Food is good. More food is better. While my calorie level is pretty much the same, eating more carbs, especially some starchier carbs has me feeling better overall.

WOD

20090331
PCF WOD 090331
Back Squat
2-2-2-2-2-2
255-275-275-275-275-275

Notes: Didn’t have much of a warmup and wanted to do more of a volume day than a PR day. So even though I just did 2×305 last week, I’m not too concerned.

Diet

Dear god, two meals with fruit!! I was feeling pretty good today and yesterday, definitely noticed the mood and energy levels were up. We’ll see how the body weight and the WODs go the next couple of days. Tony said that it might take about two weeks to really see “take off” but my first full day (pretty close to my target 18P/12C/36F) was pretty good. Didn’t feel hungry and felt energized.

2 Comments »

Got a lengthy email from Tony L. of CF Fairfax that I’ll post once I ok it with him, but short version of his assessment is that I’m not losing weight because:

1) My carbs are too low, so my body isn’t ramping up my metabolism allowing me to burn off fat and perform better.
2) Because my carbs are too low, my calories are too low and I’m hungry all the time. This leads me to alter my intake a lot day to day and cheat because I’m so hungry.

So going forward, going to up protein and carbs and shoot for: 18P/12C/36F.

Most of the carbs are going to be post-WOD still.

WOD

Did this one at the Naval Academy because I helped out the Crossfit Intramural program again.

4 Rounds
1 Rope Climb, 15 ft
10 Push Press, 115 lbs
150 m Run
Rest 1 min
Post time of each round.

Times:
1:15
1:24
1:59
2:17

Notes: Interesting WOD, just picked it based off what was available and what I needed to work on. Doing the rope climb was fun, but I still do the “wrap around the leg” technique vice the “pin the rope between the feet” technique, and I was in shorts, so got some nice rope burn on my leg.

Diet

Went ahead and went to Tony’s instructions, felt a little sluggish after my last meal of the day, but the only reason I did 4 blocks on that one was because I just had one block of acorn squash left in the fridge, so just threw that in.

2 Comments »

Helped a buddy move to Manassas yesterday and saw this sign when I was leaving. I wish I had something pithy to say about it, but I’m suffering from Delayed Onset Hangover Syndrome following the PCF Happy Hour last night. Ouch…

Comments Closed

WOD

5 Rounds
2 Snatch, 135
30 Double Unders
Time: 5:53

Notes: I’ve got video of this but it’ll be a few days before I can get it up. Judging by the cuts on my thighs, the last part of my pull is pretty shitty. It means I’m not scooping and driving at the top and that I’m keeping the torso bent over too much too late. I really tried to focus on getting my hips down in the setup, but something was happening on the way up that was causing issues, but I’ll have to get the video downloaded and slowed down to figure out what.

Part of it is probably just being a little fried from yesterday and not having done snatch in a while.

Diet

We’ll see how the next few days trying this carb spread affects my weight and performance. It’s definitely easy and it’s a nice break from eating so much fibrous veggies. I’ve still got a bunch of acorn squash cooked up and am definitely looking forward to eating 4-6 blocks of that post-WOD tomorrow!

I’ll probably take tomorrow night as a cheat night because of the PCF Happy Hour. Some beers, bar food, and of course ice cream…so good.

1 Comment »

WOD

Wanted to do a WOD I haven’t done in a while but that was mainly bodyweight and this fit the bill:

G
20090325
“Tabata Something Else”
Complete 32 intervals of 20 seconds of work followed by 10 seconds of rest where the first 8 intervals are Pull-ups, the second 8 are Push-ups, the third 8 intervals are Sit-ups, and finally, the last 8 intervals are Squats. There is no rest between exercises.
Keep track of ALL reps from all 8 intervals of each exercise for a TOTAL rep count of all 32 intervals at the end.

Pullups 16/13/11/9/9/8/7/X=73 (actually missed a set here, stupid!!!)
Pushups 11/10/8/8/8/8/8/8 = 69
Situps (anchored/abmat) 13/13/12/13/13/13/12/13 = 102
Squats 16/13/13/12/14/14/14/17 = 113
Total = 357

Compare to 080611: 316
Compare to 080105: 325
Compare to 071025: 315

Tabata Something Else, Rob Miller…[wmv][mov]

Notes: Feel pretty stupid that I missed a round on the pullups. The Tabata Timer was even set to count rounds, but I was just listening to the beep.

Diet

Accidentally fasted this morning. Got up about 7:45, but wasn’t super hungry, so just let it ride until lunch at 11:30. Felt fine the rest of the day.

Little high on fat again, but trying to listen to my body and we’ll see how the performance and the scale goes.

1 Comment »

At first I thought it was anomalous: I had an athlete who was trying to Zone who continually didn’t hit his fat blocks.  Every day I’d take a look at his spreadsheet and his blog and he’d be short.

