30 Day Paleo Challenge - Day 4

30 Day Paleo Challenge – Day 4

Weight Loss: -3.6

I. Feel. Like. Crap.

Nauseous, shaky, grumpy, restless, weak, tired. Massive headache. 

I think this is the part known as the sugar/splenda/processed food detox.

I’m an absolute treat to be around right now. Just ask Matt. 

It hit me around noon yesterday. The hard-boiled egg whites I packed for lunch? Nope. Didn’t happen. I took one look at them and wanted to throw up. All I ended up eating for lunch was my plain grilled burger and my nectarine, and that was plenty. Plus lots of water. LOTS of water.

I don’t even like eggs, and I don’t know why I try to force it. They are officially off the menu, starting now.

Food just has no appeal at all right now. I know I have to eat to get through the day and for my workouts, but it all just seems so gross.

However, I’m craving the most ridiculous things, like Crystal Light pink lemonade. Pure chemicals, but oh so sweet and tasty. Cookies don’t sound good, neither does pizza. But man, I could go for some Crystal Light. How weird am I?

Don’t answer that.

But I'm not going to give in. Hold me to it.

My burger/nectarine lunch ended up settling well yesterday, so Matt grilled some extras for me last night to last the rest of the week. He also ate my last nectarine. Good thing he’s cute or he’d get a punch in the face.

That’s the shakes talking. I’d never punch him in the face. Maybe.

He did replace the nectarines with a watermelon the size of a toddler, so guess what’s going to be all over my menus for the next ten years?

Plan for today:

Breakfast - I don't feel like eating anything. Anything. Nothing sounds good at all. But I know I'll be hungry later, so I'm pre-making a couple slices of bacon and taking a banana to work. I have meetings this morning, and I usually get snacky in the middle of it. We'll see. Ugh. 

Lunch

• Plain grilled hamburger
• Watermelon
• Cucumber slices

Dinner

• Grilled pork or chicken, whatever thaws out first.
• Beasty BBQ Sauce for the meat – interested to see how homemade BBQ sauce turns out.
• Steamed veggies – There’s a mix in the freezer of mushrooms, water chestnuts, asparagus and carrots. Love me some asparagus and water chestnuts!

Snack

• Apple with almond butter, of course.

WOD: - If I go. Wednesdays are typically my rest day, meaning I go out and run 3-4 miles after work instead of going out and lifting heavy things. We’ll see how I feel at 5:00 tonight. 60 wall balls is intimidating. I hate wall balls!!!

5×1 power clean of box (above knee)

5×1 rack jerk (behind neck, use racks)

For time -
100 m Prowler push 90/50
60 wall balls 20/14
30 clean & jerk 135/95

Midline -
3 sets of -
10 GHD sit-ups
10 glute-ham raises

Paleo Website of the Day: http://paleomg.com/ - love this girl! She has a new cookbook out. She’s snarky and hilarious and I think we could be BFF’s if we ever meet.

CrossFit Website of the Day: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/collette-debenedetto/from-the-couch-to-crossfi_b_3460332.html - great article my box posted a couple days ago. Worth a read.

Today I love: Tylenol severe headache with caffeine. 

30 Day Paleo Challenge - Day 3

30 Day Paleo Challenge – Day 3

Weight Loss: -2.6

Welcome to Day 3 of the PC! Still going strong, still energized.

Maybe because I've already had 238 cups of coffee this morning.

Black, of course.

Thank you for all of your sweet words through Facebook, Twitter and email. I seriously need you guys to keep me going – knowing you’re looking for my next post is part of my motivation to keep at it.

I’ve had some opposition about some things already this week - and it's only Tuesday! Ugh. I’m not going to go into it just because I realize there are just those people who live to make you feel bad about yourself…and it actually worked to my advantage: I was so upset that I ended up pushing through a powerful workout last night. I left it all on the floor.

Literally. My sweat was everywhere. Even parts of my shins from the box jumps.

Ugh. I'm so short. 

Anyway, when I got home, a thought came to me as I was dragging myself through the door from almost throwing up due to the Evil that is Burpees.

I’m doing this to prove the people wrong who tell me I can’t, but more importantly, I’m doing this to prove to myself that I can.

Boom. Take that, haters.

Yes. I just said "haters."

I think I need more coffee. 

