Live from Rochester

I'm calling Rochester my home for the next two weeks. About 2 weeks before I left Houston I emailed the owner of Crossfit Rochester and asked him if I could join his gym for my duration here. His immediate response was "come in and kick ass" , which I loved because that sounds exactly what my coaches would say to a transplant joining our gym for a few weeks.

I love the gym, it fits every stereotype of how I imagined, namely the thick new york / jersey / sounds like everyone is talking with peanut butter in their mouth accents. The biggest challenge I'm facing at this gym is the pressure I'm putting on myself to represent Pin Up Crossfit and the city of Houston in general. Another challenge is getting over the stomach bug I got from eating airport food, which reaffirms my decision TO NEVER EAT AT AN AIRPORT EVER AGAIN. It's been two days of absolute bathroom misery. Sorry for "going there", but with this blog you have to take the good with the bad. I'm hoping that eating cleanly, drinking a lot of water, and plenty of rest will cure me of this bug.

Questions and Concerns

I got some questions / concerns from a reader (I love answering questions and giving uneducated advice) that I thought were worth posting about.

The first concern was "I just don't trust anything I read on the internet". This is a very valid concern and one that I completely understand. While I definitely don't have a nutrition / science background so I can't speak from an authoritative position, I will say the best method is to find out who is actually published and start from there. With regards to the paleo diet, to learn more about it and the science I recommend Robb Wolf's "The Paleo Solution" as he describes the theories and science behind the whole thing. While paleo is something I follow, I won't say its the end all / be all way of life, it's just been working for me. Other sources I use for paleo guidance include my coaches (some of whom are certified nutritionists), I get recipes from everydaypaleo, read fooducate, and in general pay attention to the way I'm feeling.

Secondly, a lot of questions were brought up about "what I do" with regards to my diet. While its easy to just answer "paleo" and move on, I will now share what I believe are the key points that I adhere to.

1. No Gluten - this seems to be the deal breaker with everyone, so I'm just going to get it out of the way. If what you're doing isn't working, then why not just give it a shot? Refraining from gluten has the wonderful benefits of: lowering your carb intake, lowering your sugar intake, limits your ability to snack all the time (which is a BIG reason people are unable to control their caloric intake), oh and you won't feel as bloated (and even if you're saying to yourself, 'but I don't feel bloated', just try giving up gluten for 30 days then you'll actually know what it feels like to not be bloated.). I don't think it's a coincidence that the first thing hospitals suggest to cancer patients is a gluten free diet (I've read that, but does need fact checking).

2. As sugar free as possible - This is aided by not eating gluten, because it's difficult to eat sugar without gluten (cakes, cookies, brownies, bread, etc). The big misconception is people think that there are different kinds of sugars, and that somehow "natural" sugar is good for you. Let me give you the results of all of my research, fructose is fructose is fructose. The sugar in fruit will do the same thing to you as the sugar in ice cream (fruit has added nutritional benefits), so one shouldn't just eat 2 lbs of fruit and think you've done your body good.

3. Don't drink calories - Yes I know another tough one, but if you're trying to get serious about weight loss the alcohol must REALLY be eliminated or severely reduced. You can completely undue a great day of eating with a margarita or two. Also, this category includes fruit juices, which for some reason are given a complete pass despite being unhealthy. They are loaded with sugar, are usually made from concentrate and generally have had all the nutritious benefits of the fruit of origin stripped away from processing. For more info on fruit juices please check out fooducate and search for them.

4. Dinner is my last meal - Eating after dinner is a bad idea, and I typically aim to finish all eating by 8pm (sometimes it's later on friday / saturday which is fine because I typically stay up later). You should wake up hungry every day!

5. Eat vegetables at every meal - This is a tough one because I didn't grow up liking vegetables very much. I make a conscience effort to have at least SOME vegetables at every meal (yes including breakfast).

6. Drink a glass of water before every meal - This helps in a few ways. First it helps fill you up so you eat less. I have a problem with eating too fast so I find that drinking a glass of water helps me to fill 'full' faster. Also drinking water with your meal helps to balance out the glycemic index of food, keeping your insulin spikes under control.

7. Eat protein for breakfast - Most people consider breakfast to be a bagel, or some cereal and milk. For me, I ate steak and eggs last week. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, so I get up early enough to cook breakfast (usually means I get up 15 minutes earlier then I would otherwise)

8. No dairy - I did this because I'm borderline lactose intolerant (though I still love cheese). Some of my coaches are paleo + dairy. If you're comfortable with your weight than by all means enjoy dairy, but cutting it out will help you cut fat faster.

This may seem like the worst steps ever to follow. My main advice would be to do what works for you, but if what you're doing isn't working then I would suggest try my way for a change. Personally, I've found the most important thing is to learn to love yourself and making your main goal "being healthy" rather than looking at models in magazines and then hating the image in the mirror. When that mindset change happens, you'll be shocked out how much quicker the results seem to happen.

14.6 and falling

If I had an FAQ section I'm sure one of the most asked questions would center around the decline in my blogging. The answer is I moved my living situation and my computer was in boxes, and honestly didn't know how to keep a purely workout blog interesting to warrant posts every day of the week. Granted I probably should post more than my current rate over the past two months, and I promise to increase the frequency to all my devout readers (which may in fact be zero since I no longer link to my blog in my gchat status).

