Primal Journal: Punkgrokgirl Vs. Her Own Fat Butt, Round 1, FIGHT! page

**punkgrokgirl** · 02-03-2011, 07:32 PM

Oh yeah, public accountability!

I've been primarily primal since last spring, April, or May, when I, in a roundabout sorta way, stumbled on to this site. I did a whole lot of internetting, researched the bejesus out of Primal and Paleo, and was shocked and appalled that I'd never heard of these things before, considering how much sense they made. That was really all I needed, I bought Mark's book (then later, cookbook) out of sheer gratitude for making the info so accessible, and kicked the rice to the curb. I'd booted the breadstuffs a couple of years before after figuring out that I am a celiac.

I lost 10 pounds immediately, the first three weeks really, and felt better than I can remember feeling in ages. Ah, carb bloat weight, gtfo! I have not lost any weight or had any body recomposition since then, though, according to my occasional check ins with the scale, the tape measure, and my pants. Alas.

I try not to get too worked up about this, I've had a life time of beating the shit out of my body with wheat, booze, drugs, lack of sleep, 10 years on the pill + 1 hellish year with a Mirena IUD, my hormones have been out of whack since I hit puberty... And I've never had enough money to see a doctor regularly, and the ones I've seen when I've been poor enough to have medicaid (tell me that's not screwed up, I make too much money to have medicaid, but not enough to have any other healthcare!) were HORRIBLE. Ah, what I'm saying is, I know I have some healing to do, and this year has only been the start of figuring out how to do it for real, and I can tamp down my rabid desire to have abs (or at least one, AN ab, anything!), and a butt that you can bounce a quarter off of. For now...

Right then, stats for the curious and for my own tracking purposes!
As of February 1st, I am: Female, freshly turned 29, 5' 8", these are the things I don't expect to change any time soon.

The malleable:
192lbs (That's period weight though, for the last year I've been very consistently 185-187)
c:40" w:32" h:46"
bicep: 13" of flaaaab
thigh: 26.5"
calf: 16"

Having plugged everything into several different body fat percentage calculators and gotten everything from 28 to 37% body fat.

For the sake of consistency and tracking I'll go with www.scientificpsychic.com/fitness/diet.html (unless someone has a better recommendation) which says at 187, I'm 117 pounds of lean mass and 70 pounds of fat. .. .I .. Uh.. Dang. I still have a 0.7 WHR, that has to count for something, right?

I take daily:
10,000 iu Vitamin D3 every day (Nature's Bounty brand)
300mg 5-HTP (Natrol) Recommended by a book on Fibromyalgia, one of the first things that started to help the pain and my poor sleeping.
800 to 1600 mg magnesium oxide (Nature Made) This seems like a lot, but, tmi, it's the only thing that keeps my guts regular.
A 35 Billion probiotic, from Fairway.

I also grabbed some of the stuff recommended by Tim Ferriss in his 4 Hour Body book (I pirated it, I'll admit it, I was on a torrent binge and it caught my eye),
ALA, ECGC, and garlic extract. It was cheap and a year of no weight loss is a bummer, so I figured I'd give it a try, along with some of his other tricks.

So, food!

Tuesday:

Breakfast & Lunch both were leftover filet mignon (it was super cheap at our Fairway), maybe 12oz total, and 3 cups of spinach, all thrown together in pan drippings sauce, with red wine and butter added, there wasn't a lot of fat from the meat. Not a big fan of filet mignon.

"snack" - 1 cup chai, unsweetened, with two tablespoons of coconut milk and a tablespoon of coconut oil. My boyfriend isn't a huge fan of the taste of coconut oil, so I don't use it as often as I'd like in our dinners.

Dinner- Picking at bits of beef as I made stew for the next day, then a hardboiled egg and a tbs of homemade mayo.

Squats and wall push ups were done before all meals and after breakfast and lunch.

Wednesday:
Pre-breakfast, 50 "kettlebell" swings, using a 25 lbs dumbbell sitting around the house and prayer that it didn't fly out of my sweaty hands.
Some crunches and some fairly pathetic planks.

