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Ahh, the scoreboard. Is there anything more potentially confronting than in your face assessment of your day-by-day performance? You are going to be looking at what you do each and every day and reporting  how every day went.  And you may be looking at this saying, “I already KNOW I’m going to lose points, maybe every day, so what’s the point of playing?”

The point is, this challenge is not about being perfect. We are not challenging you to get a perfect score. This challenge is about being conscious about each choice that you make. What you take on should stretch you and give you results that you’ve never had before, but it shouldn’t make you miserable. I’m sure there are going to be things that you are not willing to give up.  This challenge is not about being miserable. This challenge is about knowing that every choice you make involves a sacrifice.  Today you hold off and don’t eat what you want to eat — there’s one kind of sacrifice you have to make. Tomorrow you may say “screw it!” and eat whatever you want — there’s another kind of sacrifice in that.

This challenge is going to help you be present at the moment of choice so that the choices you make ARE choices and not just reactions — to hunger, moods, cravings, desires, tradition, emotions. Don’t resist taking it on because you know that you aren’t going to be Mr or Mrs. Perfect.

Take it on because you are interested in training yourself to be the one in charge.

A few challenge updates/reminders:

• Get your points logged by 7p EST for the day before. For example: Saturday’s points would be logged on Sunday by 7P.  A few people were late in submitting. Since it was Day One – I will those people a pass!
• MEASURE YOUR WAIST: I forgot to have you measure your waist (silly me!), so if you can do that and email me the stat. You will measure at the navel (belly button) and around.
• The Facebook group is there to share this journey together. So please let us know what you are eating, what you are a feeling. If you have a question, need someone to talk you through a rough day – that’s what the group is there for!

Now Let’s Talk About Who Is in Control…

Remember, the required workouts are about intention, not intensity. Continue to do your Highbar workouts,  but on the days you would normally consider rest , put 20 minutes towards your fitness with something light, but that keeps you focused on health and fitness as a daily habit. A short jog, some sit ups, yoga class, a relaxed bike ride, a pick-up basketball game — anything that has you moving daily. I want you to think about the choices you make each and every day —

Are you constantly complaining about your job? Your body? Your significant other? Your friends? Your life? I’m guessing that many of you are highly motivated people who “get it” about making choices in life. And I recognize that not every person’s life is black and white.  You are responsible for your own life. How do you measure your happiness and success in your life? I measure mine in the percentage of time that I have dedicated each day to doing things that I feel 100% are my choice.

I’d say that around 80-90% of the time these days, I’m doing things that feed my soul and make me happy. That doesn’t mean they’re not work, but I enjoy doing them and recognize that I’ve chosen to do them.

• On an everyday basis, would you consider yourself happy?
• Do you live for the weekends?
• Are there some days you dread waking up?

These questions get to the heart of the choices you make every day to live a life that you choose. This isn’t to say that there might not be a few things here or there in a day that you need to accomplish that aren’t your favorite tasks (maybe it’s a tough conversation with your boss or some chores at home), but in general, do you feel you are in control of your days? Brian Tracy, a motivational speaker, states in his Psychology of Achievement series that “we feel good about ourselves to the exact degree to which we feel we are in control of our own lives.”

Does this resonate with you? Do you feel that your life is directed or driven by outside forces that you don’t control? Psychologists refer to this as your locus of control. Is yours internal or external? Do you feel you’re driving your life or that your life and everyone or everything in it is driving YOU?

Clearly this post has more questions than answers. I want to challenge people to really think about what it is that they choose to do every single day and whether or not those actions contribute to their happiness or to their feeling of stress, anger or disappointment in life.

We only get one life to live and are life is short, so what’s keeping you from making some different choices to have a life that you feel you’re in control of every single day?  It may even be as simple as asking if you NEED that dessert every day—

Robb Wolf puts it well when he writes in “The Paleo Solution”:

“stress is an inescapable and significant factor in people’s lives, and a stunning amount of their stress is self-induced. People might benefit from considering how they want to spend their time and resources… If you are attached to a bunch of crap that requires you to work ungodly hours to pay for it, you are missing something… If you have weight or health issues, work yourself to death, have a closet full of clothes you never wear, and a house full of crap you never use, then maybe you need to do some thinking about how you approach your life.”

