Friday workout

For reference:

• Warm-up: row
• Warm-up: 3 sets
  • 5 push up
  • 5 inchworm
  • 20 pvc pipe lunges
  • 15 sit ups
• WOD: 4 RFT (reps for time):
  • 20 dumbbell deadlift
  • 20 dumbbell shoulder press
  • 20 dumbbell standing row
  • 20 dumbbell thrusters
  • Row (20 calories)

Today’s workout

For reference:

• Warm-up: row
• Warm-up: 3 sets
  • 10 kettlebell swings
  • 10 kettlebell halos (5 each side)
  • 10 kettlebell goblet squats
• Warm-up: 2 sets
  • 30 high knees
  • 20 mountain climbers
  • 10 jumping jacks
• WOD: EMOTM (every minute on the minute) 24 mins total (6 rounds)
  • Sled push
  • 30 seconds burpees with plate press
  • 30 seconds plank hold
  • 60 jumprope singles (or 30 doubles)

Doing this has firmed up some observations about my preferences for exercise:

• I prefer a group setting
• I prefer sets of exercises with no time limit (as opposed to do x repeatedly for y interval)
• I prefer having an instructor to doing things on my own
• I prefer variety

I’ve tried dailyburn, but it didn’t keep me motivated.  I think I need to get my ass up and go somewhere where there are people.  This is non-intuitive for me, since I’m actually quite introverted.

My goal last week was to hit three workouts (Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday), and I made it.  Since I’m not feeling too sore now (although ask me again in the morning), I’m going to try to shoot for four this week, and work out both tomorrow and Saturday.  We’ll see how that goes.

Day 10

Ten days down, twenty to go.  I am one third of the way through this sumbitch.  Surprisingly, I have killed 0 people due to hanger.  Although, someone reheated pizza in the kitchen at work today, and for a brief moment visions of pizza-related strong arm robbery danced through my head.

I’m down about 13 lbs from where I started.  So, yay?  I am now slightly less huge.  Moving around is getting a little easier again.  I am getting slightly less terrible at the workouts.

I’m still not sold on the supposed health benefits of the diet itself.  If you look at online paleo discussions, you will see people talking about “inflammation” and how carbs tear up the digestive tract and how most people are secretly lactose intolerant or something, but I’m not feeling any different, honestly.  Maybe that will change as the month goes on.  I have slightly more energy, but at this point I’m chalking that up to the increased exercise.

Time to sign off again.  I need to figure out what I’m going to eat NEXT week.

Tuesday’s workout

Again, before I forget, here’s Tuesday’s workout:

• Warm up – 3 sets:
  • 20 Superman
  • 10 candlestick
  • run (or row) 200m
• Workout – 5 sets
  • 10 dumbbell push press
  • 10 kettlebell goblet squats
  • 10 kettlebell one arm press (5 each side)
  • 10 kettlebell sumo pulls
  • 70 single jumprope (or 35 double)

Before I Forget…

I wanted to post the workout I did Saturday.  No time, so no commentary.

Warm up – row for a while

Warm-up – 100 singles (jump rope), 10 mountain climbers.  Then 80 singles, 20 mountain climbers…repeat until 20 singles, 50 mountain climbers (I did not get through this)

Then, stretching.

Workout was modified for me.  I did the following, in alternating sets of 10 each:

• 40 deadlifts (with dumbbells), 40 jumping jacks
• 40 squats (with dumbbells), 40 jumping jacks
• 40 strict presses (with dumbbells), 40 jumping jacks
• 40 thrusters (with dumbbells), 40 jumping jacks

Then, row some more.  The rowing was in place of running.

I’m trying to record these so I keep a record of them so that when I stop doing the formal boot camp, I have exercise ideas.  I should be keeping these in my food journal, but I’m not yet.  Maybe I should double up on that?

F*** You, Paleo

I think that paleo is turning me into a crazy person.

My last two weekends have been almost entirely consumed by food prep.  Here’s the thing: I don’t have a lot of time to cook during the week (more on that, later).  So I have been taking the weekends to prepare meals for the week in advance, making good use of my newly acquired slow cooker.  But even so, it feels like I have spent almost every waking moment over the past two days in the kitchen.

Rather than recount my weekend step by step, let me just point out that between Friday evening and today, I’ve prepared the following foods.

• Steaks
• Zucchini noodles (twice)
• Meat sauce
• Enchilada Chicken Stew
• Homemade lemon vinaigrette
• Scrambled eggs (twice, once with bacon)
• The rest of the bacon that I didn’t use up when I made the scambled eggs
• A breakfast casserole
• A pot roast (still in the slow cooker)

Before this challenge, my diet consisted almost entirely of lean cuisines, takeout, and spite.  Because at the end of the day, the last thing I want to do when I come home from work is pretty much anything.  And my job is unpredictable enough that I could easily wind up having to stay late on short notice.  So, the smart thing to do is to shift food prep to the weekend, right?  Except then, I am using my much needed weekend downtime to prepare, store, and clean up after meals for the entire week.

