Struggle #4: The Lake House

So this weekend I put a few more miles on my car and made the treck to Neoga, IL to my family's lake house. It was my dad's birthday weekend so we had to celebrate accordingly of course, which meant alcohol, peach polka dot pie, Special K treats, and a lot of other food that I am not supposed to eat anymore.  Let me tell you this was a VERY challenging weekend for me... Since I have started eating healthy,  I have purposely put myself in situations where I do not have tempting food right in front of me.  However, the way that we usually eat at the lake house involves a lot of snacky food loaded with carbs, gluten, and sugar.

I would love to tell you that I managed to eat well still and avoid all of the temptations sitting in front of me, but that was not the case... I did have a small sliver of pie, a small Special K treat, and a s'more this weekend, along with a cider and vodka shot (that was forced upon me for loosing a game but still.. bad Taylor!).  Honestly this was a huge step up from what I would normally eat at the lake, which usually includes a ton of deserts and chips but those foods are not supposed to be included in my life anymore.

While I was eating the delicious sugar that was in all of my treats I was blissful, however, driving by yourself for three and a half hours gets you thinking why did I eat those things?  I have been working so hard to be diligent with my diet; reading labels on the back of everything I buy, analyzing the sugar content in everything, making sure I get enough protein and vegetables.  Why did I let myself down and indulge in these treats?

I tried to tell myself that it's not a big deal and you are allowed to have some cheats every once in awhile. I also said to myself I did not want to make my mom feel bad because she made all of these deserts and made myself feel bad because everyone else was eating these things so why can't I? It made me stop and think, if I tell myself that it is ok to cheat every once in awhile, that those words are going to come out of my mouth way too often.  These thoughts are all just excuses that if I keep allowing myself to think are going to become an easy way out and all of this hard work will be for nothing.

Excuses are easy to come by, with the help of them I let myself slip up four times in one day!  I know that with this diet, I am not going to be perfect and that it is ok to treat yourself every once in awhile. However, four times in a day is unacceptable.  I have to stop myself from thinking these excuses make eating poorly acceptable. If I want to reach my goals in CrossFit it is going to take a lot of hard work, dedication, and diligence.  Eating that poorly in one day is not going to help me out at all.  Because of all of this bad food, I am going to forego my ice cream this week because I do not deserve it.  Trust me this will be punishment enough for me and be reinforcement not to slip up like this again.

Even though I had this heart-to-heart with myself on the car ride home, I still had a wonderful weekend and I am so happy I made the trip to hang out with my family and friends.  I managed to get an open water swim in yesterday with the motley crew below.

It is so peaceful in the open water in the morning, I absolutely love it!  Just you (and the other goons around you) out to swim.  We also water skied our butts off and wrestled on our giant mat that floats in the water for hours.

All of us chilling on the mat after a wrestling match.  Fun fact: this mat was ranked as one of the "10 most useless water toys rich people buy" but let me tell you this mat is amazing and has created hours of fun.  I am sure my parents wish that they would have had this for us years ago!  Also our lake house is definitely not for the rich people.  My mom always tells everyone to "lower your standards" before you come, but it is enough for us to have a place to cook food, sleep in, and then play in the water all day.  To show you just how redneck we like to get on Lake Mattoon, I give you...

A chair in the bonfire pit!  

The house we have came with the furniture that was in it before... This chair happened to have a few springs poking out of the seat cushion and the leg rest wouldn't go down so the logical thing to do is to burn it.  At least this is how the boys in my family think.  Makes for a good show anyways!

Whew.  Long post but quite a lot of thinking happening today and after all my diet thoughts I had to add a little flavor to it!  And, I did make it home in time to watch the final games event.  I know, I am a CrossFitter so I will write my thoughts about that later!

Struggle #3: Moving to a New City

As a physical therapy student, we go on clinical rotations in order to help us learn how to be a PT through hands-on experience.  As a SLU student, yesterday we started our 3rd out of 5th one for 5 weeks.  I am located in Cincinnati, OH at a satellite clinic on the Cincinnati Children's Hospital.  I officially met my clinical instructor today and spent my first day in the clinic.  Some days I work long hours and trying to fit clinicals, CrossFit, and eating healthy in is going to be a struggle at times.

