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.

Last Supper

Today starts CFCC's fall body composition challenge. For the next 30 days, I am focusing on keeping my nutrition super-clean, starting to experiment with supplements, and gettin' strong. Adios, gluten. Buh-bye, copious amounts of fruit and Larabars. And - this is the one I'm really going to be bummed about - see ya later, artificial sweeteners. (As of now, my precious aspartame is the one thing I do plan to reintroduce come October 31, but we'll see.)

However...the challenge started today. October 1. Yesterday was September 30. Which meant my last chance for some unrestricted eats.

And I was so, so grateful that I had booked a class at Audrey Claire COOK months ago.

What better way to spend my last supper than with burgers handmade by Rob Wasserman and Michael Yeamans of Rouge? (And also of 500 degrees, which I thought opened a few months ago. Um, apparently it's been open for a year and a half. Fail.)

You better believe I started out with some bread. This was nice and crusty, with a dusting of salt on the ends and some fennel seeds baked in that I actually kind of liked. (I usually despise fennel, since I cannot stand licorice.)

As you can see, the space is fabulous - very intimate. There are sixteen seats spread around the bar, and you're only a foot away from the action at most.

It had a distinctive dinner party feel. Mike (who looks a WHOLE lot like Cliff Lee) did almost all of the hands-on work, while Rob led the show by talking through the courses and entertaining us. (By the way, sorry for the iPhone pics, but I wasn't sure if photography was going to be allowed so I didn't bother bringing the DSLR.)

First course was a tuna tartare, diced from the biggest, freshest slab of tuna I've ever seen, and tossed with a chili/soy sauce/rice vinegar dressing. It was served with salted wonton chips, some seaweed salad and an extremely pungent wasabi mayo.

The first course was paired with a light, crisp white wine - whites aren't my favorite, but this was decent. I was much happier when they started pouring a shiraz - it meant that the big guns were coming out. And I was right - we took a break between these two courses so that Mike could get our dessert (a flourless chocolate cake) in the oven.

After the miniature cakes were in the oven, he came around the table and gave a dollop of leftover raw batter to anyone who was willing to admit they wanted it. You better believe I got some, and ho.lee.shit. Five ingredients (sugar, eggs, butter, dark chocolate, heavy whipping cream) - serious bliss. I regret not taking a picture of that.

I didn't have too much time to mourn, because before I knew it, the burgers were fryin'.

O.M.G. Naturally, they weren't about to reveal their proprietary blend of meats, but they did confirm that it was 80/20, with a mix of beef, short rib and brisket. BRISKET. Under that beautiful blanket of gruyere is a pile of perfectly caramelized onions.

I mean, COME ON.

Third course was a truffled gnocchi. Below is about $600 worth of food: three white truffles, sitting gracefully in a bowl of dry rice, and a gigantic pile of truffle butter.

Mike showed Rob how to shave those gorgeous, expensive fungi over the handmade gnocchi.

This was easily my favorite dish of the night, and I am a serious, serious fan of red meat. The gnocchi were soft and pillowy, and the garlic oil and truffle butter combined with the shaved truffle was almost cheesy. I could have eaten a bucket of this.

A few minutes later it was time for dessert. (Cooked this time - not like the raw batter palate cleanser we had earlier in the night.)

The flourless chocolate cake was good, but not mind blowing. It stood up well to the Barbera that was flowing, and it somehow managed to be dense and fluffy at the same time.

("I like soup. It's a chunky soup...it's a liquid soup...it's chunky and liquid at the same time. I don't get how they do that shit.")

All in all, it was a fabulous night, and the best "last supper" I could have asked for. If any of you are considering it, DEFINITELY grab a reservation at Cook. It was a great experience - definitely a little pricey ($250 for PhillyGuy and I), but we got four courses, three free-flowing wines, and an intimate, informative cooking demonstration, with recipes to bring home. Maybe not a once-a-month thing, but we'll definitely be back. AFTER the body composition challenge, anyway.

Plus, being able to indulge like that last night made it juuuuuuust a little less painful to spend most of today baking goddamn pumpkin whoopie pies. I can't eat 'em, but DAMN do they look beautiful - plenty of pictures and I'll share tomorrow.

Happy weekend!

Weekend Update

It feels so good to finally have a second to catch up.

