Introduction and Day 1

Well I can honestly say that none of what I will be doing for the next 3 weeks is new, this is just my way of being accountable to myself. I decided sometime yesterday that I would no longer tell myself "Oh I'll start Monday," so instead I started today (Wednesday!). I have an awful habit of getting a good 24-48 hours of motivation and never getting myself past that difficult hump where your body and your mind just don't agree with each other. I am incredibly good at making excuses - it's almost become an art form ("I'm too sore" "I have too much homework to do" "The dog's being a pain in the ass" "My eating schedule is messed up and I just ate"). After these past two workouts, I'm sick of the excuses. My body can do this, I know it can. It survived cross country running and 6 seasons of indoor/outdoor track, not to mention the utter beating it gets doing EMS for the past 3 years. I am completely out of shape. I came to college and told myself that one crappy meal wasn't going to kill me. Well, a lot of crappy meals later and I finally opened my eyes. I told myself that my schoolwork should come before my health; been there, done that! And finally, I convinced myself that working for hours at a time, lifting patients in ways that would make a chiropractor cringe, was truly some form of masochistic exercise and that I was supposed to be having muscle spasms in my back after a long shift. What can I say, I'm a very persuasive person.

So I started this "new" journey back in September.  By then I'd been working out at the gym regularly. Through various Facebook fitness groups, I found Jamie Eason's LiveFit Trainer, a 12 Week program. I got through the first few weeks and just got bored with it. My strength was definitely improving, just not in ways that I had hoped. I felt like I was getting stronger at the gym but only in the motions that I was actually training. I didn't feel like my ability to perform activities of daily living was actually improving, regardless of how much better my squats and push-ups were getting. So, for the month of September, I focused on my eating instead. I started this program called Isagenix. It's a program where 2 of your 3 meals per day are protein shakes, along with a "cleanse" drink once a day. Your 3rd meal is a real meal and you could choose which meal became your "real" meal. The program went really well...until I got off track 2 weeks later. By then I was 20 pounds down and convinced that I could take it from there.

October 8th was the first time I waltzed my sorry butt into a CrossFit gym. I would be lying if I didn't say I was completely terrified. I'd been looking up YouTube videos and talking to friends for awhile and I finally decided to just do it. Well let me tell you, I walked out of that place dripping sweat and never feeling more alive. We started with a warm-up and stretching...easy. Next were the box squats...I made them my bitch. Then there's this terrifying part called Metabolic Conditioning (MetCon, for short). This is where they really get you. On that particular day, the task was to run 400 meters outside then come back inside and do 20 push-up releases. Doesn't sound too bad, right? Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, we had to do that 5 times. After the 2nd round, I was cursing every deity in the book. By the 5th, I was (briskly) walking the 400 meters. I think the big defining moment during that workout was the camaraderie that I found. I had just walked into the box 30 minutes earlier and I already had people coming up behind me, telling me that I could do it, that it was just a little further. In the midst of wanting to cry from pain, I wanted to cry from finally finding a place where I knew nobody would let me give up. 10 minutes later I was signed up for a membership.

For the next 3 months, I went back to the box off and on. It wasn't consistent by any means but I gave it about 70% of my all and I kept telling myself that it was better than 0%. The thing that I like about CrossFit is that you never have the same workout twice yet somehow you always end up working the same muscles. Not to mention, even though it's primarily lifting, you still get a cardio workout! A basic CrossFit workout consists of some kind of warm-up (I say warm-up like it's some nice stretching...nope!), and then you go on to work on some kind of skill, generally a lifting skill that you will need for the rest of the workout. The real killer is when you get something called an AMRAP. An AMRAP is essentially a circuit workout for a certain amount of time. So you may get anywhere from 3-5 exercises with a certain amount of reps and you just go for whatever the set time is and see how many circuits you can get through. I can't even begin to describe how an AMRAP makes your body feel. At some point in time, you will use every trick in the book to get yourself through another circuit - you'll try thinking of all the horrible people in your life, you'll try thinking of the one person that is motivating you, you'll think of every skinny bitch you've ever seen that can go through a carton of ice cream and go right to bed like it's nothing, and lastly you will think of that day where you will finally be able to outrun your dog. I think that's what I love the most about CrossFit - you put yourself through so much pain, but you really feel alive at the end of it knowing that for an hour you told your mind to take its doubts and shove them where the sun don't shine.

So, what now?

Well, as of January 8th, I made a pact with myself - 3 weeks. I have 3 weeks to make the most out of myself. It's long enough that I need to get over the hump to finish it and hopefully by that time 3 weeks will turn into 6 weeks and 6 weeks will turn into 52 weeks, and 52 weeks will turn into a lifetime. This blog will be my way of holding myself accountable. I got the idea of blogging and accountability from several people, but I didn't realize the benefits of it until I was in the box today. Even though my dedication to CrossFit hasn't exactly been stellar these past few months, I have still seen some serious improvements! I can now do a couple full-body push-ups (one of my goals), and just today I realized I don't need as much assistance to do pull-ups (I still need a fair amount, but every little bit counts). So, everyday for the next 3 weeks, I will be recording workout results and how my diet is doing. I'm going back on the Isagenix plan as well as going paleo (no carbs, no dairy, and nothing that a caveman wouldn't eat). I will be taking pictures of myself tomorrow, just haven't decided if I'll be putting them up here or not. I want to give myself a way to look back on a workout and find a new goal or reread what it felt like to be able to do something new. Hopefully being able to look back will give me new ideas on how to look forward.

I'm really looking forward to this and I hope whoever decides to read this can share in my failures and successes, as well as maybe finding some motivation of their own!