Scrambled eggs and fish oil

Thank god I actually went to the store yesterday and followed through with the fish oil promise.
Because this morning Justin wrote an impassioned rant about why we all should be taking it. And I'm relieved I can count myself among those who have already manned up.
The bottle up here isn't from Costco. Von's was having a deal -- 2 for 1 -- and these pills have 360 mg of omega 3 instead of 300, so I don't have to take as many.
I started with 10 at breakfast this morning. My breath tastes a little fishy, but other than that, no big deal...
And P.S. -- this breakfast was freaking amazing. Whole Foods sells a mix of chopped up garlic, onions and shallots for us lazy people who don't have the time or forethought to do it ourselves. So, we cut up some bacon, when it was ready, added the breath busting concoction to the mix with a bunch of mushrooms and cilantro. Added some eggs, and it became the best-yet morning scramble.

A PULL UP!!!

I got my first unassisted pull up today!
I can not explain how happy I am. I have always the weakest upper body, never an ounce of definition on my arms. So when I started Cross Fit, I immediately decided a pull up would be one of my biggest goals because honestly, it seemed completely unattainable.
It happened when I dropped in at Cross Fit South Bay this afternoon. Forrest and I went in about 45 minutes before class started and did a really long warm up -- stretching, practicing double-unders, doing overhead sqauts against the wall with a PVC.
We had some time to kill before the WOD, so I practiced kipping. If you don't do Cross Fit, then you might think the way we do pull ups is strange. We swing on the bar, using momentum and core strength to help out our arms. Up to now, I've always used a rubber band to give me the extra help I needed to do WODs with pull ups.
Then today, after about 10 tries, it suddenly made sense. I kipped a couple times, then went for it, and my chin actually made it over. I was so surprised that I let out a yelp, then shouted, "I did it!" To a room full of mostly people I had just met. I didn't even care, though. I was so happy I could have cried.
So I've done my first pull up. Problem is, I couldn't do a second tonight. It's like when I was learning how to gleek as a kid. Every once in awhile I could get my mouth to do it right, sending a skinny stream of saliva onto who or whatever. But I never quite knew exactly what I was doing, and I could rarely do it on command.
Right now, for the pull up, it's the same. The difference is I'm not giving up on this. I know I'm close to getting the rhythm right. I know I have it in me to do one. And if I can do that, it won't be long till I'm doing two, then three.
This picture is from after the WOD today (we did 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1 kettlebell snatch, kettlebell swing, goblet squat). I was determined to do just one more, but my hands were already raw from the kettlebells. Got close on two then ripped my hand. Which is another first.
The other two hands are Forrest's -- he effed them up doing power cleans yesterday and the snatches today. Tough love...

Supplement suggestions

I have a confession.
I know I'm supposed to be taking handfuls of fish oil every day. And some days, I do. But others (and by others, I mean most), I forget. Which also could be contributing to some of the more annoying changes I've experienced since starting Paleo a month ago.
(I've written about the girl issues. Here's another weird one: Every once in awhile after a day when we're working with heavier weights, my fingers will swell the next day. And sometimes my knuckles will bruise, even though I haven't knocked them on anything.)
SO, I know I should be taking fish oil religiously, and that it will help my body weather some of these changes and just BE healthier. And I'm going to Costco today to buy the gigantic bottle Justin told us about when we all started. I was feeling pretty good about the newfound committment to taking supplements this morning when I peeked at the South Bay Crossfit website and saw a really thorough and interesting post about even more supplements I should consider taking.
Mariessa makes some good suggestions, and I love how she explains what each supplement is and how it's supposed to help you change. I don't think I'm ready to fill my medicine cabinet with funny-smelling pills just yet, but I think I'll try some of them out. This one is first:
"Consider adding ALA (alpha-lipoic adid) at 500mg per day. ALA is a potent antioxidant and is key to glutathione production in the body (yet another antioxidant). It may also help improve insulin sensitivity, especially when transitioning from a heavily carb-based diet."
So which supplements are all of you taking? And how do you decide which are right for you?
(Oh, and that's Mackenzie in the picture up there. She just beat all the girls in the totally cindy challenge. Awesome work, girl!)