He’d have comments like “didn’t have any fat around, missed it again!!” and “Wow, it’s so hard to eat enough fat!!”

I was astounded.

Pictured above is what I could grab within arms reach when I decided I wanted a little extra fat one night, here we have:

Almond Butter
Peanut Butter
Pistachios
Pistachio Kernels
Pecans
Walnuts
Almonds
Pumpkin Seeds
Macadamia Nuts

In short, enough fat here for about two months easily.

My desk at work has a similar hodge podge in one of the drawers. A good supply of pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, and pecans. These rotate out frequently with some of the above.

My last Foundations Class I had another person start the Zone and had the same problem – not enough fat!! Hence the need to attack this growing global crisis head on.

If we want the body to shift to triglycerides as it’s primary fuel source we have to give it that fuel (fat) to burn. This along with quality proteins will stimulate the production of glucogon. This hormone is responsible for opening the flood gates of your bodies fat reserve. Check out Nicole Carroll’s Teeter Totter Video for more info:

Part I…[wmv][mov]
Part II…[wmv][mov]

So whether you are looking for weight loss or optimum performance, you’ve got to eat your fat!!

4 Comments »

Felt ok today but decided to take it easy. Was hungry all day today though. Managed to keep the carbs down but protein and fat got away from me a little.

This is an attempt lately to not be so neurotic about food, but still try to make some progress in leaning out and most importantly in performance. So just going to try to stay as strict as I can, but not going to go to the point where I’m starving constantly and just thinking about food because I’m no fun to be around at that point.

I do feel pretty fat today after this amount of food, we’ll see how the scale is doing tomorrow.

3 Comments »

WOD

Warmup
Row 500m
2 Rounds
Burgener Warmup, 45 lbs
10 Push Jerk, 45 lbs
10 Deadhang Pullups
Dynamic Stretching

Warmup Sets
Back Squat
3×95
3×135
3×185

W
20090323
Back Squat
3-3-3-3-3
215-235-235-2×305(PR)-1×295

Compare to 081209: 1×335
Compare to 081112: 5×285

Notes: Felt kind of crappy during the warmup, just not a lot of energy. Felt pretty good on the squats, especially since I haven’t done them in a very very long time. Also don’t know what my 2RM is, so hence the “PR”.

Diet

Little over on fat, but trying to not be super hungry so going as fibrous as I can on the carbs then adding some fat as needed to keep my hunger in check.

3 Comments »

WOD

Did yesterday’s NCR Military Hopper Challenge to benefit the Wounded Warrior Fund.  Note the patented overbite during the WOD – it’s what I do.

20090321
NCRMHC WOD
Run 200m
2 Rounds
10 Push Press, 75 lbs
10 Kettlebell Swings, 53 lbs
10 Ring Dips
10 Squats
10 Pullups
10 Burpees
10 Thrusters
10 Pushups
-
Run 200m

Time: 10:09

20090322
“Freddy’s Revenge”
5 Rounds for time:
5 Push Jerks, 155/125 lbs
10 Burpees
Post time to comments.

Time: 9:39 (from the rack)

Compare to 090110: 7:34 (from the floor)

Diet

Diet this week was pretty atrocious. Feel like trying to do a caloric deficit with really watching the fat intake tightly while I was sick (and before) got me into a bad groove. I was depressed and lethargic for a while because of the lack of fat.

So kind of went crazy for a few days on fat and am feeling much better. Couple of lessons learned over the last few weeks:

1) Listen to your body.

I really need to be more aware of my energy levels and mood as this affects performance.

2) Base everything on performance.

While I wasn’t losing weight anymore, my performance was still solid when I was doing some starchier carbs post-WOD and when I was erring on the side of too much fat. Once I decided to really stay tight on fat and to try to do nearly all fibrous veggies, I started to hit a wall performance-wise and also just wasn’t able to stick to any type of diet plan, so was cheating way way too much.

So going to try to get back into some starches after WOD (cooked up some sweet potato tonight and have some acorn squash that I’m going to cook for Tuesday). Also going to not worry too much about a little extra fat for flavor on meats and such.

4 Comments »

WOD

5x400m Run @ 2 min

Notes: Just set the timer on 2 minutes, went 90-95% each run, and went again at the end of 2 minutes. So the first run was about 1:20, last was about 1:45.

Skills

6 rounds each leg, PNF Hip Stretch

Notes: From Your Tight Hips Betray You by K-Star. My hips felt tight from yesterday, so the 400′s didn’t help much.

Diet

Not bad, but not weighing and measuring, just eyeballing. Dinner out tonight with Jenn as a special occasion, so probably going off the Zone for that…

As always, you can go here to see the spreadsheet.

1 Comment »