Inspiration

I love this poem...

Sugar, Sugar

You got me wanting you!!! How did Arch and the gang from Riverdale know just how I would be feeling.   At least once a day, ok once an hour, my mind fills with all things sugar.  But its not just sweet innocent sugar plums dancing in my head, its hardcore sweet tooth candy bars like Reese peanut butter cups and snickers or five cent ju jubes, washed down with by an Arnold Palmer or an ice tea lemonade from Starbucks.

It wasn't until I got on the paleo wagon and read Robb Wolf's "Paleo Solution"  that I completely cut sugar out.  This omission made me realize how much this simple substance had taken over my life.  Back when I started "casually" crossfitting and eating in the "zone"  I had myself fooled into thinking I had my junk food binging under control.  When in fact sugar was in control of me and I didn't even know how much harm it was doing to me. During low sugar times of my day my life revolved around getting that fix of something sweet.  Isn't acknowledge one of the first of 12 steps? Dr Drew would have a field day with my classic case of addiction.

But since making the 30 day commitment to go paleo, sugar just had to go.  What I am quickly learning though is that  ridding your body of the sweet stuff isn't as much fun as it was putting it in there.  The withdrawal as my blood sugar rises and falls with the time of day has been the worst part.  At any given point of my day I can feel weak, tired, dizzy and without warning a raging headache can emerge just as quickly as my mood can take an ugly turn.  I used to call the hour just before dinner "the witching hour" but for so many different reasons.   Sugar is a tricky vice, just because you aren't eating a chocolate bar doesn't mean you aren't consuming mass amounts of the stuff everyday in almost everything you eat.  It hides in almost all the foods that we were keeping in our home.  I mean the tip off that you should avoid having it in your system is that it has more street names than ecstasy. Now obviously sugar in fruits and veggies wasn't what I am going after and I am still debating whether I should bend the rule and allow natural sweeteners like agave or honey, a girl has to have something sweet once in a while.   Regardless life without sugar is tough and right now no amount of tea is going to replace a big gooey freshly cooked chocolate chip cookie.    

Fini

Total number of burpees completed over the last 60 days....1830

Days missed...0

Minutes it took to complete 60 burpees for time....7

Reaping the physical and mental benefits of a total body movement everyday for the last 60 days...PRICELESS

A big shout out to everyone who completed the challenge! I have to credit W for helping me stick with this beastly task without his encouragement and "creativity" this wouldn't have been nearly as fun or easy to stick out.  Most days in the last two months we hadn't even started to think about how and when we would do our burpees until after dinner, bath, stories and little ones in bed so it was nice to have someone to grunt through them with.  Even though I won't miss these horrific daily exercises, I will miss watching Miss M try and count how many we had done or J Dawg giggling as I slammed down on the floor on my first of every set. Its done and that makes me happy and proud but next time I have a freakin' crazy idea like this...hey wait a sec isn't this week two without sugar?

So close...

Only 3 more days of burpee hell!!!!!!!! And this shirt sums up how I am starting to feel!

Never say never

I should have known better than to have swore that I would never try and eat paleo.  It appears that I am about to eat my words.  Actually more likely I will be eating my way through a small herd of grass fed ruminants. 

As the burpee challenge draws to a close and after having some success with the Wendler cycle method for weight training I am realizing what kind of trainee I am,  I need relatively short time frames in which I  reach a very realistic goal.  The ambiguity of it ends when it ends doesn't work well for me. I have decided that if I want to get something done I have to work in shorter time chunks.  So after eating poorly, drinking excessively and working out very little I knew some kind of "cleanse" was in order and during one of the few silent car rides around BC I broached the idea of trying the paleo diet for a month with W.  Understandably he was a little leery as I was the one that got us into this burpee gong show in the first place.  During our holidays the discussion and research began but it wasn't until we were home that we decided that the time to commit was now. 

As a lead up to Thanksgiving, fitting since its the carb lovers favourite holiday, W and I have agreed to "go paleo".  We dove right in and I found tons of resources to help us get started but particularly liked one website called Paleo Diet Lifestyle which provided us with a 14 day meal plan to follow.  My cooking skills leave something to be desired so we had to do some "modifications" and settled on a 7 day meal plan in order to "tweak" it after.  We simply combined the meals we thought we would like and subsisted some of the more "difficult", time consuming dishes for ones that looked relatively more easy, keeping in mind the idea of ratios of fats to proteins to carbs that is suggested by Mark Sisson, the Primal King.  After a relatively quick trip around the outside of the grocery store our freezer, fridge and cupboards are full of things that I imagine would be similar to the foods that would make up Fred Flintstones daily meals. Though some purists out there might scoff at our attempts to eat more primal we are looking forward to all the promises of feeling healthier and better.    

Back to reality...

After a whirlwind trip to BC and back, Alberta's very own Griswolds return happily to our home and not a moment too soon! Little M informed us that she was "just so happy" to be in her bed last night.  It seems though that I didn't learn all that much from my last trip away and ate just about as badly and failed to work out but thanks to the burpee challenge I didn't go one day without a little physcial activity.  And even though there was temptation to skip a day here or there I am proud to say that we never missed a single one.  It wasn't always easy to find the time, the energy or the space but we managed to make them a priority of course not without incident.  Here are a few of the things we learned should never be combined with burpees!!!  If you let your imagination do the elaborating I am sure you would not be too far off what actually went down. 

Top 5 Things to avoid when doing Burpees

5. Second floor condo apartments and hotel balcony's

4. Bathing suits and sandy beaches

3. Chips and birthday cake

2. Driving all day with crying babies

1. Booze (trust me on this one....it any pretty)

Getting closer to the end...only 10 days left!!! Keep it up! 

Progress Update

We are heading out for a two week holiday to BC tomorrow morning so the timing of my last lifting cycle ending couldn't have been better.  W and I both were ready to test our 1 Rep Max (1 RM) and so after the kids were tucked in we headed out to the garage for some romantic us time and gutted out some big numbers.  I am feeling pretty good about things and as you can see from the numbers below I set some really solid PRs.  For the first time ever I am looking forward to getting back into the gym and starting a new cycle.  The koolaid has finally taken effect!!!!

Lift	March 31st	April 29th	Goal (set on April 29th)	August 5th	Goal (set on August 5th)
Squat	35 lbs	95lbs	121 lbs	140 lbs	165 lbs
Press	35 lbs	45 lbs	60 lbs	67.5 lbs	77 lbs
Deadlift	95 lbs	145 lbs	151 lbs	165 lbs	180 lbs
Bench Press	45 lbs	55 lbs	90 lbs	85 lbs	100 lbs
Pullups (3 x 10)	Blue band	Blue band	Green band	Green/Red band	Green Band
Dips (3 x 10)	Blue band	Blue band	Body Weight	Blue band	Green Band

Insipration

I carried my whiny two year old home on my shoulders while pushing my six month old in a stroller full of groceries on the way back from our walk today and it didn't even phase me.....to hell with the testing on Friday....I don't need numbers to tell me, I know I am stronger!!!!! YAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!

Half way there!

If you are still hanging in there only 27 days of Burpee madness left!!! The numbers are getting higher but if you are like me, your burpees are getting better and you actually are getting stronger!!!! Who ever thought I would be thankful to see burpees posted? but I praise the WOD father every time those S.O.B`s show up lately!!!! Keep up the good work super burpee troopers!!