Early Struggles and Sacrifice

Henry Ford said, “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you always got.” Ain’t that the truth…

As with any goal, over the past two weeks, I have reached that critical point where:

1.       I am not seeing the changes I want/am expecting

2.       Thanks to #1, I need to start doing some things differently.

And, like it or not (which I largely do not), this means sacrifice. The funny thing about sacrifice is it works two ways: I can either change things that are preventing me from seeing results in order to get them, OR I can keep my old habits and sacrifice results as an offering to the workout gods. And while I would LOVE to do what I want, when I want and still look like an Amazon, I know I have some decisions to make.

I should preface all this saying that I am making some headway in a few areas:

• I have gotten my gym-groove back, and have gone 12 days out of the last 14. I’m pretty impressed with that—and if you saw the murderous Neanderthal I am in the morning, I think you could confirm my feelings about this achievement.
• I have a new workout card that is kicking my slowly-firming-up-backside, and powering some serious muscle-building in my body. Interestingly enough, this card fights back. Check out this super-sweet battle wound I got from an angry plyo-box on Tuesday. The color is still surfacing:

GIANT bruise that runs the entire length of my left shin.

• I got two pairs of new kicks to help motivate me—I like showing them off to jealous folk in the gym whilst I swag around with the giant bruise above mentioned. 

I like to call the one on the left my "WAKE UP AND GET TO THE GYM" shoes.

• I have tracked my daily food and water consumption, as well as kept a fitness log on Livestrong.com for the past 2.5 weeks. In general, I am staying within my nutritive goals and under my recommended daily caloric consumption when factoring in the calories burnt during my workouts. 

So, these are all good things, to be sure. But when collecting my measurements from last week, I was super disappointed with the readings:

As of 1/25/13:

Percent body fat:   28.0%

Total percent body water:   50.8%

Percent muscle mass:   36.1%

Bone mass: 4.4lbs

I didn’t get it! At that point, I had worked out hard all week, I was starting to get my cardiac capacity back in line, and I was staying under my caloric consumption goal—but I was only down 0.1% in body fat AND my muscle mass decreased by 0.3% since the previous week?! What gives? It’s possible that that was a bad reading, so I did try again the following night and received almost identical numbers. So much for that…

So what’s holding me back, you ask? Well, after years of experience and a few days of conscious reflection, if I had to put my money on anything, I’m betting it’s THE CRAP-CRAVING HUNGER-LION IN MY STOMACH!!!

Because I am keeping track of my body metrics in a few different ways (weight monitoring, food tracking, fitness tracking, and my fancy wizard scale), I am realizing just how responsive my body is to what I put into it. I think we all know someone (or maybe you are one) who eats pizza, ice cream, buffalo wings, cookies, bread, even cereal, and just carries on about his day no worse for the wear? Well, I have learned that should I eat those foods, and it’s a recipe for a minimum of a 1 pound instant weight gain, lethargy, constipation, and world of stomach bloat. All of which take me at least two days to surmount.

That is to say, I am very sensitive to processed carbohydrates. I think I’m mortal enemies with any food substance that is primarily white in color: crackers, bread, cookies, chips, and even less processed carbs like white potatoes and rice. Except herein lies the problem—THESE THINGS ARE SO TASTY, and usually they are convenient, cheaper, and more prevalent in homes and restaurants alike.

Now, in my mind, I try to stick to a modified Paleo regime—meaning I try to eat foods a Caveman could have grown, foraged, or hunted, but I include dairy. Reviewing my food log, however, demonstrates that processed foods like this sneak into my diet more so than they really should. A taste of French toast here, a sample of birthday cake there, that moment of weakness where I divulged in the mac and cheese…and while I’m not always consciously (okay, sometimes I am) loading up on processed goop, it adds up over the course of the day, and over the course of the week as well. I’m willing to bet this is a main culprit causing the slow-down on my body metrics progress.

And then there’s the other problem. THE HUNGER-LION PREYS DURING THE WEEKEND. My boyfriend and I really enjoy eating out—it’s a time for us to catch up with each other’s unbelievably insane week while trying out adventurous new cuisine, and some old favorites—and we do so at least once, if not twice, on the weekend.  Let me introduce you to some of my best “frenemies.” 

Pepe's Pepperoni Pizza with Extra Sauce. YUM. Source.

Layla's Shawarma Platter. Overall healthy, but the pita and Mujaddara can be lethal. Source.

Who doesn't LOVE a good spicy tuna roll? Source.

My new obsession, Gob Dol. It's lots of veggies, your choice of protein, and a lot of white rice served in a lava hot stone dish . You then drown in a super spicy Korean Barbeque sauce and savor the tasty goodness. Source.

All so delicious and satisfying to the Hunger-Lion, but are they worth the fallout on my body—physically, emotionally, and at the moment of reckoning on the scale? Don’t get me wrong, I am all about indulgence here and there—I think it not only keeps you sane, it helps prevent you from feeling deprived of something you really want, and then binging on it later as a result. However, I think my problem is that processed carbs are sneaking in all over the place during the week, and then I get boatloads full when I make the conscious decision to indulge in not-so-natural, carb-heavy meals. No bueno to be sure.

And so there is the issue of decision. Do I sacrifice these tasty noms for, what I believe, would be nearly instant results in body metrics OR do I sacrifice faster results for less stringent eating?

Well, as in all things, I’m going to attempt to strike a balance. I am going to strive for clean eating days during the week. Learning to say no to those small bites of stomach-bloating heaven is definitely going to be difficult, but I think it will ultimately help me to feel more on-track when I face the food log and body metrics measurements later on. As for our nights out, I’ve discussed this with ‘ze boyfriend, and we have agreed to try to limit meals out to once per weekend. However, I’m going to let myself have whatever it is that I want, within reason, during this meal to satiate the Hunger-Lion. (If we occasionally we eat out more than once per weekend, such as having plans with people or being too lazy to go buy groceries, I will select a Paleo-friendly option from the menu.) I am hoping that this piece of battle strategy will both enable me to eat cleaner during the week because I know I have an open-meal approaching, and ward off carb-craving lion attacks during the following week because he’ll be full off of pizza I had my fix.

I am definitely curious to see if my prediction regarding my lion problem nutrition is correct. I have my next body metrics measurements coming up tonight, and then I launch into a new week with a new plan and a whole lot of determination. We’ll see if it pays off next week!

Happy weekend-ing, and may your team dominate in Sunday’s game. GO PATS!!! (…I know they aren’t in it.)