The "Power" of the Scale

Its taken over 30 years to realize that I don't care what the number on the scale says. My day won't be ruined if I weigh in one pound up. I won't entertain any thoughts that my worth has been compromised should my weight increase and likewise, I will not feel like I am a better person should my weight decrease.

To clarify, with this post I don't intend to imply that my weight doesn't concern me. Nor do I mean to say that I've given up and that I wouldn't care if I weighed 300#! I mean to say that I don't have a particular number in my head that I believe is my "best" weight. I do not believe that there is a single magic weight for me at which all my performance and health goals will come true. So whether it's 135# or 155#, I do not care so long as my health and performance is getting better daily! I will not sacrifice either in order to achieve a "magic number".

Use the number on the scale as a single data point in an ongoing "study". Too often is a sudden weight change due to the gain or loss of water, so it's not worth getting all worried about being up four pounds the day after a wicked food and booze bender. [Actually, wtf are you doing weighing yourself the day after that? I mean come on, if you haven't pooed yet all that food is still in you. The scale doesn't lie but it can't un-weigh your dinner, it sure isn't magic!] What does concern me are trends like a steady and significant increase in weight or a change in weight along with a simultaneous increase in exhaustion or malaise. Using the number on the scale in conjunction with other information such as how I feel, how my clothes fit, how my digestion is doing and how I'm recovering from workouts, is more appropriate and can better assist in learning more about how your own body responds to its environment. 

Do not imbue your scale with supernatural powers! It isn't a deity, just a battery-operated tool!

Trust me though, it hasn't always been this way for me. I used to weigh in each day or two with the sole purpose of seeing if my current diet plan was working. I'd also weigh in after a cheat to see how much damage I had done. Using the scale was either rewarding or punishing; never just retrieving data, free from emotion.

So what changed my mind? It was my body that changed my mind for me. All I had to do was LISTEN to my body, eat, allow my body to tell me what it needed, eat clean and train right. And eat.

This is me four years ago at 130#. LOOK at those spaghetti arms!

This second picture is just four years later (2012) when I weigh 150#.























OMG I'm huge right? In those four years I should have beaten my self up emotionally every time my weight went up right? I mean, this is obvious proof that all weight gain is bad...right? [For all of you that miss out on sarcasm, the answers to the above questions are all 'no'.]

All joking aside, I sometimes think about all the things I would have missed out on if I had allowed the scale to decide for me how skimpy my dinner would be that night. It's staggering. I can say that I am pretty dag-gone happy (and SO thankful) to have gained those 20#! I wouldn't be the person I am today because I wouldn't have enjoyed the experiences I have had.

More important than the black and white number on the scale is your health and happiness, now AND in the long run. Let your GOALS be your guide!

With fittest intentions,

Michelle

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Lettuce Pisses Me Off...

Don't get me wrong, I really like vegetables. I even like the lesser appreciated veggies like brussels sprouts, beets and collard greens. The funny thing is, I really like salads at other people's houses and out at restaurants (I'm not including the taco salad in the fried taco shell here as a salad!), but as soon as it comes to home? Nope. Not happening. It bugs me to have it in my fridge. It annoys me because it never fits in any of my normal bowls. Lettuce pisses me off, and I'm not really sure why.

For the next six weeks our CrossFit box is running a Paleo Challenge (ie teams of eleven people support each other as they all eat strict clean Paleo for 6 weeks to see how their bodies and performance changes). I'm not technically in the Challenge as I'm one of the team leaders but I'm taking this opportunity to eat clean again. Eating clean for me really means just removing cheese and wine, so I've set myself some separate goals all involving salad greens.

My goals for the next 6 weeks:

1) Eat raw salad greens with at least one meal per day, five days a week

2) One day a week eat all raw vegetables and fruits.

3) Each week try a new leafy green/source. Ie I can't eat Foxy Lettuce for all 6 weeks...puke.

So to get started? RECIPE TIME!!!!!!!!! The following recipe is for a salad dressing. The bacon and shiitakes give it substance and the balsamic vinegar's usual tang gets mellowed out a little by heating it up. You end up with this lovely caramel colored, sweet, smokey and salty dressing that is magic on tomatoes. Hope y'all like it!

(Disclaimer: I did not make this up, I wrote it down out of some garden veggie magazine at B&N and can't remember which one, nor can I find it. If you know, let me know so I can give credit where its due!)

