This past weekend I went to the CrossFit Regionals in Albany, New York. In addition to being incredibly inspired by the commitment, determination & fitness of the athletes, I discovered a few new-to-me fat loss friendly food items!
Most of the vendors were for supplements and fitness gear, but there were a few food & drink vendors I was excited to see.
I’m sure many of you are familiar with Zevia – they make stevia-flavored soda. Stevia is a naturally occurring non-nutritive sweetener and their soda is pretty good. They were on the concourse with 2 new product lines I’m incredibly excited about: a zero-calorie energy drink and sparkling water!
I tried the energy drink (120 mg caffeine, zero calories, lightly sweetened with stevia) and it was so good. Actually, I tried 3 of the 4 flavors: mango/ginger, grapefruit & raspberry/lime. (Ssssh, don’t tell. It was supposed to be 1 per attendee but I went back both days and had 2 on Sunday! Hey, I’m blogging about it so maybe I get a pass for my greediness.)
While they aren’t yet in any stores near me, they are sold on amazon! Plus, free shipping with Amazon Prime! You’d better believe I’ve already placed my order.
I didn’t manage to get a sample of the sparkling water, but I’m a huge fan of La Croix so I’ve also ordered a variety pack to see if I like this as much or better than La Croix. The sparkling water is also on Amazon.
The other thing I was psyched to find was a beef jerky company that doesn’t add sugar to their meat! So major!
Beef jerky can be a fat loss friendly and super convenient snack food, but almost every brand adds at least a small amount of sugar.
Naked Cow doesn’t! In fairness, they do add a small amount to their honey flavor, but their smoke & fire flavors have zero sugar and zero carbs. Plus, their beef comes from grass fed cows!
Warning: the fire flavor was a little spicy for me but I absolutely love the smoke flavor. I bought 5 bags 🙂
Before I went I told myself I wouldn’t buy more than 2 shirts and I’m proud to say I only bought one. It’s pretty sweet!
All in all, it was a great weekend. I worked out in my hotel room both days, explored the city, watched a great event and yet woke up unmotivated this morning.
#sadtrombone
Haha. Totally serious. I didn’t want to get up, I didn’t feel like working and I definitely didn’t feel like going to the gym.
But I did get up. I did get to work and I did go to the gym.
I didn’t, however, workout with the early session.
When I felt the strong urge to skip my workout I just said, “You don’t have to decide now. You don’t have to have a plan now, just do the next right thing.”
I dove into my work, worked through the early workout and within a few hours, I had gotten through enough work to begin to feel more motivated.
Sometimes it’s not about doing the perfect thing or even the planned thing but doing the next right thing you’re able and willing to do.
After that, I thought about what would make me feel my best and I headed to the gym. It was a tough workout but a great one.
“Graceful Cindy”
3 Rounds of “Cindy”
12 Clean & Jerks (115/80)
2 Rounds of “Cindy”
9 Clean & Jerks (115/80)
1 Round of “Cindy”
6 Clean & Jerks (115/80)
Here’s what 1 round of Cindy is:
5 Pull-ups
10 Push-ups
15 Squats
So yeah, lots of body weight work today & a little bit of strength.
I rarely make blanket recommendations. When I talk about nutrition, I’m quick to say that strategies depend on your goals.
When I talk about nutritional improvements, I’m quick to consider someone’s baseline. I’m not going to recommend the Golden Rules of Carbs & Fat Loss to someone who is currently eating fast food & candy every day. It would probably be too big a transition for them, right now.
I think that almost all change is relative to the individual and their goals.
However, there are a small list of changes that I think EVERYONE would benefit from, regardless of their goals and their baseline.
In today’s episode I’m sharing what those are and why I think they’re so important.
The weekend is here! I know that for many, the weekends are met with mixed emotions. “Yay” for less structure but “oh crap” that lack of structure can leave you feeling not-so-great about your choices.
I think many people fly by the seat of their pants on the weekends. They “hope” they make great choices and they intend to, but they aren’t intentional. Big difference.
Having good intentions and being intentional about what you do & why are totally different.
I’ll use myself and this weekend as an example.
