Recently I was inspired by my friend Jenn. I’m always inspired by her really, but she doesn’t know that (hi Jenn, you’re my hero BTW). Jenn loves running – she recently trained and completed a 10k, I followed her Instagram posts, pics of her and her two friends happy, smiling and tired at the finish line. Even prior to the run, I would listen to stories of her training for it, how far she had come, how she pushes herself to go further every day, how hard it is, but how much she loves it. And she would tell me “Sebastian hates that I run”. Sebastian is our chiropractor, but he’s so much more than that to a lot of people. He owns Cafe of Life in Barrie Ontario, and takes a whole health approach to his practice. Why wait for your back to hurt before you see him (like I did)? If you are going on a regular basis (no, that does not mean once every 3 months Bob) you will be taking preventative steps to back health. And since our beautiful wonderful spines protect our entire nervous system, which feeds all of our organs, tissues, brains and extremities, why *wouldn’t* you take care of that? Anyway, a while back, we’re talking at least 2 or 3 years now, Sebastian introduced Scott & I to the Whole30. It’s a strict Paleo diet/cleanse. Which opened up a whole new way of life – people who eat like cavemen (in short: no diary, grains, legumes or refined sugar). But Paleo goes way beyond food, it speaks to how our bodies were designed to break down certain foods, digest and function. It also is a way of living that speaks to how our bodies were designed to move. Using all of our muscles in tandem, to achieve the goal of capturing our prey, long walks for foraging for our leafy greens and berries, how we should be able to jump up to that limb on a tree to avoid an animal attack. This way of working out is essentially what Crossfit is all about. Sebastian is a hard-core crossfitter – as is his wife Kara and I’ve even seen their two very young kids mimicking their parents with crossfit at the playground! Amazing! In this way of thinking, we break away from the mentality that we should be ‘isolating’ our muscle groups like we have been doing, but rather use them all together to perform exercises that really push us. Hard. That doesn’t really include running. Sprinting, yes, but not running for 10k certainly. It’s too hard on our bodies (they didn’t have asphalt in caveman days I guess!) and there are better and faster ways to get the cardio strength and muscle strength we’re looking to achieve. Therefore, Sebastian didn’t like my friend Jenn was running so much – and having to get adjusted a lot to compensate for it too!
So, Jenn started a crossfit workout today that is inspiring me to do the same. Having said that, I recognize that 80% of weight loss is what goes in your mouth, so I’m aiming to do a “modified” paleo as well. I find paleo a bit rigid and hard to follow at times, and I’m giving myself permission to eat things that would normally be off-limits, but don’t seem to disagree with me, like rice or rice noodles. The biggest changes for us (I’m including Scott in the “us” here) is junk food (me), and portions (Scott). Now that I’m about to travel half way around the world, I’m hyper-aware that I won’t be able to sustain this as easily as home due to eating out more than usual I’m guessing, but I do want to try, and perhaps even be a *little* smaller by the time I hit Brisbane. 🙂 So where do we go from here? The beginning.
There will simply be things that I will not be able to do starting out, but that’s all part of it isn’t it? Once I’m able to do them, I can say “hey, there was a time I couldn’t even do 1 of these!”, and I look forward to that. I’m hopefully going to get some Crossfit WODs (Workout of the Day) from Sebastian to get me started, I’ll do what I can and if I can’t, I’ll just change how many I start with – do 10 instead of 15. Keep it easy-breasy. It’s not like I’m trying to lose all my weight in 6 weeks to look awesome in a bikini. For those of you who know me, that’s a scary damn thought. No I’m doing the marathon on this one, trying to stay motivated, no matter if it’s summer, I’m on vacation, or I’m uncomfortable – being this big IS uncomfortable!! I’d rather not be TYVM. Until then, I’ll leave you with the image of a “sweat angel”. Just learned this term today while getting adjusted by Seb – and I think it’s awesome!! After these workouts, you literally do fall on the floor and are immobile for a long time, thus creating the sweat angel. 🙂
Carolyn's Australian Adventure 