Here we go

When I signed up back in October, the Tough Mudder date of May 31 seemed to be light years away. Now it's less than a week away. What.

How prepared do I feel?

Ehhhh. On a scale of 1 to 10 I'd say maybe a 6.

My two major goals before TM were losing some weight/fat%, and being able to do a pull up, and I didn't meet either of these goals. My weight is holding steady right in the low 150s and has been for the past month or so. This is entirely due to weekends. I keep having too much fun on the weekends and it seems to always involve some sort (read: lots) of calories. That said, I suppose having too much fun is a good problem to have, yeah? On the flip side, I DO have more muscles. I got definition in my arms and legs, so that's pretty cool.

As for the pull up, I have made progress - I can now jump up, hold myself up for a while and sloooowly lower myself down easily, whereas before I would jump up and immediately come back down again. I could barely even just hang there for any length of time. But I'm nowhere close to an actual pull up. Also, my dream goal was to rock the monkey bars and that is definitely not happening. I tried some kiddie monkey bars at the playground down the street last week and literally could not get from one bar to the second bar. I just can't support my whole weight with only one hand.

You look so deceivingly simple.

My running has been going well - I can fairly easily do over 6 miles at this point, which I think will be enough endurance to get me through.

My goals for TM:

1. Finish. Get orange headband. ???.  Profit.

2. Don't die or get horribly injured. 

3. Don't bail out on any obstacles without trying them just cause you're too scared (with the exception of the ice water one, no can do). I'm looking at you, Walk the Plank. And the electric wire ones. I want to finish feeling like I tried everything that I could. Even if I can't do some of the obstacles (monkey bars) at least I can say I tried them.

One obstacle I definitely want to complete is this one:

Basically a wall with tiny footholds and a rope to climb up. When I did the warrior dash last year, I couldn't get up this one. So if I can't do the monkey bars, I'm hoping to at least manage this one.

So there you have it. I'm anxious, excited, terrified. Recap coming in a week :) Wish me luck!

Breaking the comfort zone: yoga

So going along with the theme of smashing comfort zones, I did something this weekend that I haven't done in literally a decade - yoga! I realize that everyone and their mother is already on the yoga bandwagon, but better late than never, right?

To be honest, I've never been too drawn to yoga. I did one class in college and wasn't too impressed. I remember laying there on my back breathing in, breathing out, and all I could think about was how the college gymnasium floor was kinda gross and that it was really hot and smelled like sweat. So much for letting your thoughts go, right? At the end I was like, what is this, I feel no different! I demand enlightenment! All my anxiety should be gone! or something along those lines. I always thought of yoga to be used as one of three things - 1. to gain or enhance your spirituality, 2. to reduce anxiety and relax, or 3. to stretch out your muscles. I'm not a very spiritual person, I can handle any anxiety I have pretty well, and I can stretch for free in my own home. So, why do yoga?

Another misconception I had is that yoga is easy. You just sort of flow from movement to movement right? Hahahaha. I would see pictures on Instagram like, tree pose and whatever that one is where you stand on one leg and snake your leg around the other one and your arms too and balance? NBD right?

Just smiling, chillin in eagle pose. FALSE ADVERTISING, ACTUALLY VERY DIFFICULT

Cut to: Saturday morning, yoga studio (HOT yoga mind you), with my friend Jackie. I was pretty nervous because I am such a noob when it comes to yoga. Like, nooby enough to ask if you wear sneakers during yoga class. I did go in knowing a few basic poses (1.downward dog which I am terrible at due to tight hamstrings that I rarely stretch, whoops, 2. warrior pose, 3. sitting indian style? does that count? 4. the sun thing where you stand and sweep your hands up to the sky? or something) but I was praying that the teacher wouldn't just be like "Ok class, now we will sweep into shavanuyuyasunana pose" and the whole class would contort into like, a literal flower, transformer style, and I'd be like WHAT ARE YOU.

And so, with my trepidations in tow, off to yoga we went. Ninety minutes later, I was almost literally a puddle of sweat on a borrowed mat and I felt freaking awesome.