Warm Bacon-Shiitake Salad Dressing

(serves 2ish so the recipe said)

2 Tbspn Bacon grease (drained from baked bacon)

2 Tbspn Olive oil

8oz (about 8 mushrooms) Shiitake mushrooms, sliced

6 Green onions, chopped (or 4 Tbspn chopped onion)

1 Garlic clove, minced

8 Tbspn Balsamic vinegar

4 slices Bacon, chopped/crumbled

In a sautee pan, put the grease and oil, heat over medium heat. Saute mushrooms for 1-2 minutes, add onions and garlic and continue to sautee until onions are cooked. Not so long though that garlic browns. Turn burner to lowest setting and stir in vinegar and the crumbled bacon. Warm through and pour over salad.

I poured this over a whole head of Boston lettuce with sliced tomatoes and it was fantastically good. Sadly, the picture I took didn't do it ANY justice. Just trust me, this will make your kitchen smell fantastic and will make your mouth happy.

Cheers to Paleo and Salad Greens!!

Bakin' and Burpees Baby!

Okay, okay, I'm kind of kidding. I think alot of us like to bitch and moan over burpees, but we don't actually hate burpees. That being said, however, they're not exactly groovy after doing them steady and fast for 7minutes (thanks HQ xoxo).

I did the CrossFit Open WOD on the morning after the workout was announced (7min AMRAP of Burpees to a target in case you missed it). My friend and I went back and forth about who was going to do it first (you, no you, no I insist you!). I "won", went first and did a miserable job of keeping the aftermath to a minimum (I haven't been that close to crying from a workout in a loooooooong time).
Even though the worst part of it is minute 7 to 8, when you've stopped moving and everything tightens up, it wasn't bad enough to keep me from wanting to try doing it again on Saturday.

This brought me to thinking, we CrossFitters are SO fun! Typically Friday night is thought of as a "let loose" from the work week night. Hey, go grab your friends! Let's drink and stay out late because we can sleep in tomorrow! Let's be irresponsible because we've been UBER responsible all week at the office! CrossFitter's fridays don't look like that, especially during the Open. Tonight I'm getting dinner early (5pm kinda early) with a friend. There will be no booze. We will probably go to the grocery store together, because we are WILD WOMEN! and I'm going to get almond flour, figs and honey because I am going to see if I can make a Paleo-ish approximation of Fig Newtons! Our box typically holds a post-WOD potluck barbecue and I thought Fig newtons would be a fantastic food to indulge in after those bazillion (hopefully) burpees.

My goal for this weekend is to add 7 burpees to my score and to revel in newly developed Figgy thingies (fun name to be developed whilst mixing, rolling, baking). Saturday night I shall again go to bed early so I can recover! Oh yes, we CrossFitters are SO fun! It's just that our fun is another (wo)man's torture and usually happens during daylight hours.

For this weekend, bakin' and burpees for all!
(Yes, of course I will share the recipe with you all...IF and only if it is decent!)
:-)

Darkest Before the Dawn...

I watched a little bit of The Biggest Loser last night and, lo and behold, a Reebok-CrossFit commercial pops up telling me that the "sport of fitness has arrived." I'm pretty excited! I would love to see a snowball effect of everyone getting more serious about their workouts, then eating better, then eating even cleaner (organic and grassfed), then Kellogg's will turn to making un-grain cereals in order to stay afloat fiscally. The world will be a better and healthier place! Oh what beauty!

But it's always darkest before the dawn. Due to the awesome nature of CrossFit everyone will jump on the band wagon this year. It will be very easy for it to become a buzzword meaning "workouts that will kill you." Let me say this though, CrossFit is NOT a BOOTCAMP. Your coach needs to know how to arrange movement types, speeds, and loads in order to elicit a very particular response from YOUR cardio-respiratory, neurological, physical and mental systems.

CrossFit is NOT a Bootcamp:

• It's not just any ol' hard workout of 20 of these, 20 of those and some tire flips. 
• It's not doing 5 days in a row of 45minute painstorms involving hundreds of reps.
• It's not a full hour of activity for activity's sake without focus on specific form and someone just yelling "GO! FASTER!" at you.
• It's not lifting a million pounds any way possible just because it's hard.
• It's not numbing out and forgetting what you did by the time you get home.

CrossFit is brilliant and scientific:

• It IS hard: the workout will reveal your weaknesses instead of just being an onslaught of $hit to do.
• It IS a method in which you take the time to find the current holes in your training and FIX them before moving on...this does NOT make the workouts easier!
• It IS intelligently programming your week, your month and your year of workouts to create a positive training stimulus by varying loads, intensity, and tasks.
• It IS learning. Learning how to do work safely and correctly because strength will only get you so far. FORM and determination will take you over the moon.