Poop-plantation

Why I was at Souplantation the other night is a long story.
Let's just say it involves one of my favorite friends Vanessa turning 30 and wanting to revisit a place where we loved to pig out growing up.
So a group of girlfriends (including two of their small girl kids) met up at the Souplantation in Garden Grove. Over the years, Vanessa started calling it "poop plantation" because the food always made her have to go. Like immediately after eating. Which is obviously gross and should have been a red flag long ago to stay away.
STILL, when she decided "poop plantation" was the place where she wanted to celebrate her 30th, I was relieved because I figured, being a salad bar and all, that there would be plenty of paleo stuff to eat.
Not so.
The garbage they offer up disguised as healthy food is a perfect example of why America is fat. The idea here is that you build your meal around a heaping salad. Problem is, there's no protein. Anywhere. Not even the little cups of chicken you used to be able to buy for some outrageous additional price of $3 bucks.
Instead, they fill up hungry customers with starch and sugar, from a bakery bar with muffins and pizza and all sorts of gooey mystery cake to a pasta bar where you can choose from cream sauce, and oh, more cream sauce.
I remember eating here as a kid and feeling like, it being a buffet and all, that I had to eat my money's worth. At more than $10 a person now, I'm sure plenty of cash-strapped people in the working class neighborhood where I grew up are going back for seconds and thirds.
And I'm sure plenty of them feel like it's healthy. "Sure, I had a couple small squares of pizza bread dipped in ranch, but I had a salad for dinner. And it was frozen yogurt for dessert. I might wither to nothing."
I guess I never realized just how much bad for you food replaces quality nutrition in an effort to keep down overhead and increase profits.
Literally everything came with a side of carbs. Which is why my friend Michelle was surprised when she saw my plate, piled with salad -- some spinach and green lettuce, mushrooms, olives, tomatos and oil and vinegar -- and wondered why it looked so healthy.
My plate isn't healthy, I told her. I need meat. I tried to find it at the soup bar, where two of the chicken and veggie broth-based soups said there was meat inside. But even those were loaded with noodles or rice or both, so dinner felt more like a search for submerged meatballs than having a meal.
Then I went home and made a turkey bacon and egg scramble. And the world was right again.

Strange changes

A warning: Do not read this if you're uncomfortable with girl issues, e.g. you're a guy.
Seriously.
This is your last chance to stop reading.
So I debated for awhile about whether to write something about this, but since this blog is supposed to be about adjusting to paleo and tracking all the changes that come with it, I decided I should, especially in case this is happening to others.
Mid-way through the first month on Paleo, I started spotting when I wasn't supposed to be. Heavily. That's never happened to me before, and since my diet and weight loss (11 pounds since starting Crossfit, woohoo!) are the only things that have changed in recent months, I figure that might be the cause.
So I've been looking online and found a couple message board discussions (here is one, and another) about women on low-carb diets experiencing the same thing. But so far, I haven't found anything from a trusted online source about why these changes are happening.
So I asked Forrest to talk to his CrossFit trainer Mariessa about it. While she could easily kick my ass with one arm, she's also one of the nicest people around. Mariessa says spotting is normal as my body adjusts to the changes in my diet at the same time it's handling the shock of intense exercise. Nothing to worry about, and it will go away soon, once my body gets used to life without sugar highs and lows.
Another friend heard that eating Greek yogurt would help -- something about girls needing the enzymes. Mariessa disagrees, and suggested not to stray from the diet until my body adjusts. Eventually, you can start adding back foods to see how you feel and what works for you, she says. But at first, better to go all or nothing.
To be honest, my review of info online about this topic is pretty limited, and I'm interested in learning more. So if anyone has had a similar experience, or read anything about this, post it here. And if you're all completely grossed out, sorry. But don't say I didn't warn you!

God bless this food.

Seriously. Nothing is better than a $5.99 lemon roasted chicken from Albertson's.
Today, I cut off some pieces, sliced some avocado and doused the whole thing in Tapatio. Yum. For dessert, I had a white peach.
Another paleo favorite is shabu shabu. Lindsay mentioned her favorite spot in Costa Mesa. I love Sakura Shabu Shabu in Huntington Beach. What is shabu shabu, you ask? Read this review I wrote awhile back.
This picture is from last night.

