Now that is new

The last 2 days consisted of a lot of pull-ups. On Monday I did this WOD:

5 Rounds For Time:
Run 200m
10 Pull-ups (total of 50 pull-ups)
Run 200m
5 Power Snatch

I loved this WOD. It was hard but the good kind of hard. I felt awesome after this WOD. My pull-ups just came together and I have no idea why.

Then yesterday I did a pull-up thing with Dori (in addition to the regular WOD) The pull-up thing was: 3 pull-ups every min on the min for 20 min (total of 60). I think I dropped to 2 pull-s on 4 rounds (actual total of 56). My hands were sore after this so for the actual WOD I found the kettlebell with the smoothest handle.

This morning I woke up to find this:

The photo is not that great; but I have 2 blisters where the arrows are. How does one get a blister there?

Sunshine

I am losing my medical insurance in a couple of weeks. In preparation for this, I got a physical with blood tests. One of the blood test was for my vitamin D levels. My levels are low.

I wish they would prescribe a couple weeks in the Caribbean.Instead I get this:



I do not know if it it is all in my head or not but I had a lot more energy the day after I took my sunshine pill. I will keep you posted on my progress.

Food for thought

A friend sent me this article. The main point of the article (that cheat meals are help not a hindrance) was essentially preaching to the choir. One line stuck out to me though: "carbs raise serotonin levels". Is that why I have been crying at cat food commercials?

This required further research. This is what I found:

Carbohydrates, when digested by the body, are effectively broken down into sugar molecules. When these molecules are absorbed and released in the bloodstream, blood concentration of glucose increases. Almost immediately, there will be a significant increase in plasma insulin levels as a result of the pancreas releasing its stored insulin. Insulin then steps in to do what it is genetically program to do–it breaks it down some more to produce energy and transport the extra glucose from the blood to the body cells. Insulin also makes it easy for tryptophan to enter the brain by eliminating its other amino acid competitors.

Tryptophan, an amino acid and an important ingredient in serotonin synthesis, is one of the substances allowed by the brain to enter from the blood. Tryptophan is the less occurring amino acid in the body and competes with the other amino acids in entering the blood-brain barrier. In a journal published by Springer Wien, it was observed that the concentration of the majority of the amino acids, including alanine and glutamine, are significantly reduced each time insulin is secreted. Tryptophan is then able to enter the brain at a higher rate. An increased level of tryptophan in the brain means more available tryptophan for conversion. Tryptophan undergoes hydroxylation to the 5 positions and is converted in 5-HT and eventually to serotonin.

Even when I was having a cheat day I was not really eating that many carbs because I was a little scared that I would loose the progress I made. I will rectify that his weekend.

I am winning... well not really

I do not feel like I am winning right now. I have had a few set backs of late and I unlike Charlie Sheen I see them REALLY well. One thing is my Snatch was ridiculously hard yesterday. I feel like when I try to get better at one thing, something else suffers.

How dose one become well rounded? Maybe I was not meant to be a Jack of all trades. Maybe I should try to specialize in something? What sport requires a strong core and very little coordination? I want to do that sport.

poison

What do you need to drop from your diet to loose weight and be healthier? Sugar. Robert Lustig argues that sugar is nothing more than a poison. More than likely you have viewed this Youtube video. I watched it for the second time today.

The Cliff's Notes
To put it simply: Fructose must be metabolized by your liver. What do we call things that must be metabolized by one's liver? A poison. If you think that is a bit extreme... How do you make ethanol? You ferment sugar. Sugar is the same as ethanol, it just does not give you a buzz because it can not be processed by the brain.

So what if we started to view all sugar like alcohol? To quote cookie monster, "it is a sometimes food". I know that giving up fruit and all sugar will not work for me. It makes me sad to think of a world without chocolate or fruit pie. I can, however, put it off till the weekend. I wonder how much healthier (and smaller around the middle) we would be if we took this approach.