All this was highlighted in a video that circulated on Facebook in which an IFBB Physique pro does a so-called CrossFit workout. Her workout consisted of:

3-5 Rounds
20 reps of bench press (bodyweight),
20 reps of back squats (bodyweight),
20 reps of clean and press (half-bodyweight)

I hate to say this but it's stupid. It's a stupid workout. This is a great example of a hard workout but NOT a CrossFit workout. *You can see how NOT to CrossFit by watching this video. Using these same 3 movements, a CrossFit workout would be MORE likely to look like this:

3 Rounds
9 reps bench (half bodyweight)
12 reps clean and jerk (bodyweight)
15 reps back squat (one and a half times bodyweight)

Look at the two versions again and see if you can't see why the latter would be a more effective strength training stimulus. Even still, the rep scheme in combination with the weights makes this an advanced strength-endurance workout for an advanced CROSSFIT ATHLETE. The latter version has a rhythm and a pattern. The movement that uses the smallest muscle groups gets the lightest weight (respectively) and the least amount of reps to enable the athlete to keep moving and effectively tire the shoulders for the next movement. The next movement is an Olympic lift that, when performed correctly, will engage the legs in an explosive movement in order to help the arms get the weight safely overhead and locked out. The third movement then uses the heaviest weight which will again tire the core and legs making the second round of clean and jerks (heavily reliant on core strength and explosive power through legs/hips) more difficult.

YOUR safety and health is paramount as we head into this bright new world of CrossFitting popularity. I urge to please please please...continue to be picky about who you let coach you!

CrossFit boxes will be opening everywhere and many towns already have several. Go try them all out and see which one makes you feel like:

1) you're learning something
2) you're a valued part of a team
3) you're effectively getting work done
4) you're getting better each week!
If you feel that your workouts are constantly crushing you and/or you aren't able to describe the movements to a family member or friend (ie you aren't learning anything) then please find another place or trainer to visit! While workouts will be hard, you should not feel like you've been hit by a bus repeatedly for weeks. Don't get me wrong, maybe your coach is super nice or is really cute. But if they don't know how to safely and effectively get you from Point A to Point B you can keep them on your Christmas card mailing list but break free and find another place to go!

Best wishes!

Michelle

But It's GOOD Kool-Aid!

The first stage of recovery, they say, is denial. Denial that CrossFit is better than doing 3 sets of 10 on the leg extension & 90 minutes on the elliptical. Denial that I'd been practically wasting my good hard earned money on a gym membership that didn't get me all that much fitter than I'd already been. But I could elliptical like the DICKENS!

Then, they say, there is anger. Anger that I'd never been told about this before! Anger that this information was so hard to find! Anger that my personal trainer had not ever made me do this!

After the anger passes though there is grief. Grief over all the time I had wasted in the gym, bopping pseudo-aimlessly from machine to machine. Grief that all the "Flat Abs Move" newsletters had brought me nowhere memorable.

Then there's bargaining. "Okay, okay! At least I'm fit enough to START CrossFit now," utilizing the "fit enough to begin" excuse that all those that HAVE started know to be a silly mythical creature.

Finally, thankfully, there is acceptance. Acceptance of the fact that my journey home, long around as it may have been, was necessary. Acceptance of the fact that I had not wasted any time in the gym no matter how ineffective it may now seem. That portion of my life was an education, a necessary experience (or evil, both of which apply quite well) that set me up to succeed when I finally found CrossFit.

I can say with certainty that I am proud to wear that ridiculous and delirious "I can't believe I volunteer for this $hit" CrossFit grin most days of the week.

Now, I know that you may not get it...yet. But hey, why don't you come over tonight. I've got this new flavor of Kool-Aid.

Want a taste?

"Elbows High" A Pain?

You are so not alone if you KNOW that as soon as you lift the bar off the rack you will hear your coach yell, "get those elbows up!" Tight lats (aka Latissimus dorsi) could be your primary culprit in causing you to lose that nice rack position as you squat quickly (oh say, during thrusters). Keeping your elbows up on these movements isn't just to look pretty in pictures though, you can really hurt yourself if you let your elbow go slamming into your thigh! A little stretching is all it takes to help you avoid a broken wrist or worse, constant harassment from your coaches!

