Time to get back on track

In response to Kevin's call for former FATties to get back to business, I'm back. It's been six weeks since my last post, and I've been doing alright. I haven't weighed myself in the past few days but I think I'm somewhere between 211 and 213. I went to Chicago a couple weeks ago and ate out every day, so I did gain a pound or two there. However I am still very active with my Crossfit workouts, and I'm setting new personal records almost every time I do a workout. For me, focusing on performance goals has allowed me to increase my strength and endurance while allowing me to eat a bit more and still maintain my weight. But that's the problem. I don't want to maintain my weight. I want to continue to lean out, but my head has not been in it from a diet perspective.

I've started using Sparkpeople again to track my daily intake. Yesterday I had 2600 calories, which is just a few hundred too high to lose weight at a steady pace. I can maintain weight on around 3000 calories without much trouble, so I want to be around 2400 per day to maintain a nice 1 lb./week loss. Just cutting out one serving of almonds or a glass of wine should get me there pretty easily, I've just gotta watch out for temptations at work, where there is a constant influx of crap food available for free. I'm pretty good at resisting those temptations, simply from doing it so much the past few years, so I definitely think it's doable.

I've been a little lax on the Paleo front recently, but I've begun tightening that up as well. I've found that some things, like rice, don't seem to bother me or affect my performance, but any sugar or refined grains send me into a gnarly sugar-craving cycle. That means that if I cheat with those things I'm much more likely to continue cheating, rather than just having one serving and being done. So my cheats need to be smart, and infrequent.

So what are my goals? Lose 4 pounds by July 1st, for starters. Simple, concise, doable. I'm going to take this in small steps. My ultimate goal is to weigh 190, but if I focus on "lose 2 pounds here, 3 pounds there" I think I'll get there a lot faster than thinking over a longer term. Looking back on my older posts it seems that's what has worked for me in the past. Other goals include entering everything I eat into Sparkpeople, even if it's bad. As far as my fitness goals, right now my main goal is to finally get a muscle-up on the gymnastics rings. It's the only basic Crossfit skill that I still cannot do (not counting one-legged squats, which don't come up too often). I'm currently in training to become a part-time trainer at my Crossfit gym, and one of the requirements is to be able to demonstrate the basic movements, so that's the one I'm gonna focus on.

I'll post a weigh-in tomorrow, and shoot for at least 3 new posts a week. Anyone else out there who wants to join in on the summer fun please feel free.

Paleo challenge wrap-up

Today's Weigh-In: 210 lbs.

So we finished up our 6 week Paleo challenge on Monday, and I officially lost 4 pounds, but I was weighing heavy on Monday and have since dropped another 3 pounds (water, food, etc.), so I'm pretty happy with the results. My average weight (using physicsdiet.com now) is 211, so I'm legitimately down 5 pounds since late February. My body fat was calipered at 18.1% as well.

I thought that once the challenge was over I would be really tempted to eat non-Paleo stuff, but it turns out that I'm really not. I did cheat a couple of times during the challenge, and it always made me feel awful. I don't like feeling awful, so that keeps me from cheating. I'm just going to keep eating as Paleo as I can as much as I can, and splurge a little here and there as needed. I'm definitely avoiding low-quality crap such as fast food and baked goods, because they just make me feel terrible, but other things like good ice cream or quality beer are not off the table.

I also have a new goal: 205 pounds and 15% body-fat by June 1st. I have 6 weeks to get there, which is doable. I've been monitoring my calories for the past few days, making sure I get enough to fuel my workouts but not slow down the fat loss.

In performance news, we did a workout on the first day of the Paleo challenge, which we then repeated after we were done, to compare how eating real food affects performance. I dropped my time by over 2 minutes from the initial assessment, and this was after having a terrible cold during the 2nd and 3rd weeks of the challenge which cost me a lot of cardiovascular capacity. If anyone is skeptical about Paleo eating, I can tell you that it works very, very well.

Quick update

Hey there everyone. I'm back in action on the weight-loss front. I've been sticking to the Paleo diet pretty religiously, and I've been rewarded with some more weight loss. Today I was 206.6 lbs., closing in on the 100s again. Not that I mind being 200+, but for my current level of lean mass 190 is going to be the sweet spot I think. I've been eating a ton of good food too. Last night I made a big grass-fed tri-tip roast in the Mexican barbacoa style, and it's delicious, so I've got lunch for the next few days. I also made a really good dessert with dates (which I hate), walnuts, and cocoa. Check out the recipe here, and try them, they're amazing. I added dried coconut as well, which made them extra good, but they're great on their own too.

