I'm back! With a new Crossfit challenge

Almost two years ago I started Crossfit and made it about two months before I gave it up, mainly due to life complications: I was starting my dietetic internship and living half the week away from home and I couldn't see how I'd have time. I also was completely exhausted, both physically and emotionally from graduate school. My adrenal glands had nothing left to give and I probably wasn't really ready for the intensity of Crossfitting.

As for blogging, I had to take a break for awhile to re-examine what I wanted to write about, if I wanted to start over with a new blog etc.

My struggles with finding a happy balance with food and exercise have been all over the place the past 6 months: for a while after we got back from Greece I had an easy time eating intuitively, not overeating sugar, and maintaining my weight. I wasn't exercising a ton, but I had an active job all summer (or at least one that required me to be on my feet all day). In the Fall I started my current job, working as a research dietitian for the Army. I love my job and am lucky enough to be able to work from home three days a week, but it is also very sedentary as I spend all day on the computer and my commute on the days I go to work is about 90 minutes each way, and slowly my weight has threatened to creep up. I spent January experimenting with Pilates, which actually was a very good, gentle reintroduction to exercise but I started to miss working out really hard. In February I started trying to get back into heavy lifting again using "The New Rules of Lifting for Women"-- which is a great book, and if you are a self-motivated person I'm sure you would have great results with it. I kind of lost interest and had trouble getting motivated to go to my much hated giant corporate gym. I had just watched my friend do Crossfit all through her pregnancy and get back into her very tiny pre-pregnancy jeans about two weeks after giving birth and was very inspired. This combined with the fact that since I do work from home most of the time I really was looking for a more social workout, I decided to get back to Crossfit-- tonight will be my first class.

Two years ago Lynnwood Crossfit hadn't quite started the beginner's OnRamp course and I just did three individual sessions with trainer before starting group classes. This time there are 12 beginner classes. I'm excited to start off with other new people, although I missed the first week of OnRamp last week because I was out of town for work so hopefully I'm not too far behind. Last time I was always a little scared before a workout, in part because I knew I'd be the worst one!

In addition to starting again with Crossfit, I'm going to do 30 days of Paleo eating. For those not familiar, the premise of Paleo is eating food that neolithic man (i.e. "cavemen") would have eaten-- in other words, no processed foods and mainly meat, vegetables and some fruit. Some of my fellow Registered Dietitians (one of my good friends included) would NOT be very supportive of this dietary choice. Paleo tends to be pretty low carb, and definitely does not include any dairy or grains. I already can not eat dairy or gluten due to known food intolerances, and honestly I don't eat more than a serving or two of grains a day anyway, so it's not that big of a stretch. What is a stretch is that lately I've been eating WAY too much sugar (capped off this weekend with my husband's birthday cake-- gluten free but definitely full of sugar!) I'm looking forward to focusing on protein and vegetables.

As a dietitian, what I do not buy into with Paleo is that EVERYONE needs to do it-- I know some people that do very well on a whole-grain based diet. I think everyone has their own level of carb tolerance and individual nutrient needs. I do believe Paleo is the healthiest lower carbohydrate diet out there-- many of the others have gotten too far off course marketing "products" full of artificial sweetners and soy protein isolates in an attempt to make money, and as a result their diets never help people overcome their food cravings. (I remember in college eating several Zone Perfect bars in a row-- protein or not they are full of sugar and basically candy). I've always done better on a lower carb diet, so I'm going to kick start this first month of Crossfitting with 30 days of perfect paleo, and I will document that here.

I also took detailed measurements of myself and some before pictures. Once I get an "after" perhaps I'll post them for comparison. For now I'm not too excited to post pictures of myself in a swim suit on the internet for the world to see, though my before is really not that bad, as I am not overweight-- just out of shape and with higher bodyfat than I'd care to have.

So let the Crossfit/Paleo challenge begin! I can't wait to see where the next 30 days takes me.