Breakfast, 4 egg salad with 1/3 cup homemade mayo (1 cup coconut oil, .5 cup macadamia, 1.5 light olive oil, and spices approximating Ranch flavor, mmm)

No lunch, had a snow day and cleaned the house.

Squats and wall push ups (arms... like.. noodles!) pre dinner.
Dinner, way too much beef stew, with onions, mushrooms, celery, leeks, & a carrot, some red wine, a bay leaf, salt pepper. I usually season heavily, but browning and then simmering short ribs over a couple days just gave it an amazing taste!

Thursday (today):
Squats and wall push ups before and after breakfast.
Breakfast, 3 egg salad, 1/4 cup of the mayo.

Lunch, way too much leftover beef stew. Mmmm.

Snack, 1/8 cup cashews, 1/8 cup pecans, ohhhh self control.

Dinner, about 6ozs of leftover filet mignon, reheated in beef fat scraped off the top of the soup, and a mound of crispy kale cooked in a couple of tbs of bacon fat. And a 1/4 cup of the mayo... Maybe that's a bit too much mayo in the last few days, but save for the snow day, I've been working from 6:30am to 6pm this week and cooking has been grueling. Well, part of the reason for doing this was to give myself a realistic view of what I'm doing and figuring out what to tweak. Too much fat? Mayhaps.

Desert? Okay, not really, but my ragin' uterus wanted a tub of ice cream, so I showed it who's boss with a big ol glass of stevia lemonade. I'm not usually a sugar craver, but, you know, round this time...

So, I'm trying to keep pretty low carb, maybe get all ketogenic, and too much veg seems to mess up my digestion, either slowing or speeding the process uncomfortably. Also, no dairy, 'cept my kerrygold butter, and limiting the nuts. I've been considering the question of IF'ing, in the past year I've been able to do it easily, no hunger, no energy dips, all smooth sailing for up to 24 hours, but... I've been reading round these parts that if your system, thyroid, adrenals, whoknowswhats, is healing that IF should be put off til healthier. Feedback on this would be awesome. I like IFing and would like to work out in a fasted state for the benefits it confers, but I'm wary of hurting myself in some unseen way.

Well, that's a lengthy start, anyway.

**Owly** · 02-03-2011, 07:45 PM

Seriously, how much do I love your screen name? Awesomeness!

No suggestions on IF'ing here, I'm still working up to longer ones (long story, won't eat up your journal over it), but it sounds like a good idea to let your body repair first. The noodle arms get better, I promise. I'm now able to do big-kid pushups pretty reliably after working up to them.

**Mandolin** · 02-03-2011, 09:25 PM

Originally Posted by Owly

Seriously, how much do I love your screen name? Awesomeness!

+1

Welcome to the forum! There is so much knowledge to be shared around here

**David_DC** · 02-04-2011, 01:22 PM

agreed. awesome screen name =) Upset I didn't think of it in some way . Good luck with everything. I just started this primal change myself in the last month.

**zoebird** · 02-04-2011, 01:30 PM

yeah. i like the screen name, the pic, and the thread title. triple threat!

**aktres** · 02-04-2011, 02:01 PM

Gotta love Fairway! In the summer I like to bike up to the 125 St. store and then ride home to Chelsea with my groceries in the basket. With a break while I eat my Fairway lunch at the new park up there.

**punkgrokgirl** · 02-19-2011, 01:14 PM

Thanks for the name love, kids! Much appreciated. I was helpless to resist a Dead Milkmen pun.

Yeah, Aktres, 125th st is my favorite Fairway. When I lived in Harlem I could walk over there. Going into the refrigerated room during the summer was glorious!

So, I'm apparently not so great at journaling anymore, though I had a livejournal that I updated for almost 8 years. It's a habit I really miss, but my time is sorta crunched these days.

I'm pretty excited, in the last two weeks since I made a commitment to exercise I've finally seen some breakthrough! It might not seem like much, but after a year of sweet FA, it's nice to know my body is starting to get the right idea.

