60 Day Paleo Challenge

I’m going home for Christmas in almost 60 days exactly, and I want to look like a total badass. I’ve been going to CrossFit now for nearly a year and I’ve lost some weight but I haven’t seen some of my friends in a while, since my wedding three years ago to be exact, and I was a bit plump then. I want to sort my life out, be skinny, have nice skin, sleep like a baby and be able to lift like a champ not necessarily in that order.

We did the Whole30 in August and that was hard. It was a very, very strict paleo eating programme that you did for 30 days and you avoided:

• Dairy
• Grains (all grains, even grandfather grains and rice)
• Sugar (of all sorts, so no honey or maple syrup)
• Legumes (no beans or lentils or soy)
• Processed Food (except bacon, which is only kind of processed depending on how you look at it)

I think we did ok. We didn’t cheat. That’s not true, we cheated one day by having a sausage so if you want to tell me that’s cheating, then go right ahead. We were tired most of the time, we didn’t do very well at the gym because we weren’t feeling so strong and we were a bit cranky. But we finished it and it was amazing to feel like I could have done anything for 30 days. So we decided that we’d have a treat day on day 31 and then have one treat day per week where we were less fussy about our food intake and live our lives. 

Paleo Resources

These are some of my favourite resources for inspiration and recipe ideas, snack help and general guidance to enjoy when eating in line with the paleo diet. I’m trying really hard to keep to this diet*. I know that it will make me feel better, and it really, really does make me feel good when I am being strict. I find that when I eat a good breakfast, take proper snacks and avoid bread and other nutritionally deficient garbage, I don’t get cravings for a mid-afternoon piece of chocolate or a bag of chips, or a coke. The more I read about avoiding gluten, the more it makes sense to me. And, of course, avoiding processed foods and sugar is a no-brainer. So, the sites below are some that I check regularly for inspiration and encouragement.

*I know, I know. It isn’t a diet. It’s a lifestyle.

CrossFit, Part 2

I’ve already written about CrossFit, but I wanted to write again since you all know how I am with starting something and then being all intense about it and then quietly forgetting that I’d ever started it in the first place. We’ve been doing CrossFit now for a couple of months and I can tell you that I haven’t ever found anything like this. I want to go all the time, and I’ve been pretty good about it, although this I have had a few weeks of sub-par attendance.

Intro to Paleo

…Or, I’m a Cave Girl. Kind of. Sometimes.

So, as I mentioned in my last post about CrossFit, we’ve decided to try the Paleo diet for a while. I struggle with it more than Bear because he’s got so much more willpower than I do, but I think so far it’s been pretty good. Basically, the deal is nothing processed, no dairy and no grains. We’re modifying it to include beans which is a life-saver for me because I don’t really like to eat meat with every meal. In fact, I hate it. The upside, though, is that we’re eating lots of veggies in really nice recipes.

It does seem a bit extreme, and I know that MomKat wasn’t super excited to hear that I was “excluding two food groups” from my diet. The idea is that you should only put into your body what your ancestors (i.e. cave people) would have eating, and nothing that’s come from after the industrial revolution, or even, I suppose before that since bread has been around for a while. The result is that you eat meat, fish, seeds, nuts, fruit and lots of veggies. 

CrossFit

I know that I’m prone to starting something, writing about it here and tell you I’ll keep you updated and then quitting or forgetting about it and hoping that you will too, but I think I’ve found something that I won’t want to repeat that pattern with. Bear and  have started going to CrossFit, which is, I suppose, a core strengthening and conditioning programme. Basically, it’s lots of squats, things like box jumps, medicine ball throwing, push ups, pull ups, burpees, weightlifting and general great mix of lots of things that I would never normally do together in lots of different combinations.

I should say that our involvement so far has consisted of watching one class and going to two personal training sessions, but I really like it. The classes are about an hour and split into thirds, so that there is a warm-up, a more or less self directed portion when we’re able to practice anything we want to improve or push ourselves, and the last bit which is the workout of the day (WOD), which is lots of things like, for example, this one which particularly crazy and intense:

30 Day Yoga Challenge

I’ve been thinking a lot of how to get the year started off in the right way, but I am very skeptical of New Year’s Resolutions, and that’s mostly because I make them and then forget or pretend like they didn’t matter because I only told a few people and they’d forget I said it, right? I feel like I’m genetically unable to let myself commit to things I think I might fail at, which makes one of those terrible circles: I beat myself up when I say I’m going to do something and then don’t follow through (this blog, for instance, is a great example of that) and that makes me not want to commit to anything because what if I’m not perfect at it?

Ok, now that’s out of the way, I want to do a 30 Day Yoga Challenge. I really, really want to do it. But not just say I want to do it and never start it in the end, but say I’m going to start on the first of February and then finish at the beginning of March and feel good because I’ve done something fully that I said I’d do and not make excuses for myself so that I wouldn’t have to do it properly.

yin yoga

I bought an unlimited membership to the yoga studio around the corner from my house when we got back from Barbados. I’ve been going twice a week, but hopefully once my papers are out of the way (only two more days!) I’ll go maybe three or four days a week. I want to say that I’m going to go five days a week but I’m no superhero. The point of all this is that I went to yin yoga last night which is a more gentle and slow practice and today my body hurts and I love it.

I went to ashtanga on Monday which is more difficult and I was struggling to do one of the postures and I was getting frustrated and I thought to myself “what am I doing here? I hate this!” but then I left and I felt better and I realized that this is one way of exercising that I actually enjoy and of course it’s going to be hard. Nothing that’s good for you is easy, right? Plus, if I’m going to feel good in my clothes or bathing suit I have to do something drastic. I mean, I have to look good when I’m hanging out on Brighton beach this summer!