Posts Tagged ‘fitness’

Transition Possible, a guest post by Rick Martinez

Posted: October 5, 2012 in CrossFit, Exercise, Fitness, Health, Inspiration, Motivation
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

Today I’m turning over the blog to Rick Martinez of Transition Possible. As the daughter of an Air Force fighter pilot, the niece of an Army Ranger and Green Beret, the cousin of an Iraqi War vet from the Coast Guard, and the mother of an EOD tech, living in a world populated with active-duty servicemembers, reservists, retirees, veterans and their dependents, I know too many individuals and families who bear a heavier burden than the average American for the various armed conflicts our country has been involved in. No matter how you feel about the politics behind the conflicts, the intrinsic honor and sacrifice of our servicemembers are not diminished nor tarnished by performing their duties. 

My name is Rick Martinez and my mission is Transition Possible. I am a retired Army nurse, an entrepreneur, the head vision-keeper of the Fitness Porvida movement, the owner of two CrossFit gyms and the founder of an organization that allows us to support and celebrate our nation’s heroes. It’s my moral obligation and I believe it is one that we all have.

Picture from Transition Possible

The parents of SPC Tracy Willis, who was killed in action in 2007 in Afghanistan. Transition Possible held a fundraiser in Willis’s honor and named the WOD “Tracy. ”(Photo Credit: Transition Possible)

Transition Possible’s mission is four-fold:

  •  To positively impact the lives of our nation’s heroes
  • To encourage them to continue living and achieving through sport and functional athletics
  • To show the world that the warrior spirit can thrive no matter the circumstance
  • To bridge the gap between wounded heroes and citizens

As I post this, we are one day away from the launch of the world’s first non-profit whose vision is to create mentorship and leadership programs through which wounded heroes and adaptive athletes can find a new path or career in the world of sport. Think entrepreneurial boot camp for heroes.

On Saturday, October 6, 2012, in San Antonio, Texas, we will host the Warrior Summit II, which will bring together the nation’s best coaches, U.S. Paralympians and adaptive athletes to prove that CrossFit can be for everyone. In the evening, we will be hosting a special fundraiser (tickets available here) with keynote speaker Kyle Maynard — an ESPY-award winning athlete and one of the most motivational individuals in this world. “An Evening with Heroes” will celebrate adaptive sport and our nation’s heroes and will raise funds to support Transition Possible.

Why does this vision, this launch and this cause matter?

Let me share Mike’s story:

How a daisy-chain IED is set up. (Photo credit: GlobalSecurity.org)

Mike Gallardo is a Tribe Member and he is an amputee. His dream was to become an elite trooper, “Delta Force,” he says, to serve his country. The events of February 7, 2008 had a different path for Mike. That’s when his platoon was hit by a daisy-chain IED. That’s when he, for lack of better words, became broken.

Folks, that’s when Mike’s hopes and dreams were radically changed because he made the choice to serve. To protect us. Mike came to us some time ago, buy us I mean Fitness Porvida, and it was evident that though broken physically, mentally he was not bowed. He attacked the program and embraced CrossFit as a means to a new end. The Tribe was his new platoon.

Mike Gallardo at work … or play? (Photo Credit: Transition Possible)

The WODs were his new mission.

But where does it go?

How does that fulfill a destiny?

Even more, how does that offer a life of fulfillment where a man can support a family, start a career and be a productive citizen?

Mike was integrated into the Tribe (as we call it at Fitness Porvida), accepted as a regular Joe and soon he started a 90-day internship pilot program to test the efficacy of making a coach/trainer a viable career option.
Here are his words:

The internship helped me in many ways people can’t see. It has helped with my PTSD because I did not like to be around lots of people. The Tribe made me feel at home and that I can trust people once again. It helped with my TBI because before I could barely remember my own birthday, now I can remember over 50-100 members names. It also helped me be a little more organized because I have to plan my day and keep a daily planner for my tasks.

WOW!