This week marks the first week in the pinup crossfit paleo challenge. I decided to join at the last minute, despite the disadvantages described earlier. I think there are about 20 of us competing, which really helps my odds because most of the people I know competing don't have the will power to give up alcohol for the duration of the challenge. Some of the other contestants mentioned a multitude of vacations and weddings, so I'm beginning to think I can actually finish in the top 3.

To start the challenge I had my body fat percentage measured accurately for the the first time in my life. I came in at 14.6%, which means I have no clue how much my percentage was before crossfit. 18%? 25%? If I'm still 14.6% after losing close to 25 lbs (I weighed 164 with shoes on during the baseline testing, also this doesn't take into account any weight gain from muscle, so total fat loss could be greater) then I might have been as high as 22-25% body fat.

The truth behind the numbers, we got our body fat measured in 7 locations (back of arm, chest, belly, hip, thigh, upper back, arm pit, calves), and all of my non-belly locations came in at around 7% body fat. What this means of course is that my belly is still 18% (and the final place I'm battling to drop fat, albeit this is the most stubborn area) and is really throwing off my numbers.

While talking to the coaches they said a realistic goal would be 1-1.5% reduction, and at the high end maybe 2% (Andrew mentioned the most he's seen in a paleo challenge is a 4% loss, but that was a person going from 29% to 25%, which as I said its easier to drop from a higher percentage). To do this I will maintain eating as healthy as I can, probably reducing my nut (and sadly this includes nut butter as well) intake to almost 0 (even though those are great sources of fats) and absolutely only drink water. Additionally I will add in some long distance running on a few of my off days (I think I'll keep wednesday sacred and do absolutely nothing).

Furthermore I've been working on weighted dead hang pullups before class. Right now I can only manage about 3 with a 15lb kettle bell hanging from my foot. During this challenge I have made it a goal to go even more uncomfortably heavy to build muscle in an attempt to to hit that 1.5% reduction (though with a NYC trip looming this goal might not happen).

Either way it's going to be a fun challenge.

Paleo Challenge

The National Crossfit games have concluded, and the Bayou City Team had a great showing (alas they didn't win). It's amazing how little can change over the course of a year, this time last year my friend Cody would be streaming the games in his office and I had no clue how someone could get so amped up watching someone lift weights. Fast forward a year and I was glued to my computer (not hard to imagine) watching a live stream of the games, fascinated by seeing some of the fittest people on the planet compete.

Naturally after my last post I had a couple of paleo cheats, one was chips and queso (delicious) and the other was a nice hearty slice of pecan pie (with ice cream!) from Taste of Texas. I don't feel bad about either of those cheats, but I did notice how bad I felt physically when I started feeding myself the bad (but very very good) foods. I hope I got it out of my system because I'm about to compete in pinup crossfit's first ever paleo challenge.

The idea behind the challenge is to show the members how changing their diet can change their life. On the first day we have our body fat measured (the correct way, I'm not sure which method but I know its more scientific than height / weight) and then we embark on a 6 week challenge of who can lose the most body fat. Notice I didn't say the most weight, but who can lower their body fat % the greatest.

While I'm confident I can eat perfectly paleo (at least as to the point of splitting hairs about grass fed whey protein shakes), I don't think I can win this competition if some of the larger individuals take it seriously (which I hope they do). Fatter people always have huge advantages in fat loss competitions (even percentage based competitions) because the initial shock to the system is accompanied by the most fat loss. I've already lost about 23lbs, and my weight loss has really slowed down, meaning I probably won't be able to keep up no matter how clean I'm eating, but I'm going to give it a go. The winner gets a free 3 months at the gym.

This competition is the perfect motivation I needed to really clean out any bad parts remaining in my diet. We will be taking before and after pictures, and obviously doing a lot of trash talking to each other to stay motivated. The coaches have offered all the support for participants, including GOING GROCERY SHOPPING WITH US. I don't think Charlie realizes what he's signed up for, because I'm going to be taking him to whole foods every day to shop for the next days worth of groceries. I will definitely be keeping a food log for them to review, even though I do have a cheat day planned for when I'm in NYC (gotta have NY pizza right?).

For now I'm really trying to cut the last remaining 20 lbs or so left, and am trying to get away from so many protein shakes (not quite there yet) and to really get my nutrients from natural sources.

For now my usual diet looks like this:

6:30 am - Scrambled Eggs with Sauteed Onions (might need to add in a protein)

9:00 am - morning protein shake (not sure if this is staying or not)

11:00 am - Grilled chicken, vegetable mix, a couple spoonfulls of almond butter before returning to work

2:00 pm - Handful of trailmix (nuts,berries,and mostly seeds), wait 10 minutes to determine if I'm still hungry, if still hungry eat another handful

4:00pm - A serving of sweet potato as a pre-workout meal

6:30pm - recovery shake

7:30pm - Grilled chicken, vegetable mix

You might be thinking "does he really stick to that?", and to answer, yes I do. This routine makes it easy for me, not only in staying healthy but also in shopping for the weeks groceries. My main question during the challenge will revolve around if I'm eating enough vegetables and are they a broad enough mix (currently onions,carrots,broccoli,bell peppers).

As you can see I've already eliminated the afternoon protein shake, and hope to eliminate the morning protein shake once I figure out a breakfast. Also, I've been reading about how wonderful a food spinach is for the body, and am trying to find ways to incorporate it into my meals.