I am still recovering from my big party weekend but had a great workout still – upper body workouts are a specialty of mine.  I looked up at the leader board that CFI has on the board that lists top 10 athlete workout times and I am on the board with most of the workouts that focus  on the upper body. Which brings me to something that f’d with my mind a bit over the weekend…

I saw this picture and the first thing that came to my mind was how big I look. And my mind raced around all the work I do and I still look like a big bulky girl. It is not how I see myself so it really screwed me up mentally. I called my sister Dee who talked me down from all the negative self talk I was doing. A picture does not define me. I will never be a small dainty girl with tiny arms and I really have 2 choices — fat big arms or toned big arms but Big Arms are not negotiable. It’s how I am built — upper body strength, broad shoulders, tiny waist and legs and as Dee said — I have to get over this internal shit of being a chubby fat girl who is so self conscious about how I look.

I am 41 years old and still have the same insecurities that I did when I was a teen. Sad isn’t it? Part of it is — I don’t want to be a disappointment to people out there. People that see me get up early all the time and work hard on my fitness and I still don’t look like Jillian Michaels. I know that even Jillian doesn’t look like Jillian but it’s hard to get the images out of my head of what my ideal vision of fitness looks like. I don’t want people who are look at the work I do to look at a picture like that and say oh man — all that work and she looks like that. YES i know I am being an Eeyore – but sometimes I get down on my progress and where I think I should be vs. the reality of where I am. I also think there really is something to that whole body dysmorphic stuff because what I hear from my friends is not what I see many times.

I know I have to change the voices in my head — as I have written about before but it’s not like a snap of the fingers and poof they are gone. It’s constant battle and commitment to SEE things differently – to challenge the negative thoughts in my head. I have triggers and weak moments when those Eeyore thoughts are louder than the ones that drive me to push through.

We all have our triggers & I’m learning to prepare for them so I can push thru without it holding me back.

I gave up soda almost 2 years ago. I was what I refer to as a Diet Coke-aholic so it was a VERY big deal and my family still likes to talk about how much soda I drank. Gotta love your siblings to help remind you of where you came from right?   I remember deciding to go to 1 soda a week as a ‘treat’ to finally deciding what the heck –let’s just ditch it.  When I thought about it all — there was hardly a day since I was a teen that I didn’t have one and all those chemicals were in my body daily. It was a scary thought as I was beginning to look at ways to live healthier. I have never looked back.  Occasionally I have one mixed with a drink when I go out to a bar etc– but it’s not often.

3 Surprising Reasons to Give Up Soda

By now, it’s probably fair to say that most Americans know soda isn’t a health-promoting drink. Over the years, the carbonated beverage has been blamed for the obesity epidemic and rising healthcare costs. Some public health experts have even called for asoda tax to help deter people from drinking so much of it. While love handles and diabetes are obvious problems associated with soda, drinking the sweet carbonated beverages harbors hidden threats, too.

A Civil War in your Body —-

Love that Dr. Oz is talking about Celiacs and Gluten Intolerance

Dr. Oz recently went of Fox News to discuss the gluten free diet.  This is a major step toward a wider recognition of gluten sensitivity, celiac disease, hypothyroidism, and other gluten related conditions.  His viewership is in the millions.  Most doctors ignore the relationship between diet and disease.  Fortunately, Dr. Oz has a large sphere of influence.  Hopefully his and other prominent doctors recognition of this widespread problem will alert many physicians and get them to start looking more into gluten intolerance.  

Dr. Oz: You Could Have Gluten Intolerance or Celiac Disease: MyFoxCHICAGO.com

For all my pals who did our CrossFit Impavidus 8 week Whole Life Challenge  here is some good advice from Diane from Balanced Bites –

My Nutrition Challenge is Over…Now What??!!

The bottom line: After The 21-Day Sugar Detox, a sugar-bender is not recommended. The first time I completed The Detox myself, I ate candy the following day when I was hungry (note: this means my blood sugar was already low!). I spiked my blood sugar SO high that when it crashed about an hour or two later, I nearly passed out. Seriously. It was THAT intense. I vowed at that point that I’d never let that happen again. Hopefully you can learn from my mistake, and from the questions outlined above, when choosing how to ease back into your regularly scheduled programming of life and food.

I needed to read this today: I have been feeling the physical and psychological effects of overtraining. After today’s workout, I am going to take 3-4 days off starting tomorrow to give my body time to recover. Someone asked me this morning when the last time I took more than a few days off in a row? You know I couldn’t remember….

Personal Best: Workouts Have Their Limits, Recognized or Not

Intense endurance exercise depletes muscles of their energy supply, glycogen. Muscles store enough glycogen only for an hour and a half to two hours of activity, Dr. Saltin said.

It takes a day for trained endurance athletes to replenish glycogen. Athletes with less training have less of the enzyme that restores glycogen — glycogen synthetase. It can take up to two days for them to restore this muscle fuel.

In addition, connective tissue in muscles can be damaged and needs time to recover. In a study of runners in an annual local race that is a bit longer than two marathons, Dr. Saltin and his colleagues found that the athletes’ muscles lost their elasticity as their connective tissues weakened.