So let’s keep going. Here’s my plan for today:

Breakfast

• Black coffee, iced. It goes down faster that way. 
• Bacon
• Scrambled Eggs with diced tomato

Lunch

• Plain hamburger – my husband is amazing with the grill!
• Cucumber/tomato/green pepper salad with olive oil and vinegar
• Two hard-boiled egg whites
• Nectarine

Dinner

• Leftover Spicy Pineapple Chili – this recipe seriously made an insane amount. Just so you know, this is probably going to be dinner for awhile. Matt won’t touch it because it has (gasp!) tomatoes and (gasp!) onions. How terrible, right?

Snack

• Apple with almond butter – This will always and forever be my go-to snack. I’ve never really ever liked peanut butter, but I am a lover of almond butter, especially Justin’s Maple. To make it especially yummy, I use green apples. Tart and sweet. Kills my sweet tooth, which, believe me, is wicked. 

Tonight's WOD:

Back squat 5×5 @ 78%

Front squat 2×10 @ 50%,

3×3 Pendlay row

Three rounds for time of –

2 rope climbs (6 modified)
15 thrusters 95/65
25 double-unders (75 singles)

Paleo Website of the Day: http://whole9life.com/category/whole-30/ - bare bones eating, discusses a lot of medical issues that correspond with processed foods and chemicals. The book It Starts With Food is the hard-copy version of this website. Next to my bible, this is probably the most highlighted and margins-written-in book in my house.

CrossFit Website of the Day: http://crossfitfreedom.com/what-is-crossfit/ - really good site that tells you what CrossFit really is. If you don’t want to read it all, definitely watch the Reebok CF video at the end. It’s awesome.

Today I love: Almond butter and my husband serenading me with "Mary Had a Little Lamb" on my piano at 7am then shouting, "Thank you very much! No autographs! No pictures please!" He makes me laugh, the nerd. 

30 Day Paleo Challenge - Day 2

The first day of my paleo challenge went well. Matt had a baseball tournament all day yesterday, so I was all hopped up on pre-fixing meals for the week and kept myself busy changing my blog template about a million times.

I did sneak a pear (gasp!) in yesterday between lunch and dinner. I was hungry, and the pears are going bad. I feel sorry for produce that has to get thrown away (here’s looking at you, avocados!!), so in part my snack was out of pity for overly-soft fruit.

What I’ve discovered: Black coffee isn’t as gross as I thought, especially if you use a high-quality brand like my beloved Caribou. However, strict paleo = running to the bathroom a lot. During the day, all night long. Super-fun when you’re driving around all day to your patient’s houses…I’ve now programmed every 7-Eleven in a 10-mile radius into my GPS.

I’m also preparing myself for the headache I’ll get from cutting myself off of Splenda cold-turkey. Fabulous.

30 Day Paleo Challenge – Day 2
Weight loss change: -0.8

Breakfast

• Coffee with unsweetened almond milk
• Sausage Bites from yesterday (sub raw honey in place of the sweetener in the recipe)
•  A couple slices of bacon. Cause what's paleo without bacon???

Lunch

• Sliced ham and turkey
• Cucumber/tomato/green pepper salad with olive oil and vinegar
• Two hard-boiled egg whites
• Nectarine

(My lunches might look strange during the week. I have to pretty much eat in my car as I'm driving between patient's houses, so my lunches tend to be of the finger-food variety. That's how I roll.)

Dinner

• Leftover Spicy Pineapple Chili - which, by the way, is one of the best things I've ever put in my mouth. A full pound of bacon? Um, yes please. I did leave out the jalapenos and red pepper flakes because I'm a lightweight, and the chili powder was just enough seasoning for me. This recipe is awesomesauce. 

Snack

• Apple with almond butter

WOD (Workout of the Day):

5×2 Snatch off box (above knee)

5×1 Overhead squat, 3-second pause at bottom (use racks)

3 sets, each for time of -

20 calories on Airdyne (AKA “Satan’s Horse”)
15 burpee box jumps 24″
10 strict pull-ups

Paleo Website of the Day: http://civilizedcavemancooking.com/ - My favorite!

CrossFit Website of the Day: http://crossfitverobeach.com/ - My box!  (They actually just announced the 30 Day Paleo Challenge winner on the site yesterday. Pretty cool.)

Today I love: Bacon. Bacon bacon bacon. 

30 Day Paleo Challenge - Day 1

So.

It’s been approximately 500 years since my last post on Easter.

