Diet

I've actually been focused on losing weight with calorie counting lately. Not something I love to do; in fact, I can't remember ever doing it this long before because I dislike it so much. But there's something different about it this time. I've already reduced my food options so much with trying to avoid "natural flavors" that it isn't nearly as much of a burden as it used to be to track those calories. 

I'm seeing some weight loss, though nothing significant yet, just over a month in. That makes sense to me, because I know that weight loss is not linear. Our bodies do respond like perfect automata to the stimuli that we give it. That has to be in part because there are parts of that digestion cycle that we not only don't have access to influence, but don't even completely understand. Science around the microbiome is still in its infancy, but we know it matters. 

It can be hard to stay positive, but, as Ambrose said, our bodies are our allies in this fight. We shouldn't get mad at them because we don't understand why our weight is up, despite diligent calorie counting. We might look at other things, like macro ratios, if we get super frustrated, but I know that I need to especially be prepared for a gain of about 5 pounds around my period. It's almost not fair that men don't have that cycle to be able to see when their hormones are out of whack. Men cycle, they just don't get the red flag of warning. 

I had a thought that, if our bodies are our allies, then what exactly is the enemy against which we are aligned? My first answer was despair. Doubt. We must fight with our bodies against the idea that nothing we do actually makes a difference. Fight to stay the course. Fight to remain calm as we are buffeted by the waters of the rushing river of life. 

I talk to my body. I ask it to try and become the shape that I'm asking it to be. To try and lose the weight that it (and I) have clung to since high school. To show off the muscles we've built at CrossFit. To lower our base weight for backpacking. 

Break Time

Although I hadn't intended it, I have ended up taking a bit of a rest week this week between Christmas and New Years. This is in part due to a cold that I acquired at some point. Not a bad cold, but irksome enough to prevent me from running in sub-freezing temperatures, which just happened to arrive this week. 

I think it's actually a good thing. While I like creating a streak of running 10 miles a week, I think my body will benefit from a little break in the routine. I'll be getting back to it next week, I hope. And in the meantime, I'll focus more on the kind of work I can do sitting at my desk. 

I've been doing better with my tummy pain lately. I'm thinking that I may have been more stressed about the whole thing than I realized. I recently started paying close attention to what I'm eating, because I'm doing calorie counting. I'd like to lose some weight - not too much, because I still need to carry my backpack, but I'd like to see if I can go from hovering around 150 to hovering around 140. Part of that will come from a renewed commitment to exercise, but the part that will actually get it done is the calorie counting, no matter how much I despise it. 

I mean, despise might be too harsh. I find it troublesome and irritating to not only track what I'm eating, but how much of it. I guess I should be happy I'm not currently interested in the time that I'm eating. My dad has suggested intermittent fasting, but I really don't like how I feel when I've gone too long without eating. Maybe fasting will work for me someday, but that day is not nigh. 

And it doesn't matter how much I eat or don't eat when my period comes around. I'll gain weight at that time no matter what I do, which makes it hard to see progress sometimes. But I do think that I'm seeing progress, so the counting, however tedious, is here to stay. 

Fitness Goals 2020

I feel like I'm at a good place, fitness wise, this year. I've been working on building a foundation, and though the payoff is slow, it is coming. Last year, I focused on conquering the Spartan Race, and I did it. But it came at the expense of my backpacking conditioning. I'm not going to let that happen this year. This year, the focus is on being ready for backpacking season, with more small prep trips through May and June so Ambrose and I are ready for the coast and so that I'm ready for the 2nd half of the Frank Church on the Idaho Centennial Trail.

But that focus doesn't mean that I can't have other goals. I can and I shall.

A year long goal is to attend 264 CrossFit classes. I did 259 in 2018 and 257 in 2019, so I know that's a number within my reach. I also know I won't make commitment crew for 2020 because I'm taking too many August vacations and also focusing on backpacking in June and July, which will reduce my summer months' attendance. That means I need to pick it up in the off season to make the goal. That's an average of 22 classes per month. With the lower numbers for sure coming in August, I'll be trying for 25 classes per month in January, February, March, October, November and December. If I can swing that, then I'll need about 18 classes per month for the remainder, which will be spread out since I doubt I'll even make 18 in August.

It's probably not great that I don't have a concrete plan for this one, but I still want a freestanding handstand. I've had this on my radar for a while now, but I do feel that I'm getting closer with my foundation. If I really want this one, I'm going to have to work at it. Figure out a plan and stick to it. So the goal is to figure out a plan and then pick a time to work on it.

Arbor CrossFit has a pull up challenge for January. I don't know that I'll actually be able to complete it, since I've never done more than 7 strict pull ups and the challenge ends with a set of 10, but I'm going to try and see how many I can end up getting on the challenge plan. I want to increase my pull up strength so I can get a strict chest to bar, one of the many steps on my long road to muscle ups.

I've been doing the 15 minute 3 pull up/3 dip EMOM with my girlfriends at Arbor, and I am starting to see some impact on my dips. I used to use the horns and bands, but since I restarted with the girls, I've been doing assisted ring dips, and I was able to do a negative ring dip and hold at the bottom last Sunday. That is a new thing for me, since it used to be when I tried to hold at the bottom, I would drop after less than a second - and that's coming into the position at the bottom, not after lowering from the top. So I'm going to put a strict ring dip on the Arbor goal board, because I think I'm close and I'm going to get there soon with the work that I'm doing.

