• Exactly what I DIDN'T want to hear today: "uh mom, I think my computer has a virus". It's a doozy too, reformat & reinstall… #
• Dudes, I work in IT, don't give me the BS that unsubscribing from your newsletter takes "3 days to process". #
• Added to wishlist: 'Do More Great Work' – http://bit.ly/bEvSY2 ~ Not a big fan of self-help, but this sounds more like a practical workbook #
• Friday Food Fest: 5 Recipes from Paleo Chix – http://bit.ly/drXUyb ~ 4 cups of onions in Hungarian Chicken, hello tears! #
• The weather can do what ever it likes. In my mind it's May and I'm planting my vegetable garden. #
• http://twitpic.com/1531vz – I learned @Vibram5Fingers are NOT indestructable, but they are repairable. #
• RT @lyndit: 3 Tools For Tweeters http://goo.gl/fb/0khY – I hadn't heard of any of these, and they all look usefull. Thanks lady! #
• Reading: Love Me Some OHS – http://bit.ly/9f9sU0 #
• Recipe: Crispy Kale – http://bit.ly/9zbdrr ~ I like my kale in a salad, but maybe this will keep chip cravings away? #
• ATTENTION all trainers, coaches and gurus – list your next event for free with the Whole9 community: http://whole9life.com/community/ #
• Ugh, running. But then YAY, lifting! Two weeks left of this program, and then I see if it earns me a new deadlift PR. #
• Well good job USA! Good game Canada, you kept pushing into the last seconds. #
• SCOOOOOREEE! ONE MORE POINT CANUCKLES! #
• Wha? @JillianMichaels just posted to FB mentioning taking fat burners. How many overweight people will be lining up at drugstores tomorrow? #
• SCOOOOOORREEE! #
• NOOOOOOO! USA gets the first point against Canada…boooo #
• I have a pile-up of chores today – dishes, laundry, groceries, sweeping, mopping, bathrooms, dog-walking AND I'm re-installing my netbook! #

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Earlier in the week I was perusing the blogs I read and I came upon Matt’s confessional post titled “My name is Matt and I am a food addict!”. His post really struck a cord with me. If you want to go so far as to read the comments you’ll see that I left the first one, with a confessional of my own.

I’m rocking the Amazon mindset but it is not totally reflecting on me in the form of a rocking Amazon body. Right now I’m doing a 37-day strength-building program from Whole9 called the “603 Power to the People” program. I’m going for a new deadlift PR somewhere above 200 pounds. That’s my primary goal, I’m focused on it, I’m following the program, and I’m certain I will have that PR when I finish in three weeks.

The problem is that I had also hoped, and partly assumed, that I would see some fat loss on this program as well. I did a 30-day strict paleo challenge back in July and stripped off ten pounds almost effortlessly but somehow (pizza and peanut butter sandwiches) those pounds have crept back on. I thought that during PTP I could do a “sanity-preserving paleo” diet of my own construction: eat mostly paleo foods with occasional cheese and one non-paleo meal allowed every five days. The problem is that I’ve had a few episodes of “spinning out” and gone on full-day non-paleo food binges. Bad Amy.

So I posed this question to Matt – just what the hell are we supposed to DO? Well he and C Wiss chimed in with something that boils down to one word – goals. I felt like I had just been smacked with a fifty-pound sack of DUH. This whole month I’ve been working on my deadlift goal and like I said, assuming fat loss would follow. Maybe if I had a secondary goal, one for fat loss or another performance goal that would help achieve fat loss it would actually happen!

I also realise reading Matt’s post that when I hit my deadlift PR I’m going to be stuck out there in success land wondering “what’s next?”. I think NOW is the time to figure out what’s next, and that means new goals.

