As of now I CrossFit at the BOOM box 3-4 days a week and do a bootcamp put on by iChoosefit 2-3 days a week. This morning was choosing the fit. And by choosing fit we did a good warmup with a 5 minute run, assorted drills and shuttles, several rounds of boxing (my favorite) and a mix of movements with and without weights. I haven’t been to bootcamp regularly in a couple of weeks due to sick children, sick grandmother and dad’s dr. appointments but I was able to make it back this week! I sure did need it because my week was getting WEAK 🙂

Took measurements today as well and I lost one inch in my waist and 5lbs from my last weigh in which was sometime in October maybe.. i think.. not really sure!?! I can’t recall. But my BMI dropped 3.5% as well! Yay me! Really YAY! I’ll look to find my original measurements from March when I first started doing the bootcamps. I’ve always been relatively active but my good ol’ weight likes to fluctuate and well I LOVE to eat food! So by February of this year I had reached 155 on the scales and for my 5’2 size that’s a little heavy. I’ve dropped 30 of those scary pounds and lost lots of inches. I’ll get back to you on that one in regards to total inches lost 🙂

So I’ve told you I loved the food and I really love SWEETs so it’s hard to let it all go. Well my CrossFit coach shared a recipe and I decided to make it last night and boy was it YUMMO! Kids wanted to finish it off last night and I think Ernie was close to waking up in the middle of the night to do the same thing. But I woke up and everything was still in it’s place.

Before I go into detail with recipe I did take a picture of dinner as well. It’s not fancy or anything special. Some ginger chicken and brocolli with asparagus. It was tasty but like I said nothing fancy. Just needed to feed the troops 🙂

Here is the recipe for the Date Walnut Bars and pics to go with it! Try it out. It’s amazing.

Gluten Free Date Walnut Bars
1 ½ cups blanched almond flour
¼ teaspoon celtic sea salt
¼ teaspoon baking soda
3 eggs
¼ cup grapeseed oil
¼ cup agave nectar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 cup walnuts, chopped
1 cup dates, pitted and chopped

In a large bowl, combine almond flour salt and baking soda
In a medium bowl, combine eggs, oil, agave and vanilla extract
Stir wet ingredients into dry
Fold walnuts and dates into batter
Scoop batter into a greased 8×8 inch baking dish
Bake at 350° for 22-30 minutes
Cool and serve

Gluten Free and Dairy Free Date Walnut Bars Recipe
www.elanaspantry.com

No black Friday this year!!!! Last year we decided to go for it and I’m pretty sure I won’t ever participate in the madness again.

As far as a Thanksgiving wrap up I believe the paleo dishes went over well. Everything but my extra tart cranberry sauce maybe I can work on adding something to it to make it more enjoyable. The sweet potato casserole was perfect and very well received. I wasn’t sure if the “stuffing” was going to do well. It smelled fantastic but people expect a bread dressing and definitely questioned what it was all about. I think it was about 60/40 on who enjoyed it.

I did cheat and have some pecan pie and one of the cheesecake minis I made. They were very rich compared to years ago when I could eat several at a time. I should have just stuck with my pumpkin pie! It was pretty darn yummy for anyone who has given up sugar 🙂 My dad enjoyed it but still threw some cool whip on it…. Ah well.

Overall I rate it as a success! There’s definitely tweaking to be done and I will surely find more recipes.

No WOD today but I’m sure the BOOM box will have a superiffic beating for us tomorrow morning!

Happy Friday!

Whew! Today has been a super long day. You will see I finally took a pic of the whiteboard so you can see my WODs. Todays workout looked a little something like this (my time was 10:06):

Skill/Strength
DL 5,3,1+

METCON
For Time
50 Push Press
40 Bar Facing Burpees
30 Barbell push ups

Killer on the shoulders

I was happily surprised to get an early release from work. Woohooo! Then I was off to help my dad make cheesecake cupcakes! NOT PALEO but he needed my help. I will dream of eating cheesecake instead of really eating it! Then it was time to go home so that I could not only get dinner started but to get my PALEO feast cooking 🙂

Our first obstacle was getting fresh ground beef. The one we had didn’t quite smell right. So Ernie took off to Whole Foods (across town) to get us some fresh grass fed beef and some GINORMOUS tomatoes. Dinner was going to be simple spaghetti squash with a meat pasta sauce. Easy enough. It was very delicious. After a tiny little break I got to the real cooking – my first attempts at a Paleo Thanksgiving. We are going to see family out of town and I know they will have an abundant feast, but I wanted to bring some items that I know are best for me.

You will see pictures of all the recipes I made below or however I figure this out. 🙂 I followed the Paleo Plans posted recipes and I’m hoping they are a huge hit.

I started off with getting a sweet potato casserole in the oven. The creation didn’t mess with too many ingredients. Obviously… sweet potatoes! Added ingredients were coconut milk, coconut oil, honey, cinnamon, dried cherries and chopped nuts. I did not taste test but Ernie said it tasted great!

Next up was Cauliflower Mashers. Used a little coconut milk, garlic, chives, and rosemary. Smelled delicious and my only taste tester approved 🙂

While the cauliflower was cooking I was slicing and dicing ingredients up for some Paleo Stuffing which consisted of italian pork sausage, carrots, mushrooms, celery, onions, garlic, dried cherries and almonds. I’m not a big fan of italian sausage and my taste tester had to sleep so I will know in the afternoon if this was a hit or not… ah well. I’ll keep you posted. I almost did forget to tell you of obstacle #2. I forgot to take sausage out to defrost… DOH! Poor Ernie who injured himself doing deadlifts today had to go ALL the way back out to Whole Foods to get more sausage! Bless him! And bless the meat guy who had sympathy for my wiped out person and hooked him up with a deal!