Done with days: Fishy breakfast, busted body

I slept in my own bed in my own house for the first time in two weeks last night. Felt great.
What did not feel great was coming home from CrossFit this morning and realizing that I also hadn't been grocery shopping in two weeks. I'm going to take care of that after work today. But that was no help this morning when the only paleo food I could scrounge up was a warm can of Whole Foods tuna and a plum.
I don't know if it was "Elizabeth" or the breakfast that made me want to puke more.
On another note: I've been nursing a couple injuries for about a month now. The first happened when I fucked up a hang clean. The second is a knee injury. I didn't really know the cause of that one until Saturday night when I asked my brother to take a look.
Some background: My brother is the head athletic trainer at a local college and has been on staff for several college and professional athletic teams. So he knows what he's talking about.
I asked him to take a look at my wrist and explained how I thought I injured it. Turns out, my injury isn't in my wrist at all. Apparently I strained some really small muscles in my forearm while incorrectly trying to heft up a lot of weight with them. That caused caused the tendons to swell. It was most painful in the wrist because the tendons run through a smallish tunnel on the way to my hand. When they're swollen, they've got a lot less space to run through, which amplifies the pain. (If I've got terminology for tendons and muscles wrong, forgive me. You get the gist.)
Anyway, in the process of rehabbing that injury, my brother asked to see some of the other movements we are doing in CrossFit. Generally, he's stoked on the work outs, loves Olympic lifting and the other basic exercises we do. He does have some concerns about the body's natural tendency to sacrifice form for speed in a competitive atmosphere.
And his example of that was my squatting. He could immediately tell I my left knee is injured because I was favoring my right one every time I squatted. And he said that injury likely occurred because I was squatting incorrectly in the first place.
That's no surprise to me. Every time I squat heavy weight, my knees tend to buckle in. My trainers have pointed that out and told me to stop it, but I guess I never understood the consequences of not being extra careful while following that advice. In addition, I guess the alignment of my knees (and being a woman with wide-ish hips) make me predisposed to this sort of problem. The solution is to be extra conscious of pushing out my knees (ie, pointing in the same direction as my feet) when I swat and narrowing my stance.
So usually I wouldn't write about my aches and pains -- I'm not a pansy or anything. But I guess I just realized that we have to take a higher level of personal responsibility doing these intense workouts. If something hurts, it's important to ask for help figuring out what might be the cause. The trainers at CrossFit are awesome and really knowledgeable, but they can't be everywhere and see everything all the time.
I'm really looking forward to building momentum at the box this week. How's everyone else doing on Paleo?

Day 1: Again....

Back from Nicaragua, and I'm starting this post as a second day one because the diet was pretty impossible to maintain while there.
I spent most of my time in one of the poorest towns in one of the poorest countries in the world. I was staying in a small, stark surf bungalow, and there was one option for every meal: what the cook there made. There was no grocery store within 30 miles of where I stayed. The chef did a good job at thinking of vegetarian alternatives, but those usually consisted of rice and beans. So there were several days when the only thing for me to eat was a lean protein. I brought along almonds and beef jerkey and was able to stick to paleo foods for the first four days, but the proportions were all off and it was doing some not so pretty things to my body.
The rest of the trip, I ate mostly paleo, but where I had to cheat to be full, I did. I also allowed a cheat day to try some native food -- the most gigantic tamale I've ever eaten.
I can't tell you how much I could feel the difference when I stopped eating paleo food. Felt sort of like when you quit smoking, then have a cigarette. Maybe the first drag is good, but it leaves you feeling not so great afterward.
I'll be back in the OC Crossfit gym Monday. Can't wait to see you guys.
I'm in the south bay for the rest of the week. Going to drop in a Xfit gym up here.
On another note: An anonymous commenter wrote the other day that I should read up on paleo, and I totally agree. So I'm starting "Paleo Diet for Athletes" by Loren Cordain, PhD. so I can have a better understanding of this.
That being said, a three-month paleo challenge is hardly "drinking the Kool-Aid." It's an experiment, a way to see whether this makes me feel good and gets positive results. Part of the reason for blogging about it is to document that, and to clarify things I might not understand with the help of people who read this. So if you see something I'm eating that isn't paleo, let me know. And please explain why it's bad. But telling me that I'm somehow brain washed and that my CrossFit instructors' advice is way off just because I post a photo of some organic turkey meat is hardly productive.