First off my clinical site is awesome!  So far (one day) my CI seems extremely nice and willing to let me be hands on and learn during my time here.  This is exactly what I look for in a CI, someone that is going to challenge me yet let me be my own person so I can learn and become a better physical therapist.  One of the huge downsides of my clinic is that it is located 26 miles from where I am staying. The drive without traffic is about 30 minutes but anytime I hit traffic, it is not going to be a fun experience.

I was lucky enough to find a great CrossFit gym, thanks to some detailed research by me and a recommendation from my coach!  While I am in Cincinnati for these 5 weeks, I will be training at CrossFit Conjugate.  They had 2 teams qualify for regionals and one of them went onto the games and is competing this week in Carson, California at the CrossFit Games.  They are very strength focused which is great for me because that is where I lack as a CrossFit athlete.

The affiliate I am training at for the next 5 weeks.

I met a coach who is willing to the competitors work with me in the morning for the next few weeks, which will be great to have someone push me.  I quickly learned they do a ton of accessory work first, before the WOD, to tire you out and then when you get to the WOD you have to figure out how to push your body through it.  This is going to be a great experience for me and will really help with my mental toughness!  I am so excited to get to train here.  Again the one downside is that it is about a 24 mile drive from where I am staying.

I would love to say that CrossFit Conjugate and my clinical site are in the same 20 plus mile direction but they are not... So needless to say, I will be making a loop around Cincinatti everyday and that I will have some very long days.  Today I left the house at 5:15a.m and returned home at 7:30 p.m. (but that did include an almost running out a gas fiasco after my clinical was done).  If you look at the map below, you will see I will be putting 74.5 miles on my car almost everyday. Yikes! It's going to hate me after this!

 You may think I am absolutely crazy for doing this everyday, but 

I have a lot of goals I want to meet and Conjugate seems like 

the best place to help me meet those.  

On top of all this traveling everyday, I will continue on my quest of eating to fuel my body.  I visited the grocery store last night and let me tell you, the trip was a SUCCESS!!!  I spent about an hour there for not a ton of groceries, but I carefully read over tons of labels making sure that what I put in my body was something that was going to help me fuel it!  Pictured below are my awesome groceries from last night!  I am very proud of my trip!

With all the traveling I am doing here, it is going to take a lot of meal prep in order for me to stay on top of my diet.  Every morning before I work out, I will have to make breakfast (most likely eggs and ham) and this will be around 5:15 a.m.  On Sunday I will make salads to last me for lunch every day of the week, this week's included lettuce, red pepper, tomatoes, mushrooms, and steak.  I will also have to pack my lunch every night before I work out because let's be honest, my brain is not fully functioning that early in the morning. Dinner I will be able to change up a bit because I will have my evenings freer!  

I know this experience will be challenging for me, but I am so excited for the challenge and to see where this takes me!  Hopefully it will be an awesome experience, stay tuned to find out!

Struggle #2: The Diet

In starting this new diet, I have some certain goals in mind that makes me want to stay true to this new diet I am following.  I'll list a few of them below and expand upon them a bit.

1.  I want to feel better before, during, and after a workout.  So often I will eat crap before I work out and expect to perform well and then just tank during the workout.  Other times, I feel like I had such a great workout that I feel like I can eat whatever I want, and I do and then proceed to undo everything I just did during the workout.

2.  I no longer want to workout so I can eat, I want to workout so I can perform.  The diet I was eating was full of foods that can cause inflammation in your body.  I was eating on a daily basis lots of gluten, sugar (I mean it's so hard to resist that tasty treat), and alcohol (not so much daily but a few days of the weeks anyways) all things that are known to cause chronic inflammation. That is the absolute last thing you want to cause.  I am sure I am creating enough inflammation with all the training that I do, why would I want to create more by the foods I eat?

3.  I want lean muscle mass and a lean, mean, fighting machine body.  All those carbs aren't helping... Damn.

Here are a few of my general rules in my new diet...

• No bread! None. Ever.  This by far will be the hardest thing to accomplish because I crave bread.  I blame being a swimmer, but hopefully that will disappear! Sooner rather than later preferably. 
• No fruit an hour or so before working out.  Apparently the sugar in it is bad for you before you work out.  Who knew?
• No granola bars.  I probably consume at least 3 a day because they are so easy to pack and eat in class.  I am going to have to find a good snack to substitute for this and I will inform you when I do what it is.
• Limit the amount of dairy I consume.
• I am only allowed to consume alcohol once every two weeks.  That means no more drinks with dinner or when I have a bad day.  This is going to be hard to follow but I am up for the challenge! I just hope my friends don't dish out too much peer pressure.  Must resist.
• Watch the processed foods, sugary foods, and chips.  So when I come home, to my parent's house, with a drawer like the one shown below, I know that is going to be difficult to accomplish.