In the meantime I prepared Cranberry Sauce which came out quite tart! But I guess that’s expected when there is no sugar added to help sweeten the deal. It was good nonetheless and the only thing I tried tonight!

I also prepared a Paleo Friendly Pumpkin Pie. The verdict is out on this one as well since I didn’t want to disturb the perfectness of how it appeared. Hopefully we’ll enjoy it for dessert.

I hope you all have a Happy Thanksgiving! I’ll definitely let you know what the people think. Who knows I may get a slew of converts 🙂 All I know is my kitchen smells great so if anything I have that to hold on to!!!! Gobble Gobble!

Happy Tuesday! Traffic was light which makes me in a little bit better of a mood but eh, I still have to come to work so it’s a wash.

Let me start off by recapping my workout from yesterday 11/21. I had a nice dream that we did box jumps, to some it’s a nightmare but I don’t mind a few every now and then. My dream did turn into a nightmare though! I’m not a fan of the running which ended being the majority of our WOD!

After our handy dandy warm up we proceeded to do:

Skill/Strength: Front Squat 3rm

METCON: 4x400m sprints 1:30 rest
Sadly my fastest 400 was 1:52 (UPHILL for half of it). Me and running… we are not friends 😦

Since our box will not be open Thurs/Fri, we added a Tues morning workout. And boy I thought I was ready and I was lying to myself!

Skill/Strength: Press 5,3,1+ (I got to 4 total on my 1+) Not bad. Def improvement I think. Press is probably my weakest lift. Hopefully one day I’ll be able to say otherwise 🙂

METCON
21,15,9
Squat Cleans (95,65)
Ring Dips

I only did 55lb squat cleans instead of the prescribed 65lbs. I’m pretty sure I could have handled the 65lbs. It was the RING DIPS that killed me! BAD! I never thought I would have struggled so badly. I failed to take a picture of the board, but I finished around 10:30 (something). I really expected sub 10 minute but today I was just full of lying to myself.

Tomorrow will be better! Tonight’s dinner: Spaghetti Squash with Grass Fed Beef Pasta Sauce. Should be yummo. Not sure what else I’ll do. Maybe some asparagus and some cauliflower.

Also I hope to get a paleo pumpkin pie started. Thanksgiving is so close! And I have so much to do!!!! Pictures to come hopefully tonight.

I’m still debating in my head if I’ll post daily or just every couple of days, so bear with me as I get my blogging planning figured out.

I’ll begin with Saturday. I started my day off with iChoosefit bootcamp because truly this bootcamp has helped me begin my journey of good health. I’ve kept with it even after I joined CrossFit. I know this can be taboo and frowned upon, but this is my fitness family. They have supported me and cheered me on for months.

Typical Saturdays would be a double workout if there is a WOD at my box CrossFit Boom. This Saturday however was unique because Ernie (boyfriend) and me participated in the Fort Worth Chevy Sonic Adventure Race for a car. It’s an event where we use the app SCVNGR that gives us clues and locations. If we answer the questions correctly then we earn points. The team with the most points gets a chance at winning a new car. We participated in a similar event last year but were truly out of shape. In addition to our lack of stamina and endurance we had a meltdown mid-race that caused us to lose a lot of time. This year after running around downtown Ft. Worth for 2 hours, we felt great and were feeling quite confident in our points earned. We drove out to Lone Star Park in Grand Prairie to meet with the Dallas teams where we would find out if we were the leader in points. Unfortunately we were not and I had asked the winning team how many points they had they said “123”… we had 119! So close but not good enough for the win.

We ended our day with my son’s football Championship Super Bowl football game. Sadly the boys didn’t bring their A game and lost 14-0. It was a sad ending to an exciting season. 😦

Sundays are reserved for shopping and miscellaneous errands. This shopping excursion included my rounding up ingredients for the Paleo dishes I will be contributing to our families traditional Thanksgiving dinner. CrossFit introduced us into the Paleo lifestyle and we’re doing pretty good sticking with it. We found some recipes, bought the ingredients, and hopefully we will be enjoying some yumminess come Turkey Day. I’ll hopefully have pictures to post.

Overall a good weekend! I’ll have a WOD post later. I ramble on too much. I need to get that under control!

Hello Hello… I know the CrossFit kool-aid has been around for years now but I’m a late bloomer and I just recently took my first CHUGS! I know for sure I’m ready for more. I’ve heard of this world over the past few years but I never really took a good look into it all. That was until recently when my boyfriend who detested working out at any gym decided he would check out a local box. He actually wanted to go back and eventually I creeped my way in. After only a few months CrossFit is a way of life for us now and we’ve seen only good things come from it in regards to our health and overall physical and mental states.

I’m a mom of 3 young boys and I’ve always wanted to be fit and in good health. Although I’ve had some hiccups in my 34 years of life I feel that in general I had not let myself get too out of control … just slightly. But now I’m in it – for the long haul! I want to be an example to my family and absolute strangers that I’m capable of anything and everything. So here I am. Working towards that goal.

I started this blog because I encouraged my oldest son who is embracing the Paleo lifestyle and the CrossFit way of life to start his own blog. I figured that I should follow my own advice and start one that belongs to me.

I hope to share not only my CrossFit journey but my personal crazy life and what we endure daily to achieve some sort of functional chaos. With that said… Welcome! I hope I stick around long enough to keep you entertained. And if not… live life, enjoy it and know that it does take work to meet your goals. 🙂