Yes, I’m making one of those “gee I’m so sorry I haven’t updated in weeks” posts. Trust me, I hate myself more than anyone for doing it. I’ve been slogging away at an ebook on top of other life distractions. I wish I could say more about the ebook, but I’m a ghostwriter on the project so I can’t give away too much. It is a neat premise though – a diet program that points to hormonal balance as the key to health and weight loss.

What else have I been up to? Here’s a BLUT (big long update thingy):

Eating
I’m still mostly paleo with an occasional planned non-paleo meal. I’ve been on a fish and seafood kick lately so I’ve been playing with cod, salmon, scallops, and halibut. I also have some cheap lobsters coming my way soon and fishing season in my province starts this weekend!
Lamb is also plentiful in my area right now and I’ve bought some but am still figuring out what I want to do with it. The lamb liver is my most daring aquisition yet.
My usual non-paleo meal is some thin-crust pizza or a burger at a local “fancy” burger place. Last week my daughter turned fourteen though, so I made the most non-paleo birthday cake I could: a Mars Bar Nutella Cheesecake with an Oreo Cookie crust.
Oh, and I’m especially excited to be joining a CSA/food share program. Starting in June I’ll be getting a big box of local organic produce every week! I’m even signing up for the “family-sized” box with the hope that if I can’t eat that much vegetable matter I’ll be able to can, freeze, or dehydrate what’s left.

Lifting/Moving
I’m working my way through my pull-up program, though not as quickly as I had planned. I’ve missed a good number of workouts and am probably going to finish a full month later than expected if this continues.

I am LOVING my pullup assistance bands from Rogue. Being able to do the entire pull-up movement makes me feel so much more proficient than any amount of negatives, jumping pull-ups, or ring rows.

The assistance bands took some getting used to. Funny story. When I use the assistance bands I put one foot in the band and the other over the top of that foot to prevent the band from snapping forward and potentially taking out my eye. I was about halfway through a wall-ball/pull-up workout (Day 15 of my plan) when the band slipped off my foot and snapped behind me. Actually, it snapped up into my crotch. That wasn’t even the funny part. At that point I was getting pretty fatigued and those bands are a lot tighter than you would expect. It took me a good few minutes to finally work the band back down and under my foot. I’m just glad I didn’t have to ask for help.

Reading
I’m trying to get a handle on my reading. I seem to have five books on the go at any given time, and I never seem to finish any of them. I strongly believe that being a better reader will make me a better writer. I’m also inspired by Steve from the GeekFit podcast. He’s taken on a challenge to read 100 books in 2010. I don’t know if I’ll set a number, but I do want to read more in general (and actually finish reading what I start).

My current book is “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle“>Animal, Vegetable, Miracle“. I’m reading it as part of an informal book club started in the HealthProject subreddit. So far the book has completely stolen my heart. My ultimate life goal is to have a small house on a big plot of land and raise my own food. I am so jealous of the family in this book being able to just pack up their lives and go rural. Even though they write about the difficulties, they make it seem like such an easy choice.

Living
I’m walking the work/life balance as best as I can and trying to stay chill despite a long and daunting to-do list. A few weeks ago I put some vegetable seeds in some dirt and so far only one basil plant and pumpkin plant have sprouted. I sure hope that I see some tomato and pepper sprouts soon.

This will be my second year as a recreational fisherman (or fisherperson). Last year I simply purchased a license and bummed equipment from a very generous coworker. This year I put down about $150 on some basic gear: rod and reel, tackle, tackle box, a good knife, a multi-tool, rubber boots and some rain gear. The season officially starts today, but I don’t think my first day out will be until next weekend. There is a lake known to have some very large trout in the early season, and my belly says the bigger the trout the better! FYI – I am not a catch-and-release fisherperson; I am all about the eatin’.

I’m thinking about joining a dog-training club in my area, so I’ll be checking the club out this weekend. The training is known as “Schutzhund”, which I think translates to “Protection Dog”. It’s a combination of obedience, tracking, and protection. In Germany you can’t breed a German Shephard Dog unless it has achieved a certain level in Shutzhund. I see it kind of like CrossFit for dogs.

I’ll end this 900-word BLUT with a picture of my gorgeous redhead:

On January 25th I started a frequency-based strength program from the now-extinct CrossFit 603. You can find the entire program here, and a thread for discussions about the program here on the new Whole9 site.