Day 8: In awe

Justin blogged the other day about the philosophy of CrossFit, the healthy competition and drive to improve that catapults members into better shape.
I started CrossFit with my good friend Lindsay (that's her after Saturday's workout -- photo courtesy Orange Coast Crossfit), and I love it when we get to work out together because with every workout, she's so determined to push through and lift more and go faster. It keeps me honest and motivated. And being able to see how we improve together has been awesome.
Well, except when she completely kicks my ass during a workout like she did this morning.
Lindsay did the workout today Rxd, which means it's the prescribed weight for all around bad-ass girls. I've been able to rx a couple workouts, but I'm still not strong enough to do the majority of them. This morning's WOD was 21-15-9, burpees, push press and kettlebell swings.
The rx for push press was 65.
I started the workout rx'd just like Lindsay. But after struggling through four push presses on my first round, I had to drop 10 pounds. And even then, I was still dumping weight throughout the WOD. Meanwhile, Lindsay just got it done in what I'm sure were painful sets of four.
Great fucking job this morning, Linds. You killed it. And now you have me imagining how I'm going to do shoulder workouts in Nicaragua.
(And cheap plug: Lindsay is a top wedding/party planner, so check out her website if you know anyone who's walking down the aisle soon.)

Day 7: Carnivorous cravings

So today ends the first week of paleo challenge. I'm feeling great. And just now noticed, that instead of craving frozen yogurt or nachos, all I really want to eat is meat.
Anyway, I like lists. So I'm going to list some of the paleo foods I'm really loving so far.

• Sparkling water: It cured my cravings for diet coke quick. And it's so much more refreshing. Squeeze in some oranges and it's like a virgin paleo mimosa.
  
• Almond butter: So good on fresh apples.
• Paleo smoothie: Frozen blueberries, strawberries, a small splash of fresh squeezed orange juice with no sugar added and heavy whipping cream. Blended. Forrest's CrossFit trainer told him the heavy cream is ok because it's not pasteurized and processed the way regular milk is. Let me know if you hear differently.
  
• Turkey slices with avocado.

And here are some things I'm still missing.

• Hummus
• Cheese
  

Day 6: Paleo-friendly fiesta

What? We can have margaritas, and it's not cheating?
Lindsay just sent me this photo and a recipe for these margaritas.
I think we need to have a paleo fiesta soon. Who's in?
Strawberry Margaritas:
Fresh strawberries
100% Agave Tequila
Agave Nectar
Ice
Cointreau
Fresh Lime Juice

Day 6: After the marathon

Ok, so I'm not talking about a real marathon. But the past two days have felt like one: Up before 6, in bed after midnight, with jam-packed days.
And miraculously, no need to cheat.
I owe a big part of that to two people who helped me out huge this week.
First meet Laylan, my roommate and dear friend. I had one hour after work on Thursday to pack for a trip, shower, take apart my bed for the new mattress delivery guys and eat before I had to rush to LA for a meeting. Laylan to the rescue.
I've got to start by saying, Lay is a great cook. And part of the reason for that is she's not cheap with the ingredients that make things taste delicious, such as olive oil and cheese and cream and bananas fried in butter with ice cream and Nutella. So when I first told her I was doing paleo, the conversation went something like this:
"What about rice?"
Me: "No rice."
Lay: "But you can have tortilla chips?"
Me: "No."
Lay: "Golden Spoon?"
Me: "I wish"
Lay: "Good luck with that.."
So fast forward to Thursday, and Laylan tells me that she's going to have dinner ready so I can just eat really fast and leave. She grilled cod topped with a homemade sauce of pureed garlic and spices from her garden. Then she baked cauliflower with spicy red flakes on top and made a paleo version of caprese (without the cheese, but add pine nuts). Um, hello five star restaurant in my living room!!












So awesome person #2 is Forrest. Let me start by saying that Friday was equally nuts. I was up at 5 a.m. to get to the airport for a quick work trip up the coast. Didn't have time to eat before I left, so I ended up having this sort of disgusting scramble at LAX:
I also grabbed some almonds and water at the airport for snacking later that day, and I raised some eyebrows at lunch, when, at this fancy restaurant with a pretty limited but very specific menu, I was ordered my meal with tons of modifications and turned down the waiter's offer for a free dessert.
My returning flight was delayed and didn't get in until 9. But I hadn't eaten anything but coffee and almonds since 2, so Forrest picked me up from the airport, and when I was showering and about to pass out, he was grilling steaks and veggies: broccoli and artichoke hearts. It was so good, and I'm bummed that I was too tired to think of taking a picture of it.
So this brings me to a new dilemma: I leave next week for a week-long surf trip in Nicaragua. I'm going to pack a couple bags of nuts, maybe some nut butter, and beef jerky in case the villages where we go don't have enough paleo food. Anyone have some suggestions for what else I should do to prepare for that?
When I can find a computer, I'll update from there about how THAT's going.