Two weeks ago I was hovering around 190, I thought it was just PMS but it didn't drop back down after that ended, so maybe I'd just put on a couple of pounds. Ah, well, whatever, I'm back at 185, and more importantly, my ever bloated waist lost a whole inch! So, according to the above link for BF percent, I went from 37.6 to 36.5. 1.1 percent? I'LL TAKE IT!

AND! I've gone from wall push ups to windowsill pushups! Score. My air squats are getting better, my legs are definitely getting incrementally stronger, and I noticed that my walk to the bus takes about half the time it used to, with no conscious effort on my part. A really great part of the working out though, is that while I'm a little sore every single day, after the first week and pushing through the pain of a big workout, doing "pissups" (20 pushups and 20 squats every time I go use the bathroom) has completely mitigated that crippling, miserable, can't walk at all DOMS that used to happen after any workout.

The downside is that, yeah, I am a little sore EVERY day, which would be fine, except my boyfriend can now totally kick my butt when we wrassle. Hah, he'll just have to wait though, after a couple of rest days I am going to PWN him!

I just got a pull up bar and installed it, too. It's been my goal forever to be able to do one pull up, and one chin up. It's gonna happen. After a lot of reversals. A lot.

Most importantly, I feel good all of the time. I've hit some rough patches this week, and instead of days of soul crushing angst, I've been able to brush things off and move forward with more ease, speed and confidence then I've had in any save for my most manic of times. I just feel GOOD. I'm going to get outright annoying to be around, feeling so relentlessly cheerful. I also have tons of energy and I can actually wake up and get out of bed at 6 in the morning and actually want to work out.

Diet has helped, supplementing has helped, this has been the best year of my adult life healthwise, but really exercising, and doing it consistently was the missing piece of my wellbeing puzzle. So there we have it. I can't even tell you how excited I am to be able to ride my bike to work, once the last of the snow melts, to go hiking, to try rock climbing with some climber friends, and to continue to lose fat, finally. Oh yeah, and the being happy thing, that's pretty sweet too.

Oh yeah, and I've been IF'ing too. I think if my body had a problem with it, it wouldn't be so easy for me to do, so as long as it's not a struggle, I'm gonna assume that it's all good.

**punkgrokgirl** · 02-20-2011, 08:16 PM

Note to self, rest days are important!

I had planned on today being my rest day, Sunday seems to have a precedent for such things, but you know, life and plans, they don't quite gel.

So, this morning I woke up after sleeping too little and worked out until I couldn't form complete sentences, because my boyfriend agreed to get up and work out with me and I am trying to be supportive of his desire to change his lifestyle, without bitching or nagging (ahem, there was a prior incident)... Then we went grocery shopping, piled the cart high with veggies, meat and eggs, surreptitiously picking at the bulk macadamia nuts and olives like starving ninjas. *sneak*sneak*sneak*munch*munch*munch*

When we got home I planned to stuff my face with tasty protein laden snacks and perhaps fall asleep on the couch while the boyfriend waged war on the XBox, but alas, it was not to be. I bought a slow cooker last week and last night I threw in the week's chicken bones to start making proper bone broths, so of course, I had to strain and skim my first batch. And then brown and put in the beef bones and cow's feet for some beef broth. And then... Make chicken soup with my awesome fresh stock, make stock ice cubes for future use, make custard for making coconut milk ice cream (my personal battle against the agave laden crap the boy is very fond of), make mayo, regular and chipotle, hardboil eggs (the Julia Child way, work intensive as a mofo, but so worth it!) for deviled egg salad, all done more or less at the same time, clean the kitchen after this madness, and take a break in the middle of it for a message for my very sore shoulders (yay pull up bar!) and some sexytimes, because how can I resist the man pulls his hungover ass outta bed at 8am to work out with me and then rubs all of the pain right out of my back?

Yeah, so, no rest...

I have to work tomorrow, but I'm making a deal with myself. No work outs, no pissups, no fasts, no stress for the day, and then I can go back to kicking my own ass the rest of the week.

And I think I'm going to take some photos to post in this thread so I can track myself visually, the image in the mirror seems to change with mood, not reality, damnit.