Day 1: So far so good

I apologize in advance for the poor quality of my food photography. I'm working on getting a better lighting set up-- until then I hope it doesn't make you too queasy, as bad food photography often does to me!



Breakfast day one: I cooked two pounds of Sheldon's turkey chorizo (it was not in casing- just ground turkey with spices) with two pounds of frozen stir fry veggies in coconut oil. I ate maybe 1/5 of this mixture for breakfast with a cup of green tea.



Lunch: A half cup or so of the breakfast mixture, 2 hard-boiled eggs, grilled asparagus and 1/4 of a large avocado. It was delicious! I didn't think I could finish it but I was hungrier than I thought! I also had nettle infusion, which is tea made of dried nettles (they don't sting once they've been dried or cooked), and I make mine with Red Raspberry leaf (a good herb for women's health), peppermint, Rooibos tea and a smidge of licorice root and then I put it in a coffee press and let it steep overnight. Nettle is very rich in minerals like calcium, magnesium and iron. Not sure if this is strictly paleo, but tea is allowed so I'm going with it.

Pre-Crossfit snack: a little bit of pulled pork (see below) and a few raw baby carrots.

Dinner: I made the Cook's Illustrated recipe for pulled pork, which I made once before except I didn't "crisp" it under the broiler at the end the way the recipe suggests because that made it kind of dry last time I made it. (I'd post the recipe but it is a subscription only service-- I highly recommend it, they really test all of their recipes so they are always fantastic). This I served with broccoli and more avocado and a kiwi. I also through some chicken in the crock pot for tomorrow so it was a busy cooking afternoon. Was too hungry and the kitchen was too dark to take pics so you will just have to use your imagination!

And then there was my first day back at Crossfit: first of all the gym has been remodeled since I was last there and it's double the size it used to be. I'm sure they have way more people too (there are 12 people in the newbie class this month) but since I never went to evening classes before I can't be sure how much more. Our workout was all calisthenics-- after a few practice of each and some other warm up stuff we did:

3 rounds of:
10 pull ups (which those of us not strong enough to really do them do by jumping on a box to get over the bar)
10 push ups
20 sit-ups
20 air squats

I found out if your pilates instructor is impressed at the strength of your abs this does NOT translate to 60 sit-ups-- I struggled through those. The squats weren't too bad as I have been doing squats with somewhat regularity. The pull ups were hard, and the push ups I got through the 10 in the warm up and the first set of 10 doing "real" ones and then I had to switch to my knees, which I felt pretty good about. There was a huge range of abilities-- I was probably in the bottom half to third, but definitely not the worst. One guy puked outside and then came back in to finish! Good for him.

My energy was good all day, I wasn't hungry or craving anything and I really enjoyed my workout-- it was harder than I would have pushed myself, but not so hard that I will be absolutely destroyed tomorrow.

Incidentally, my hubby started trying Crossfit on his own today and did

3x
10 burpees
20 squats
20 situps

with almost no rest. He's in much better shape than me-- I hate burpees! He said the squats killed his quads.

Overall an excellent first day. Tomorrow's a work day-- I have my food all packed up but no crossfit again until Wednesday.

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.

End of a journey

I promise to finish writing about Greece next week but first I need to write about the most significant event in my life this year, probably in five years: today I passed the RD exam-- I am at last a Registered Dietitian. This is HUGE for me-- let me explain.

In 2002 I was going into my Senior year of college, waiting to hear if I had been accepted into the theater major at UCLA. What I really loved was not so much the acting, but musical theater. I went to see that year's musical and realized that even if I was accepted into the major, I would never be as strong of a singer as the students in the play-- they had studied intensively since they were freshmen, and while I have a perfectly nice voice I do not have that big capacity to "belt" necessary for musical theater. I was unhappy in LA, homesick for Seattle and not excited about the additional year it would take me to finish my already 5 years of undergrad to do the theater major-- I didn't want to audition for a living and the pressure of being judged on my looks was already pushing me toward disordered eating. I was getting pretty interested in nutrition and natural health at that time and I remember one of my acting teachers saying to the class-- if there is ANYTHING you can see yourself happy doing besides acting you should do it because this business is too hard. Before the results were posted for major admissions, I walked into the theater department office and told them I wanted to withdraw from consideration-- it was one of the hardest things I have ever done.

I finished undergrad as a Philosophy major, a major I had chosen merely because it was not impacted so I could increase the likelihood of transfer admission to UCLA. I spent a miserable year taking confusing and sometimes crazy upper division Philosophy classes and then the day after my last final we packed up and moved to Seattle.