Soon after, Mike was offered employment as a coach at Fitness Porvida. He’s one of the finest coaches
we have EVER had. In his words,

Fitness Porvida has been very helpful because they have set me up for success. They helped me make goals for myself and accomplish them ahead of time. They helped me become a good coach, but they still are in contact with me to make me a great coach. Not only did they treat me with respect, they treated me as part of the family.

Now imagine doing this ten-fold, folks

Transition Possible exists to make this transition possible.

Today it’s Mike.

Tomorrow … well … tomorrow depends on you.

Be a part of making the transition possible.

~ Rick Martinez

How to tell you’re making progress without the scale

Posted: June 17, 2011 in CrossFit, Exercise, Fitness, Health, Obesity, Uncategorized, Weight Loss
Tags: , , , ,
2

Well, so far the scale hasn’t been my friend. Two doctors appointments and two weigh-ins have resulted in zero change. But I can still I’m better for the regular exercise. How? Here are my progress markers:

  1. It takes me less time to recover after a workout. Don’t get me wrong, I still don’t want to talk to anyone for a bit after my workout (assuming I had enough breath to do so). But the racing heart and ragged breathing stills much more quickly than when I started even though I’ve been (very) slowly increasing my workouts.
  2. I recovered more quickly from a sinus infection. Usually that will put me down for about a week, but I was only really out of it for two days, despite the fact that I was still running a low grade fever after that. Cipro is now my bestest friend.
  3. I am no longer ambling along neck-and-neck with people using walkers. I’m jetting right past them without noticing that I’m walking faster than I used to. Still probably don’t walk as fast as my hubby’s usual stride.
  4. My clothes are getting somewhat looser. Not yet down a size, though. Don’t have to lie on the bed to zip that one pair of jeans.
  5. I actually miss it when I don’t work out. I can feel the difference in my overall energy levels. I also retain more water on days I don’t exercise.
  6. My fat takes less time to stop jiggling. Yes, I actually can tell by doing the upper arm fat chicken dance.

Who needs fancy calipers or immersion tests or x-rays to tell my fat percentage? I can tell by my everyday life that there’s more muscle lifting my built-in weights dispersed all over my body.

Alas, though, I still want to see the dadgum scale move, just like everyone else. Sigh.

Fat, science and all that

Posted: June 15, 2011 in CrossFit, Exercise, Fitness, Health, Obesity, Uncategorized, Weight Loss
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
0

Dr. Brian M. Scott, a mathematics professor at Cleveland State University, once said to me, “If you know one expert, you know all the answers. If you know two, you’ll never be certain.” I have repeated this bit of wisdom more times than I care to calculate (probably because I’d be wrong), and Scientific American’s “Can Fat Be Fit?” interviewee Paul Raeburn reinforces this view when discussing his opinion that being somewhat overweight isn’t a bad thing as long as you’re also exercising:

The statistical things are very tricky and I wouldn’t sit here and say that I can go through all the mathematical minutiae and analyze what’s going on — far from it; I can’t get into the nuts and bolts at all. It really requires a professional, and the evidence for that of course is that the professionals argue madly over these things about whose right and whose handling the statistics correctly.

Go to their section on “The Science of Weight Loss” and you may find yourself confused about exactly what the right answer is. For example, the article “Does Exercise Really Make You Healthier?” doesn’t really answer the question, as the experts seem to be saying, well, generally yes, but there are exceptions, and we don’t really know why.

So what should we laypeople believe, when things like this, back in 2005,  have happened:

Dr. Julie Gerberding, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, issued a rare and curious apology. She apologized for the mixed messages and contradictory studies regarding the dangers of obesity, acknowledging that flawed data in several CDC studies had overstated the risks.

The article goes on to say, well, folks, be skeptical of what you read. Well, gee, thanks.

As I indicated in an earlier post, there are studies that support the contention that interval training, or mixed difficulty exercises, such as CrossFit are actually better for weight loss and increased fitness. There’s also a study saying that the kind of diet CrossFit advocates will make you feel more satisfied and, presumably, will make you eat less overall:

Eating fewer, regular-sized meals with higher amounts of lean protein can make one feel more full than eating smaller, more frequent meals, according to new research from Purdue University.