Robb was talking about our attachment to “stuff” there, but I would venture to guess that much of the stress we put on ourselves to “achieve” more, or “succeed” more is largely because of a desire to get more stuff. What’s the stuff really worth anyway? Most of the time, it tends to control us rather than us controlling it. It’s the reason why we are bound to jobs we hate or relationships from which we don’t remove ourselves. Unbind yourself from the stuff and start driving your own life rather than it driving you.(excerpts from Balanced Bites.)

Remember: You weren’t put on this Earth to go at someone else’s pace, to be less than you can be. So don’t be less. Don’t cheat your own strength.

Here’s some bright news:

Dairy – Butter is permitted. No milk, raw or not, yogurt, cheese, kefir, etc. If  it is made from the milk of any animal and is not butter, it is not allowed. That’s  the rule.

Remember, you own your decisions – so if you use an inordinate amount of butter, it will show. I suggest using Kerrygold or some other grass fed butter!

It’s one thing to say things are going to be different. It’s another thing completely to have them BE different.  Don’t go out there and just expect it to be different. The world will not have organized itself around your choices about your life! Make your circumstances different and you will make you different.

Prepare yourself for the situation as you know it exists out there and you won’t be disappointed.

Creating the Environment

The Purge 

You must change your surroundings to make them different than they have been up until now. Throw away all food items that donít support your success ñ cookies, pasta, bread, crackers, etc. They should not be there when the craving strikes. Youíll also want to look for things that have sugar that you weren’t even aware of! This isn’t magic- This is pure practicality.

Shopping

Buy your food on a regular basis and shop with intention. Don’t even venture into the middle of the store. The only things that you should need for this challenge are on the perimeter – meat, produce, nuts and seeds, etc. The closest you should get to an aisle is to buy olive oil.

Make a list and stick to it like a promise to your grandmother. Once you’ve cleared out the kitchen don’t put any junk back in!

Shopping

Remember to READ LABELS -there are sugars where you don’t expect them, especially in marinades and cures for meats.

Weekly Prepping and Cooking

Prepare like you are a restaurant chef. When you leave for work or come home at night, it will make a big difference if you can open your fridge and have what you need at your fingertips.

• Open, dry, season, and cook (roast, grill, sautÈ, poach) all meats.

• If you want to be able to cook hot dinners, donít season or cook, but portion the meat our for what you will use in a dinner

• While meat is cooking, chop and prepare all vegetables. Save as much raw as you want to make salads or cook at dinner. You can cook lots of stuff now -asparagus, peppers and onions, sweet potatoes, roasted tomatoes, etc. Make putting a meal together as quick and painless as possible. There will be a learning curve here. Don’ t expect that your first try will take an hour or two. It will get better over the course of weeks.

Eating Out

Eat something before you go out to take the edge off. This applies to going to a restaurant OR a party — ESPECIALLY a party. Don’t go out hungry.

Ask questions at the restaurant. Be that guy. You want to ask about sugar, soy, grains, etc. This is about ownership and clarity. If you can start being clear for yourself about the choices you are making, you can start seeing real results!

Strategy

Don’t do this alone

Form partnerships or teams to support each other. Your mind is a dangerous neighborhood, don’t go there alone!

• Make weekly promises to each other and use each other to have conversations to make sure you keep your promise. Your friends can talk you off the ledge when it gets bad.

• Lean on fellow challengers to vent, complain, get advice and guidance

• Create a food co-op – have pot lucks and cook enough that everyone can take some home. Invite enough people that you have enough for lunch or dinner for a week (or both!).

Working Out

Daily workouts are about consistency, not intensity. You should continue to do your CrossFit workouts as usual, but find some time every day, 10 minutes at least, to be active – jog, bike, hike, yoga, sit ups, whatever. Do it to instill that health and fitness is a daily commitment and that it doesn’t come down to going to the gym 2-3 times per week to fix everything that you did wrong in your life.