The diet I am on right now cuts out sugar entirely for the majority of the week. I get one cheat day every week to indulge in whatever I want. Robert Lustig says "When God made the poison, he packaged it with the antidote." Where ever you find sugar it is packaged within a large quantity of fiber. Think about sugar cane. I will probably start to eat fruit again once my weight is to a level I am happy with but for right now I am limiting it to one day a week. This limitation resulted in a 3lb weight loss last week.

4hr body Day 5

Another diet.... I was getting frustrated because I dropped 8 lbs and then it just stopped. I started reading The 4 hr Body after a coworker told me about it. Husband had already heard about it and downloaded for his Kindle. It is a really long book with a ridiculous lead in. I have no clue the amount of pages that are devoted to how great of a book it is going to be because I read it on my Kindle; but they should have been edited down.

Here are the diet rules:

Rule #1: Avoid “white” carbohydrates. Don’t eat bread, pasta, rice (brown or white), grains, potatoes, breaded fried food or dairy on your slow-carb days.

Rule #2: Eat the same few meals over and over again. Meals should include protein, legumes, and non-starchy vegetables; eat as much as you like, 3-4x/day.

Rule #3: Don’t drink calories. Avoid milk (including soy), sweetened soda (no more than 16oz of diet), and fruit juice. One or two glasses of red wine are permitted.

Rule #4: Don’t eat fruit. Tomatoes and avocados are okay (the latter in moderation).

Rule #5: Take one day off per week. Go nuts and eat lots of calories to keep your metabolic rate (thyroid function, conversion of T4 to T3, leptin) up. Do at least five days of rules 1-4 before following rule 5.

It is basically paleo with the fruit taken out and legumes added in. Drum roll please...... down 3 lbs. I am actually a little scared about rule 5. I have decided I just can not handle the stress related with an entire day of cheating. I will do a cheat meal instead.

The right kind of girl

I have always been a tomboy. The majority of my friends have been boys. When I say majority I mean I had 2 female friends growing up and all the rest were boys. This was the case until CrossFit.

In the past few days since I posted my opinion on Tracy Anderson, I have seen two very different behaviors from women. Of course we did poke the bear first (or as McKell says the angry fawn). But we did not poke hard. We were not mean. We (and by we I mean Ashley) simply stated that what they were doing to themselves was dangerous.

They might look like fawns but they are strait up honey badgers. Those girls are mean. Maybe it is because they are so hungry. What ever the reason there is no excuse to be so cruel. I did find today that you can mark comments as spam or as mean. They will take it under advisement if you mark it as mean but take it down immediately if it is spam. I marked all of the really mean comments as spam. This type of meanness is exactly why I never hung out with girls... well that and the fact that playing paintball in the woods just sounded like much more fun then playing with dolls.

CrossFitters on the other hand do not do that sort of thing. Ashley is right when she says that it is a welcoming community. Of course there is some competition between boxes but it is never mean. When someone is injured and out for a while, we worry about them and encourage them when they can come back. We tell them that it will not be long before they are right back to where they were. I know this because it happened to me.

I have so many amazing, strong (mentally and physically) female friends now. Friends that I feel very lucky to have.

Pain

I am a bit sore today. I do not really know why. I did not lift heavy yesterday. This is what I did:

Run 800 with boot campers
Bench press
5 rounds of
10 cleans
10 elevated push-ups
Sprints with Murph
Pull-up ladder with Dori

My wrist started to bother me during the WOD so I dropped the weight an used dumbbells to keep my wrist in a neutral position during the push-ups. That is not what is sore today. My butt is sore today. Why?

My favorite thing that happened yesterday was after I finished my last pull-up, a certain someone that had been watching Dori and I suddenly says: "You guys are going to be hating life tomorrow". Why, you ask...

Today's WOD:
AMRAP in 10 minutes:
25 Double Unders
10 Pullups

Now, I do get the WODs ahead of time but I do not remember what is on each day. He totally could have chimed in before we did the pull-up ladder.

Healthier?

I subscribe to a lot of different blogs. Some are CrossFit related, a lot are photography related and then some are food related. One of my favorite blogs is Pioneer Woman. It combines food and photography. I have made several of her recipes. I had to modify them a bit to make them more paleo friendly.