My goals for this program were three-fold:
– Get my deadlift over 200# (aka “I want a 200-pound ass”)
– Increase my overhead press by and undefined amount
– Lose some fat

The first two goals are what the program is designed for; get bigger 1RM numbers for deadlifts and presses. My third goal was a ‘nice to have’, but wasn’t the focus. It’s hard to lose fat and gain muscle at the same time. I was just hopeful that a few months of clean eating along with my program would help me drop some of the jiggly.

Starting Stats

Female, 30, 5’10″
180lbs, 35%BF
Deadlift 1RM: 185# (pulled on Jan.22, previous PR was 195#)
Press 1RM: 85# (which was a PR in itself!)

Results

Still female, 30, 5’10″ (haha)
174.5lbs, 30%BF
Deadlift 1RM: 215# (+30# BOOYAH!)
Press 1RM: 95# (+5#, I’ll take it!)

I added 30 pounds to my deadlift, 5 pounds to my overhead press, put on four pounds of muscle and lost 11 pounds of fat. That is a whole lot of win.

Impressions

This program was a dream for me. I love strength work. There were also metcon-type-workouts almost every day, but most of them were under fifteen minutes. No more suffering through 20-minute metcons feeling like a lardass! I found the workouts fun, interesting, challenging, motivating. They were just fan-freaking-tastic. And holy taco, they worked!

Adherence

My adherence to the program was what I would call “OK”. I blasted through the programming with laser focus, until day 13. I skipped day thirteen because I was feeling tired. Day fourteen was a rest day anyway, so that was cool. On Monday I was back at the gym for workout fifteen and had no problems and felt good, but on Tuesday everything went off the rails. All motivation to do anything was gone, I didn’t even drag my ass to work that day. I also went completely off my diet, chomping down on every bit of bread, pasta, and chocolate I could find within my reach. This funk lasted pretty much the whole week. The next Monday I was ready to restart and picked up from day sixteen. Between day sixteen and thirty seven I missed three more workouts for typical random reasons: time, tired, or just lazy.

On my last week leading up to my 1RM attempts I really focused on adherence and did six days in a row of WODS, followed by three rest days before my 1RM attempts.

Diet

I’ve been following the paleo diet for the entire program, but with a few modifications. For the first few weeks I was eating mostly strict paleo but allowed a bit of dairy and one non-paleo meal every five days. I don’t know if that contributed to my ‘spinning out’, but I decided to dial things in a bit after that bad week. I had probably two non-paleo meals in the last half of the program, being extra strict with food choices in the last ten days.

At the beginning of the program I tracked my calories and macro-nutrients. I would average about 1900-2100 calories with 50%fat, 30%protein, 20%carb ratios. After my spin-out I stopped measuring/tracking, ate pretty much the same amounts and servings, and just focused on eating the right foods and not getting hungry.

During the whole program I supplemented with 2Tbsp of liquid fish oil and 2000IU of Vitamin D every day.

Final Thoughts

I just think this is a phenomenal program for building a solid strength foundation. I know “periodization” is a no-no concept for CrossFit, but if you aren’t already a firebreather or if you have significant weaknesses I think focused training makes sense. Would I recommend this program to an absolute beginner to the gym? Probably not. It is more likely I would recommend a month or two of “The New Rules of Lifting for Women” or “The Female Body Breakthrough“. I think it’s important to learn all of the major lifts and work on form before tackling a program that focuses on only two lifts and works them four times a week.

I think the 603 PTP program best suits someone who has spent at least a few months at the gym already and has done some lifting, either a traditional split approach or through CrossFit. As someone who’s been on and off the CrossFit wagon a few times but still has a hard time slogging through longer metcons this really made me feel more functional and less like a wind-sucking out-of-shape goober.

Pics or It Didn’t Happen

I wasn’t even sure if I’d post pics but I know there’s a saying about pictures and words…whatever.

You can see some slight change in body composition here. The belly, aka my “food baby” is disappearing. I also have some nice shape to my ass now, if I do say so myself.

Note that I took these for myself, not for you. Ignore my unhappy expression, shiny tired-looking face, and that weird stain on the front of my pants (I’m sure it’s something paleo).

Next

If you stuck with this post this long I won’t keep you much longer. I just wanted to point to my next program. I’ve drafted it myself and dubbed it the “Amazon PUE” (Pull-Up Extravaganza).

Here is the entire 47-day Amazon PUE Program

I start next Monday and will finish April 30.

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!