Thursday I tried Zumba with my friend. Um, WOW. I ran the 1.2ish miles from my house to Versa Fit at 16th and Walnut, which felt AMAZING - running outside really is so much better than the treadmill, both mentally and on my knees. It was the perfect warmup for the class, also - I am not, how shall we say...coordinated. At all. Being warmed up made it a lot easier for me to follow along with the instructor.

I'm still on the fence about whether Zumba is right for me. It was definitely a blast - I sweated like crazy and the class flew by - but all of the jumping and pivoting was not good for my knee. I will probably try once more, wearing my knee sleeve this time, to see if that alleviates the pain at all.

PhillyGuy and I ended this week by taking advantage of Friday's gorgeous weather by grilling a big fat steak. I put together my standby brussels sprouts/mushrooms/onions mix, with olive oil, kosher salt and pepper.

We had a super-thick ribeye in the freezer that must have been at least 24 ounces, so we split it.

Let me tell you, PhillyGuy makes a mean steak. He seasons it very simply - just salt and pepper and garlic powder - but MAN it's good.

(What can I say...I basically like my steak still walking.) And there is nothing in the world as delicious as these vegan oatmeal raisin sandwich cookies that we've discovered at Whole Foods on South Street.

Can of diet coke provided for size purposes. That cookie is the size of my face. The two of us share one and can't even finish the entire thing...but good grief, it's amazing.

I spent yesterday at Kleinfeld's with one of my best friends, who is getting married next February. I don't watch Say Yes to the Dress, but everyone else I was with does, so they were downright giddy picking out all of the people they saw on the show. Much to everyone's surprise, my friend picked out and bought a dress yesterday - it's absolutely gorgeous, and as soon as she held it up, her entire face just lit up.

Too bad we couldn't carry that feeling all the way home - it kind of got eaten up when we spent an hour getting through the Lincoln Tunnel. (Don't look at me - I wanted to take the train.) It was a long, LONG day - fun, but exhausting. I crashed hard when I finally got into bed, which is probably why it was so easy for me to be out the door at 8:30 this morning to go grocery shopping.

Now I'm hanging out in bed after polishing off a big fat bowl of Fage 0, Whole Foods bulk bin ginger granola, blackberries, blueberries, raspberries and strawberries.

It's in the 40s, sunny and not as windy as yesterday - I'm thinking it's a perfect day to try to get in my first "long run" for Broad Street prep. I haven't run more than 5 miles since the half in November, so this might be a little creaky, but I'm hoping that my fairly consistent shorter runs will maybe bring my pace down a tiny bit...we'll see.

Happy Sunday!

Water Update

So it's been a whole week since I decided to cut down on my personal black hole of spending: diet soda.

My full disclosure: as I stated originally, I don't intend to -- and haven't -- stopped drinking soda at home. I still have a couple glasses of it at night after work, with dinner and during my precious TV watching-and-internetting time.

BUT, I'm proud to say I haven't purchased or drank a single soda at work since last Thursday. And it hasn't been so bad!

The first morning was great. "Lookitmeeee! I'm drinking water! Who needs soda?? Not meeeeee!" and then I finished my first bottle, around lunchtime. And promptly got slammed with a craving for fizzy deliciousness. "Stupid water. This is stupid. I want diet coke, dammit." But, lucky for me, I didn't have any cash for the vending machine, and I didn't have the time to run downstairs, and besides -- I can't just give up that easily, right?

And I'm happy to say that since then, I've averaged two full 800mL/28oz bottles of water a day. One in the morning, one in the afternoon. Plus, of course, my iced coffee in the morning, and occasionally a second iced coffee in the afternoon. By "occasionally," I mean "once."



So, I'm doing pretty well, I'd say. I honestly haven't missed my daily 40-60 ounces of Diet Coke/Coke Zero/whatever, but that's probably aided by the fact that I'm still having about 16-20 ounces at night. I don't know that I've noticed any changes -- but to be fair, I haven't been paying much attention. Herding a pack of dogs has taken up most of my time this week.

Last night, I herded said dogs into their respective crates for some dinner while I hit the gym. And what an interesting evening at the gym it was. Now, I use my condo complex's gym. It's actually pretty decent, with a good variety of equipment, enough cardio machines that I've never had to wait, and a nice set of dumbbells in every weight I need. Best of all, it's free (or, well, not "free," but "included in the HOA fee"). But one of the drawbacks of a free gym is that anyone who lives there can use it. This occasionally means, say, having someone bring their child with them and having said child wander aimlessly about, randomly messing around with the machines. Or people who don't regularly attend the gym, and thus have no sense of etiquette (i.e. sitting on a machine to rest, not wiping their sweat off, doing strange calisthenetics in the middle of the floor and blocking access to the weights).