Today I opened up my reader to find this:


Granted, it was not on her site. She linked to it. It is a "Healthier Gyro". Healthier than what? It has french fries on it. It says that they are baked but come on. If you are going to eat that sort of thing, make it your cheat meal. Do not fool yourself into thinking it is healthy.

No wonder we have issues when we see this:

and this:


in the same commercial break. In case you are wondering, that bread bowl has pasta in it. And yes, Nicole Richie is a Tracy Anderson follower. Sorry about the rant.

Tracy Anderson

There has been a lot of talk about Tracy Anderson and her silliness though out the CrossFit community. The biggest thing being her "women should not lift more than 3lb" philosophy. This and this are with out a doubt my favorite responses to it. And, although her 3 lb rule is ridiculous it is not the thing that bothers me the most. It is her diet. Her diet is insane. For those of you that do not know: it is a 700 calorie a day diet that consists of mostly pureed food. She is essentially promoting anorexia.

The reason this bothers me so much is, I like many American women, have struggled with an eating disorder in the past. I am proud of the fact that I have gotten past some of the worst habits I have had. But there will always be this nagging feeling that I am not thin enough. I am trying to over ride that feeling with one that at least says fit enough.

I have changed my view of what beauty is. I no longer find this to be the ideal:

I now strive for this:

I think, as a person in the CrossFit community, it is easy to miss fitness trends that are happening outside. I went to the Dirty South competition last year and was in awe of the fitness levels. I also felt kind of like a lump. In contrast, the beginning of this year I went to the 24 hour race in Daytona and felt like beacon of fitness. My view of beauty has changed thanks to CrossFit and I think it can change for others as well. That is why if you are willing to post a picture of you in all of your CrossFit / weightlifting badass glory, I will take it for you free of charge. That is all you have to do to get a free fitness photo of yourself; post a photo of yourself with your lifts on Tracy Anderson's fan page and I will take the photo for free. Do not worry if you are not as strong as Tamara or Stephanie. Just remember that the girls that follow Tracy Anderson only lift 3 lbs. I was thinking about how much Tracy would be wishing she had lifted more weight if the tire I flipped yesterday fell on her. Boy would she be F@#ked.

Another night of little to no sleep

I have a sleep disorder. I even went through a sleep study at Duke. They attached a great deal of wires to my head and then told me that I do not leave stage 2 like I should. Essentially, I do not turn off my brain. I keep thinking and worrying about things when I should be sleeping. This is a chronic issue. I can not remember a time when this did not happen.

I have drugs that I can take but I should not take all the time. If I think, I will be okay tonight. I will not take in Ambien. I will often wake up at 3 am wishing I had. Because, like now, I am awake and now it is too late to take it.

What makes matters worse is now you hear of studies being released that say weight gain is associated with lack of sleep. Great, another thing for me to worry about while I am lying there not sleeping.

Melinda

For an update on the very amazing, very strong Melinda please click here.

They should know better

You try to do something nice for people and then they say it is too easy. Oh well!

Actually my boot campers seemed to really enjoy the Hoover Ball game. The problem was that it was also bring your friend week and I had a few new comers from the Living Social Coupon that we did. (2 that were suppose to come and 2 that just wondered in.) My class more than doubled in one day. I could have changed from my original plan to give them a more realistic view of what they will normally do in class. But I like a plan and that was a large group of people with no CF experience. So Hoover Ball seemed like the safe path to stay on. The problem that they will face now, is that then I feel like I need to prove myself.

Maybe there is a little CrossFit main site buried deep in my psyche. Oh, you can do this crazy ass work out I have created in less than 3 minute? Well, then... Bam! Ring handstand push-ups.

Seriously though, I am not that bad. I just feel like I have to give them their money's worth. So, needless to say, tonight will be tough.

Stats

"Shirtless black men" is one of the top key words for my site today. Why? I do not think I have written about that. Not that it isn't nice to see.... but this is another one of those things that would lead to great disappointment when you actually visit my site.

