Fix Friday

When I started CrossFit, I had never heard of Paleo. I remember my sister telling me how some people at the box ate that way, and when I asked her what it was, so she told me how they don't eat bread, and potatoes, and basically ate only meat, fruit, veggies and nuts. Nuts?! They sure were! I was like, "uhh...that's dumb. I'll never eat that way." Buuuut...the more I CrossFitted, the more I heard about it, and then I started following bloggers like PaleOMG, and Balanced Bites and started to learn why people ate that way. I started to learn more about food, and how it affects your body, and then I started to pay more attention.

Now, the point of this blog is not to go into Paleo, or any of that. The point is to talk about the influences I have had, that changed my thinking about food. Coz lemme tell you...when you hit 30, your body starts reacting different to food. Like me...never had to worry much, then I hit 30, and the pounds came, and never left! I HAD to change the way I handled food.

Ok...back to my thoughts. So then after 3 years of CrossFitting...it seemed to me the tides were turning. Paleo peeps started to say that actually....you DO need carbs. You cannot do workout as intense as CrossFit and NOT fuel your body with carbs. People that had tried it, eventually found they got sick and/or their performance changed. But...they had to be GOOD carbs. Then I started hearing about macros...counting them, and balancing them, and eating them at certain times of the day, to make them work for you. I did a challenge through my CF box with the purpose of leaning out (yes, please), and learned about some new websites that helped me calculate how many calories I should eat, and how many grams of protein/carb/fat I should consume a day. Problem? The calculators were confusing...I have never been the math whiz. Like with any task, teach me and I'll learn, and math takes a lot of brain power. ESPECIALLY when I need to keep converting grams and whatever the opposite of a gram is....it confused me more than anything, and I did not find it particularly helpful. A coach was nice and offered to calculate for me. I took her calculations, and tried to plug them into My Fitness Pal. Yeaaa....that wasn't happening either! MFP would not let me customize my calculations to the exact numbers I needed...so throughout the day, I had to keep looking at the post-it note on my desk at work and say "OK...how many grams of protein am I suppose to eat again? As you can imagine...it did not work, and I was finding myself spending WAY too much time the night before,  planning out my meals, and entering it all into MFP to make sure it evened out, and I was set for my meals for the day. This just all seemed way too hard.

Then...I discovered The 21 Day Fix. It was a food system created by a fitness figure competitor and model, as well as a trainer at The Equinox in LA, named Autumn Calabrese. She is the cutest little firecracker, and I was drawn in. She had these cute rainbow colored containers that did exactly what I was looking for...they balanced out my macros EXACTLY to the same % as what I was told by my CF coach, but the science and the work was already done for me. When I bought the kit, there was a simple calculation I had to do, to figure out what calorie range I fell in, then I just had to eat that many of each food group for the day. SO EASY!!!! I did not need to play around with MFP, I did not need to do any fancy math calculations (the one I did have to do was so easy, my first graders could do it), and I also did not need to measure. The portion control piece was built in. This was a no brainer, and I could tell...a game changer. BONUS: chocolate and wine were allowed....as well as eating out. Um...winner!!!!

So...this post is getting quite long. I am told I am long winded. I blame it on being Italian. We love to talk! I'll hurry it up... my first Fix Friday will be on Chipotle. Why there? Because they just opened a brand new one seconds from my house, and because, like so many other people, I thought...oh it's healthy! They have salads to cut back on the carbs, I can get beans (protein) meat (protein) brown rice (healthy carb) and lettuce (veggies). That's a good meal choice. Right? Right?????? I could even add some guac for a healthy fat. OK...so watch:

In my currently calorie range (which is low b/c I am injured and not doing any intense working out) I can eat 4 servings of protein (red), 3 servings of vegetables (green), 2 servings of fruit (purple), 1 serving of carbs (yellow), 1 serving of a healthy fat (blue), and 2 servings of an extra (orange) for the day. Now...here is the salad I ordered from Chipotle.

Barbacoa salad with brown rice, black beans, grilled veggies, cheese and pico de gallo.

I made it easier for my experiment and got the cheese, beans and rice on the side, so who knows if that is the actual portion they give you when they free serve, but they stopped at the size of the container. Here is what I found when I put the items into my containers:

The meat was a little short in my portion allotment and the grilled veggies were half a serving.

In total, the lettuce was 2 servings of veggies. So, in eating this salad, with the grilled veggies, I only had 1/2 a serving of veggies left for the day.