One of my favorite studies is the one that says that obesity is spread socially:

The people we associate with can have a powerful effect on our behavior—for better or for worse. This holds true for human health and body mass, too. The heavier our close friends and family, the heavier we are likely to be.

Don’t know how that works in my reality; I’m usually the heaviest, by a wide margin (excuse the bad pun), in any of my social groups. But maybe it’s not the peer pressure, but simply that you “caught it” from them:

Obesity can be “caught” as easily as a common cold from other people’s coughs, sneezes and dirty hands.

That would certainly take us fatties off the hook.

Then there’s this, that could give a deconditioned fattie like me an excuse to ditch the exercise for the nearest fad diet, from an article headlined as “Study: Exercise Won’t Cure Obesity“:

Though better nutrition coupled with exercise has long been the favored prescription for losing weight and avoiding obesity, a new study suggests diet actually plays the key role.

Lovely.  But I never thought exercise on its own would make you lose weight. But I am convinced, at least for me, that I won’t be able to keep it off unless I exercise. Losing weight? That’s another thing entirely. I can’t say for certain that you can’t lose weight just by exercising, but it doesn’t sound like the scientists know for sure either. All I know is I feel better and am more motivated to watch my food intake since I started CrossFit.

Think there’s a study on that? Wait. I am my study on that. So there.

To sleep, perchance to dream

Posted: June 14, 2011 in CrossFit, Exercise, Fitness, Health
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
0

Sleeping. Ah, the best of painkillers, the escape from your worries, the balm that restores you.

When you can get it.

Nothing replaces a restful night’s sleep. A rest day will not restore you if you don’t get good sleep. Unfortunately, some of us have issues with sleep. Actually, according to a recent study, more and more of us (up to a third of American adults) don’t get enough sleep. I have been a chronic insomniac, unable to shut my brain up when I lie down at night. And recently I have found that the best predictor of whether I’ll have a migraine is the quality of my sleep.

If you are exercising regularly, whether CrossFit or something else, chronic sleep deprivation can effect your body’s ability to continue making gains with the exercise — and that’s the best case scenario. If you’re working out and not getting good quality sleep, you can end up ill or injured (yes, I know, I’m obsessed with not getting injured. If you’ve had as many MRIs, physical therapy sessions and drugs for injuries as I have, you know what I mean. Vicodin doesn’t do much more than aspirin for me anymore, I’ve had it so many times.)

An article called “Sleep Deprivation Can Hinder Sports Performance” at About.com’s Sports Medicine explains what experts believe is the problem when athletes don’t sleep:

Glucose and glycogen (stored glucose) are the main sources of energy for athletes. Being able to store glucose in muscle and the liver is particularly important for endurance athletes. Those who are sleep deprived may experience slower storage of glycogen, which prevents storage of the fuel an athlete needs for endurance events beyond 90 minutes.

Elevated levels of cortisol may interfere with tissue repair and growth. Over time, this could prevent an athlete from responding to heavy training and lead to overtraining and injury.

What about those who do shift work, staying up all night and trying to catch Zs when the rest of us are (at least theoretically) awake? Brent Behringer at “BrentsCrossFitPaleoLife” addresses how he deals with getting sleep while keeping nontraditional hours in his post, “What About Sleep“:

I chose to look inward, identify unhealthy sleep habits, determine how they got that way, and chart a course for improvement. Here are some things I have learned …

1. Prioritize at all costs … When I know it is time to sleep, there is no negotiation.

2. Combat fatigue with….sleep … Go figure. I have spent most of my night-shift life combating my fatigue with snacks, sugar, carbs, and caffeine. Now, when I’m thick and stupid with fatigue, I take a little nap …

3. Watch the caffeine …  I have found that using caffeine as a wake up is the most useful. That’s it. Right when I wake up. If I use it to try to STAY awake, it just doesn’t take. I end up being fatigued …

4. Listen!! … You can’t bank sleep. It either is or isn’t. You are either tired or not. Listen to your body …

5. Relax …  I force myself to relax every muscle from the top of my head and work all the way down to my toes. It sounds like BS, I know. But it really works.