I feel like now I actually have to produce a shirtless black man. Here you go:

Guilt

I get in to these patterns. Pattern of either being completely on or not wanting to work out at all. The crazy thing is, there is guilt associated either way. When I am off, obviously I feel like a sloth and feel bad about it. The only thing that stops me from starting up again is the fear associated with the pain I will inevitably feel.

This is the crazy part: when I am on, I have a hard time taking a rest day. I feel guilt about my rest days. Why? I have no clue. Yesterday was my rest day. I spent it rowing 1500 meters and doing as many double unders as I could in 10 min.

This morning I decided that I would take tonight off (for real). I have a lot of photo editing to do and my body could probably do with an actual rest (especially my legs). Then I look at the CFD website:

5 Rounds For Time:

10 Pull-ups
10 GHD Sit-ups
10 Push-ups

I love GHD sit-ups and Dave hardly ever programs them since they almost killed Rich. I do understand the fear. I just would like Rich never to do them again but he makes up his own WODs and throws them in regularly. Rich is hard headed and will not let anything beat him.

Side note: For those of you that do not know, Rich had rhabdomyolysis. He was in the hospital for 3 days after doing Michael on the GHD. (Michael is: 3 rounds of run 800, 50 GHD sit-ups, and 50 GHD back extensions) His CK levels were at 120k . CK levels should be under 300. He was given the high score at Duke Hospital.

I think that part of the problem might be that I am not happy with the shape I am in. There is this fear that if I stop I might revert back to the fat version of myself. I also wonder if I will ever get to the point where I am happy with my body's shape. I know this is not the healthy, strong woman that I should be but it is the truth.

Play

I teach boot camps at CF Durham. I really like teaching boot camps because the people in them are very gung-ho and willing to try anything. I feel like I have been kind of brutal in my WOD creation recently. I usually do the WOD before hand and then try to adjust so it does not suck too much. I want to make sure it is fun as well as good for the body.

Today I am going to have them play a game of Hoover Ball. I have not quiet figured out how I am going to work the net yet. I did however, find the original rules:

Rules for Playing

· The court is 66 feet by 30 feet.
· A 6-pound medicine ball and 8-foot volleyball net are used.
· Teams consist of 2-4 players. (For the national championships, 3-player teams will be used.) Each team may have one or two substitutes.

· Scoring is exactly like tennis. Teams play best-of-five or best-of-seven games.

· Points are scored when a team: fails to catch the return, fails to return the ball across the net, returns the ball out of bounds.

· The ball is served from the back line. The serve is rotated among one team until the game is won. Teams alternate serving after each game.

· The ball must be caught on the fly and immediately returned from the point it was caught. There is no running with the ball or passing to teammates.

· Each team's court is divided in half. A ball returned from the front half of your court must be returned to the back half of your opponent's court. If the ball doesn't reach the back court, the opponent is awarded the point.

· A ball that hits the out-of-bounds line is a good return.

· A player who catches the ball out-of-bounds, or is carried out-of-bounds by the force of the ball, may return in-bounds before the return.

· A ball that hits the net on its way over is a live ball. (If it was thrown from the front court, it must reach the opponent's back court to be good.)

· Teams may substitute at dead ball situations.

· Women serve from the mid-court line.

· Women may pass once before a return.

· Women may return the ball to any area of the opponent's court.

· Good sportsmanship is required. Points in dispute are played over.

I am going to drop the "Women" rules. They look like Traci Anderson had a hand in them (but hey, it was the 1930s).

Hopefully they have fun. I have only played this once myself and it was with a certain caped crusader at the helm so he gave us a 20lb med ball to play with. I did not enjoy it because of my immense fear of getting knocked out.

beatriceyaxley's photostream

beatriceyaxley's photostream on Flickr.

What type are you?

I went to a photography workshop recently, and one of the men hosting it referred to himself as a generalist. I love photographing all sorts of thing so I would like to believe that I am a generalist as well. The truth is I am best when photographing things I love.

I realized this while throwing several of my photographs up on flickr. Some of my best work is of CrossFit. This isn't to say I won't do a kick ass job at a wedding. I will... It will just be better if I like you. :)

Seriously though, I think I need to try to photograph more sports. What do you think? My flickr stream is on the post above this one.