There were some great things right off the bat about this yoga class. It was a small class - only seven of us total I think - and the instructor was excellent at welcoming all levels. If I was struggling to stay up in a certain pose, she would gently remind the class that we could put our back knee down for more support if needed (boom, knee to the ground). Or she'd remind us we could use a block, or just revert into child's pose. But she'd also say things to challenge the advanced people, like, "if you have a warrior level 18 pose you like to take here, feel free to challenge yourself" (obviously I just made that up), and then basically people would turn into ACTUAL warriors. Level 18 is crazy. I also just made that up.

"Saturday morning: a level 18 yoga class leaves the studio."

 Things I learned:

1. Yoga is hard. Like, really hard. It's a serious workout. So much for "just stretching," lol. My legs were on fire and I thought a number of times that I wouldn't be able to make it through the whole 90 minutes. There were people there who were at the same level as myself I'd say, and then there were people who were like, handstanding and practically break dancing (at a much slower pace than actual break dancing. Slow-break-dancing). This dude next to me was doing some crazy poses and barely broke a sweat.

This was happening 6 feet to my left. I don't even.

2. Speaking of sweat, I don't think I've ever sweat so much in my entire life. We'd be in downward dog and every 5 seconds I'd have another drop come off my nose onto my mat. Drop. Drop. Drop.

3. My balancing skills need a lot of work. Every time we did something where we balanced on one foot I felt like one of those inflatable air dancing things.

WHOOOAAAAAA

4. I felt really good afterwards. Not in some crazy enlightenment way, and I'm not about to change my whole mindset and start following Buddha or anything. But I felt really relaxed and refreshed and overall, really good.

Would I do it again? Absolutely. I would love to make progress with this and get better at some of these poses. I'm actually pretty excited to try it again. I see a new yoga mat in my future....

Against all grain

So recently, my dear friend over at The White Whale gave me a little birthday present of the cookbook Against All Grain.

Isn't Danielle Walker just the cutest? She's like, hey y'all. I got some paleo goodness up in here. I don't know why I picture her as a southern belle. More likely she's from the Bronx or something (edit - she's from San Fransisco, which makes a lot of sense). But that hair! The red dress!

Check her out on her soon-to-be-published second book here:

 

Oh, you know, just washing my organic romaine and greeting my gorgeous husband with a smile as he walks through the door with two puppies and a dairy-free chai latte in hand. Alright, I think I might be extrapolating a bit here. Safe to say Danielle Walker is pretty great.

I digress. I love cookbooks, and I was super stoked to get this one. Yes, I know I'm off the strict paleo bandwagon, but I still want to be eating lots of healthy foods full of veggies and protein, and these recipes deliver.

First up: slow cooker beef chuck chili. I was psyched cause I got to use my roommate's slow cooker (thanks Jansky!) and basically just threw everything in there and let it stew in its own awesomeness. I made some adjustments, like using ground beef and bison (what I had on hand) and throwing in a boatload of spinach at the end.

Sort of close, right?! I don't even think I'm being sarcastic this time!

Next up is banana bread. I've got some bananas that are knocking on death's door and deserve a eulogy in the form of nomtastic baked goods.

My new goals are:

1. Cook more recipes from cookbooks. I've got Ellie Krieger's floating around somewhere from a while ago which has a lot of awesome healthy recipes, too.

2. Eat leftovers from said recipes before moving on to other recipes.

3. Make sure to not cook anything with shellfish. I had a horrid reaction last week where my entire body, head to toe, was on FIRE with hives. It was miserable. Got a prescription for some major anti-inflammatories and antihistamines and they slowly went away after about 5 days. The only thing I can think is that I ate shrimp right before it happened. Then ate calamari the next day (yeah, I'm dumb and didn't connect the dots) and that just threw it through the roof. I have an allergy appointment in July but until then I'm avoiding everything shrimpy. But I keep forgetting. I'm like, OH this SHRIMP RECIPE with SHRIMP PUREE and SHRIMP SAUCE SHRIMP WRAP sure sounds good! Shellfish smoothie on the side, yeah! Yum! And then I have to stop myself and be like, HIVES.

4. Get back into the workout swing. The hives threw me WAY off. I couldn't work out, let alone move without being utterly miserable. Itch itch itch. I went to bootcamp on Thursday, which was the first day I had no hives at all, but then still had trouble getting into workout mode this weekend. Today I ran 3ish miles though, so I'm getting back into the groove.

What recipe books do you own? Any recommendations?