Most of you reading this are probably well-functioning adults who accept the fact that being an adult means less free time, and more time spent doing basic life maintenance tasks, like cleaning, or I don’t know, budgeting.  But I am currently in a position where I need to spend every precious, precious moment of free time I have on doing things that help me to relax, none of which happen to be basic life maintenance tasks (the reasons why are a topic for another day or, perhaps never, because I really don’t know you all that well, Mr. person-on-the-other-side-of-the-monitor).

Which brings me to one of my chief complaints about paleo: it takes time.  So much time.  I never thought I would spend more than a minute of my life contemplating which store brands of broth have sugar added – yet today I spent about 20.  It’s not just the prepping and the cooking and the cleaning (I must have done about half a dozen sink-fulls of dishes, never mind what got put in the dishwasher); you have to spend time figuring out whether any damn thing you put in your mouth is allowed, and that takes time, mental energy, and (in my case) an always on Internet connection.

I  have access to the Internet, a basic knowledge of cooking, and a wide array of kitchen gadgets.  And this is still turning into another part-time job.  How are folks who already have multiple jobs supposed to do something like this?  Or folks who don’t have easy access to grocery stores?  And that’s not even taking into account the fact that if you really do paleo “right,” it can be pretty expensive (that’s a topic for another post).

I’m sure that this is the first of many times this month I will be giving a hearty Fuck You to Paleo.  But for now, I need to sign off.  I have a motherfucking pot roast to carve.

Boot camp to the head

Another grueling boot camp session – and this was just the other assessment workout.

First, I couldn’t really finish the strength set before the assessment workout.  It was supposed to be 30 straight dead lifts (with dumbbells, increasing the weight after each ten reps) and 30 “curtsy” lunges, each side (with dumbbells, increasing the weight after each set of ten reps on each side).  I gassed out somewhere in the second set of lunges…I just could not keep getting back up, and I didn’t want to push myself.

After a rest I did the assessment workout:

• Row 1000m
• 50 squats
• 30 strict presses (dumbbells)

Again, I ate today the same as yesterday.  Consistency.

I am pretty sore.  We will see how I feel in the morning.  My plan this week is to hit three Boot Camp workouts (Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday).  Assuming I survive, next week I will try to scale up to 4.

I’m finding that I don’t have much energy at the end of the day for long posts, so hopefully I can post some more entertaining stuff over the weekend.

Short post today…

Long day at work plus jiu jitsu class.  I love going to JJ – even when I struggle with it (and today was a struggle), I walk out feeling better.

What I ate today: same as yesterday.  The last time I lost weight, I found that consistency was key…plus making meals for a week in advance kept me from ordering takeout after long days at work.

Tomorrow I go to boot camp again at 6:30.

Internets, I am torn

On the one hand, this challenge is something I am honestly trying to do my best at, because I think it will help me to get healthier and get me back on the mat more consistently.

On the other hand, I am an incorrigible cynic full of snark and bile.

I am actually quite comfortable with this contradiction.  I am vast (I know, because I stepped on the scale today!).  I contain multitudes.  I have reservations about both paleo and crossfit, but I am using this challenge as a way to shake up my routine for a month and hopefully break some bad habits.  Amid a sea of positive people and cheery facebook status updates, I am a perpetual sad trombone noise, played on loop.

I am this way because I have a strong aversion to getting conned, and I deeply suspect that much of the weight loss industry is a long con. This is a multi-billion dollar a year industry that preys upon the fears and insecurities of anyone who struggles with their weight (which, according to the industry, is almost all of us).  Every year, we are fed an endless buffet of conflicting information about health/weight related issues.  Chocolate is good! Chocolate is bad!  Wine is good!  Don’t drink wine, you lushes!  Carbs are bad!  No, fats are!  No, we’re back to carbs being bad again!  Many of the studies published are industry sponsored, and it is difficult for the average person to tell good science from bad.

So, I’m a skeptic.  I’m personally of the persuasion that the best way to lose weight is to eat “well” and exercise.  If this challenge can help me to do that, great!  Half the reason I am writing this blog is so that I can use it as an outlet for my snark and skepticism without raining on anyone else’s parade.  The other half of the reason is to document what I do, so that I can look back on this with some objectivity (hopefully) while I try to figure out what works for me and what doesn’t.

Things I can’t do, apparently…

…include running 400m without getting gassed.  Once, let alone 3 times.

Today I did one of the two “benchmark” workouts that will be used to measure how my fitness has increased at the end of the challenge.  I took the “beginner” level workout, which was three rounds of…

• 400m run
• 10 sit ups
• 10 burpees

There were 7 minute intervals, so when you finished your set, you rested until the next interval mark.

I am…not in good shape.  Let’s just put it that way.  Even the warm-ups pushed me.  One of the things I have been struggling with is the fact that, post-injury, I lost a lot of conditioning due to my recovery time.  I spent about 5 months doing little to no exercise (outside of the 3 or so months of physical therapy), so when I started to get back on the mat…I felt it immediately.  That, plus the heat, kept me off the mat for most of the summer.  And so here I am now, with terrible conditioning.  Oh, I am sure it will get better with time, but right now it is super frustrating.

I pretty much ate the same today as I did yesterday.