If you are waking up during the night because you snore or twitch, you  may need a sleep study and, if you find you have sleep apnea (like me, whoo-hoo), you’ll find yourself with a little friend called a CPAP. We dubbed mine “Snuffleuppagus” because I look like an elephant with the mask and hose. Once you get used to it, you sleep better. At least until the plastic that makes contact with your face starts deteriorating; then you get face farts when the seal breaks, which, oddly enough, wake you up repeatedly through the night.

But sleep apnea is just one of the things that may be interfering with your sleep, hence the point of the sleep study, although I’ve had yet to have one where I even slept as much as my usual lousy night’s sleep. Being told “Go to sleep now” is like giving me an infusion of caffeine.

If you’re lucky, you can get sleep without medication (I wish. I think most rhinos would be incapacitated by the amount of drugs I take that have sleep as a side effect). Some of you will have to get some prescriptions to get there, although maybe not on a regular or permanent basis. Even with drugs, good “sleep hygiene” (that’s really what they call it; sounds like you should be cleaning up while you snooze) is still important. I resisted the “always go to sleep and get up at the same time” advice for years, but I pretty have much resisted anything that tries to make me keep a routine. I always thought “routine” equaled either “boring” or “something is controlling me.”

Anyway, here’s the classic set of sleep hygiene instructions from the National Sleep Foundation:

  • Avoid napping during the day; it can disturb the normal pattern of sleep and wakefulness.
  • Avoid stimulants such as caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol too close to bedtime. While alcohol is well known to speed the onset of sleep, it disrupts sleep in the second half as the body begins to metabolize the alcohol, causing arousal.
  • Exercise can promote good sleep. Vigorous exercise should be taken in the morning or late afternoon. A relaxing exercise, like yoga, can be done before bed to help initiate a restful night’s sleep.
  • Food can be disruptive right before sleep; stay away from large meals close to bedtime. Also dietary changes can cause sleep problems, if someone is struggling with a sleep problem, it’s not a good time to start experimenting with spicy dishes. And, remember, chocolate has caffeine.
  • Ensure adequate exposure to natural light. This is particularly important for older people who may not venture outside as frequently as children and adults. Light exposure helps maintain a healthy sleep-wake cycle.
  • Establish a regular relaxing bedtime routine. Try to avoid emotionally upsetting conversations and activities before trying to go to sleep. Don’t dwell on, or bring your problems to bed.
  • Associate your bed with sleep. It’s not a good idea to use your bed to watch TV, listen to the radio, or read.
  • Make sure that the sleep environment is pleasant and relaxing. The bed should be comfortable, the room should not be too hot or cold, or too bright.

Sweet dreams, y’all!

Feeding the machine: The Zone and Paleo

Posted: May 27, 2011 in CrossFit, Exercise, Fitness, Health, Obesity, Uncategorized, Weight Loss
Tags: , , , , , , ,
0

Today’s post is the last in a a series of three.  Four main points to reiterate:

  • Think about it as giving your body what it needs, not about what you can’t have
  • Consider your particular needs, such as Vitamin D
  • Don’t be a food fascist
  • You need to eat sensibly from the three macronutrients: protein, fat and carbs, preferably carbs with low glycemic load.
For more specific guidance in sensible eating, CrossFit has recommended Barry Sears’s The Zone Diet and Loren Cordain’s The Paleo Diet.  Both are protein friendly diets that recommend eating fresh fruit and whole grains for your carbs (and apparently Chuck Norris is on the same page).
WebMD summarizes The Zone Diet so:
Like other popular diet books, Enter The Zone offers more than just weight-loss claims. By retooling your metabolism with a diet that is 30% protein, 30% fat, and 40% carbohydrates, The Zone diet contends that you can expect to turn back encroaching heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes. Another much-touted advantage is better athletic performance. Sears doesn’t come right out and claim he has found the cure for heart disease or diabetes, or how to win athletic competitions, but instead he provides glowing anecdotes from people who have taken The Zone diet to heart.

