Days 22 & 23: It's all relative

No pics today-- blogging from M's work computer.

That chocolate/carb overload last weekend was a bad idea. Since then I've been extra hungry, craving sugar and CRANKY. Time to rein things in-- today I had a really stressful day at work, culminating in getting absolutely drenched in a flash hail storm and I took it out on a whole bar of 72% cocoa chocolate, which has a lot more sugar than the TJ's one. I am not going to beat myself up about it, but I don't like feeling that sugar craving feeling all day so that needs to stop. Compared to the amount of sugar I was eating before this experiment it's not that bad, but I would prefer not to eat so much in one sitting. It is not good for me for a whole bunch of reasons. There might be a PMS component to this sudden need for chocolate too.

Crossfit last night was great, though I'm really feeling it today. It was all about calisthenics again: warm up: 3 x 10: pushups, pullups, situps and squats, then we worked on knees to elbows (I got closer!) and kipping swings.

Full workout: 10 minutes of 40 seconds squats, then 20 seconds "dead bug" (an ab thing where you lay on your back with your feet in the air and reach toward your feet trying to have as little of your back on the floor as possible), 40 seconds push ups and repeat with no breaks. Those pushups killed, as my arms were already spent from all the other hanging stuff we already did, but it's my legs that are really feeling it today from all the squats. Afterwards we reviewed thruster and front squat form. I was sad my buddy S hasn't shown up the last few classes and buddy A has graduated to the big kids class (I have two more onramp to go!)

It was funny-- my first week of Onramp there were a few girls that were WAY better than me and now being the most seasoned girl in the class, they were looking at me like I was so strong (one of the girls said something about me being buff-- I told her it was all relative and pointed out some of the hard core awesome chicks in the real WOD class). Excuse me while I rant for a second: What bugs me about a lot of the women in this class (and I am sure I am guilty of this sometimes too, but I try hard not to) is they don't believe they can do things and or they are nervous to fail and so they try to be cutesy or laugh and give up or complain about how hard it is when we just started. This annoys me. Just TRY. TRY HARD. If you fall down, get back up. If it burns and is super uncomfortable then GOOD you are doing it right. If I wanted it to be easy I would have stuck with walking and pilates. I am here to get my ass kicked so that it looks and performs better. Just because you are a girl doesn't mean you have to be weak. The fact you are overweight means you actually have more muscle than a lot of people because you need it to haul that stuff around. So stop complaining and WORK. Of course I say this having had a very different relationship with weight training then many women my age-- I've lifted weights on and off since I was 15 or 16-- half my life, and I've experimented with a lot of different workouts and even took (though didn't finish) a course to become a personal trainer. But I was never an athelete, I am not particularly well coordinated and while I'm not a weakling, I'm not crazy strong. I just TRY and TRY HARD. (see? I told you I'm cranky!) *steps off soap box*

Food yesterday:
breakfast: 2 hard boiled eggs and the soup I made last weekend
lunch: left over lamb, kale and a bit of beef stir-fry
dinner (post workout): made pot roast, broccoli and yams. I think the yams after the workout made me feel good and helped me sleep, but it might have been too much today, given all the sugar cravings (but maybe that was from the chocolate over the weekend). Tomorrow I'll do yams again but not as much.

Today: had a ridiculous soup-tastrophe this morning. I don't know why I chose a tupperware I know to be leaky for transporting soup other than I was really tired and not thinking. I had soup everywhere in my work bag-- not pretty. I mixed it with some left over pot roast and had some coffee mid morning with coconut milk.
Lunch: leftover potroast and somewhat undercooked broccoli. The combination of a stressful day, trying to finish something on a deadline and being at battle with microsoft word + forgetting to take half my digestive enzymes resulted in very poor digestion.
Dinner: eaten at M's desk, as this is our last super long Tuesday where I wait at his office while he plays basketball (yay! last game of the season! It's hard on both of us to stay so late). Also had a giant chocolate bar and a kombucha.

In tracking my temperatures this month I had a couple days when I took melatonin where my morning temps took a bizzare nosedive for two days. Melatonin is a hormone--maybe it messed with my progesterone. It also gave me a hangover until almost 3pm, so I'm done with that stuff! I'm resigned to the fact that pregnancy is not likely to occur soon. Obsessing over diet modifications and crossfit have been a welcome change from thinking about that. If my temps and cycles don't even out in a few months I'll go get some blood tests done but I've decided not to worry about it for now and focus on healing my gut, getting my blood sugar balanced out, and getting in better shape. Hopefully I can lose the Ms. Crankypants attitude soon too!

Days 20 & 21: Mini Treats, carb increase and sleep

The end of this week I was tired and and really not very hungry due to poor sleep. Last night I both upped my magnesium and took a little melatonin (.5mg). I slept a lot better, only waking up once instead of 4 or 5 times. Often Melatonin makes me kind of hung over the next day but I woke up feeling like I'd really slept for the first time in awhile. I've still been tired and cranky today though, perhaps from residual fatigue not being totally caught up, but even more than that I woke up STARVING. I haven't been all that hungry this whole time, given how few carbs I've been eating and I kind of like it. I also slept in and didn't get breakfast in until 11am-- today I've been an eating machine! I've had probably twice the carbs I usually do, and a bit of sugar (in the form of dark chocolate as pictured above-- it's pretty low sugar chocolate, but it has some). I've also kind of gone to town on carrots and sunflower seed butter. I figure I was probably behind on calories and needed to catch up. The extra carbs left me feeling less satiety though-- even when I'm full I still kind of feel like eating, a sensation I don't get when I keep the carbs lower, so I don't think I'll make a habit of this.

Yesterday I ate:
B: leftover ground beef stir-fry
L: 2-3 eggs cooked in coconut oil with salsa, coffee with coconut milk, dark chocolate
S: more leftover ground beef stir-fry
D: baked cod, 1/2 a small yam, broccoli with olive oil

Today:

B: Rainbow chicken soup (recipe below), 1 cup frozen berries with coconut milk
S: still hungry, had the last of the ground beef stir-fry and broccoli, then 1 cup carrots and 2 T sunflower seed butter
L: More soup, more carrots and seed butter, dark chocolate
D: planning lamb, which I've never made before-- I don't think I've even ever eaten it before, other than in Indian food with a lot of sauce, with broccoli or greens.

Today worked out to about 100 grams carbs instead of my usual 50 ish. Tomorrow I'm going to try specifically targeting more carbs (yams) after crossfit and see how that goes.



Rainbow Chicken Soup:

8 cups chicken stock + 4 cups water
4 lbs chicken thighs, diced into bite sized pieces
a whole lot of veggies! I used
4 Zucchini, 3 summer squash, 1 head chard, 4 small golden beets (peeled), handful of baby carrots-- all diced (see pic)
1 T Thyme
1/2 T Tarragon
4 cloves garlic, crushed
Salt to taste (probably 3-4 Tablespoons)

I threw all of the above in a giant stockpot and simmered it for an hour or so.

This soup tastes good, but if I made it again I'd alter the ratio of veggies to meat-- there are so many veggies that I'm hungry again an hour after I eat it because I get full on veggies and broth, but only get a couple oz of chicken. I might add extra protein to this as I eat it-- I made a ton of it and was thinking I would eat it for breakfast this week.

I'm trying to shift my perspective to what amount of nutrients makes me FEEL the best and stop thinking so much about losing body fat. I think the body fat thing will happen slowly over time-- I have maybe 10 pounds max to lose, and am likely gaining muscle, so I don't expect to see much scale action. I don't like that hungry/cravings feeling though, so will not continue with the higher carbs all day scenario.