An Interesting Place

A few weeks ago I hurt my back while working out.  (Don't blame Crossfit. It happens.)  These weeks have really been an interesting journey.  Emotionally I have been all over - in disbelief that it happened, sadness at feeling like I may be losing the muscle and strength I have gained over the past few years, desperation in dealing with the moment to moment chronic pain and relief at getting a chance to step back and rest.

Lessons I have learned while injured:

1. It is REALLY easy to get used to not working out. You all know I am a workout freak. I love Crossfitting and was doing it 5 days a week.  Now I am back to having it scheduled on my calendar and thinking "well I could work out now or I could go and do X,Y and Z". I now have a little more sympathy for those who fall off the wagon or have never started working out at all.

2. There is no "there" to get to.  I believe good work outs consist of lifting heavy things and sprinting. Neither of which I can do right now. It started me in a bit of a panic. Who am I with out that? How the hell do I work out any other way?  Breathe. Its going to be ok. A few months of not doing that is not going to suddenly make me an obese couch potato.  I am working on shifting my perspective to joyfully explore what my body can and can't do now and discover new ways of working out.

3. Maybe 5 days a week of Crossfit is too much for me. This injury has also helped me refocus on dealing with my fatigue.  It is something I have been trying to trouble shoot for years.  Ideally I am hoping it can be solved through good nutrition, proper sleep and stress management.  I met recently with a paleo nutritionist to see if there was anything else I could be doing in regards to heal possible adrenal burn out.  Her first recommendation is not to Crossfit 5 days a week. Ugh. What? Of course at the moment I am doing 0 days a week. Part of my plan going forward is 3 days a week and long walks on the other days.  THAT is going to be a big adjustment.

4. Focusing eating on nourishing my body is so much more fun than thinking about fat loss. I have been using this time to maximize on my nutrition. I am making an effort to try and give my body all the nutrients that it needs to heal the best it can. That has felt so good having my eating just focused on just nourishing my body... which of course does my brain pretty good as well.  Meal times feel more relaxed and oddly my cravings for wine and sugar have really dropped off.  huh.

What have your injury or down times taught you?

The Happiness Assumption

I am not sure if many of you know but I am participating in a coaching group this year with a small group of women and it is headed up by Jill Coleman, who if you don't know her... find her and see what she is all about. My life is better because she is in it.   Anyway... each month we get a book to read. This month it is Being Happy by Tal Ben-Shahar.   I am only a little ways through the book at the moment but I am blow away by two concepts and I can't wait to see what else I learn from this book.

1) Assumption of happy people always happy - The author talks to a wide spread assumption that he covered through talking to people about happiness. It is the thought that "that truly happy people are some how immune from feeling sadness, fear and anxiety of from experienceing failures and set backs in life. " It is a sign of perfectionism.

Now I would not have consider myself a perfectionist. If you know me I try to be a comfy, casual, roll with it person.  However, I have spent many an hour beating the crap out of myself for feeling more sad or moody than I feel like I should with the amazing life I have. In essence, I completely buy in that happy people should always be completely, floating on the clouds happy.  Huh. Will need to think and practice around this one a little more.

2) The book provided an insight to me on at least one reason Crossfit makes people better.  - "Taking on challenges instead of avoiding them has a great long-term effect on our self-esteem more than winning or losing, failing or succeeding.  Paradoxically our overall self confidence and our belief in our own ability to deal with set backs may be reinforced when we fail, because we realize that the beast we had always feared-failure-is not as terrifying as we thought it was. "

I get a chance at least several times a week to feel afraid. I see a workout that makes me start thinking "I can't do this, it is too hard." I get that deep pit in my stomach that makes me want to run, get in my car and go home.  But I do the workout anyway. Some days I just barely get through, some times I thrive. Either way I know I am a better person for it on the other side and I am happy that I made the choice to stay.  It is good to have it confirmed that facing challenges regularly is good for the self-esteem.

The Hourglass

Recently the image of an hourglass has been popping up in my brain frequently.  For me it is a visual of how life is moving...second by second, minute by minute, hour by hour. This is how we experience life whether we are aware of it or not.  Before long, years pass and we are at the end of the journey. Tara Brach, a meditation teacher, often talks about reciting "...and this moment...and this moment" bringing your self to the presence of each moment that comes to us and really thinking about how what is important is really just the minute that is in front of us that we are experiencing.

I actually really like thinking of life like this as it is simply the way life unfolds. The hourglass reminds me to be here and be with what ever life is bringing in the moment.  The image makes it clear to me that  life changes. Whatever is going on be it beautiful, stressful, boring, exciting, hunger, pain, joy it will all pass and change.

In the present moment, you can't be regretful about the past. You cannot be worried about the future. You are just here.

