delicious looking mini pizza things and ate microwaved veggies and some bacon and eggs for dinner instead. Mmm bacon, I've missed you. I have drunk some strawberry passion pop tonight though, so that's probably as far from Whole30 as you can get I think! It's surprisingly nice though. I also had one dark chocolate covered almond, which was awesome.

So all in all, I think I'm doing well and haven't screwed everything up completely, yet! Now for Friday's Crossfit effort..

I'm not sure why but I really didn't enjoy this workout. I didn't feel strong and I got pulled up on my squat form again, I'm not sure what is going on with my squats but I just suck at them and it seems like Ben (owner of the gym) has a 6th sense and can tell when I'm squatting badly and always pulls me up on them, even if he's doing stuff with group 1 people way across the other side of the gym! By the end of the workout I was getting a bit better at them, but my ability to do them properly seems to be so variable depending on the day, Friday's issue might also have been because we were doing over-head squats and they're probably my weakest of all the lifts.

We also had to practice hand-stand holds on Friday, which I hate. I'm not good at handstands, they freak me out and even just wall climbing up backwards makes me feel unco and heavy. And then there was the running whilst carrying 20kg sandbags, also not fun!  I was probably just in a bad mood and it carried over to everything I did, but often if I'm in a bad mood, Crossfit sorts me out. Hopefully Monday will be better.

Warm-up


10 x stick rolls
10 x inchworms
10 x leg raises

repeat 4 times.

WOD 1 


10min AMRAP for handstand pushups, or if you're unco like me it was practice hand-stand holds.

WOD 2 


10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1

Overhead-squats (12kg)
Chin-ups

So 10 OH-squats, then 10 chin-ups, 9 OH-squats then 9 chin-ups etc. down to 1 rep of each.

WOD 3 

Run 400m whilst carrying a 20kg sandbag over your shoulders

Repeat once more!

Goddamn it was heavy! I can't believe I used to lug around an extra 33kg or whatever it is, how I even walked around anywhere I have no idea. I guess I never would have run anywhere when I was 107kg though.


Thursday 1 March 2012

Wrap-up















Woo, I completed my first Whole30!

I have to say it was way easier than I thought it would be and think that is largely due to how strict it is. It is simple, there is a list of foods you can't eat and that's it, no compromises, no excuses and no "in moderation", you just cannot have them, at all!

That being said, there were a few times that I cheated on the plan, in my opinion they weren't bad cheats and I'm quite proud of myself that this is all I cheated on, given my history with food and self control (see pics below!).

There were a couple of times early on where I considered seriously cheating, but both times Glenn actually talked me out of it, so I'd like to give a big thanks to him for not letting me slip up early on, it gave me the motivation and strength to keep going and get through the 30 days with few issues.

Times that I cheated knowingly:

- Used fish sauce that contained sugar in a curry (on two occasions)
- Drank a soda water with lime cordial instead of lime juice (Valentines day, we were out)
- Ate 1 baked potato with a takeaway dinner
- Used some wholegrain mustard that contained sugar when cooking meatballs

Times I may have cheated accidently, but can't be sure:

- The hollandaise sauce on grilled salmon (contained butter?) and dressing on the salad (looked like balsamic and oil but can't be sure) when we were out for Valentines day.

- Take away Italian chicken casserole x 3 (maybe sugar in the tomato sauce, two of the meals looked like they had a tiny amount of parmesan cheese on top, the first time I just ate it and the second time I scraped it off, so maybe that first time counts as deliberate!).


All in all I think it's incredibly impressive that I managed to go a full 30 days without any:

-Alcohol
-Grains
-Chocolate
-Dairy (other than the times mentioned above)
-Legumes
-Sugar (other than the times mentioned above)

I missed alcohol, chocolate and early on I missed yogurt, but at no stage did I miss grains or legumes or sugar in any form other than chocolate. I also did not miss milk and came to love black coffee!


So my plan is that I am going to try and minimise eating any of the things on that list that I did not miss, and the others I will eat in moderation and only when I really want to. There are so many paleo recipes and substitutions out there that there is really no need to introduce those non-paleo things back into my life on a regular basis. Meals out with friends/family and the odd take away meal are definitely an exception though and I give myself permission to eat whatever I feel like at the time, because there is no point being a social pariah!


I completed this program whilst doing Crossfit 3 times a week and I never felt hungry or deprived. I also improved on all my lifts, chin-ups, push-ups etc. and my energy levels were stable throughout the day and I never felt sleepy in the afternoons.  

I would highly recommend this plan for anyone whose eating is out of control and who wants to reset the way they think about food and also lose some weight in the process. It was awesome and I will probably do another one in the future. Now for the physical results....

Physical results

                                                                              
Before 
Weight: 79.8kg           
Waist measurement at belly button:  91cm            
Waist measurement 5cm above belly button:  83cm
Waist measurement 5cm below belly button: 99cm


After
Weight: 74.7kg (-5.1kg)
Waist measurement at belly button: 86cm (-5cm)
Waist measurement 5cm above belly button: 79cm (-4cm)
Waist measurement 5cm below belly button: 94cm (-5cm)

Photographic proof




Before


Nice rolls! 






















After





































Now if you're prepared for it, here are some pics of me in my undies! They are not in the least bit sexy, I didn't really plan on putting them on the internet, but they really show the difference in my body shape since I started Crossfit in November. Warning - seriously un-sexy photos ahead!



November 2011, before I started Crossfit





Me in Jan after 2 months of Crossfit and before Whole30
















Me March 1st, after 3 months of Crossfit and 30 days of Whole30

















Maybe soon I'll have abs :)


Now just to give you some context, here are some photos of me throughout the last 6 years, starting with my heaviest weight of 107kg back in 2006. Yes they are hideous.


2006 - 107kg. Ugh so unhealthy!


2006 - 107kg. Mm attractive.

























                                                                                                                                                             


2006 - 107kg. Seriously hideous, I almost didn't post it!

Okay, enough of that! Here is me after some hairdye, some exercise and healthier eating.


I think this is 2007 or 2008, probably about 80kg. 
2009, I'd put some back on, probably 85-90kg
2011 - Under 80kg here and looking pretty good!

So, as you can see from all these photos of me at various weights, you can completely change your body shape in a relatively short amount of time. Obviously I highly recommend Whole30 and Crossfit, but if you're not ready for that then just start small, every bit helps!