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.

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.