WebMD reviewer Kathleen M. Zelman takes a stab at summarizing The Paleo Diet in a review:

The diet is based on the foods that could be hunted, fished, and gathered during the Paleolithic era — meat, fish, shellfish, eggs, tree nuts, vegetables, roots, fruits, and berries. But a true paleolithic diet is impossible to mimic because wild game is not readily available, most modern plant food is cultivated rather than wild, and meats are domesticated.

Each article points out the problems with each approach, but the truth is that neither diet appears to have been tested in a controlled study. Dr. Sears has published a couple of articles in medical journals about his diet, but no one else seems to have run a test on it. PubMed doesn’t have anything on Cordain’s Paleo Diet.

So as far as the merits of adhering to either specific program, there’s nothing scientific to go on; you’re basically left with what people who’ve tried it have to say. That doesn’t mean that either of them are wrong or bad for you; it just means that you need to evaluate it on your own. Even the one diet that has gotten the nod from science as a workable solution, Weight Watchers, isn’t 100% effective for 100% of the people on it. Like I’ve said in the earlier posts, everyone’s body chemistry is slightly different, so what works for me may not work for you … or even if it works in terms of building muscle or weight loss, you may not feel good on it.

I changed my eating habits, trying the Body for Life program during my 2nd degree [karate] training, and the Zone during 3rd degree. In my quest to provide the best start possible for my children, I began to buy organic fruits & vegetables, and to pay attention to “balancing” intake of protein, fat and carbohydrates. I started lifting weights (with my home gym machine) and running in the hills, but it seemed that no matter what I did, I couldn’t lose the extra 40 pounds of fat I had gained since my first pregnancy. I began to see my body as an adversary, and to feel frustrated because it wasn’t doing what I wanted it to do, namely losing fat and getting sleek and slim as I had been prior to the years of child-bearing.

During my third degree training, I discovered CrossFit, and thanks to 5 months of workouts with a private trainer, I made it through the rigorous testing without any injuries. My trainer at CrossFit Los Altos (aka. FIT) talked to me about nutrition because I was so frustrated with my flabby arms, thighs and stomach. She gave me information about how to eat better, and I adopted some of her recommendations, but I could not relate to the focus on eating for better performance. I did not see myself as an athlete, certainly not as an elite athlete, and I had no illusions about becoming a “firebreather” or “CrossFit badass.” Not only that, but with the demands of my home life, including the disintegration of my marriage and the beginning of 6 years of being married but separated, I just couldn’t find it within me to impose a rigid diet upon myself which would require lots of attention, energy, and deprivation. It was a stress I just wasn’t willing to add. I began to think that I was just going to have to get used to being fat, and that although I could increase my athletic capacity, I couldn’t actually effect a change in my physique…

Then came the FRAT Paleo Challenge … I was able to stay close to strict Paleo for the full 30 days, with the exception of heavy cream in my coffee and the occasional piece of dark chocolate. I lost about 10 pounds and began to see a few muscles. I followed the Challenge with Robb Wolf’s Paleolithic Solutions seminar about six months later, read “Lights Out”, started taking Fish Oil, Vitamin D, Natural Calm (magnesium) and my old pre-natal liquid vitamins (Floradix) regularly. I did Diane SanFilippo’s 21-Day Sugar Detox and discovered that sugar and fruit were not essential to my daily living. And for more than a year I stayed somewhere between 75 and 90 % Paleo. When I strayed from “goodness” I felt a bit guilty about it, knowing that the closer I could stay to 100%, the better it would be for my long-term health. I started to see my body and my nutrition as an investment in my future.

Cynthia’s got a good handle on looking for what works for her and has a good perspective. And, girlfriend, I can so relate. I’ve spent over a decade in the “Nothing will work; might as well get used to being fat” mindset.

As for me, I read The Zone Diet shortly after it came out, and found it far too complicated to work for me at that time. Now if I were to go ahead and spring for MyPlate Gold, it wouldn’t be as bad since I could then set my nutritional goals in line with the Zone’s 30/30/40 guidelines. Doing the math by hand just took too much time.

