I ended up going to the gym Thursday evening. I was kind of disappointed because he wanted us doing a box jump height that would allow us to do box jumps unbroken. So it didn't end up being a good day to try a 20" box. What I DID try was jumping on the box without walking up to it or using a lot of momentum before I actually jumped. I just worked on standing in front of the box, and jumping on it. It ended up working pretty well. It's starting to show that I'm getting confident enough with the 16" that I don't need to get practically a running headstart. It may not have been a 20" box, but it's something. The MetCon (4 rounds of 5 axle thrusters and 10 burpees) wasn't that bad at all. It actually really helped with getting me ready for yesterday's baseline WOD. An axle bar is different from a regular barbell. It's lighter and thicker and doesn't have any rotating parts so you really have to make sure that you're getting the rotation from your arms, not the momentum of the actual lift. I did those with 60 pounds. Maybe I could have gone heavier but my muscles were just about ready to give up.
Came home from the gym, made a really simple dinner and was in bed by 11. Slept until 1030 the next morning. I think I was a little tired. I ended up cancelling my reservation for the Friday class because I just really wanted to rest. Instead I ended up gathering a few friends and checking out a walking trail in Rush, which was absolutely beautiful. We probably did between 2.5 and 3 miles.
I did a lot of meal prepping Friday afternoon. I made Sweet Potato Pancakes, Zucchini Pancakes, Sweet Potato Chips, Crockpot Beef Stew, and Meat Candy. I totally reminded myself of my grandmother. I was sitting at the kitchen table peeling sweet potatoes and shredding them while I was watching Glee. I did end up slicing my finger with the mandoline slicer. Nothing too major but I can now saw I shed blood for the sake of paleo.
Sweet Potato Pancakes:
2 medium sweet potatoes
Bacon fat
2 eggs
Salt/pepper
Peel and shred the sweet potatoes, and add to a bowl with the eggs and the salt/pepper. Mix until the eggs get well-distributed. Heat up a skillet with the bacon fat. I used a little 1/4 cup measuring cup to ladle the batter into the pan. Cook the pancake on both sides until browned.
Sweet Potato Chips:
2 sweet potatoes
Olive oil
Salt/pepper or other seasonings
Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Slice the sweet potatoes into thin rounds. I placed the slices on a cookie sheet and misted with olive oil, but you can also add the slices to a bowl, drizzle a little olive oil and mix it by hand. Add the desired seasonings. Bake for 20-25 minutes.
Crockpot Beef Stew:
1 lb. stew beef
1 bag frozen pearl onions
3 tbsp. almond meal
Salt/pepper, garlic powder, Italian seasoning, cinnamon
3 large carrots cut into small rounds
3/4 tbsp. red wine vinegar (you can also use red wine)
1 1/2 cups beef broth
2 sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped into bite-size pieces
Mix the stew beef and almond meal together in the crockpot until the beef is well-coated. Add in the seasonings and mix. Add in carrots, onion, red wine vinegar and beef broth. Set the crockpot to low (for a 7 hour cooking time) or high (for a 5 hour cooking time). In the last 45 minutes, add the sweet potatoes and cook until tender.
Meat Candy:
Dates
Bacon (cut into 1/3's)
Toothpicks
I didn't put an exact amount of dates and bacon with this one since it all depends how many you want to make. If the dates aren't pitted, pit them. Wrap a piece of bacon around a date and secure with a toothpick. If you want your meat candy to be very meaty, use longer pieces of bacon. Place dates on a cookie sheet and back at 350 for 15 minutes.
I'm up in the air on how I feel about the beef stew. The recipe usually calls for gnocchi which end up soaking up the last little bit of liquid and making it a nice thick stew. Apparently just putting sweet potatoes in there doesn't do the same so it's still somewhat liquid-like. I'm on the fence about how I feel about it.
The sweet potato pancakes are a little weird. They just have a strange taste to them, I don't know if I should have added more seasonings or what.
Saturday morning came and I was super nervous, on top of being tired from not sleeping a whole lot the night before. Took Mack to the vet really quick and had a quick breakfast of a boiled egg and a couple pieces of bacon with about half a water bottle's worth of water. I didn't feel like being weighed down.