That's about it for me, and I hope everyone else that reads this is doing well.

News

So, I felt like I should post an update here to let everyone know what's going on in my life. On Monday, March 8th, my grandma passed away. She was 83 years old. She helped raise my brother and I, and was like a second mother to us. She'd been dealing with advanced Alzheimer's for the past few years, but she never forgot us. I will miss her tremendously.

On the day she passed I didn't worry about staying on my diet, so I had some non-paleo foods, but I got back on the wagon immediately the next day. I drove up to Sacramento with my brother on Tuesday because he goes to school up there and my mom didn't want him to have to drive by himself after everything that happened. I stayed with him for a day and flew back down yesterday. I'd never been up there before, so it was nice to get away, at least for a little bit.

I weighed myself this morning, and was surprised to see 207.8 show up on the scale. I've dropped close to 9 pounds since the first of the month. Not sure if it's healthy weight loss, but I've been eating enough food, so I don't know. I was really sick for a few days last week, and I could only eat fruit during those days as everything else tasted repulsive to me. I also haven't been able to take my creatine for a week, so I'm sure some of the loss is water. But it's encouraging to see the number on the scale move again. I haven't worked out in a week, and won't be able to get back into the gym until tomorrow, but it goes to show that eating right trumps working out every time.

What I'm up to

I resurrected my workout log thread on the Crossfit message board, and there's a ton of info there that I don't feel like re-writing for this blog, so just check it out here.

I'm not going to be weighing myself daily during the 6-week paleo challenge that I'm participating in. The goal isn't how much weight I can lose, but how much I can improve my performance. The weight will take care of itself if I focus on good food and hard work. I'll keep you posted as the challenge gets going.

Quick update

Today's Weigh-In: 215.2

5-day Average: 216.3

Not a ton to say today, just wanted to check in. The weight is coming down nicely, but I haven't had a chance to work out since Monday due to an upper-back injury that's keeping me down. I'm rehabbing it but it feels like I'll still be out until next week. As long as I keep a close eye on my eating it shouldn't prevent me from losing weight, it just bugs me to not be able to train.

See you next week.

New month, new goals

Today's Weigh-In: 216.6 lbs.

Since it's February I've started reducing my alcohol intake even more, as I said I would in my new year's post. I've actually decided to go a tiny bit stricter than I laid out then. Instead of allowing 3 days a week with alcohol, I'm only allowing two: Friday and Saturday. And I'm still sticking with a 3-drink max. That reduces my alcohol intake from ~40 drinks a week (prior to January), to 21 a week (during January), down to 6. That should put a decent dent in my empty calorie intake.

I took shipment of another batch of grass-fed beef, this time 15 pounds of just ground beef. I find myself using the ground beef much faster than the other cuts, so I needed to restock. I've find a chili recipe that is amazing, and I eat it every day for lunch. I've done so for the past month and I still look forward to it every day. I've got the chest freezer up and running, but it's looking a little empty with only 25 pounds of meat in it, so I'm thinking of finding a good source of pastured chicken and possibly some organ meats. I love beef heart, so that's the first thing I'll be looking for.

Everything has been looking good on the diet and exercise front this week. I've been trying to listen to my body more, and I think that's working out pretty well. I work out pretty hard, so sometimes when my I'm super hungry, I know I should just eat a big-ass meal. It's my body's way of telling me that it needs food to run efficiently and to recover for the next workout. It also works the other way. Sometimes I just won't be hungry in the afternoon, so I'll skip lunch and then eat a regular dinner. It all balances out, and I know that as long as I'm eating quality food 90% of the time there's no way I can fail.

I've adjusted my goals to hit a 215 average by Valentine's day, which should be easy. I've also adjusted my weight training goals a bit. I hit one of my goals, which was a 225# clean, so I increased that to a new, loftier goal. I also added the snatch as one of my targeted lifts, because I'm so bad at it it's not even funny. That's all for now, hope everyone is doing well.