So, About That Challenge

As I mentioned last time, October 1 marked the beginning of a 30-day nutrition challenge at Crossfit Center City. I kicked off my challenge by meeting with a coach, where we took stats and reviewed a three-day food journal I kept last Saturday, Sunday and Monday.

Here are my goals, for 30 days as well as for the rest of 2011:

In case you can't read - my primary goals for October 31 are to lose enough body fat to drop another clothing size (for anyone playing along at home, that should take me from a size 8 back into a size 6. It won't necessitate buying new clothes yet but will open up a whole slew of pants I haven't worn since late 2009) and to seriously improve my pull-ups. Right now, I can do about 4 or 5 with the "light" plus "mini" bands, and can do one very ugly pull up with the mini band alone. If we're doing pullups in a metcon, I have to use the "average" band. By the time 30 days is up, I would LOVE to be repping them with a light band or better. Truth be told, this would actually make me even happier than dropping a pants size.

By 12/31/2011, I want to improve all three lifts for the Crossfit Total, to go from a 230lb DL to 250, from a 165lb back squat to 185, and from a 75lb press to 80, and to do bodyweight pull ups. And not need to go to my knees for pushups.

I have a lot of work to do.

BUT ANYWAY. Starting this week, my major focus was something I knew was coming, but was dreading: cutting out the artificial sweeteners.

I don't care about the 3/4 packet of sweet & low I usually add to my morning coffee. But I freakin' care about my precious diet soda. Remember that time I tried to switch to drinking only water at work to save money? Yeah, clearly that didn't go too far. According to my blog, I lasted at least a week, but I can tell you - although there's no record of it - that it definitely didn't last much more than that.

So I spent a few minutes washing my pink water bottle on Friday afternoon, since god knows when the last time was that I used it. And now that will be my best friend at work. I've been carrying around a freebie North Face squeeze bottle at home - something I picked up at the Philly Half expo last year - and I'll throw this random metal bottle I have into my gym bag. For someone who doesn't like to drink water, I sure have a buttload of bottles.

Okay, so. I'm cutting out the artificial sweeteners, at least for now. Erin promises this will have a tremendously positive effect on my health, and will aid me in reaching my goals. I'm skeptical, but clearly I need to give this the whole 30 days before I can really judge, so here goes.

The other big focus was to not eat fruit for breakfast. See, I used to eat fruit and plain Greek yogurt every morning, with the occasional granola mixed in. When I cut out dairy back in July, I swapped my 4-6 ounces of yogurt for a couple tablespoons of almond butter, but kept the fruit. Even though I found that the almond butter had more staying power than the yogurt, I would still end up hungry by 10:30 or 11 most mornings. This doesn't happen when I have eggs. So, I've been googling "microwave omelet" for the last ten minutes or so, and we'll see how that goes this week.

All in all...the past two days have been a little challenging, but nothing awful. Yesterday I spent hours baking pumpkin whoopie pies, and then filling said whoopie pies with two flavors of homemade frosting. I managed not to taste the batter, the frosting, the finished product, or so much as lick my fingers. I had dinner at my friend's house without an issue (due in no small part to the fact that I ate about half a rotisserie chicken and some raw green beans before I left the house). Today, when walking through Costco to stock up for the week, I couldn't help but feel small pangs of jealousy for people who were spending the day watching the game while chowing down on chips and dip. And I pretty much would have killed someone for a cold Pepsi Max with my steak tonight.

But so far, two days of success, down. 28 more to go. Here's to bodyweight pull ups.