So for the record, I am setting some goals for the post-200-pound-deadlift-achieving me:

Performance Goal: My first pull-up. I don’t care how ugly it is or how much kicking I have to do, I will get chin to meet bar.
Body Comp Goal: TEN POUNDS – ten freaking pounds, and I will still have plenty to spare. That’s ten pounds of FAT, so I will be measuring weight + bf% to track this.
START: MARCH 16
FINISH: APRIL 30 (46 days)

Matt also mentioned setting a stretch goal. I really like that term. It’s a bigger, long-term goal. My stretch goal would be to hit 22% bodyfat.

Next week I’ll follow up on this and post about my actual PLAN to reach my goals, and a bit about my team of professional coaches. Team of professional coaches? It’s called a tease dearies, I’ll see you next week!

photo credit: Martin Kingsley

Sometimes you just don’t move like you should and you pull or tweak a joint or muscle. Sometimes a mild pain in the shoulder turns into a big pain in the neck the longer you run. Being able to recover quickly from injury gets you back to your fitness routine without too much down time, but you have to know how to properly treat your type of injury.

Pain that happens during or just after a workout, usually because of something traumatic during your workout, is called an acute injury. Think of a sprain, strain, or pulled muscle. I bet you don’t think the pain is so cute, har! These types of injuries benefit from immediate icing because it helps slow the body’s healing response. WHAT? Why does that sound like the wrong advice? In essence your body often overreacts to your injury; accumulating fluids in the injured area (inflammation), and increasing blood flow. In a way that is good, because that is what tells you that you have an injury – the increased blood flow makes the area feel ‘hot’, and the inflammation makes the area feel sore or stiff. The problem is that the blood flow and inflammation also cause less oxygen at the injury site, which can suffocate the tissues and actually create more damage. Applying ice reduces the circulation and inflammation and results in faster healing.

Waiting too long and then sitting in front of the TV with an ice pack draped loosely over the injury site is a half-assed attempt to get well. Icing should happen as soon as possible – the minute you even think you might have pulled something. Placing an ice pack on the injury is adequate, but you’re more than adequate, you’re elite, so you are going to massage your injury with ice. Put a few ice cubes in a ziploc bag and rub circles all over the sore spots. If your girly hands can’t take the cold then put on some gloves. Five minutes of ice massage is going to give you the benefits of twenty minutes of normal ice-pack application. Don’t ice once and go about your day either, shoot for five ice massage sessions in a 24-hour period. 48 hours after the injury occurs you can lessen the frequency, and 72 hours after injury you’re hopefully well on your way to a full recovery.

DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) is a bit of a different beast. It’s kind of not an injury, but it is. It’s usually your body reacting to micro-tears in your muscle fibres. The pain might not come on strong until a day or two after an intense workout, but it is still caused by inflammation so the treatment is still ice. If you know you’ve just done a killer lower-body workout and you expect to be sore tomorrow, try plunging into a tub full of ice water for 30-seconds. Your quads will thank you when you stop shivering. If you’re not that much of a masochist then you could try some ice massage or basic ice application.

Though heat often seems like it would be the best treatment for an injury, it is recommended only for chronic pain. Chronic pain often exists before a workout, and is usually a dull ache or stiffness. Heat will promote blood flow to the area, relaxing muscles and increasing the elasticity of connective tissues. Regular pain in an area can indicate a more serious injury or condition. Heat can limber you up and get you through a workout, but if the pain continues after several days you should see a doctor.

• It must be a meatball kind of week. A meatball recipe from Sweet Cheeks – http://bit.ly/a3N494 and Everyday Paleo – http://bit.ly/bRF647 #
• Reading: Procrastinator or Incubator? http://bit.ly/bH4VYj ~ I did the quiz at the end and it says I'm an incubator, how about you? #
• Recipe: Paleo Flax Crackers – http://bit.ly/9CmOz8 ~ Mmm, I can see me munching on these with a roasted red pepper dip… #
• Is it weird to be jealous of people with no toilet? http://nyti.ms/9hjI83 #
• Alert! Whether you follow low-carb or not, it is NOT OK for a store to give you nutritional advice: http://bit.ly/bDR34I #
• Recipe: Paleo Chicken Cordon Bleu – http://bit.ly/9RWhPt ~ Wrap that in bacon and I will give you my first born! #
• Reading: What we know, don't know.. http://bit.ly/dp0qtP ~ This resonates with me as a blogger and writer. Sometimes I just don't know…\ #
• Sir Elton John improvs a song from an oven manual: http://bit.ly/9fttYD Amazing! That's what a truly gifted artist can do. #

