Hocus Pocus Let's all FOCUS!

This title comes from an old co-worker.  We used to say this after he told us all the story about his kindergarten teacher using that phrase to get the class under control.  

I've changed my focus.

Lately, I've been really focused on nutrition and Whole30 and fat loss.  Now that summer is here and I feel pretty good about nutrition, I want to change my focus to performance.  I want to really commit to CrossFit at least 4 days a week and give it my all and see some performance gains and PRs.  I plan to eat in a way that fuels these goals using the guidelines outlined here by Eat To Perform.  Here is another good article from ETP that explains why it's better to eat for performance than to eat for weight (or fat) loss.

According to the ETP calculator, I should be eating 2,258 calories per day.  This might shock some people for a 5'2" tall 130lb female to be eating that much, but trust me, I have very little problem meeting this goal! I've been doing it for quite a while, actually.  I will shoot for 100g of carbs per day.  I usually under eat on the carbs, but have been consciously adding more sweet potato and fruit to increase this.  I will try to eat at least 130g of protein (1g per pound of body weight) and the rest will be fat (apprx. 150 grams).  

I will occasionally use My Fitness Pal to make sure my numbers are where they need to be, but I hope to get to a point where I am intuitively eating to fuel my performance.  

Also, for the summer I am not weighing myself (until sometime after Labor Day).  I look forward to this summer and all it will bring!  What are you focused on right now?  

Catching up...

There's been a lot going on in the last week and half and I haven't even had time to share it all!  

On November 18th I participated in a 3-1/2 hour CrossFit Fundamentals class.  I'm hooked!  I went back the very next day and did a WOD that was spending 30 minutes determining your one rep max deadlift. I had never done a deadlift before, so I had no idea what to expect.  I started with 95lbs (you are only lifting the bar from the floor to a straight standing position, mostly using your lower back muscles and hips to move the weight, allowing for much heavier lifts).  I then tried 115, 135, 145 and finally 155 pounds!  I was proud as a peacock to have lifted that much on my first night!  

My friend Billie & I after we totally
ROCKED the Turkey Day 5k

That was only the beginning of what was to become an incredible week of accomplishments for me!  I had been planning on running the Turkey Day 5k on Thanksgiving morning for the 2nd year in a row and while I had been pretty excited about it, in the weeks leading up to it I felt very unprepared and not ready.  There were over 800 runners!  What a rush!  I was convinced this was going to be one of my worst 5k races.  Last year I finished it in over 35 minutes.  That's about what I expected this year.  You can imagine my shock and astonishment when I finished in 30:06!  That's over 2-1/2 minutes faster than my record.  Also, it was the first time that I have ever ran the entire time.  NO walking!  My next 5k will be under 30 minutes and I will bring home a trophy before the heat of summer in 2013 stops me from running.  Mark my words.

After the race we had Thanksgiving lunch with some of Husband's family.  I had deviled eggs, veggies with homemade ranch, turkey, potatoes & gravy, sweet potatoes, fruit salad, cranberries and even a paleo cake that his Aunt made for us!  

I have since done 2 more WODs at my local box (CrossFit Jackson) and I felt a sense of accomplishment after each one like never before!  Husband has been CrossFitting since April and since he works 3rd shift, he attends the 7pm class (would be the equivalent of me going at 6am).  Since April, I have been making dinner while he's gone to the gym and when he would get home (after 8pm most times), I would either have already eaten dinner or we would eat together.  He really wants me to workout with him at 7pm, so I had to figure out how to make and eat dinner in that time frame.  Since this is the first week we are trying that schedule, I spent time this weekend cooking up a ton of food so that all of our meals would be ready to heat & eat.  Here's what I made:

Paleo Blueberry Muffins

Chicken Salad (with homemade mayo, grapes, salt & pepper)

Buffalo Chicken Salad

Steak & Chicken Fajitas

Spicy Pulled Pork (I skip the sauce) Served with green beans

Smoked Beef Brisket with steamed broccoli

Beef/Venison Cabbage Soup  

I also made 10 hard boiled eggs and baked a cookie sheet full of bacon.

We are nearly out of boiled eggs and the bacon is gone, so tonight I will fry up a pound of pastured pork sausage together with a dozen eggs and portion it out in the fridge for the rest of the week.  We like to heat it up and top it with Frog Ranch Salsa.