That’s embarrassing. Embarrassing to the point of almost wanting to delete the whole blog and start over fresh.

But ain’t nobody got time for that.

So here we go.

What’s new? New job is going well – I love being a hospice nurse. Matt’s baseball season finished well – made it to round two of super-regionals, and now we’re in the middle of Legion summer ball. CrossFit hasn’t killed me yet, although I have had days where it’s impossible to climb the stairs or reach up to wash my hair due to a particularly ridiculous workout.

Speaking of CrossFit, that’s kind of the reason I’m motivated to write a new post. Matt and I are leaving in roughly 30 days for our 10^th anniversary trip to St. Lucia.

We are very excited about this – we’ve never done a huge trip like this before. And yes, our anniversary isn’t until November, but being married to a teacher means you have to travel to exotic islands during the hottest part of summer, right smack in the middle of hurricane season.

Yes mom, we bought traveler’s insurance. J

So. 30 days and I’ll be living in a swimsuit for a week. That thought does wonders for my body image issues – wonders in the form of anxiety and panic attacks.

CrossFit has been helping with that. How can you hate how you look when you’re busy doing 115lb back squats? Boom.

In any case, my box (how CF people refer to their warehouse of sweat) recently completed a 30 day Paleo challenge. I didn’t register to do it – I didn’t feel mentally committed to diet changes at that point…I was more focused on getting double-unders and cleans down.

However, I did see results. People I knew who were committed to the challenge were literally melting away before my eyes, revealing their awesome CF muscles underneath. Uuugggghhhh, why didn’t I sign up?? Stink.

So I’m doing it on my own. Well, on my own with encouragement from all of you. For the next 30 days, until we leave for St. Lucia, I’m doing my own Paleo Challenge.

What is Paleo? The easiest way to explain it is this – eat how our ancestors did. No processed food, no sugar, no grains. Eat plenty of meats, vegetables, fruit, nuts and seeds.

Here are a couple of my favorite sites that explain it in more detail:

• http://thepaleodiet.com/ - Dr. Loren Cordain, founder of the Paleo Diet
• http://robbwolf.com/what-is-the-paleo-diet/ - Robb Wolf’s site – my favorite!!
• http://www.theclothesmakethegirl.com/paleo-101/ - Melissa Joulwan, author of Well Fed, one of my favorite Paleo cookbooks

This will be a challenge for two specific reasons:

1. Matt. Hands-down, my man does not want to eat things like vegetables without cheese. Or coconut flour. Or almond milk. However, he is the most super-supportive person in my entire world, and he’s ok with us cooking completely separate meals for the next month. Hamburger Helper for him, ground pork and apple sliders for me! And spicy pineapple chili. And roast with sweet potatoes and onions. Paleo is delicious, people!

2. 4^th of July Weekend. We’re going to Alabama for a Walters family reunion, of which I’ve volunteered to bring the makings for s’mores. Just so you know, s’mores are decidedly NOT paleo. I will resist! I will sip my iced coffee with almond milk and enjoy the company! I will indulge in the watermelon I’m also bringing along! I’m just excited to see family that we haven’t seen in ages.

Living in South Florida kind of cuts you off from the rest of the country family.

So to keep myself on track, I’m announcing it here: I’m going to be posting EVERY DAY for the next 30 days my menus and workouts. I generally try to use Fridays and Sundays as workout rest days – Friday can be interchanged with Wednesday, depending on how sore and tired I am. If I miss a day of posting, this is where you come in – call me out on it! My menus might start to look monotonous…I’m a big fan of cooking a lot and freezing for leftovers. I’m going to include links to the websites for my favorite recipes…a lot of my favs come from http://civilizedcavemancooking.com/

30 Day Paleo Challenge – Day 1

Breakfast

• Coffee with unsweetened almond milk
•  Sausage Bites (sub raw honey in place of the sweetener in the recipe)
•  Handful of red grapes

Lunch

• Leftover Paleo Meatloaf
• Broccoli and cauliflower sautéed with bacon
• Nectarine

Dinner

• Spicy Pineapple Chili

Snack (if hungry)

• Apple with almond butter

I’ve also taken measurements/weight/pictures…we will wait until waaaayyyy later to post those. No use scaring everyone right off the bat.

Thanks for your support and motivation!

Today I love: Caribou coffee and supportive husbands who won’t let me order pizza until after our trip.