I have had a great week. My workouts were on point and I’m just feeling really good as a result of really good choices.
Enter: Friday.
I’m going out of town for the weekend. I’ll be staying in a hotel and eating out for all my meals. I’ll be with great, fun company and great, fun company sometimes turns into a “live a little!” approach to food and alcohol.
Sure, my intention is to make great choices and keep this amazing feeling going strong. But my intention isn’t enough.
I choose to be intentional. To not just hope for it but to actively participate in creating what I want.
That doesn’t mean I’m going for perfection, it means I’m intentional about what will make me feel my best. Big difference.
So, this morning I took a few minutes with my journal to write out how my ideal weekend would go.
First and foremost, I planned to crush my workout this morning. Done. See below.
Second, I made a plan for hotel-room workouts on Saturday & Sunday. Between my jump rope, burpees, body weight squats & push-ups, I can absolutely get a great sweat going. And it doesn’t take long. These workouts will be done in 15 minutes or less but the intensity will be high.
I’m not interested in perfection or being a purist so I set an intentional standard: one food indulgence, one alcohol indulgence – if I’m somewhere it feels totally worth it. I’m not going to order an average glass of wine just because I can, but if there’s some drink that really screams at me, awesome.
Same thing with food. I’m not going to have nachos “because I can” but if there is some indulgence at a restaurant that seems SUPER worth it, fantastic.
Beyond that, I’ll eat like I normally eat. Clean meals. Mostly non-starchy veggies, some protein, some fat.
On top of that, when we can walk, we’ll walk instead of taking the car.
I haven’t created a rigid plan and I’m certainly not taking away my enjoyment of the weekend, but I am being intentional about what I want and how I want to feel.
That’s how I win the weekend, and it’s how I win every day: going beyond good intentions to being intentional.
About that workout I crushed…
“1775”
100/80 Calorie Bike
50 Power Snatches (75/55)
25 Over-the-Bar Burpees
Like I’ve said before, if you haven’t been on an airdyne bike, they will BLOW YOUR LEGS UP. The resistance is nearly instant and pushing through that lactic acid burn is a beeeeeeotch.
The goal was: keep moving, don’t stop. Steady pace & smile on my face. Hey…that’s a good mantra, eh?
On the food front:
Before my workout I had 2 cups of black coffee and 1 tbsp of coconut butter (off the spoon). I had a spa appointment after my workout so I knew it would be a while before I ate.
Around 11:30am I had the same milkshake from yesterday. So delish! This is, for me, a large meal. When you look at the ingredients, you’ll see why. I did skip the cashews in the shake (which is why I snacked on them a little later). I’ll intentionally keep my fat lower in my other meals.
After leaving the chiropractor around 3:30 I had a couple handfuls of cashews. I wasn’t hungry and could absolutely have gone without this, but hey, I ate them & enjoyed them!
Since I had that shake & nuts earlier (a whole buncha fat), I’m keeping dinner on the lighter side with grilled chicken, pico & sauteed veggies.
Nom nom nom.
If you need more weekend support, check out these podcast episodes on weekend & evening strategies.
Remember back in drivers ed when you were taught the 3-point turn? You needed this skill so you could make a complete direction change in as few moves as possible.
I have to ask, who picked the number 3? Is that just an average? Sometimes you can make a u-turn, sometimes it’s a 10-point turn and 3 seemed like a reasonable average? #justcurious #why3
I mean, who here hasn’t made a 10 point turn, improving your position only by inches with each attempt, not quite sure if you’d be able to make it happen?
I know I have! At best, it’s more like a 4 or 5-point turn on a good day!
(I have a sneaking suspicion that a lot of men, especially the ones who have been passengers in my car, are rolling their eyes right now. Uh huh. I understand. My point is a valid one though…)
Here’s why I’m bringing up the so-called-3-point-turn: it seems like many of us approach change with the expectation that we should be able to make a simple U-turn.
We hold ourselves to this standard that with a simple decision, we should be able to do a behavioral or nutritional U-turn.
Guys, life is more like the 10-point turn. Behavior change, improvements in fitness, healthier food choices, they all come about as a result of many, many, many 10-point turns.