These Blueberry Muffins by PaleOMG were pretty good!  However, an entire cup of almond butter is a lot of money and when I think of it that way, they weren't good enough to warrant that kind of spending for a dozen muffins.  Also, if I were to make them again, I would put an entire cup of blueberries in them because you can never have too many blueberries in your blueberry muffins.

The recipe says it makes 8-10 muffins, but I easily filled all 12 muffin cups.  Also, it didn't say how far to fill the cups.  As you can see, I filled mine about 3/4 full.

Do-Anywhere CrossFit

I found this little gem on Pinterest last week.  The workout was featured in Women's Health magazine.  I have been alternating days of running (Couch to 5k style) using my 5k Runner app on my iPhone with "CrossFit" days.  I don't belong to a box at this time, but I have been doing all of the body-weight only CrossFit workouts that I can find!  This one is spectacular!  I know it's a good workout because I can hardly walk today after doing the "Total Countdown" yesterday.

Basically there are 6 moves that are rearranged into 4 different workouts.  The first workout didn't seem to challenge me as much as the second one did.  Some of these moves were totally knew to me (like the jump squat and the lunge hop).  

See the four workouts below.  Be sure to visit the article from Women's Health to see what the moves are!

Total Time
Do 10 reps of each exercise, moving from one to the next without resting. Complete as many rounds as possible in 15 minutes.
EXERCISE ORDER: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 -

Total Countdown
Complete 60 reps of the first move, 50 of the second, 40 of the third, and so on, until you've worked down to 10 reps of the last exercise.
EXERCISE ORDER: 2, 1, 6, 5, 4, 3

Total Rounds
Do 12 reps of each exercise, moving from one to the next without rest. Complete five rounds and note how long it takes you to finish. Aim to do the workout faster next time.
EXERCISE ORDER: 3, 4, 5, 2, 6, 1

Total Reps
Complete as many reps as you can of each move in one minute each, moving from one exercise to the next without stopping. Rest one minute, then repeat the entire sequence two more times. Keep track of your total rep count (e.g., if you finish 20 lunge hops, start counting pushups at 21). Try to beat your grand total next time.
EXERCISE ORDER: 5, 6, 2, 3, 1, 4

Tune-Up Weigh In

My partner is camping at the river, so I had to use her weight from last week.  I lost 1.8lbs, so team Lady Swamp Slayers is down .64%!  The Tone-Up Challenge is tough, but I've been doing it every day!

More Daily Exercises for June

I've decided to add this to my June Challenge Tone-up:

found this on pinterest

Anyone care to join me?

June Challenge

I've decided to do the June Tune-up Challenge from The Sisterhood of the Shrinking Jeans.  My partner in crime will be my friend Brittany.  I will also be doing the June Tone-up (see below) which is similar to the Mad Muscle May from last month!  I will post our success every Wednesday throughout the month!  If you care to join us, grab a partner and sign up (starts today!) and let me know in the comments how you are doing.

Randoms

Day 37 ~ Thursday, May 3, 2012


My husband is joining CrossFit this month!  I'm excited for him!  I am not joining at this time, but I have been doing some cross training on my own.  Here are some of the workouts I'm doing:

Click here to visit the website!

Here's some others that I have found on Pinterest:

This one was killer!
The Leg Lifts were tough!

The wall sits were the
toughest part on this one!

Here are some that I have yet to try:

Visit website:
http://backonpointe.tumblr.com/tagged/workout-challenge

I can see how this one is going to hurt!

Back to Hubs joining CrossFit... He's really getting into the Paleo eating plan.  However, he feels that I'm "overdoing it" on the spices and seasonings.  I think Paleo cooking includes a lot of flavor so that we don't get bored and go back to our processed foods.  I'm working on striking a balance between throwing myself wholeheartedly into these new and exciting recipes and toning it down a little for his taste buds.  Last night I made round steaks and just seasoned them with S&P (per his request).  I sided them with some delicious sauteed onions and peppers.  He was pleased!  

I'm still not eating veggies with my breakfast.  I need help in that area.  But I will be purchasing more fresh, wild caught fish at the Farmer's Market this week :)