The rice and the beans were both 1 serving of carb. So, this was OVER my daily allotment. Yes, beans are not counted as a protein (learning curve) but as a carb.

And the cheese fit my portion size, but since I get one a day, I cannot have a healthy fat for the rest of the day (good thing I did not get guac.)

This is an example of what I have learned about eating through becoming more into fitness, and it is what I have learned in using the 21 Day Fix. Is this a new concept? Nope! But Autumn made what I was trying to do EASY by setting a system up for me that was user friendly and error proof. So, while I can eat out and make it fit my lifestyle, I have to be aware of things....next time I go to Chipotle, I can't have both beans and brown rice...I have to choose one, and know that is my carb for the day. I'll skip the grilled veggies because I will still want to have veggies for another meal. I will want to have half the cheese, so that I can have a healthy fat with another meal. Balancing out food like this, is what you have to do if you want to be healthy, and lose what you have. Portion control and food balance is hard, but this system make it easy. #justmytwocents

Gettin' My Groove Back

Hey! So, I started this blog, and then got busy....and injured! I talked a lot in my first blog about injuries I have gotten in doing CrossFit, and a week or two after that post, I started having some pain in my hamstrings. I thought they were super tight and needed to be stretched. I signed up to do the CrossFit Open, and only made it through 14.1. The next day I ran an 8k. No matter what I did, I could not get that hamstring to stretch. Well, those two workouts were the last ones I did, and that was at the beginning of March. Turns out my bulging disc never went away, and all the while I was CrossFitting, the bulge kept slipping more and more. An MRI in April showed it had slipped 16mm and that hamstring issue I was having was actually sciatica. Have you ever had that? IT IS TERRIBLE!!!! I had it for 3 months before it finally went away. I had countless hours of driving (commuting), sitting in meetings, working with my students (and trying to sit for small group instruction), and it was rough.

So what did I do? I called my doctor and asked for muscle relaxers and pain meds...which she gave me, and I took until it ran out. I also started going to a chiropractor, who was also from my CrossFit box, and a sport massage therapist, whom my brother-in-law sees (he's a retired Marine who was in 2 serious car accidents, and is now on disability). I racked up some good credit card debt seeing both of them once a week for about 2 months straight. My chiropractor also took a homeopathic route with me, which I liked, and got me on natural supplements to reduce my inner inflammation, so I could get off the pain meds my doctor gave me. She also suggested I go Gluten Free (ummm....still workin' on that one). Then, at the beginning of May, she announced she was homesick, and was moving back to New York, and I have not seen a chiropractor since the last week of May. I also have not seen my massage therapist due to a scheduling glitch (and then my head gasket blew, and I had to replace my car engine among other things).

So NOW what am I doing? I am falling back on Beachbody. My chiropractor had told me in our last few sessions that I was progressing enough to start pilates, as I badly need to work on my core. I also wanted to start yoga because I have lost SO much mobility and flexibility since doing CrossFit. But, until I get out of my credit card debt, I refuse to pay hundreds of dollars to join a yoga or Pilates studio...so, I went the next best route and got PiYo.

PiYo is a hybrid of Pilates and Yoga, taught by celebrity trainer Chalene Johnson. The program is centered on getting toned and shredding fat, with low impact on your body. No weights, and no jumping (both things I cannot handle). So here I am....I am starting my new journey with PiYo. Although my sciatica is gone, I still have lower back pain where my bulge is, and I cannot run, jump, and still no CrossFit. Check  back here to see how I am doing :)

Meet Me!

Hello :)  My name is Christy and I am a teacher and proud mama to a beagle named Vinnie. I am starting this blog to share about all things fitness related. I do not have a big fitness background. I did gymnastics, color guard and karate when I was younger. I was on the archery team in middle school, swam JV my junior year of high school and V my senior year, and then just stopped! I chose to work more than join anything fitness related that I wanted to. Honestly, I was SO skinny my whole life (in high school, I was asked a handful of times if I was anorexic), I never felt I had to workout, as I just thought working out was for people who needed to lose weight. I grew up in a family that owned a pizza parlor, and I ate anything and everything I wanted, and was always very lean. I remember wanting to run, but was hesitant because my younger sisters always made fun of the way I ran, and so I was self conscious about it.