For some people, The Zone makes them focus on food to the point it becomes unhealthy. “From thin to fat,” an inspiring item from the CrossFit Games, tells of a former anorexic, Emma Moburg-Jones, who overcomes her eating disorder through CrossFit, but has a temporary relapse after a coach recommended The Zone to her:
The Zone Diet didn’t help Emma because it refocused her attention on quantities of food. Many people who have suffered from anorexia have obsessed about calories and quantities, and may find it hard to weigh and measure without returning to obsessive thinking, or over-control.

My guess is the difficulty of calculating the proper things to eat and the necessity of focusing so hard on your food to stay on The Zone is  part of what has made The Paleo Diet popular among CrossFitters, overtaking The Zone’s former dominance. Paleo isn’t about math or inflammatory disease, which is the focus of the Zone, but, as indicated by Zelman’s comments above, it’s about trying to recreate the diet of our ancestors.

That sounds plausible; we all know evolution takes a long time. But just how long to adapt from a hunter-gatherer culture to an industrialized agricultural milieu? I’m not sure anyone knows for sure. But the rules of The Paleo Diet are pretty simple, at least in the “hard-core” version as described by Julianne Taylor in her “Paleo & Zone Nutrition Blog”:

Hard Core Paleo– strictly cutting out all foods that do not fit with a hunters and gatherer / paleo diet: no grains (that’s all grains, includes corn), no legumes (includes soy and peanuts), no potatoes, no sugars or synthetic sweeteners, no processed food, no dairy, no alcohol, no omega-6 vegetable oils or chemically altered fats (margarine).

Not easy to do, but pretty simple to understand. Tom Ashby at “Smashby’s Training Blog” has a series on Paleo called “The Pursuit of Paleo,” which can give you a lot of great info on the program (as do the above bloggers), but I particularly liked his post “On being strict,”  in which he says:

Don’t approach your diet, or your nutritional choices as I prefer to call them (as “diet” just sounds too temporary), as a system based on punishment and limitations. My advice is to simply learn what foods are good to eat, and have every meal you eat consist of those foods as often as possible.

So there you have it. The particulars are up to you; use The Zone or Paleo diets to work for you. You’re the one in charge, and you can choose to be, to steal from an old diet’s name, fit or fat.

Feeding the machine: general considerations

Posted: May 24, 2011 in CrossFit, Exercise, Fitness, Health, Obesity, Weight Loss
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

Let me start out with what this post is *not* about. It’s not about weight loss or diets, even though I’m planning on seeing some weight loss as a side effect of CrossFit, just as you would with any fitness program that will help you build muscle.

Instead, this is about what my husband/coach keeps telling me to focus on: “Feeding the machine.” It seems to be a healthier focus for me; not looking at what I can’t have, but focusing on what the body needs in order to function well. This focus works in tandem with focusing on fitness, rather than weight loss. I know you “can’t outrun the fork,” but I dislike that phrase as I have usually heard it as an excuse to blow off the exercise component of weight loss.

I’d begun looking at the issue of nutrition more in connection with my various illnesses. What they all have in common is serotonin, or the lack thereof. Serotonin is an important neurotransmitter that affects sleep, moods, anxiety, food intake, sexual behavior, heart and blood function, gut function and the immune system.  If your serotonin production is out of whack, you’ll have health problems.

One of the major factors can be your body’s ability to process folate. Not only is folic acid deficiency a fairly widespread nutrional problem, there’s a fairly common genetic defect that will keep you from being able to get enough folate, one of the B vitamins, which is a building block for serotonin. From what my docs have told me, the over-the counter (OTC) stuff won’t do you much good (whether because of the low dose or the problems with regulating the quality of OTC vitamins, I don’t know) and can even be harmful. But there are prescription versions which are formulated so that your body can use it directly when you lack the gene to break down enough into usable form.

The one I use is Deplin, and some of my illnesses got better as soon as I was put on it a few years back. The test for the genetic defect is pricey; Deplin is generally not going to hurt you in the short term and you’ll know pretty quickly if it’s working or not. When I told my mom about it, she asked her doctor, who hadn’t heard about the new research about folate, and decided there was no harm in trying it. Mom could tell immediately that her overall mood stabilized.