Finally, I'm working on my weight and diet. I want to get a bit leaner, especially since I'm considering doing the next gains course, which will, by definition, increase my weight. There's not really a concrete goal with weight; more than I want to be aware and not continue to increase willy-nilly. I would like to lose some fat, and it would just be nice to get back into the 140's. I mean, for now, it's all about staying out of the 160's, but I think what I'm doing will get me back to the 140's. For now, I'm tracking what I eat and when, but not how much. I want to make this a sustainable habit, and calorie counting is just a bit more than I want to do for starters. As far as diet goes, I'm still figuring out which foods trigger my tummy, but the main food experiment going on to start the year is, which bars can I eat for backpacking? I have half a dozen so far to try, and I'll get more to try if necessary. I'm going to dial in my backpacking food in the off-season so that I don't get sick on the trail like last year.

Diet Challenge Redux

Back in October/November, I participated in a 30 day nutrition challenge. Basically, a low carb, high fat diet with an emphasis on hydration and sleep. I lost about 10 pounds in the course of the 30 days, and I dragged my husband along with me - although his following of the dietary rules was a little bit looser than mine.

Getting through that - especially the first week when I wanted bread, cookies, crackers, anything crunchy and carby and sugary - felt like an accomplishment in and of itself. But there were other benefits. It caused me, and my husband, to look hard at our dietary habits and make some changes.

We became less "treat" oriented. No longer were we buying ice cream every week (or every pay period). Candy intake got cut down significantly. And I found I didn't miss those "treats" as much as I thought I would.

I would never have broached the idea of trying that kind of diet again, but it turned out I didn't have to. My husband liked the results enough to want to do it again. We are not likely to ever go low carb full time, because of backpacking. (There may be a way to do backpacking low carb, but that is not how we hike our hike.) But periodic refreshes of our diet are another matter.

And so we've undertake a 28 day challenge - 28 days because that's two pay periods and fits better into our grocery shopping schedule. We're 12 days in, and doing well.

One thing that I'm doing differently is following my husbands lead (to an extent) and being looser in my restrictions. Because I was trying to lose weight as part of a challenge, I used an app to count calories and tried to make sure my caloric intake was low each day. This time, I'm just eating mindfully and keeping an eye on the scale and my body. I might try using the app again in the third or fourth week, but I think the first two weeks need to be devoted to letting my body adjust to the change in macronutrients.

Besides, it isn't solely about weight loss this time. I want to retain or gain strength as I continue to go to Crossfit in the weeks leading up to the Open. I want to practice discipline in restricting my diet, a kind of mental dress rehearsal for surviving on backpacking food during my solo trip. The weight loss is nice, but I know that some of it will come back when I reintroduce carbs on February 25th. Just 15 more days.

Not that I'm counting or anything...

30 Day Nutrition Challenge

I, and to an extent, my husband, took a nutrition challenge recently. We changed our eating habits entirely, and I also tried to track my caloric intake and make sure I got close to getting my calories from 10% or less of carbs, 60% fat and 30% protein, give or take.

On the one hand, this meant being able to eat bacon and eggs, all kinds of meats. On the other hand, it meant cutting out bread altogether along with just about anything with added sugar. We also cut out most fruits and took care with the vegetables to limit carbs.

We both lost weight over the 30 days. I proved to myself that I could indeed cut all those delicious little candy treats out of my life and survive. No candy, no donuts, no pumpkin muffins with cream cheese icing that my director brought in on the first day, no cupcakes at the office Halloween party, no Halloween candy, no party cake, no bread, no crackers, no chips. I can do that. For at least 30 days.

By the time the diet ended, I had stopped craving sweets, but I still craved bread, crackers and rice. I dreamed about pasta.

But each day that I succeeded gave me the strength I needed to get through the next one. I know I can't maintain that kind of diet indefinitely, partly because I'm pretty sure my doctor would have a conniption fit if she knew how much cholesterol I was consuming, and partly because my discipline in avoiding carbs only stretches so far.

I haven't weighed myself since the challenge ended. It isn't so much that I'm afraid to know how much I've gained back, though that's part of it. Mostly, I don't have a desire to obsess over my weight at the moment. I am happy with going about my exercise routines and knowing that I can lose weight if I put in the effort.

The diet was a marathon in my fitness journey; a long period of focused effort. But it was not the entirety of my journey. That experiment has ended; the journey continues.

Turn the Run Around

Before yesterday, the last two times that I ran, and the last few times I did Crossfit, I had started to experience wheezing and lightheadedness. Finishing the open in that condition was an exercise in discipline, as I couldn't go out or I'd risk fainting. (Puking during Crossfit is a badge of honor, fainting, not so much...) I was wondering if I were getting a lung infection or maybe the pollen counts were way up since I'd been running outside.

But Sunday, I decided to start a test of eliminating soy from my diet for a week to see if I started to feel better without it. And, the early returns are, yes, I feel a heck of a lot better.

Where before, while eating two soy sausages every morning and drinking soy milk regularly, I'd started to not only experience wheezing after aerobic exercise, but also an increasing level of fatigue. My legs would feel leaden as I ran, and I couldn't find a pace that felt good. I only forced myself to keep going so that my leg wouldn't stiffen up painfully.

But yesterday, running felt good again. Absurdly good, considering it was 30 minutes on a treadmill. I took it slow, doing 2 miles at a 5mph pace to start. When I finished that without wheezing, I did a quarter mile at 5.5, another quarter at 6 and then finished out the 30 minutes at 7 (only 40 seconds). I walked until my heartrate fell down close to 100 and then used a foam roller on that right leg for a few minutes.

I did break my rule of doing the rowing machine for 5 minutes every time I go to the Rec Center, but I didn't want to push my luck. Plus I didn't have my bike, which makes the trip from Rec to office a lot longer and I wanted to have some time to eat lunch.

But I felt good. I smiled the whole time I was walking back to my office. I'm clearing up whatever infection was making my lungs act up, or I'm allergic to soy - either way, I'm happy.