Going topless

Well that title is sure going to screw with people's search results, no? If you came here for pics of topless crossfitters I apologize for my cunning ruse. Might I suggest r/gonewild? I don't think a lot of those ladies are crossfitters but they are topless. And lots of times bottomless. Bless their hearts. So why the title? 

                                       Because this has been happening off and on at my box:

If you don't like to see imperfect bodies in sports bras then,

I'm sorry f*ck you, you're reading the wrong blog.

I had been talking to Dave awhile ago about the idea that, judging from what I've seen and heard on the interwebs, there are a lot more chicks just sporting the sports bra during/after WODs at other boxes than our own. Which kinda makes me a sad panda because I am a nudist at heart, and more importantly, did I mention I live in Florida and there is no air conditioning at our gym? And let's be honest it's the first damn time in my life I feel comfortable taking my shirt off in public! But noooooooo, even the fittest chicks at our box rarely take their tops off. As a result, and I don't think I'm speaking for myself here, those of us with less than perfect bodies are left thinking, "Well, hell. If SHE isn't taking her shirt off, I sure as hell can't."

And then one day during a Team WOD I looked over and my friend (in green above) was rocking just the sports bra. So I told her how I had been feeling about it. We both agreed that if chicks like us lost their tops every now and again, then other women (who wanted to, but were too intimidated) would feel more comfortable doing it. Or at the very least, we would. 

So now we do. Not everyday mind you, but when we are especially overheated and/or feeling bad-ass. Which we were yesterday. Both over-heated and feeling bad-ass. The first Lurong Challenge WOD was yesterday's WOD for our gym. Coach smoked us of course, but we all finished well under the time cap. 

So yeah...the shirts came off.

Looking good, Billy Ray!

So I got to see this guy Saturday night:

 

Oh, to be those hands.

With these guys:

Thank you Holden, for being into Maroon 5 and not One Direction. Thank you.

Badger judges the author for putting a naked pic of Adam Levine so close to one of her family.

Anyways, the Lurong Paleo Challenge (finally) started on Monday. Yay! Seriously you guys, I really needed the rigidity of the program; knowing I gots to do right by my team, really helps get me back on track. Now I'm back to feeling like my old Badass-self again.

Gratuitous tire-flipping-beast-mode pic.

I got on the scale on Monday for the first time in weeks. Yeah I know, very weird for me. That's how off the rails and in denial I was, I. Didn't. Even. Want. To Know. That's how I know I've wandered back into disordered-eating land. As a result, I was perilously close to hitting a number I swore I would never see again. Like, one pound from it.

Yeah.

But that said, I weighed myself this Wednesday morning and I am already down 5.5lbs. Which sounds crazy, but not when you understand the Paleo/Not Paleo thing. Major water retention/bloating. Let's not beat around the bush with these numbers shall we? I hate when people do that. I was 199 Monday morning, 193.6 this morning. There I said it. I fully intend to get into the 170s by the time this Challenge is over, I'd really like to see some 160s, but that may be pushing it. We shall see. I am willing to trade any new Crossfit PRs (for the next couple months) in exchange for losing more fat. I've been dabbling a bit in r/fitness and other like-minded places around the intertubes. My big takeaway has been that you don't have to lose muscle to lose fat, but it's extremely difficult to build muscle and lose fat at the same time. Thanks to the past year of Crossfit, I have a lot of muscle. More than I have ever had in my entire life. But it's time for a "cut" as they say in the weight-lifting circles. I'm ready. It's time.

That said, here's the plan for this Challenge. All the meats and vegetables. Only one (two, if I really need it) servings of fruit per day. No nuts as snacks. If they are in a recipe, fine. I reserve the right to check new recipes/food combos on Myfitnesspal to make sure there are no surprises. However, I will not be logging every meal on MFP. Though I will be paying much closer attention to portion/serving sizes. There will be no more "Just cause it is Paleo, I get to eat as much as I want." I sorta did that on the Whole 30, and even though it was a very good experience, I did not lose any weight on it. Which I could have had I known then what I know now.

"You know better, you do better," as Ms. Angelou so eloquently put it.