If being present is not a regular practice for you, I recommend trying it.  Simply bring your focus to what is going on in front of you where ever you are... in front of your computer, at a meal, at a stop light, in a meeting or during a workout.

What are the sounds here? Where is my breath? What all am I observing? How does my body feel?

While I try to do this with as many minutes as I can during the day, I do love it during my workouts.  It takes away the fear. I don't focus "I can't do this" instead what does my body need to be doing here? How are my feet moving? How does that bar bell feel in my hands? Wow, my lungs and heart are working! I can feel it.  More often than not being present during a workout fills me with gratitude for a body capable of doing what it does, a community that I love and a connection with getting to be doing what I love and that is better to me than any time or PR.

Why this is important? Our lives pass us by one minute at a time. Being present as often as possible allows us to "be" better with the time, more connected with what is happening right in front of us and it allows us to be aware of all the things that are around us that remind us that we are alive.

Competition. What if you looked at it another way?

One thing many people love about CrossFit is the competition.  For the people who were competitive athletes in high school or college, Crossfit is a great way to reconnect with that competitive environment.
What about for the rest of us?

• Those of us who were really never athletes? 
• Those of us perhaps even completely inactive up until starting Crossfit? 
• Those of us who rarely if ever get to do a work out at prescribed weights or standards?  
• For those of us who will never have the fasts times or highest scores or heaviest weights written on the board? 
• For those of us who worry "Am I going to be the last one again?"

In pondering this over the past week, I want offer a different perspective on competition.  For me, I know I some times get caught up with feeling like doing the workout as prescribed as the end goal or that if I don't put up times close to the top athletes at our gym that some how I am failing.  This focus this can leave me feeling frustrated and depressed when there is really no need for that.

I have been practicing looking at it another way.  If I complete against myself what does that look like? Because I track all my workouts, its easy for me to compare performance on a particular lift or workout.  If I have done a workout more than once, was I able to do it in less time this time? or with more weight? For any given lift, did I do it better, more efficiently this week?  Even beyond the actual metrics: Did I show up more times this week? Did I relax more and manage my self talk more during the work out rather than berating myself or complaining endlessly? Did I check the website, groan as it is stuff I hate or things that scare me and show up anyway? :)

Take some time and make sure your standards of success aren't so high that you are in a state of constant not feeling good enough. There are so many ways to look at competition, growth and success. This isn't about lowering the standards so that every one gets a ribbon kind of thing but rather shifting perspective to way that you can appreciate how you are stacking up against the you that was yesterday, last week, last year.

Ask yourself "How can I be better today?"

"Competition is not about winning or losing, its about putting yourself out there, doing things that might scare you a bit, and coming out the other side a better version of yourself"  - Ben Bergeron CFNE

Glad to Be Here

I was taking my typical long Saturday morning walk in a nearby park when I saw a young woman putting on her head phones and take off for a run. A few years ago I would have been me - same park, slipping on my head phones and running. In observing her, I breathed a sigh of relief that it was no longer me.

I spent so many years toiling away. Looking to be fitter, healthier and feeling so frustrated.
I convinced myself that I just needed to push more, work harder even though I was working out more consistently and harder than most people I knew. I ran a half dozen half marathons and two full marathons. Of course accomplishing the goal of a those distances is a reward in and of its self.  However, part of the reason I was logging all of those miles was I thought that is what I needed to be doing to be thinner, fitter.  I created some great friendships, conquered some goals but as each training season ended I was typically injured (stress fractured femur, constantly painful knees) and always flabbier.  Even my weight lifting didn't bring me the results I wanted for various reasons. I was following advice from mainstream fitness sources (magazines, tv) and honestly they just miss the mark. The really good trainers in the industry know this and don't train their clients that way. Not ever having been a high school or collegiate athlete or having exposure to a trainer who knows what the hell they are doing, I didn't know any differently.

I am not knocking things like Shape or Women's health. Every program out there will bring results from some one - this goes for both fitness and diet plans.  Some one will get in better shape from following a workout plan from a monthly women's magazine, from eating vegetarian, from marathoning, from following the South Beach plan (or insert any of the 10,000 different diet books out there) but none of it worked well enough for me and it left me feeling lazy and stupid.

And then I found Crossfit.  It set every thing that I thought I knew about fitness on its head.  You don't need hours of cardio that make you miserable to be leaner? You can do something other than 3x10 for every body part and still build muscle?  You can do a workout that is only 4 minutes long and that is all you need for that day? Tell me more. :)

There are so many lessons I have learned from Crossfit but the point of this blog post is this one:
Question what you are doing. Have you been doing the same thing for years in hopes of being fitter but not really seeing any changes? Seek out experts and test their advice. Run experiments on yourself. Are you happy with how you look, feel and perform? If you are, then super! If you are not, then change something....not a BUNCH of somethings... but something so that you can observe and learn from.  I spent years thinking I just needed to be working harder but what I needed to do was to work smarter.  Find out what works for you. Demand it for yourself.