But last night, I think there may have been a certifiably crazy woman there. There I was, pedaling away on the bike and cursing the burn in my quads, when I started hearing a sort of wailing coming from behind me. It was loud enough that I could hear it over my music, but not loud enough so that I could tell what was going on. After maybe ten minutes of this, I managed to nonchalantly turn around.

There was a woman wearing a long, light blue jersey dress (I'd call it a maxi dress, but it had short sleeves) and Ugg slippers, hair down, singing along -- and LOUDLY -- to "Stayin' Alive," which I presume was playing on her ipod. She was hopping sort of wildly from machine to machine -- she'd do a few crunches on that ab-weight-machine, wail "stayin aliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive," jump up, run over to the leg adduction machine, bust out three or four thigh moves, "ah ah ah ah stayin alive, stayin alive," run over to the lat pulldown, knock out a couple of reps, continue singing and dash across the room to another random machine.

I'm wondering if we were being punked or something. Everyone in the gym was doing the same thing I was: trying to stare in disbelief while letting it appear as though you didn't even notice the bizarre turn of events going on in front of you.

Yeah. I cut my workout short last night.

Weird gym sightings?

Water?

Today's challenge?

This might not seem like a big deal to most of you. It's hardly news that you're supposed to stay hydrated, and it's hardly news that drinking water is generally the best way to do it.

But...ugh. Guys, I have a REAL PROBLEM with drinking water. I love it while I'm working out, but that's it. Period. Unless I'm sweating buckets, I just. Don't. Like. Water.



There, I said it. It's pretty much blasphemy, right? In a world where everyone just LOOOOOOOOOVES their water! OMG, it's SOOOOO healthy and refreshing and I make sure I drink three full Nalgenes a day! (Actually, it's probably not Nalgenes anymore, since they cause cancer or whatever -- what's the new fancy bottle? Sigg? Am I still living in the past? Whatever.)

Here's my second confession: I definitely stay hydrated. Constantly drinking. Um, no, not really THAT kind of drinking. But in the eyes of some (probably most, at least in this healthy-living blogworld), what I'm about to say might be just as bad.

I drink diet soda. All. Day. Long.

Yup. Pepsi Max is my favorite, followed by Coke Zero, followed by Diet Pepsi, followed by Diet Coke. And I'm not talking "oh, I have one can each day as a treat!" Nope. I'd estimate that I drink at least two liters of diet soda every day. By myself. I average one 20-ounce bottle in the morning and another in the afternoon. When I get home, I'm constantly refilling my glass. I probably take in enough artificial sweeter to kill a lab rat.

I think I'm going to try to change this habit. I have a pink Nalgene that lives on my desk. It's lived with me here at work for three years now. For a while, it got annihilated twice a day -- but not with yucky plain water. No, I would blow through those Crystal Light iced tea packets like nobody's business. Eventually, I ran out and for whatever reason, just stopped buying them. Not sure why.

And this brings us to confession number three. I'm going to try to force myself to drink water instead of soda at work...but not really because I buy the whole "diet coke will leach calcium from your bones and give you cancer and make you fat" argument. Um, no. I'm trying to change my habits because SODA IS EXPENSIVE. I'm averaging TEN 20-ounce bottles every week -- probably more like twelve, because there are definitely days where I go through three a day. Even assuming I buy all of them from the soda machine at work (cheapest around at $1.25 each -- they are $1.75 at the convenience store downstairs, and more like $2.25 if I get them at DiBruno's), that's fifteen bucks a week on soda. I also kill about three two-liter bottles at home each week - so at a minimum, that's TWENTY DOLLARS every single week on fizzy, carbonated deliciousness. When I have a perfectly good water cooler at my disposal!

So, we'll see. I figure my palate will adjust if I just keep making it a point to drink water. I'm interested to see if I see any health benefits from what I'm sure will be a drastic cut in aspartame intake, but frankly...I'm skeptical. And I certainly don't plan to give the stuff up cold turkey -- I'm going to keep drinking it at home.

In other news, we got our baby Sophie just about one year ago:



I can't get over how tiny and cuddly she was. Now she's got a big ol' diva attitude, and I can't imagine our lives without both of our dogs.