Reflections of a CrossFitter

Well this has been a pretty good week!

Monday I took the day off from CrossFit, ran, and then worked the evening. Running was awful. I dragged through the entire thing. Not to mention it was SUPER windy so we ended up getting double the exercise than what we wanted. Didn't have the chance to head to the store for food so I ended up eating Boston Market for dinner. To be fair, I had a fairly good dinner. Not paleo, but it wasn't crap. Tuesday I kinda had the same crappy schedule. Woke up and was eating breakfast when I started realizing just how much I had to get done this week before a weekend of work was upon me. So in 3 and a half hours I went to the ATM, washed myself, washed the dog, and went grocery shopping. It was fairly skilled in itself let me tell ya. I had to be at work for another evening so I didn't get to food prep like I wanted to. I just ended up bringing leftovers for food. Wednesday I spent the entire day painting/cleaning Rothberg's new house. It was a day for some serious active rest. Got home well into the evening and got to work on food prepping.

I made some roasted eggplant, sweet potato and zucchini chips, mashed sweet potatoes, mashed cauliflower, and some boiled eggs. It was good to get a lot of the sides out of the way since I just end up baking a lot of my proteins. Was going to make Turkey Meatballs but I was exhausted by the end of all that, so I just prepped my food for Thursday and went to bed.

Yesterday I worked for 14 hours. Woke up at 530 so I didn't have time to eat at home. My breakfast was cottage cheese with cut up strawberries and two turkey hot dogs. I decided that while I was going to be paleo, cottage cheese makes for a good to-go meal so it's the one dairy I'm allowing. Cheese is also the only kind of dairy that I can tolerate. Go figure. My mid-morning "snack" was half of a berry muffin. I know it's not paleo, but thank goodness I had it. My partner and I decided to go do some errands and grab salads for lunch. I'd brought lunch but I wanted to get a little side salad. I got a spinach/romaine mix with artichokes, black olives, roasted red pepper, and egg, with balsamic vinagrette. Well...in the middle of all this we get a call. Yeah, "lunch" wasn't had until 430. I was about to eat my right hand. Plus I was dehydrated since I'd left my water bottle at base. Along with that I had my lunch of tuna fish wrapped in turkey bologna with a tomato on the side. It was delicious, albeit late. Dinner happened when I finally got home. I baked a pork chop and had some mashed sweet potatoes. I also took the time to prep some turkey meatballs, which are delicious. It's just ground turkey, artichokes, and onions baked together at 350 for like 20 minutes. I cheated a little and made them in a muffin tin. The recipe makes 12 decent-sized muffins.

Today I'm sitting at RIT for graduation all day...and tomorrow too. I brought turkey muffins, salad, sweet potato chips and celery to help keep me away from cheats. We'll see what happens. I've been a lot better this week than I thought I would be. I've at least been fairly consistent. 2 out of my 3 meals everyday have been paleo. Now just to get it to 3/3. I'm not complaining too much though. It's a step above where I was.

My body is not happy that I took the week off. Well, it was happy Monday and most of Tuesday, and it all went downhill from there. All my joint pains that I'd been keeping at bay came back. Not to mention I kept checking the WODs everyday and all I wanted to do was go. But all the classes were full so it's not like I could have done anything last minute. So back to the grind on Monday!

So as I'm going along, I realized I never told you guys about the reflection I did after I did my baseline and the PR board! I'mma fix that. We'll start with the reflection.

After every baseline we fill out a reflection on our accomplishments and what's holding us back from reaching our goals. Mind you, I wrote these things down at the beginning of April so there have already been some changes.

My accomplishments from January - April:
Lost 14 pounds (Paleo challenge)
Finally found a diet that works
Finished the paleo challenge
Worked out consistently and learned how to kick some ass
Learned how to take care of myself before others 
Dedicated myself and learned how to push my limits
Started running again (and haven't died yet!)

What is stopping you/holding you back?
This question was hard, but I put myself. I've learned to tell the unsupportive people around me to shut their mouths. Now it's just all on me, and my inherent inability to be able to say no to the temptations of ice cream.

3 month vision, what you want to see/do in the next 3 months...
Catalyst Games!
Run a 5k
Lose 20 more pounds
Handstands
Double Unders
Keep kicking ass!

What are you going to do to attain your vision...
Workout 4x/week, run 2-3x/week
Get back on paleo
Don't settle for less in workouts
Work on movements after class

So obviously I've already accomplished some of my goals. I competed in the catalyst games and I now know how to do a handstand. I've also continued to kick ass all the time. The 5k is a work in progress. The losing a few pounds is a serious work in progress. Double unders...gah! We'll get there.

So the PR board. In April, I PR'd my back squat, my push press, and my baseline, so I got put on the gym PR board for the month which was awesome! What I didn't know was that I made it to the leader board. I'm in third place in the entire gym for my back squat and my push press. Back squat I need to add about 50 more pounds to be in the lead. For the push press I don't need to go up as much, but that movement gets harder with very small increment additions, versus back squat.

Ultimately, I didn't go into CrossFit to get on a leader board. I was loving being on the PR board though because that one truly showed my accomplishments. I'm not a huge competitive person. I compete against myself since I'm my own worst critic in the worst way possible. Other than that, I never anticipated that I'd be at the same level as some of my coaches someday. I've already decided that  one day I want to be a CrossFit coach. Maybe in a couple years I may start looking into it, but it's definitely going to be a long term goal of mine. All the coaches I've met are so supportive in every way possible and they truly want you to succeed. I want to pass that on. I'm still going to be a PA, but from a fitness world point of view, I've definitely found my "calling" so to speak. It's a very cool thing.