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Thrilling Dirty-Tub Drama

I’m never going to win an award for world’s best housekeeper, but every so often my Type-A personality looks around my dirty house and says “I’m going to conquer this mess”. Then I spend a day not cleaning, but coming up with a battle-plan. I meticulously itemize every area in the house that needs to be clean and assign it to a schedule. The last time I did this I scheduled the bathroom cleanup on Tuesdays.

The first week it worked like a charm. The second week, not so much. I didn’t consider the fact that on Tuesdays I work a full eight-hour day, come home to eat, and then run out for three hours to work at one of my part-time jobs. By the time I get home I am tired and sweaty and the last thing I want to do is clean my bathroom. So the second Tuesday I got home and said “Eff this, I’m not cleaning my bathroom”. Not the type to give up completely, I tried half-heartedly to stick to my “perfect” schedule for another few weeks, but eventually the bathroom got repeatedly neglected and my tub built up a nice layer of grime.

My Genius Solution

If you stick with me here on the blog you’ll see that I push “rest, recovery, and stress management” like it’s the new crack. My bathtub is critical for my own personal rest, recovery, and stress management. A hot bath before bed does all kinds of great circulatory things for my muscles, gives me some quiet de-stress time, and also primes my body for a great sleep. I freaking LOVE a hot bath before bed, but I can’t enjoy one in a filthy tub.

Eventually I had to accept that I was not a domestic goddess and that Tuesdays were not good days to clean my bathroom. So here’s what I did: I stopped fussing over the big-picture, and just focused on having a clean tub. To achieve this I came up with a novel idea: take a scrub-pad into the shower with me. Seriously. When I shower I grab a little SOS scouring pad from a box under my bathroom sink. When I’m done cleaning my beautiful self I just bend down and scrub the tub, and all the grit rinses away. It’s so clever I should win an award.

How to Clean Your Tub

I bet you’re expecting a dry and informative step-by-step on cleaning your tub now, but you are going to be disappointed. This whole story, though true, was just a metaphor for your own lifestyle habits. I’m talking to all you ladies who have done the on-a-program/off-a-program dance again and again. You pick the perfect program, plan a week’s worth of perfect meals, coordinate the perfect outfit, and then you fail (perfectly). That’s because PERFECT IS THE ENEMY OF GOOD!

The 2 Keys to a Clean Tub Success

Here’s the gold at the end of the rainbow ladies. Apply this formula to your workouts, your sleep, your eating. Use this on whatever your own personal “dirty tub” is.

1. Focus on the most important thing. Instead of being obsessed with getting it all right you have to chip away all the extraneous bits and find the core of what you want to achieve. For me it was a clean tub. Not a clean house, not even a clean bathroom, just the tub. You probably don’t want to see a picture of my toilet as proof, just believe me when I tell you my tub is the most sanitary fixture in my house.

2. Make the plan work for you. The “perfect” time to work out is not first thing in the morning, the “perfect” workout is not a formulaic mix of strength and cardio at the “perfect” heart rate. The “perfect” meal doesn’t require you to calculate macronutrient ratios down to the decimal point. The PERFECT PLAN IS THE ONE THAT IS MOST CONVENIENT FOR YOU! For me that means working out at my lunch break, eating the same boring breakfast every morning, and not beating myself up for taking an extra rest day. If you aren’t sticking with it, find a new it.

What is Your Dirty Tub?

Confession is good for the soul, so cough it up. Do you have a “dirty tub” and what is it? Are you focused on the tub or the whole bathroom? Can you remember a time when your dirty tub was always shiny and clean? Can you identify the WHY and HOW it worked for you then? Share your answers in the comments.