While I wish I would have known better about training earlier in my life, I am so glad to be where I am.

Check In and Start Again

This past month for me has been interesting. It turned out differently than I thought when I started on my little experiment to lean out joyfully.

Here are the new habits I worked on over the past month:

• 15-30 minute slow paced, stress reducing walks daily
• 1-4 Snatches and overhead squats daily starting at 65lbs and increasing weight each 1 or 2 weeks
• Start taking CLA supplement (supposedly good for fat metabolism)

Here are the results of those actions:

• I was successful in keeping daily walks which I just loved and connected with in ways that I didn't expect.  I used this time to connect with nature a bit more, breathe deep and be present and having some extra peaceful times with my husband when ever he joined me. 

• I didn't end up snatching with weight every day. That plan changed rapidly when I realized my squat/overhead squat form was pretty poor.  I needed to take a step back.  I spent the month doing 5-10 squats daily as close to the wall as I can, really working on keeping my torso up right. It was hard. I also spent some time hanging out in the bottom of the squat - increasing my hip flexibility.  It all felt worth while when  demonstrating air squats today in class I could feel that I have gotten better.  My torso just stayed straight up!! I want to keep this up!

• I did take CLA. I am not sure it has changed anything other than killing my appetite and making me feel sick to my stomach some times.  Not sure I am going to continue this but not sure 4 weeks is enough time to see if a supplement is working.

My measurements changed slightly but nothing worth giving the details on here.  That is almost beside the point for me. I got more out of this past month than what the numbers reflect.

The biggest gifts over the past month:


1) Finding the Perfect blog post from Zen Habits. I read it every day. I have made "I am already good enough. I am already have more than enough. I am already perfect" a mantra for myself that I turn to often. I'm focusing on doing things...anything really... because I love it and I am passionate about it, not because I have to be better. Its changing things and that is exciting.

2) I put an infrastructure in place for me to be successful in implementing the habits I wanted to work on over the past month. I set up my calendar so I knew daily and weekly what I wanted to do and had regular check ins scheduled for myself. That proved to be HUGE in keeping me on track.  I often start experiments and new habits only to have them peter out after a few days or a week.  I will definitely continue to this!! Love it.

Spending time in the next few days figuring out what I want to focus on next. Pretty pumped about it all!

My Latest Experiment - Update week 4

Week 4 updates of my leaning out joyfully (possible, right?)

Four weeks ago,  I wrote about a plan I had put together to lean up a bit for an upcoming photo shoot and some other events happening later on this year.  In that I had promised weekly check-ins, more for my accountability than your interest but here it is anyway.

Thoughts for this week:

I have been in a battle with myself this week.  The photo shoot is getting closer and I waiver between leaning out joyfully and trying to convince myself to log all my food, track my macro ratios and start taking fat burners to get to this photo shoot as lean as I can possibly get.  The struggle between wanting a super lean beautiful body and feeling the unhappiness of it to dedicate all my time and energies getting to that place. At the end of the day washboard abs, although beautiful, are not what is meaningful to me. What really makes me happy is connecting with joy through doing things that I love: good, open conversations with people, lifting heavy weights, helping people connect with health and happiness, being a cheerleader and a source of positive encouragement for others, make sure those closest to me feel loved and taken care of, being present in what ever I am doing and working to accept that I am enough exactly as I am. 

Its funny that I feel like I have to explain that even though I am not chasing 13% body fat, I am not slacking off. I am still healthy and want to be.  Just because I am not counting calories or know what my macro ratios are on a given day doesn't mean that I am busy stuffing junk down my gullet or that I have given up.  

I have been reading this Zen Habits blog post every day so far in the month of May and spending time internally processing it:  http://zenhabits.net/perfect/   Take time to read that post. Its amazing and powerful beyond measure. 

There is a paragraph in there that makes my heart sing: 

"You are now free to do things, not because you want to be better, but because you love it. Because you're passionate about it, and it give you joy. Because it's a miracle that you even can do it"

THAT is how I want to be spending my time on things that I am passionate about and because I love it.

I love filling my body with healthy food, I don't love obsessing over calories

I love lifting heavy and going to my crossfit classes, I don't love stressing if I should be doing more to be leaner

I love being present in the moment, I don't love beating the crap out of myself for not being leaner or where I "should" be.

Also from the Zen Habits post:  "A powerful realization that has helped me is simply this: You're already good enough, you already have more than enough, and you're already perfect"

Breathe and take that thought in.  :)