First, place a standard bar on a rack at shoulder height. Stand at arms distance resting your wrists on the bar  at shoulder width, thumbs up.  

Now start to sit down. Keep your arms straight and be conscious of the sensation through your armpits, shoulders and along the sides of your rib cage. *It's true my arms don't look straight, but that's what my arms look like at this angle.

You may notice that I am standing feet together instead of in squat stance: this is a hold over from yoga. In Chair pose you stand with your big toes touching, heels slightly apart. When you then start to sit down into Chair, you press your knees and thighs together to maintain posture and balance.

Be aware of how the stretch feels of where you feel it most. I will sometimes find that I'm nice and loose and so I need to step a little closer so that I can squat down more to get a deeper stretch. Other times I need to really focus on pointing my tail bone up to increase that lower back sway which in turns increases the stretch.

I'd recommend adding this to your everyday pre-workout stretch/warm-up routine. Experiment a little bit to address your particular needs! Enjoy :-)!

Metamorphosis

There was once a time I didn't really feel I was very special or remarkable in any way. I felt like my body was too pudgy to be attractive and I felt that I wasn't particularly pretty or charming. I wasn't very healthy let alone being any kind of strong. Now, I look back on that image I once held of myself and laugh. I laugh because it isn't even close to true. It wasn't true then and it isn't true now, nor will it ever BE true. I laugh at the astonishing ignorance of all of those statements yet how they have guided the course of my life. But for all the sadness I inflicted upon myself with those self-sabotaging beliefs, the scars help form the woman I am today. I am transformed.

I was finishing up my senior year of college at the University of Maine when everything changed. I remember walking across campus to get to class when suddenly I choked up and began to sob uncontrollably. Right there on the quad in front of the library. Huge tears and choking sobs I couldn't contain came rolling out and at the time I swear to you I had NO idea why. This would happen almost every day and I came close to missing an entire month of classes before I sought help. Together with my therapist's help, I began to deal with all the sadness and confusion of my youth (daughter of an alcoholic father) that was literally crying to get out and dealt with. Years of turmoil, both repressed and suppressed, were fighting their way to the surface of my consciousness. Most days I had a very hard time sitting still for any length of time; I was always antsy and agitated from a mind gone wild.

So one day I went for a run.

Mind you, I had NEVER gone for a run. I got about fifty feet that first time I think. Then I walked for a while. My body started to relax now that it had an outlet for the pent up energy and my mind started to feel on track. Then I ran again, then walked. So on and so on. I can still recall the first time I ran the entire one mile stretch of the road I lived on. I had been so lost in thought that I hadn't realized I ran the whole way. I started jumping up and down and cheering out loud for myself: it was a complete rush like I'd never experience before! Soon after that I began running more, doing 5k races and even joining a gym. Thus my new "fit" life was born.

So when was it that I was transformed? Was it the moment that I first stepped out the door to go for a run? Or maybe it was when I had my first session with a personal trainer and thought, "holy shit this is the job for me!" I like to think it was every time I made a healthy choice. Every time I chose to go for a run in the woods with the sole purpose of getting emotions out (I'd run so hard I couldn't suppress anything anymore and I'd end up bawling). Every time I chose to eat a healthy meal. Every time I chose to throw away any negative self talk I transformed a little more.

Nowadays I'm a completely changed woman. But I don't look that different then I did back then, I'm still recognizable as myself. It's been ten years of progress and this whole time I've been slowly changing. My metamorphosis wasn't literally me turning INTO a different person. A butterfly isn't born overnight, it is through a long series of smaller changes that this amazing little critter eventually changes from an egg into a butterfly. Instead little by little, it was the relationship between my body and my mind that changed.

I am no longer that same scared little self-saboteur I once was. I no longer bully my own self just because the world feels out of control. I have learned that all of it, all of the power, is within me. All I have to do is be me, accept me and let the phenomenal symbiosis of mind and body crush any trouble that gets in my way! Of course sometimes I still get scared but now I use that fear as a motivator. When I feel fear I know it's a road sign telling me I'm getting close to the edge of my comfort zone. And that edge is EXACTLY where I need to be so that I can do the most good for myself and for the world.

So every time I chose to go for a run, every time I chose to deal with my problems, every time I chose to run a little faster a little longer, every time I choose not to put the barbell down, and every single time I choose not to give up I am giving myself bigger and brighter wings.

I would LOVE to hear your stories of transformation! I will be compiling them and putting together a series of motivational stories! Please please email them to me at chalkandchi@gmail.com!

Much love,

Michelle