I had to wait a year to reestablish residency to start taking prerequisites-- the only year of my life I have not been in school since I started kindergarten. I started taking prerequisite science courses, one at a time at night while working full time. It took me nearly three years to finish all of them and start graduate school full time. I can not tell you how many times I had meltdowns from the stress of studying chemistry in every spare second-- at least once a quarter I completely lost it.

The first two quarters at Bastyr nearly killed me-- not coming from a science background the intensity of having a full-time load of almost all science courses was a lot to deal with. The last quarter at Bastyr and the internship application process wounded my spirit (as I wrote about extensively) so deeply it took months to heal. The internship had it's own challenges, including having to move away from my husband for several months.

I had only one last hurdle, the RD exam. This is the national exam that proves to the American Dietetic Association dietitians are ready to practice-- without this exam no prospective employers would even talk to me.

After I passed the test I cried all the way home-- it is such an unbelievable relief, I almost can't comprehend it-- I don't ever have to take any exams ever again. I am DONE with formal school for the rest of my LIFE (if I want it to be anyway).

I am overwhelmed, and grateful and happy.

Greece: Mykonos

Sorry I'm not telling this story as fast as I planned-- I am studying for the RD exam and it is taking over my life! Until I take it I'm going to have a hard time getting a job (it actually probably isn't going to be that easy even after I take it) so I've made it a high priority.

Anyway, Mykonos. This ended up being the nicest hotel in some ways, of our entire trip. It was right on the beach, had free internet (important for keeping my mom and Marc updated that we made it and were still alive) and it had breakfast included in the price of the room-- this turned out to be very helpful, especially since the breakfast was amazing! They had pretty much anything you could ever want-- fantastic thick greek yogurt, fruit, eggs, sausages, bacon, many kinds of bread and pastries, coffee tea etc. Food was pretty expensive on Mykonos so we usually tried to eat a big breakfast to make it as long as we could on that-- I had yogurt and fruit, sometimes an egg, a couple bites of something bread, and a lot of coffee both mornings.

As I mentioned our hotel was a ways out of town. Fortunately there was a bus that stopped right outside the hotel to take us into town. Mykonos is famous for it's narrow, white-washed streets, fancy stores and pretty harbor. It wasn't very busy-- between the volcano drama and the national strikes due to the Greek economy crashing a lot of people stayed away, plus it was still the off season-- it gets really busy in July and August apparently.

We spent a ridiculous amount of time looking for a pharmacy to get more contact solution (since the Athens airport confiscated it) and sunscreen, because there was no way we could bring enough given the airline liquid restrictions. When we finally did find one it was closed because of strikes-- apparently they all take turns being open for a couple hours at a time so we had to wander to find the one that was open, and kept getting lost because all those narrow alleys look the same. We got kind of sunburned while we were looking for a place to buy sunscreen (which was ASTRONOMICALLY expensive-- a regular sized bottle cost about 14 Euros which works out to almost $20!)

We wandered in and out of shops, mostly just looking (I didn't want to spend a bunch of money on the very first day!) but Megs bought a pair of sandals and we bought a little jar of honey at an amazing honey store where they had probably 8 or 9 different types of honey which we got to taste and the man in told us all about the different healing qualities of each one.

In the evening, back at the hotel we read at the beach, had a good dinner with wine and we sat there so long the waiter brought us free ouzo (we came to find that most restaurants will eventually bring you a free something at the end of the meal). I don't usually like hard liquor but I actually quite liked ouzo-- Megs liked it too even though she hates licorice and to me it tastes exactly like licorice.

Greece, Day 1: the longest day ever

Sleeping at Heathrow

Passed out at the beach in Mykonos



On May 5th we were packed and ready, nervous because just days earlier flights from Seattle to Iceland (we were flying Iceland air) were canceled and a Greek strike was looming. Our flight was at 4pm and I was so keyed up that morning I took a drop in Bikram yoga class to calm my brain (and also to limber up before hours and hours of sitting on a plane). It was exactly what i needed-- I can never do much more than focus on yoga when I'm there.

I drove to pick up Megan in Wallingford and then picked up Marc at work, since he was coincidentally going to Montana for work that same day. Marc dropped Megs and I off at the terminal and since we were hours early, we had lunch at Seatac (did you know there is an Anthony's restaurant at Seatac?) The salad I had contained some kind of crunchy noodles most of which I picked off, but still caused me to cough for a couple hours afterward, making the later discovery of gluten eating abilities in Europe that much more strange.

Our first flight was 7 hours from Seattle to Iceland. We both took Homeopathic sleep aids which I combined with a half a dramamine in an attempt to sleep on the flight. Between the loud talking on the flight and the fact that it was only 4pm-10pm at home meant that despite my attempts I did not sleep more than an hour or so on the flight.