Then I figured out my food sensitivities, and got much more careful about what I ate to avoid GI symptoms. Now my fabulous pain doctor, Robert Nett, has me taking riboflavin, vitamin D and magnesium, other pieces of my nutrition puzzle.

Your nutrition puzzle is probably different. I encourage you to look into what vitamins you may need, though.

But supplements aren’t the answer to everything. I remember reading years ago, but can’t recall which of the countless diet books I read it in, that the most powerful drugs you put in your body are the foods you choose to eat. Of course, it’s hard to decide what’s the best food when the scientists keep arguing over whether eggs and salt are really that bad, and whether antioxidants are really that good. All they seem to agree on is that the current USDA food pyramid sucks.

So here are my observations: If drugs don’t work the same on everyone (for example, Zyrtec works for me, Claritin doesn’t do a thing, but it’s the reverse for my daughter), why should we think foods will be any different. You can eat corn, perhaps, but I can’t without regretting it later. That probably applies to overall dietary strategy as well as to the specifics, so I’m not going to get into an argument over which of the specific diet plans is best — what works for one person may not work for another. And, to paraphrase what Chris Kesser at “The Healthy Skeptic” says,  don’t be a food fascist (more about the Paleo Diet later).

That being said, there are some things we do know:

If you apply those simple rules to what you eat, your body will have more of what it needs when you work out. You can’t get fit without managing the quality of your food. A great take on this is the post called “Hold my beer while I PR this clean and jerk” in “Blood on the Bar.”  In it, Dr. Joseph Doughty puts it pretty simply: “Eat more good than bad and you get the results.”

CrossFit recommends that you “eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch, and no sugar.” CrossFitters tend to advocate one of two diets: Barry Sear’s “The Zone Diet” and Loren Cordain’s “The Paleo Diet.” I’ll address them soon; what I want to leave you with is this: What are you eating? Do you know? If not, try logging it, either by hand or using an electronic tool like MyPlate. You’ll get a better idea of exactly what you’re eating, and then you can think about whether you need to make some changes.

Con woman

Posted: May 4, 2011 in CrossFit, Fitness, Health, Obesity, Weight Loss
Tags: , , , , , , , ,
0

As a sweat-resistant person, my “pros” list for CrossFit was  pretty short: add muscle, get fit, burn calories.

But my “con list,” well, that was a whole different matter:

  • It will hurt
  • I’ll look stupid
  • I won’t be able to do it
  • I never have been coordinated; why should this be any different?
  • I’m too fat to do it
  • I’ll hurt myself

Summary: Fear of failure.

I didn’t want to commit. I wanted to get a trial version and then decide whether I liked it before committing to it. Problem: Commitment is a prerequisite. With the exception of my marriage and my kids, commitment is an issue for me. I like change. Or at least that’s what I tell myself. A friend once told me I was a magpie; I couldn’t focus on anything because if I saw something new and shiny, I was immediately distracted. Short-term megaprojects I can do, probably because they require intense focus for a short time. It’s the ordinary, repetitive, boring, and/or longterm tasks that give me trouble.

So I didn’t want to make a commitment to CrossFit because I was afraid I’d fail either by my natural deficiencies as an athletic-sort or, more likely, because I’d bail. I didn’t want to do the latter again; I’ve done it too many times in my life.  So agreeing to start, and then, masochist that I am, deciding to blog about it, is either incredibly stupid or pretty damn courageous on my part.

So I won’t find out if I’ve been conning myself out of something great for all this time or if my negative assessment is right until quite a bit of time has passed. But I’ve tied my own hands a lot lately for fear of failure.

Time to jump out the door and hope the chute opens.

Sheer, unadulterated terror

Posted: May 3, 2011 in CrossFit, Fitness, Health, Obesity, Uncategorized, Weight Loss
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
2

It’s like this. My husband, Gary, has been doing CrossFit for…oh…a few years now. He’s got a group at work that use CrossFit to stay in shape, and he and his good buddy, Kenny, have gotten so into it that Gary got certified as an instructor and Kenny opened a box. My husband is 55 and a hoss. Why the high school jock married a sedentary, klutzy nerd is anyone’s guess, but he still seems to like me anyway.

