F*$@ Yeah!

Excuse my language, but I fucking love these girls and this gym.
Last night was box jumps and burpees. And every single one of these women dominated. Awesome.

Technical difficulties

Apparently when I added this new blog skin, I deleted the ability for people to leave comments or sign up as a follower. (I'm sure all eight of you wonderful people who read this are just dying to leave comments!). Anyway, I'll figure out how to fix it tonight ... Until then, if you want to leave a comment, you can email me at jennifer.r.muir@gmail.com, and I'll post it in a blog.
Thanks for reading, friends.

Domestic violence

I accidentally let it slip last night to my brother that I'm on a Paleo diet.
That wouldn't be a problem if I was talking to anyone but Russ, who's an athletic trainer, likes to argue and has an over-developed sense of outrage for anything he thinks is a health and fitness trend.
I said the word Paleo, and an alarm sounded in his head, blaring that Paleo eating must be ill conceived and I must be stupid for trying it out. By the time his mental rant was finished and he opened his mouth to ask a question, I'm sure he already grouped Paleo with Atkins and hippies and Prius drivers and all the other stereotypes that set him off.
So instead of continuing the discussion, I told him I'd send him some links to websites about the thinking behind Paleo. It's not the bold stand I could have taken, but I figure that given some more time, and even more positive results, he'll come to accept that this is a good lifestyle change -- one i'm definitely not giving up when the two-month Paleo challenge at our box ends.
At this point, though, he either thinks it's fucking up the nutrients in my body, or that Forrest is beating me.
About an hour after our conversation about food, he looked at my legs and noticed a line of bruises up each of my shins. If my shorts were any shorter, he would have seen them on my mid-thighs. There are some on my shoulders, too.
"Are you eating ANY red meat on this diet?"
Lots of it, I told him.
See, I did Elizabeth at CrossFit South Bay on Tuesday. And I came in early to practice because I've been struggling to get my front racked position right -- whether I'm cleaning or pressing. Justin has been working with me on making sure the bar hits on my shoulders instead of leaning back and letting it slam lower on my chest when I'm doing a push press. On Tuesday, Mariessa also helped me with the breakdown transitioning from deadlifting to the clean, where the momentum should start and how to get a full extention. (The woman in this picture isn't me -- she's from CrossFit Winnipeg. But I'll post mine as soon as it's in the gallery.)
Anyway, I was exaggerating every movement and repeating a lot, so I got a little black and blue. Honestly, looking at them makes me feel proud. So I smiled when answering his question.
"Those are from power cleans."
The look of surprise on his face was priceless.

Stocking up

This is Forrest's fridge. And I had to take a picture because it's pure Paleo heaven. I share my fridge with roommates who still have not bought into my new eating lifestyle. So our cupboards are packed with granola bars and crackers, our fridge contains all different kinds of cheese and sugary drinks, and inside our freezer, there are four different kinds of gelato and sorbet.
So I have a much deeper appreciation for how clean and nice a purely paleo-filled refrigerator can be.
He's got eggs, chicken, tons of veggies in those drawers. The OJ is freshly squeezed and used very sparingly in delicious paleo smoothies (this morning's had frozen blueberries, a splash of heavy whipping cream and a splash of OJ). There's tuna and nuts and the juice boxes on top are coconut water, which F loves but I think tastes like armpit.
In other news, after a couple days of fight gone bad dreaming, we did a slightly sideways version of the workout yesterday at CrossFit South Bay (subbed hang cleans for SDHP and double unders for rows). I know it's a different WOD with different goal marks, but I still redeemed myself by scoring 302. And at the beach on Sunday, I randomly ran into a woman who goes to CrossFit Laguna -- one of the boxes hosting the Fight Gone Bad fundraiser Justin recently wrote about. Felt sort of like it was a sign that it's going to pay off to confront head on the stuff that hurts the most. This is one, so I'm thinking I'm going to see if I can move my schedule around to attend this event. (And I already signed up for Race for a Cure. Please do the same!)
Alright, back to work. I'm in the south bay again tonight, back in my home box on Wednesday.
Until then...