Got to the gym and the first task was to get weighed and measured. Here are my final measurements compared with my beginning measurements that they took:
February 16th:
Shoulders: 20"
Chest: 42 3/4"
Waist: 43"
Hips: 50"
R Arm: 14"
R Thigh: 26 1/2"
R Calf: 17"
% Body Fat: 34.5
March 30th:
Shoulders: 20"
Chest: 43"
Waist: 39"
Hips: 45"
R Arm: 14"
R Thigh: 26"
R Calf: 17"
% Body Fat: 32.7
So, contrary to my belief, I actually lost all of the inches in my waist and hips. I'd like to see more weight come off of those areas as well as my thighs, but for 6 weeks I'd say that's pretty damn good. It added up to 10 inches total lost, 1.8% body fat, and 14 pounds. Not bad at all I'd say.
The numbers are great and all, but wait until you see this baseline WOD. The idea was to use the exact same weights and modifications as the original baseline. If you only did kettlebell swings up to your chin, that's what you did this time around.
Baseline WOD:
Max effort pull-ups (using a black resistance band and strict pull-ups)
12 minute MetCon:
12 - 9 - 6
Kettlebell Swings (26# - modified swing to chin)
Clusters (Squat Clean + Thruster -- 53#)
Burpee Box Jumps (16")
February 16th Results:
10 pull-ups
2 rounds + 7 reps in 12 minutes
March 30th Results:
12 pull-ups
MetCon finished in 11:32
Seriously, if anyone needed any proof that paleo and a little determination works, here's your proof. Yes I did all that eating bacon, steak, and sweet potatoes. My body literally turned itself into a machine. That box is definitely still intimidating when you're exhausted and pairing it with burpees. Nothing is fun when paired with burpees. Either way, I'm still entirely amazed. I still have a lot of work to do. I want to lose 23 more pounds before the summer. Now I could sit here and agonize over what my results would have looked like if I didn't cheat, but if there's anything I've learned, a little cheat here and there wasn't what killed me. My body just wasn't made to lose a lot of weight in a short amount of time. So we're going to see what the next two months have in store for me. I'm still just living on the high that I've had since Saturday.
Yesterday I spent the day cleaning out my closets. I knew there were plenty of clothes that still weren't going to fit me, mostly because I got them back in freshman year, still 20 pounds ago. So I didn't agonize over those. My goal was to find the things that didn't fit because they were too big. I started with the dutyshirts. I found out that I'm no longer a large (men-sized) shirt. I had a couple mediums laying around so the larges definitely came out of the closet. As far as dress sizes go, I'm definitely a 14 now. Both of the dresses I bought for graduation no longer fit.
There is definitely some stuff that I'm in limbo with. My bikini looks a little better on me, while my bathing suit from last summer essentially still fits perfectly. With stuff like denim skirts, I'm kind of in limbo between a 14 and a 16, so I think I'm going to hold off on skirts/jean shopping until I'm at least one or the other, hopefully the smaller one. I find it weird how you can drop a couple sizes in one kind of clothing, but either stay the same or still not fit in another kind of clothing. Regardless, I now have a mini skirt from a couple summers ago hanging on my wall as motivation.
I did end up taking a couple pictures yesterday. I won't put up the bikini pictures just because it's still kind of scary. But I did get these...
That's me in October wearing a pair of new EMT pants that I never got to wear. They're Size 18, which in the real world equates to about a Size 14. Between October and January, my size didn't change that much. Those pants still didn't fit me at the beginning of the challenge.
My current end goal for the beginning of June is to be another 20 pounds down, and hopefully comfortably fitting into Size 14 jeans, if not smaller. As far as performance goals go, I want to be getting on a 20" box as well as going down one resistance band in pull-ups (as in, black to green). I have two months to accomplish those. I get the feeling it'll take me a bit less time, but I figure I shouldn't go too crazy. Also got the Catalyst Games coming up in 26 days!
So what would a diet challenge be without a few post-challenge cheat meals. Yesterday I attacked the chocolate. A couple friends also came over and we made Matzah ball soup for "lunch". For dinner I had chinese food with some hard cider. Tonight I had Salsarita's, and a garbage plate. I can now officially say my bucket list has been fulfilled and I'm ready to hit it again tomorrow! I officially signed up for the Biggest Loser challenge at work so we'll see how far I can go with that! Like I said, I'm going to stay about 90% paleo. If I happen to use butter or maple syrup, or even real milk here and there, I'm not going to curl up in a corner and cry, but I wouldn't use those things for anything other than cooking. I don't plan on drinking glasses of milk per day. This lifestyle has definitely worked for me, but at the same time, I'd go stir crazy if I remained paleo to the extent that I did for the past 6 weeks.
Alright I think I've made this post long enough. I'm sure I'll remember something I forgot, but that's what tomorrow's post is for!
G'night all!
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