We make a little progress…whoops, back it up, readjust…a little more progress…straighten out…inch it forward, inch it back…
Why are we so frustrated by that?
That is LIFE.
Stop expecting it to be so easy just because you want it to be.
One of the primary reasons we give up and give in is because we resent the 10 (or 100) point turns in our lives. Then, we give up.
Well, if you keep giving up, you’ll never get there.
Staying patient was the name of the game in today’s workout. Freakin’ running again. Sure, it was only 200m but with a 20 minute AMRAP (as many rounds as possible in 20 minutes), there were a LOT of runs.
On top of that, I thought it would be a good idea to do goblet squats with my 55 lb kettlebell while watching TV last night. Not a bad idea in general, but my glutes are screaming that I might have overdone it…and they screamed the loudest during all this morning’s running…
“Hells Bells”
AMRAP 20:
200 Meter Run
14 Kettlebell Deadlifts (70’s/53’s)
2 Rope Climbs
Instead of getting frustrated with my speed and fatigue on the runs, I focused on getting a little bit better with each round. “Better” doesn’t always mean faster, but I’d focus on keeping my upper body relaxed. I’d focus on keeping my steps quiet and quick. I chose to focus on an improvement instead of on the fatigue and difficulty.
I won’t get better at running because I want to and my improvements won’t be fast or obvious. It will be tiny inches of progress like that 10-point turn.
I started to get tired at many points throughout the afternoon as it was a day of computer work and webinars. I stopped when I could to do small sets of pushups and then, before my last webinar, I did 100 burpees for time in my living room. Why? Because it sure as hell wakes me up and it feels WAY better afterwards than coffee or sugar!
Tired? MOVE!!
On the food front:
My friends, the warm weather is here in the Boston area! With all the outdoor running in the heat, yesterday’s muscle soreness and today’s challenging workout, I was craving a milkshake.
Here are some of my issues with most “protein shake” or “whole food milkshake” recipes I find online:
They are loaded with sugar in the form of multiple servings of fruit and or honey
People treat them like a snack instead of what most of them should be: a meal
They use highly processed powders with ingredients we don’t need or aren’t as bioavailable as real food
I decided to play around with something that would be refreshing,satisfying for hours and help me recover from some of this muscle soreness.
I don’t regularly eat fruit or starch and when I do, as per the Golden Rules of Carbs & Fat Loss, it’s either with my evening meal or post workout. Today it was in the post workout window. And: it was a MEAL for me. Not a snack. Not a post workout drink.
A meal.
I don’t want to make a shake that is going to have me hungry an hour later, but I also don’t need a 700 cal meal or a blood sugar bomb. So, this is what I came up with.
Milkshake Meal
1.5 cups unsweetened almond milk (you could sub coffee for a mocha flavor)
1-1.5 cups frozen cauliflower (1 cup if riced, 1.5 cups if florets)
1/2 banana
1/2 avocado
2 heaping tablespoons of coconut milk solids (the solid part of canned coconut milk)
small handful of cashews (you can skip this if you want to lower the cals)
I use the frozen cauliflower in lieu of ice and the key to making this delicious is having a great blender. If it’s chunky, that won’t be too fun. I use a vitamix.
I’m really happy with how full it kept me for many hours! Around 2pm I had 4 grilled chicken strips with Primal Kitchen Chipotle Mayo for dipping.
Dinner was simple, courtesy of Paleo Power Meals: steak and veggies.
I would bet you have someone you admire. Maybe you admire their discipline, work ethic or attitude. I have people like that, too.
And if you’re like me, you might wish you were more “like them”. Maybe you wish you thought like they think, act like they act, or have the magical qualities of discipline and motivation that they have.
Been there. Totally get it.
But here’s what I know: you can change. You can redefine yourself.
It does NOT have to always be hard!
I went from work-place slacker to hard-driving overachiever.
I went from careless spender to disciplined money manager.
I went from emotional yo-yo dieter with zero lasting discipline to consistently healthy eater.
You can redefine yourself. I am still redefining myself and today I’ll tell you how.