After I started teaching 11 years ago, I joined a couple of gyms-Club One and Fitness 19, but hated it! First of all, I could never find an accountability partner that was as serious as I was, and they never wanted to keep a regular schedule like I did, so I was always going alone. Second, I knew nothing about weight lifting (I remembered nothing from my swim years) and most gyms I have been in are filled with beefy men, that look at you as if they have never seen a woman in their life (gross), and they hog all the weight machines. Not only that, but I really did not know how to use the machines, so I just kept to the elliptical and would do workouts on machines that I found in magazines. I found a bikini workout in a Shape magazine article once that took me through a series of workouts, explained how to use the machines, so I would go do that. Eventually I just stopped going, and then did yoga while getting my Masters degree.

Around that time, which was 3.5 years ago, my sister started talking about CrossFit. She had some friends that had just opened a box, and I was intrigued. I did not join right away as I lived about 60 minutes from the box, but eventually ended a 9 year long relationship, and moved back into the area. I joined CrossFit and fell in love. I was in my box's first On Ramp program, and quickly made a friend named Chelsae, who was just as dedicated to being fit as I was (and also a former competitive gymnast), and still goes to this day. I was so out of shape when I joined, that I could not run a half mile, nor jump rope longer than 30 seconds without being super out of breath, and needing to stop. What was nice though, is that my coach could care less, told me it was OK, and that I would be in shape in no time. I could barely lift weights beyond just the bar, and was not even close to doing a pull up. The cool thing was that no one ever made me feel dumb, and in fact everyone was just super encouraging. They showed me how to modify, and I slowly learned how to do the moves. I liked how I walked in and was told what to do (no more walking into a gym and feeling awkward), and how to do it. It took a lot of stress off me. I also did not have any weirdos staring at me...to do this day, my box has always brought in super cool people, who have good jobs, and are flat out just good people.

10 months after joining CF, I was doing a birthday WOD for a member turning 25, and in that WOD were snatches. On my second or third snatch, something went very wrong in my back, and I dropped to my knees. It took about 30 seconds before I could move, and I had to crawl out of the way, and to a wall, where I stayed, and eventually stood up and rolled against a ball, but it hurt too much. I was set to hang out with some friends at a festival that day, but had to cancel as I could walk but 5 steps before my back would spazz. I now think this was the first sign I had a bulging disk...something that continues to plague me, and slowed down my fitness progress. It soon healed, and then I threw it out again the following March after a run. I can't remember the distance, but it was either a 5k or an 8k...after the run I got plantar fasciitis in my left foot, and did a WOD the day after the run that involved 16kg KB swings, and deadlifts. After that, my back was smoked and it took several months for me to be able to lift again. So..to make a long story short, my back has been an on going thing, and I also got PFS in my knee, but I have just learned things I need to do to prevent this from happening, I have gotten a lot smarter about my form when CrossFitting, and have just learned more about how to take care of myself.

One thing I know, is that CF is pretty hard on your body. You do so many repetitive movements over and over, and you go heavy and fast, and it's bound to get you one way or another. One thing I have learned about CF too, is that it focuses on functional movements, and your bigger muscles, whereas when you go to the gym and do things like bicep curls and kickbacks, you are working more of the smaller muscles. I have learned that my smaller muscles are weak, and I have been working my larger ones so hard that they have been compensating for my weaker ones, and eventually have caused me to get hurt.I have since had to kind of back things up...I lift lighter, and focus more on form. I have been trying to strengthen my core my glutes, and all the smaller muscles that don't get regularly worked in CrossFit.

More recently, I have started doing some Beachbody programs (and became a coach) to supplement my CF workouts in hope that I can increase those little muscles, especially my core. Beachbody is another excellent fitness community where the people are super supportive, very motivating, and very supportive.I started with Body Beast, but doing an extra hour of working out was very hard for me. Then P90X3 came out, and I am currently in Week 8 of that program. I feel that doing CF has made it easier for me to do this program, but it still gives me a run for my money! I still struggle to do the core workouts, and since I am following the Lean Out schedule, it gives me a lot more cardio than I care for :)  which is actually helping me improve my endurance. Another thing that I have proven to myself over & over is that diet, as they say, IS KEY. I will save some of these learning for another post, but I more recently purchased The 21 Day Fix to help with that piece.

Sooo...I know that was super long winded, but I just wanted to introduce myself with a bit of my background so that you know where I am coming from. Thanks for visting my blog, and I hope that if you like what you read, that you will follow me and comment to let me know you stopped by.