So what have I eaten the past few days? I'm so glad you asked! 

Breakfast -  Bacon and eggs, with 1/2 an avocado one morning, a banana a different morning.

Lunch - Canned tuna with a salad of romaine and carrots w/ balsamic vinegar/olive oil. Raspberries.

             Left over tuna steak and a hard boiled egg over a salad. Raspberries.

             Left over brussel sprouts and sweet potato/ground beef hash with a hard boiled egg and an apple.

Dinner -   Tuna Steak and Spinach

                Brussel sprouts and sweet potato/ground beef hash

               Tonight looks like a shrimp stir-fry with zucchinni and probably half a sweet potato.

For the record, I only get into this "what I stuff in my mouth hole posts" during Paleo Challenges. I always have non-Paleo friends asking, "So what DO you eat?" Umm, lots of stuff? So this is just a way to say, "SEE! HERE! It's not all bacon and steak." 

Though to be fair...there is a lot of bacon and steak.

                                           The Oatmeal is my hero. (pic more bigger here)

Off the rails

The Lurong Challenge is just 4 days away. And it cannot. Get. Here. Fast. Enough. For you see, knowing I'm about to start a fairly strict, two month long eating plan has kicked my particular brand of disordered eating into high gear, the past week or so especially.

"Go ahead, eat what you want...BINGE even!" my brain says. "You're about to get super strict and you're going to lose a ton of weight in the next couple months! You know what? If you eat a bunch of crap now you'll be so sick of it you won't even miss it!"

I've know I've used this pic before, but it's never been more appropriate.

Yesterday for example: two chocolate chip cookies with cream filling in the middle and a bagel with butter (a BAGEL, for the love of Gallifrey!) for breakfast. For lunch, a 1/2 sub (a SUB!?! Though to be fair a couple of years ago I would have bought a whole sub, AND ate the whole thing, so there's that...I guess) along with a cup of watermelon and not one, but two (Because king-size dont'cha know) BIG peanut butter cups. And for afternoon snack, what probably amounted to nearly 2 cups of peanut/raisin/m&m trail mix.

Yeah.

So wrappers have been unsuccessfully hidden, receipts thrown away, the credit card used to buy food (if you can call it that) instead of the debit card, because then my husband will see that I stopped somewhere and how much I spent.

Fuck. Me.

I am not a smart woman.

So, naturally by 4:00 yesterday afternoon I felt like shit. But to be honest, I didn't feel too (mentally) low about it, because again, in the back of my mind, I'm thinking, "This is temporary. I'll get my shit together come Monday and all will be fine." Then I made the mistake of talking to my usually wonderfully supportive husband about how I've been eating and how I've made myself sick with it. To make a long story short, we broke the first rule of martial contentment in that only one of us is allowed to be crazy at a time. I'm not saying he was crazy per se, but he was tired mentally and physically and wasn't in the right frame of mind to deal with my neurosis. So instead of feeling supported I felt, really, really judged. And like I have been letting him down by my eating habits lately. Which of course really sent me down the shame spiral.

It got ugly.

Why a picture of a puppy here? Because I just google-imaged the word "ugly." Don't ever do that.

But thank Glassman, I went to Crossfit after work. And I RXed a workout not many people chose to, and I was really proud of my performance. And I remembered who I was. A badass. A BAMF that can accomplish anything she puts her mind too.

Dealing with my ED is not a one time battle, it's a war that will never completely end for the rest of my life, I imagine. The lines of occupation may shift on occasion, but I have the weapons I need to succeed. I just need to keep fighting.

I hesitated to write about this for the same reason that Dave's choice in words hurt me so much yesterday. I have been told by some really awesome people that I am an inspiration to them. So to lose control of myself so badly the past week has me feeling like a fraud and a failure.

Yup.

But then again, I'm not being authentic if I let my blog or my FB page make it seem like this whole eating-right, active lifestyle thing is always easy. Because it's not. We all need to realize that the path to wellness is not a straight line. It's a meandering path. And one that you're occasionally going to lose sight of. But it's up to you to keep your eyes open and realize when you've lost the trail and then do all within your power to get back on it. 

Because you will. And so will I.