We had a quick 50 minute layover in Iceland (the airport looks like an Ikea!) where we got our passports stamped in and out of the country and went through security again -- I was selected for a random search of my person (not my bag just my body) which was hilarious because I was wearing leggings and a fitted t-shirt-- not sure where I could have been hiding something in that outfit but a nice security lady patted me down anyway and then we boarded another plane, this one a 3 hour flight, to London. I did manage to sleep another couple hours on the London leg of the flight as we arrived around 1am Seattle time. It was noon London time and our next flight, to Athens was not until 10pm. I had booked a late flight in case we wanted to actually try and go do something in London, but the lines at Customs were long, the tube takes an hour from the airport into downtown London and we were scared we'd miss our flight, so instead we spent 10 hours in Terminal one at Heathrow, which is one of the smallest and most boring. In a sleepy daze we paced up and down the length of the terminal. We went to the pharmacy 3 or 4 times for various reasons, ate two greasy meals (traditional English breakfast and then some kind of salad I've forgotten now later on). We found an empty corner and sort of slept awhile on hard benches, though every time I fell asleep another announcement over the intercom of flights coming and going woke me up.

We were so lucky we had booked the 10pm flight-- no flights were landing in Greece that day because of a strike-- ours the only flight to take off for Athens because we arrived at 4am-- technically the next day and after the end of the strike.

The flight to Athens was also loud and it was once again difficult to sleep. We arrived in Athens at 4am with another 5 hours to kill before our final flight to Mykonos. On the 4th trip through security that day they confiscated Megan's contact solution because even though it had a TSA approved symbol on it, apparently it was more than 100mL. The woman in charge of putting items through the scanner also yelled at us because apparently she likes to put things in the bin for you. Crazy how every airport and every security checker seems to make their own rules.

I had Greek yogurt with honey from a food cart in the airport-- the girl put almost more honey than yogurt on it but I decided at 4am it could be dessert or breakfast and I was much too tired to care so it didn't matter. There are lots of stores and things in the Athens airport as well as free email access. However, once you get past security there is absolutely nothing to do. It was much too loud, busy and chaotic for sleeping so we spent four hours sitting dazed, too tired to read, but unable to sleep either.

Finally we boarded our 30 minute flight to Mykonos, grabbed a cab and found our lovely hotel which was outside of town on the beach. We were very grateful for showers and then crashed at the beach (I completely passed out for about two hours). We spent a very leisurely day at the beach, ate a good dinner and then slept 11 hours that night. Finally, we had arrived and were ready to begin our vacation!

Re-entry trouble...

That is not sorbet....

I promise over the next few weeks I'm going to tell you all about my amazing adventure in Greece in great detail. I took notes so I could blog properly about the whole experience when I got back (I didn't have a computer consistently or I would have just done it as I went along-- actually, no I wouldn't have because I didn't want to spend my vacation in front of the computer!).

But first I'm going to tell you that I'm having a hard time adjusting to being home.

For one thing I have a very strange lingering case of jet lag. When we got back on Monday it was 5pm in Seattle and approximately 3am in Greece-- we were exhausted and in bed by 8:30pm, and then not surprisingly, woke up at 4:30 am. Every single day this week my body has decided this is the routine we are going to stick to-- I can't stay awake past about 8:45 and by 4:30am I'm wide awake. It's ridiculous. If I could push it back an hour I wouldn't mind but there is no reason to go to bed before it gets dark in the summer time.

What doesn't help is that I have absolutely no structure in my days now. Marc went back to work immediately. I have no where I have to be-- I am so happy to be finished with my internship (SO HAPPY) but I don't do very well without structured time and I have a feeling it is going to take me a little while to find full time employment. I also need to start studying for the RD exam, which doesn't excite me terribly but my options for jobs are limited without having taken it and I need to hurry up and get it over with.

Today was the first day that I had any energy at all-- Monday through Thursday I pretty much just laid on the couch and caught up on all the TV shows I missed on hulu although almost every show seemed to end the season with violent murders/deaths (Grey's Anatomy, Private Practice, Chuck, Brothers and Sisters)-- the Grey's season finale was so scary to my poor disoriented, jet lagged self that I had to keep taking breaks from watching it and finally went online and found out what happens at the end before I could finish watching it! Thank goodness for the cheerful non-violence of Glee to balance everything out.

Now I have to tell you the weirdest part of my whole trip. In Greece I had ZERO trouble with gluten (as in, I could eat it with no reaction) and very minimal reaction to dairy of any kind-- people, for the first time in three years I had pizza, ice cream and bread and was FINE (okay, the pizza didn't make me feel great, but it wasn't horrible). Now that I'm home both gluten and dairy are again giving me asthma, fatigue and headaches. WHY on Earth would these foods have such a dramatically different effect in Europe? I have no explanation. (BTW it started because the bread that came with dinner looked so good I had 1/4 of a piece. Nothing happened so the next meal I had 1/2, etc until I was easily eating a loaf of bread myself over the course of the day). I am stubbornly continuing to eat gluten even though it is giving me headaches and fatigue because I want to get a Celiac test before I go off it again (the antibodies only show up when you've been eating it) and because even though I feel like crap I'm not looking forward to having to be on a restricted diet again.