The One with Lots of Updates All At Once

So many, many things have happened in the past couple months, and of course I have done absolutely nothing to keep family and friends updated.

For instance, baseball. I am a Baseball Wife, am I not?

Baseball started in January and goes until the end of April or early May. Coach has been gone pretty much every night during the week, keeping him blissfully happy and coming home smelling like dirt and grass.

The team is 7-7 for the season so far. The hard thing to keep track of is that unlike in Missouri and Mississippi, Varsity and JV do not play on the same night - therefore the reason Coach isn't home four to five nights of the week, and I cannot for the life of me keep track of which team plays which night. 

Spring break just kicked off for Matt this week though, and I think his plans include sleeping, going to the beach, sleeping, sitting by the pool and sleeping. Oh. And sleeping. 

I, on the other hand, have been keeping myself occupied by turning in my resignation at the hospital and going to visit my sister in Georgia.

We never do anything by little steps and measures around here. It's all or nothing, folks.

First: my job. I really, really love working with cardiac patients. I love that I have the knowledge and skill in how to bring down someone's sky-high blood pressure, relieve their pain and teach them how to move while protecting their chest after open heart surgery, and how to administer and monitor critical drips and medications. I love that chest tubes - while they still make me nervous - don't scare the bejeezus out of me anymore.

I love the girls that I worked with. Our floor was so insanely busy and crazy day after day, it was great to work with a team that would pull together and help each other out - some days it was all about survival for us.

However, you all know that I'm a Funeral Home Girl at heart. Growing up in the environment that I did - with the dinner table conversations that I had with my family - I was destined to have a career dealing with end-of-life issues.

Enter: Hospice.

Hospice and oncology is one of the main reasons I went back to school for nursing. I'll be helping someone stay comfortable and live their life to the fullest that they possibly can, while managing their end-stage disease symptoms. Hard, challenging, and one of those career moves that you just know is right. I couldn't pass it up when I was offered the job.

Everyone I'll be working with is so compassionate and caring, with such positive, encouraging attitudes. I'm learning more and more about Hospice and what it does - it's not just giving pain meds and watching someone slip away. I'll be going to patient's homes and doing complete assessments, wound care, medication administration, lab draws, and my big passion - education. Teaching families and their patients about what to expect as the disease enters it's final stages. What happens when the body starts shutting down. How to keep their loved one comfortable and to not hesitate to page the crisis team. You're not only be dealing with the physical, but the emotional and spiritual needs of the patient as well. The Hospice physicians are amazingly kind and helpful, the chaplains and social workers are fabulous resources that work hand-in-hand with the RN.

I'll be working out of the Fort Pierce location, but the Hospice House in Stuart, FL is where I spent the past week in orientation. Policies, procedures, OSHA, HIPAA, etc. My brain was gone as of 2pm Friday. The grounds are beautiful though - lots of landscaping, walkways, paths, fountains...all dedicated in remembrance of patients of TCH.

Ok. Sorry for the RN rambling. Now on to non-job stuff.

My sister!

I spent four days in Georgia visiting Erin, Cole, and Addie.

(Say cheese!!)

Addie got a nurses' kit from Auntie Addie - gotta teach em' young!

She kept going around the house (for hours...days...bedtime...bathtime) saying "Checkup! Checkup!"

She also refers to one of the bearded pirates on her Pirates of the Caribbean placemat as "Jesus," so I'm not really holding out hopes that she'll be a Nurse Practitioner in the next two years or anything.

Erin and Cole are looking forward to the arrival of Liddie in the next couple months - especially since every time I would turn around I would accidentally run into Erin's pregnant tummy. Ooops. My bad. It got to be hilarious after awhile...for me, anyway.

Fun Florida things we've done lately:

Universal Studios, particularly Harry Potter World. We're Potteraholics.

Braves vs. Mets spring training game. We live about 20 minutes from Tradition Field, spring home of the Mets (boooooooo!!!!). Since I'm married to a Braves fan, I humored him and drug myself to a game. Since he's a baseball coach who somehow gets incredible hookups from people he knows, the tickets were front-row and free. I can't really complain.

The only Braves person I cheered for was their first base coach, former St. Louis Cardinals third-baseman Terry Pendleton. I watched him play with Ozzie Smith under Whitey Herzog in the 80's. Actually, I mostly remember Fredbird and eating ice cream out of plastic Cardinals helmets because I was only 10 years old, but still. I remember my parents getting really, really excited about all those good old STL guys and Ozzie's handsprings at shortstop.