I, on the other hand, just turned 50 and have had chronic health issues and am seriously overweight. Okay, I’ll just say it: I’m an obese 5’5″ fattie weighing in at 242 lbs. Some of it has accumulated from binge eating when I’m stressed; some of it came from a medication which made me balloon 70 lbs in about 6 months. But that was over a decade ago, and I’m still looking down at the basketball that lives over my abdomen.

Gary’s been trying to tell me for…oh…probably friggin’ years that I needed to exercise (and drink more water and eat better and take Megamucil — these I’ve finally given in on) for health and weight loss. I generally stuck my fingers in my ears and said “Lalalalala — I can’t hear you.” I grew up believing in the magic pill. When I was 16 and 120 lbs, my mother took me to a fat doctor for the first time (no, not an doctor who is overweight; I believe the technical term is now “a bariatric specialist”). The guy’s office was in a shady part of town, which should have given me a clue that perhaps Mom wasn’t really on the right track about this, but, no, I bought into it. And continued to. For years. For decades.

So once Gary got into CrossFit, he kept harping on about how great it was and anyone could do it. I thought back over my multiple times to physical therapists (at least 11 times I can count offhand) and the countless minor injuries that I’d had at lower body weight (which lead to my 3-week rule: three weeks of any exercise, no matter how benign, and I’m down for 6), and rejected the idea out of hand.

Then Gary got certified, and has been using family members as guinea pigs to hone his coaching abilities. I had started having chronic migraines (5-7 per week) some months before, and after one feeble attempt, gave it up as a lost cause. Of course, at that point I’d given up driving, socializing, and pretty much anything other than huddling in a dark and quiet room as a lost cause.

Then, right after my 50th birthday, I finally caught a break. I was accepted by a headache specialist who is so well-respected and in demand that you pretty much have to audition to get to be a patient. He identified the weirdnesses associated with my migraines, and the solution also applied to almost every other disease or syndrome I have. (Basically, if it will make you miserable but probably won’t kill you, there’s a high likelihood I’ve got it.) So the drug he put me on began decreasing intensity and frequency of the migraines, but slowly. The side effects, mostly being what my daughter tells me is definitely the equivalent of being stoned, wouldn’t go ahead and go away, though, because the dose was never quite enough, and kept going up, and every time the dosage went up, any side effect improvement went away.

But a little over a week ago, a window of coherence appeared. And the man I live with said, “Lo, a time to try CrossFit, as it has been prophesied.” (Okay, what he really said was something more like “CrossFit?” He’s extremely economical with words, a failing I obviously do not share.)

So he made me a babystep CrossFit plan. A sorta-squat using a plyo box, a press using PVC pipe, a shrug using a 10 lb medicine ball (who knew those things still existed…don’t they predate Jack LaLanne?), all preceded by a 10 minute walk on the treadmill. I started at 2.5mph on the treadmill and kept trying to cry when he was instructing me on the techniques I needed to do.

“It’s too much.”

“I’m overwhelmed.”

Yeah, basic whining and complaining. The only thing I was ever good at athletically was doing the splits and now out-of-date dancing; other than that, I was slower and clumsier than anyone else. I missed being high school valedictorian because I got a D one semester in PE. So I pretty much count on being a failure at anything athletic.

And then my wonderful husband said something amazing as I sat on the plyo box with tears welling up in my eyes: “You can’t fail at CrossFit. When I say ‘working until you fail,’ I only mean that you do something until you can’t do it any more. That’s not a failure; that’s a success. It means you are challenging yourself and getting better. You are the only measure of success; improvement is success.” And, for once, I actually heard, all the way down in my heart, what the man was saying.

So, although I’m still terrified I’m going to screw up or hurt myself, I’m committed to trying. That’s my first goal: consistency. And I managed to weasel a deal out of my husband: After I’ve done 2 sets of 5-day workouts, I get a foot rub. Now that’s what I call motivation.