So you might think having the door open to any food (I had gelato almost every day!) that I would have had some problems maintaining my weight. At least until I told you that we probably walked 6-10 hours every single day. My feet hurt like hell because I didn't have supportive enough shoes (more on this later) but my legs are in good shape! And I lost 3-4 pounds-- the capri pants I took with me were falling off of me by the time we got home and a lot of jeans I have in my closet at home that were too tight to wear fit perfectly now! I'm holding my breath that I can maintain this now that I'm not walking as a full time job (at some point I'm going to have to get off the couch and get moving again!)

The day before I left for Greece I quit my gym-- they switched management companies right after I joined and I really did not like the changes they were making. So now I get to spend some time seeing how many free 7 day trials I can go through at all the gyms within a 5 mile radius before I join somewhere-- I'm hoping I can figure out where I'm going to be working before I make a commitment. But I'll tell you all about the gyms in Lynnwood/South Everett too in case someone is in the market for a new one.

So much blogging to catch up on-- I'll post again soon!

Skinny jeans

It is amazing how much self-torture women are able to inflict upon themselves because they feel they don't fit into some sort of "ideal" category. Almost every woman I know has or at least has had, issues with food in their lives. This is one reason I gave up on trying to be an actress-- I saw that to be successful I would have to be at a weight that was not healthy for me-- as it is I have been weight-conscious since the third grade when I remember being mortified when my mom told my friend's mom that I weighed 100 pounds. (Sad that third grade girls even 20 years ago had this issue-- that same friend later became anorexic).

In my early 20s I put on about 12 pounds-- the ironic result, actually, of rebound weight gain from over-exercising and depression. I beat myself up about it, would diet and over-exercise to try and get it down, only to lose 5 or 6 pounds and then regain it and maybe more. I have maintained this same weight, within about a 5 pound range for 6 or 7 years now-- despite the initial gain I am still well within a healthy weight range for my height. I beat myself up about a two pound range-- for some reason when my weight ends in a 2 or lower I'm comfortable, but when it ends in 4 or more I feel very fat. I mostly have recovered from my tendency to extremes with calorie counting and over exercising, but at the beginning of March I unwisely decided to follow the workout and calorie recommendations in Jillian Michael's "Making the Cut" but, being type-A and crazy, I also added extra cardio. And predictably, I had a very dizzy week and a half on 1400 calories before I slowly started overeating when poor body rebelled at being starved. I KNOW that's not enough calories for me. I have a #$*@!#$#*! Master's Degree in Nutrition! But sometimes the psychosis of being an over-achieving, self-judging woman takes over common sense and higher education.

I will say this-- though I haven't been as consistent with JM's workouts as I was last month, I have continued them and I have seen changes in my body, despite not really losing weight and in fact despite eating more sugar than is good for me. The circuits make me feel strong and tighter.

A few other things have happened lately that have changed the way I feel about my body-- the first is that in preparation for my Greece trip I found a swim suit that is flattering and I feel great in and covers my less than ideal areas.

Second, last weekend I attended a workout session sponsored by Dove Deodorant and hosted by my friend Stevie (it was an amazingly intense workout-- I could barely walk for two days afterwards!). There was something that really hit me running around that gym with a bunch of women, all of us about the same age, all different shapes and sizes but all at similar fitness levels when I kind of realized there is nothing wrong with me the way I am. I think particularly working out with my friend E, who has undergone an incredible amount of struggles in her life with her weight and has really beaten the odds and is in fantastic shape now even with a new baby that was powerful for me.

As for the jeans-- I actually hate wearing jeans because I always wear the boot cut, wide leg, Clinton and Stacy approved style which make me feel kind of dowdy. Due to my curvy shape I have never found a pair of skinny jeans or even straight leg that didn't look ridiculous on me or weren't too tight in the rear. But something changed-- I don't know if it's the workouts or just a shift in my own perception of my body, but I was trying on a pair of black leggings the other day intending to wear them under skirts and they actually looked good on their own. Then I was at the mall today and on a whim tried on a pair of skinny jeans at the Gap and they not only fit perfectly, but actually looked good.

I feel like in the aftermath of a self-abuse relapse I've found a place where I am feeling good about myself in the place where I am at. I would like to be in better shape, and losing a jeans size would be nice but I'm finding peace with being the size and shape I am right now, and that's an amazing feeling.