My family LOVES sweets, and no, none of us are obese.  Looking at this 

drawer, however, I do not know how that is.

One stipulation I did put into my diet, is that I am allowed to have ice cream once a week!!!!!  Anyone who knows me, knows I am an ice cream connoisseur and would frequently get it 3 times a week.  Jacque, the nutritionist, approved and said as long as I follow my diet pretty well, ice cream is a good reward for me.  I am so happy this was approved because I am pretty sure I would be lost without my ice cream.  My absolute favorite place is Ted Drewes in St. Louis, MO and I am pretty sure they would miss me if I stopped going there.

Soooooo much deliciousness in one cup!

I did happen to make it home this week because I finished my summer classes last week!  I am spending a few days here with my family and the swimmers I used to coach before I head to Cincinnati, OH for a clinical rotation for physical therapy.  I am excited to be home and see everyone I love for a bit and even more excited for the new adventure that awaits me in Cincinnati.  I promise to write more about my life, Crossfit, and others things besides my diet, but currently that is what is consuming my thoughts.  Once start to get in a groove with that, who knows what my fingers will want to type! 

Until next time!

Struggle #1: A New Diet

I am starting this blog as I start a new diet and start to really embrace some CrossFit goals I have set for myself.  My goal is to write about these new challenges I am going to face and how I over come them.  I am hoping seeing it in writing helps me better see my improvements and increases my mental toughness.  I am kind of all over the place most of the time so bear with me as I lay my thoughts down in writing.  Also, excuse my grammar, english was not my best subject.  So without further ado, post one:

Anyone who knows me, knows that I have never really cared about what I eat.  I usually eat what I want, when I want it and don't think twice about it.  However, with the goals I have set for myself in CrossFit, I decided that what I eat probably needs to change a bit to better reflect my training goals.  So I asked Jacque Albus (a nutrition guru) for some help and she asked me to keep a food journal for a few days.  I honestly thought I ate pretty well but when she gave me my journal back, wow, maybe not...

 All of the yellow is what is considered bad for my goals... Yeah, that is a lot

The first thing she told me to do was to cut most of the carbohydrates I eat out! Wait, what?  Being a competitive swimmer for years, carbs are the main staple of my diet so that is going to be a shock to the system.  The next blow to me was to lower my dairy intake.  Hmm, that's going to be interesting as well.  I am a habitual eater and usually include bread, yogurt, cheese, milk, granola, and granola bars into my diet multiple times a day.  So taking all of these things out of my diet basically leaves me with not being able to eat anything I used to, as evidence by my cabinet

Everything on the top shelf is no longer in my diet... The bottom shelf hold the few approved items.

I asked Jacque, "what am I allowed to eat?"  Basically all I heard her say was protein, vegetables, and guacamole.  She also told me to look at the ingredient list and to put the items with 500 ingredients back on the shelf.  So off to the grocery store I go feeling determined with my new mission of eating healthy.  However, when I arrive and start shopping, all I feel is overwhelmed.  Everything I want for a snack is carb loaded, the only approved granola bars cost $1.29 for one (I usually get 6 for $2.50), and all of the healthy food is significantly more expensive than what I would normally buy.  Being a poor college student, who does Crossfit (expensive in itself), I don't have that much money to spend so how am I going to be successful at this diet?  Anyways, about to cry in the store, I quickly bought some guacamole, plantain chips (possibly unapproved but only 3 ingredients), and almonds.  So yes, we are going to have to revisit the grocery store challenge in the near future. 

On a positive note, two of my best friends came to St. Louis last night and we went and saw Toby Keith in concert, which was awesome!  We of course had to hit the town afterwards, so I showed them Ball Park Village (topped off with a mechanical bull ride) and Talanyas, ending at Courtesy Diner for some great breakfast food afterwards.  Probably one of the best nights I have ever had out.  I am so glad they came down to STL to visit!

    

A picture of us at the concert! Ignore the straw-berrita in my hand.  Definitely 

not approved but you have to enjoy life every once in awhile!