Compliments

So last night I went up to Hollywood to see Point Break Live! with a group of friends, many who I haven't seen in a couple months. And before most of them even said hi, they commented on how skinny I look. None of them really knew I've been working so hard at Crossfit or following a paleo diet. But they said it so often that I thought Forrest had told them.
He swears he didn't.
Honestly, the compliments felt great. But it was also a little strange because while I've been focused on eating better and getting stronger, I haven't taken very much time to think about what I looked like before I started Crossfit. Inside, I feel the same. Outside, apparently not so much.
Some time this week, I'll find some photos from when Forrest and I went to Maui earlier this year and post them. It was just a couple weeks before I started Crossfitting. And I'll take some more this weekend to show the difference.

Crossfit dreams

Fight gone bad yesterday was brutal. It was my first time doing it, and Justin prescribed a lighter weight in hopes we'd be able to do more reps. Which worked for everyone -- but me. I scored 254 or something -- compared to all the other girls who had scores at least higher than 280. I know I shouldn't compare myself to other people, and that I should focus on my form and technique and finding ways to push myself harder. Still, I couldn't stop replaying the WOD in my mind all day, mentally telling myself I could have easily done more reps at each station, playing out how it would have looked and felt.
Apparently my subconscious likes that game because it didn't stop when I went to sleep. I woke up all night long, thinking I had just completed a one-minute station and needed to move on to the next. It was so strange. Even stranger was in the morning, Forrest said he had a similar dream.
Then he told me about the one he had a night earlier, which I think wins for best yet. In it, he was chasing after a bad guy or something, but every 400 meters he had to stop and do squats or push ups or sit ups.
Are we crazy, or does Crossfit get in anyone else's head like this too?

MIA and more

I have been such a slacker on this blog lately. And it's not because I haven't had stuff to write about.
For example, I ate dinner at the Crawfish House in Garden Grove on Wednesday, where they bring you bags full of deliciously steamed crab and crawfish and shrimp and sausage, bathed in oil and spice. Eating it was about as pretty as today's fight gone worse WOD is going to look.
Even worse was what happened later that night.
It's clear my body is loving clean, paleo eating. So much so that when I stuffed my face with the oily rich shellfish, my stomach was confused. The meal I ate technically fit within paleo guidelines. It was just a lot greasier than I'm used to eating. So I puked all night. That was fun.
Fastforward to last night. Went up to Echo Park to visit a friend who just moved and we ate Mongolian barbecue. So yum: You get to pick the meat, and all the fresh veggies you want, and they grill it all up on a gigantic circular hot plate on the spot.
A couple other things I've been meaning to mention on here all week:
1. Fish oil is awesome. I shouldn't be able to lift my arms after all the push jerks we did on Wednesday. And yeah, they're sore. But not nearly as bad as they would have been.
2. I can't thank Justin and Mike enough for their support and guidance at the gym. The other night when I was warming up, Justin noticed my squats were off. He was running a WOD and standing across the parking lot, but he still had his eye on everything that was happening -- another example of how he's a complete Cross Fit machine. Later that night, Mike stayed late -- even though he has to wake up super early Thursday mornings -- to help Pinky and me get our form right. He watched until we were done. And afterward, we talked about the beauty in failing at your heaviest weight: You know you're going to be able to do it next time.
I can't tell you how good it feels to know these people have my back every time I'm there, watching to make sure I don't get hurt and offering encouragement to push me to my highest potential. Lifting heavy weight has been scary for me lately. I think I got a little frightened after getting hurt. That fear has been subsiding this week. And it's all thanks to Justin and Mike. Thanks guys.
And finally, Punky and I were talking the other day about one of the few negatives that can be associated with Paleo eating: the cost of food. She said she's been spending $100 a week on groceries and challenged me to figure out how to reign in costs. I'm going out of town this weekend, but next week, I'll break down the cost of my eating every day. I don't know how much I spend each week on food, but I do know that it's less than that -- thanks largely in part to the Vietnamese grocery store around the corner from my house where I can load up a cart full of vegetables and pay less than $10. That's including a bag full of avocados.
SO: Stay tuned. Next week I promise I'll be more consistent. Until then, the Green Market is on Magnolia and Edinger in Fountain Valley if you want to check it out.