Running got harder and harder, so much so that the energy required for a set pace at the end of the race was 50 percent higher than it had been at the start.

So how to avoid a self-defeating training program? There are no hard and fast rules, because individual athletes vary so much. A training program that one person thrives on will break another, equally talented athlete.

Dr. Raglin said even the experts, researchers like himself who study overtraining, had trouble defining the symptoms. Psychological changes are the most consistent signs of a problem, he said.

In the early stages of overtraining, athletes constantly feel tired; by the end stage, they may be nagged by depression.

Recreational athletes must be attuned to their fatigue, Dr. Raglin said. If it persists for several days, they should take a day off or simply do a lot less during workouts. A diary or notes on how they feel can help.

And that does not mean that difficult regimens are out of the question, Dr. Raglin said. He should know — he’s training for a contest in March, the Arnold 5K Pump and Run, in which competitors must bench press their body weight up to 30 times and then run a five-kilometer race.

As a friend on Facebook said – I think people have SERIOUSLY lost their minds.

Young, obese and getting weight loss surgery

Though Shani Gofman had been teased for being fat since the fourth grade, she had learned to deal with it.

She was a B student and in the drama club at school. She had good friends and a boyfriend she had met through Facebook. She even showed off her curves in spandex leggings and snug shirts.

When her pediatrician, Dr. Senya Vayner, first mentioned weight-loss surgery, Ms. Gofman was 17, still living with her parents in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, her bedroom decorated with glow-in-the-dark stars because she was afraid of the dark.

There was no question, at 5-foot-1 and more than 250 pounds, she was overweight.

But she resisted, saying she could diet.

“I’ll lose weight,” Ms. Gofman assured her doctor.

Dr. Vayner said, prophetically, “It’s not your fault, but you’re not going to be able to do it.

Along with the obesity epidemic in America has come an explosion in weight-loss surgery, with about 220,000 operations a year — a sevenfold leap in a decade, according to industry figures — costing more than $6 billion a year. And the newest frontier is young patients like Ms. Gofman, who allowed The New York Times to follow her for a year as she had the operation and then embarked on a quest to lose weight, navigating challenges to her morale, her self-image and her relationships with family members and friends.

Squats again?!!  —

$hit Women Say to Personal Trainers (Inspired by Sh*t Girls Say)

I keep hearing about how people don’t have time to workout like I do. And I keep getting asked by the guys I workout with – if I will talk to their wives about coming to CrossFit. Seriously people — do I have to share my story over and over again?  You DO Have time if you CHOOSE to make it work and commit to finding the time. And for those wives – or moms – you are doing no one any favors by getting stuck in a rut of being a MOM and not taking care of yourself. You are important to your family and you should make yourself just as important as they think you are – which means asking for help if you need it so you can get some fitness in. ASK FOR HELP — It’s ok to ASK FOR HELP — from your family, from your neighbors, from your friends if need be. I learned this lesson when my husband was going through his cancer treatment and I had no choice but to lean on others.

There I was – no family locally at all (and I mean at all). My closest relative, my Mom, lives in NJ. I work full time, I have 2 elementary aged kids, have a house — all the same pressures that everyone around me has — and my husband gets the Cancer diagnosis. First, thank GOD I had my fitness outlet because I dont know if I would have had the mental & physical grit needed to take on the challenges that were to come.  But secondly, I feel great and found my passion for healthy and fit living. It has also introduced me to an amazing community of fellow athletes — many just like me — working full time, families to raise, their own crisis es to deal with — and they are making it work too.  I am no different than the 15 other athletes who join me at o’dark thirty in the AM all week long and there is room for you too.

Do you remember when you first met your spouse? Yeah, young and full of energy. Well is it fair that you aren’t completely like that anymore and for most of us, its because of our own un-doing? You are now immersed in the world of suburbia and for those women out there — being a MOM.  But who says it has to be that way? You are still a PERSON and should put yourself up on the to do list! Too many women forget that they have hobbies, interests and yes passions that need attention. You lose that, you lose yourself and then you have to ask yourself – Am i the person my spouse married? Now, I know we all grow and are hopefully an enhanced version – improved with experience and age – but the essence of what made you fall in love is still there – or is it? Food for thought?

I am not advocating you drop your family responsibilities but how about taking a good, hard look at how your family is run and see what can be shifted, re-assigned or even – gasp – dropped to make room for some ultra important ME time? Who knows – you may just find the spark that sets a whole new fire for your life!

Just did a CrossFit Impavidus KIDS workout as a family — 4 rounds: 30 squats/200m run! See, no excuses! Do it with your kids if you have to!

Most kids begin training too late and miss their potential

Mather says Olympic lifting has been incorrectly accused of being dangerous, especially for kids.

It is a controlled activity and technique is vital, and that’s why he believes kids as young as nine should be working on the mechanics of lifting.

“We don’t do it with the huge weights; we start them out with broomsticks and teach them pat-terns and movements and work on maintaining their flexibility.”

He says that by the age of 12, most youth have lost much of their flexibility due to inactivity.

“Almost everybody that comes and starts here to do some training, for whatever sport, they start noticing differences within three or four weeks in performance of their own activity.”