So...the best part is...

WE WENT TO A CARDINALS GAME!!

A good friend of ours from our days in Licking came down from Missouri, and we spent the day at Roger Dean Stadium in Jupiter, watching our boys.

I felt so giddy and homesick and wanted to hug every single one of them and say "I know you!! I follow all of you on Twitter!!"

But I decided that that's fairly stalker-ish, so I stayed in my seat and took pictures of the best side of Yadier Molina.

Not ashamed. Not ashamed at all.

Matt just rolled his eyes and pretended he hated being at a Cardinals game. I knew he secretly wanted to cheer for them. You can't run from the red.

And the best part...I got to revive my childhood.

Ice cream helmets! And sunburns!

Great day, despite the loss by one run. I still love you, Redbirds!!

Coming up: I officially joined CrossFit last week. Not sure what it is? Google it. I have no words on how to explain it other than it hurts you and empowers you and makes you want to laugh and cry and scream all at the same time. Fundamentals Day One included roughly five bazillion squats with weights, which meant I couldn't walk upstairs to our bedroom or sit down to use the bathroom for about four days.

Anyway, my sadistic trainer Kristi told me to get all my fun out this weekend, because CF starts for real tomorrow. Meaning clean eating, meaning the complete opposite of the Dixie Cream doughnuts we just had to get for our Missouri guest this morning. (Seriously. Dixie Cream makes Krispy Kreme taste like nastiness. Come to Vero and we'll show you what's what.)

So tomorrow - WOD for real and Paleo/clean eating for real. Matt doesn't think I can stick with it so you know. Now I have to to prove him wrong.

It's on.

Lagoon Running

Trail: Lagoon Greenway
Distance: 3.14 miles, including the mini "adventure trail"
Difficulty: Moderate

I didn't feel like getting up at 5am to hit the sidewalks today, so I made the decision to sleep in, then go out and try a new trail around 9:00 this morning.

Big mistake.

First of all, at 9am in Florida the temps are already 75+. Not my favorite temps to run in...a little too hot and buggy, especially on the trail I tried this morning.

There's a new trail that opened up this weekend not too far from the house. It sounded intriguing and beautiful.

Turned out it was beautiful...and buggy and swampy and scared me to death because it was so remote.

The good news is I ran so fast to get out of the lagoon that I ended up clocking a decent run.

The bad news is I looked like a bug bitten, red-faced and sweaty swamp monster when I got done.

Yay me.

Luckily no one was out there to witness this. On the other hand, the whole trail was so eerily deserted that it made me even more paranoid that I was about to be abducted any second. I almost started praying for more joggers to show up.

Hence, the near sprint-like run to get out of there.

Yay for my jogger's mace that makes me feel (a little) safer.

It seriously is a beautiful trail.

Parts are wood-chipped (which almost turned my ankle):

Parts are packed sand (not too bad to run on):

Other parts reminded me of running cross-country back in high school, going through ankle-high grass and wondering where all the snakes are.

Speaking of, there were lots and lots and lots of little swampy marsh areas. While pretty, I couldn't help but think of snakes and alligators and swamp monsters.

Just kidding. Kind of.

The part that really freaked me out was when I came around a bend to a little pond, where I heard the biggest splash and rustle in the trees...and about jumped out of my shoes. I might have even screamed a little.

Seriously. I was so alone out in the wilderness my mind was giving me the worst possible scenarios.

It turned out to be a massive bird leaving the water and flying up into the trees.

Much better than an alligator, but still. Scared the bejeezus out of me. Dang bird.

The trail was nicely marked with signs, and I eventually did get to the stretch of trail that ran along the Indian River.

At the end of the loop, back by the trailhead, there's a little 1/4 mile "adventure trail" that looked fun.

It was full of lizards and spiders.

Once again, yay.

Yes. Lots of tripping hazards.

All in all, it's a nice trail with lots of different surfaces and ecological environments. I just don't think I want to go back out and run it by myself. My mind is in it's own little world all of the time anyway, and I just couldn't handle wondering what was in the lagoon, what was hiding in the grass and if anyone was going to jump out of the mangroves and grab me.

My Garmin calculated a nice heart rate and calorie burn, which I completely contribute to anxiety.

Today I love: Exploring beautiful new trails and not being kidnapped or eaten alive.