Goals

Set milestones for yourself. Create short term goals so that you can have victories all along the way. There will be weekly challenges for you to take on, but you can create any kind of marker for yourself that you choose.

Where do you want to be 2 weeks in? What can you do each week to celebrate victory?

What do you want to have halfway through? The more you have to look forward to on a short term basis, the quicker the long term will arrive.

Make a promise. What is success in this challenge going to look like? Make a promise to yourself and share it with someone else. Keep that as your motto, mission statement, mantra, whatever. And make it something that you are excited about. When this is over I will have the energy to __________! When I complete this, I am going to treat myself to _______. And do it! It doesnít just have to be food. This is a big deal, reward yourself.

Great turnout this morning for our kickoff —

If you were not able to make it this morning – you can do the workout sometime this week and email me your results.

12min AMRAP

• 10 Burpees
• 20 Air Squats
• 100m Shuttle Run

Also by Wednesday-send me the following information:

• Measurements
• Hips (at the widest part)
• Chest (nipple level)
• Each Thigh
• Each Arm

Optional:
You can also benchmark your weight and send that info to me and
some like to take a picture at the beginning of the challenge and then again at the end – it’s up to you!

Remember, you log your points for today by 7p tomorrow! If you have any issues with using the website, let me know!

Many of us can read forever about the many ways we should make changes, but they are often particularly difficult to enact. How much easier it is to be a couch potato wolfing down unhealthy foods and beverages than to find the discipline to make some changes for our bodies’ sake! More often than not, we are prone to make a grand gesture of change such as: “tomorrow I’ll give up all junk food forever and exercise for 90 minutes every day” without the awareness that those two major changes would take many months or years for even a highly disciplined person to accomplish. A few hours after we enact such an impossible program, we discard it like last New Year’s resolutions. We can then blame our failure on advertising, stress, travel or our job. Or we can reinforce our own lack of self-esteem by considering ourselves a failure. Instead of blaming ourselves or others, it would be far healthier and more effective to self-talk along the lines of “I tried that and it didn’t work – now I’ll try something different”

NOW is the time to try something different …

What Foods Do I Need To Avoid?

Grains/starches (corn, soy, bread, rice, pasta, potatoes) – Quinoa and wild rice are grains. Quinoa contains saponins, a concentrated source of anti-nutrients which increase intestinal permeability and lead to “leaky gut” which in turn may promote low level, chronic inflammation. Quinoa also contains phytates which inhibit the absorption of nutrients such as iron and zinc. Wild rice also has similar gut irritating qualities.

It comes down to whether or not you can OWN it. If you are not sure, the best answer is always avoid it until you are clear.

Sugar – ANY caloric, natural (honey, agave, cane juice, evaporated cane juice, maple syrup,  coconut crystals, Truvia, etc) or non-caloric artificial sweetener (aspartame, nutrasweet, sucralose, etc.). Stevia is fine for this challenge, just be sure you are not preserving a sweet tooth you’d be better off without. Unwire your palate from sweet!

There is also some research that says that there is an insulin response just from the taste of sweet.

Gum and mints are not OK – artificially sweetened or not, they are a violation. There is a reason that people dip and chew tobacco. The mouth and gums are a highly permeable entranceway to the bloodstream. Whatever you chew in your mouth ends up in your system.

Alcohol, soda, juice –. No soda – it’s either sugar or artificial sweetener, so lay off. No alcohol. No juice allowed. It’s just liquid sugar, people.

If you choose to drink any of these, portions for 1 point are:

• 1 oz. liquor, 16 oz. beer, 4 oz. wine, 1 mixed drink
• 12 oz. soda
• 8 oz. juice

Dairy – Only butter is permitted. No milk, raw or not, yogurt, cheese, kefir, etc. If it is made from the milk of any animal and is not butter, it is not allowed. That’s the rule.

Diet or processed foods – nothing artificial, nothing processed in anything besides traditional cooking or preserving methods (curing, cooking, drying). If it required a lab, it’s not OK.

The same rules apply for additives –if its almond butter, but has some additive that was made in a lab – Nope! It’s not allowed!