I used to work at an office in a real office building downtown where I had access to approximately every type of food known to man within 10-minute walking distance. I mostly frequented Illegal Pete’s (which is just like Chipotle, only better), and would get a carnitas bowl with no rice or beans, mild and medium salsa, lettuce, and as much guacamole as possible. Or I would go to Choppers, this really fantastic salad place that taught me that it’s not that I don’t like salads (because I just can’t bring myself to eat a salad at home), it’s that I only like them when all of the ingredients are chopped to oblivion so that your bowl most closely resembles some salad confetti. Which, at this place, it always was. And I loved them for it.

Now I work out of my dad’s house in a suburb of Boulder, and I’m pretty sure the only thing within a 10-minute walking distance is an elementary school. The Dairy Queen and a Burger King of my childhood are still within rollerblading distance, but are somehow less appealing these days (plus I’m pretty sure I would die if I tried to rollerblade right now). Which means that I have to bring a lunch every day, and if I don’t, there really is no back-up plan.

This took a lot of getting used to. And now with Brandon working 4 10-hour days a week as a park ranger who hikes around for miles and miles every day, it is even more important for us to have a lot of food (and I mean a LOT) ready to grab in the mornings.

I have slowly learned what does and doesn’t work for us in the world of meal prep, and I have found out that we are not the types of people for whom meticulously preparing full meals days in advance is a good idea. We are more of a mix-n-match type of household, and our weekly meal prep is a pretty good reflection of this.

On Sundays we do most of our weekly grocery shopping, and we almost always pick up some broccoli, kale, sweet potatoes, apples, bananas, whole chicken legs, ground bison, eggs, and the biggest, cheapest Organic pork or beef roast we can find. We get lots of other things, too (like almond butter, almond milk, whatever other fruit or veggies look delicious, sometimes we will get some fish, etc), but those are the staples.

I typically try to prepare food for about 3 days at a time, for a few reasons. One, I think that’s about the limit for a lot of leftover vegetables to still be appealing. Two, I work from home on Thursdays and Fridays, so having pre-prepared food isn’t as important on those days. And Three, we just don’t have that much tupperware. Another thing to note is that we don’t have a microwave, so I try to make things that are easy to reheat in a skillet or eat cold.

Food prepped for breakfast: One dozen hardboiled eggs, which are usually eaten with apples and almond butter. If I am feeling really ambitious, I will pre-chop a bunch of sweet potatoes so that I can just throw them in the pan and cook them in the morning, but I rarely will pre-make sweet potatoes unless they’re mashed because I don’t think they reheat very well.

Food prepped for lunch: 4 whole chicken legs, which I pan roast using this recipe (except I use butter or tallow instead of veg oil). 1-2 pounds of ground bison, prepared with taco seasonings. 1 cauliflower head worth of Paleo Fried Rice. I usually will also take a few leaves of raw kale with me to work every day because I can cook it while I’m there.

Food prepped for dinner: The cauliflower fried rice can make a cameo here, but we also usually make a big pork or beef roast, usually a shoulder or rump roast depending on what’s cheaper, cooked in the crock pot. I cook most of my crock pot meat the same way: Start by browning some onions and garlic in a pan, then add the meat and brown it on all sides. Remove the meat with tongs and put it in the crock pot, then add chicken broth (or water and bouillon) to the pan with the garlic and onions and let that simmer for a few minutes before dumping it all in the crock pot. Add some spices (usually I will add a bay leaf and some sprigs of rosemary, but whatever works for you), and cook it on Low for 6-8 hours. Turn it off, let it cool for a while, then pull the meat out and shred it with your fingers. Sometimes I will then turn it into carnitas by adding lots of taco seasoning and browning it in a skillet, or Brandon will use it to make a stew, or I will just grab a handful of it and add BBQ sauce. It’s awesome, and then we will usually just stir fry some veggies (pre-cut frozen veggies if we are in a hurry) to go with it.

How important is meal prep for you? What are your favorite foods to prep for the week?

Spoiler Alert: I definitely am not at Day 5.

For some reason I just do not feel super motivated about this. I mean, it’s summer. Things are growing. Fruity things. And they want me to have them for breakfast and put them into smoothies and eat them when I get home from work because it’s hot out and let’s be real for a second, what is better than a few chunks of cold watermelon on a hot day? Nothing, that’s what.

But even though I can hear the carton of blueberries singing their siren song from my refrigerator right this very second, that is not the real problem. The real problem is that I just don’t believe that cutting out fruit, even for just 3 weeks, is necessary.

But… I also think that this is the type of thing I was telling myself before I experimented with the grain and dairy levels in my life. And those first few weeks didn’t feel like they made any sense, but now I know how much better my body feels when I stay away from gluten and ice cream and other things that I used to just think, “What is better than this?” Well, feeling good is better than those foods. And while I doubt that I will find myself swearing off of juicy red strawberries at the end of the 21-Day Sugar Detox, who knows what new thing I will learn about the ever-evolving desires of my gut?

Maybe I will learn that cutting out fruit isn’t necessary, and then I will be able to go forth and eat all the peaches in the world when they show up in August (I truly live for peach season). Or maybe I will learn that eating fruit for breakfast is the reason that I am ridiculously hungry by 10AM. Or that it turns out that it’s bananas that have been giving me heartburn this whole time. Or something. I mean really, the possibilities are endless.

But I guess first thing’s first: I should probably start the dang detox. For real this time.

This weekend we have a baby shower to go to, and a BBQ with my dad for a joint Father’s Day, brother’s birthday, and twin-stepsisters’ birthday party to attend. I don’t think it is a good plan to tempt my already not-so-solid resolve on this issue with cake (or heck, ketchup), and everyone knows that you have to start things on a Monday. Right?

So Monday it is. Round 2. Or maybe Round 1.2, as it were. No false starts this time.

I need some motivation, guys. What tricks do you use to get motivated when you are feeling apathetic? Have you done the 21-Day Sugar Detox? How was it? Was it worth it?

It was the day I found out that I have Butt Wink.

And last night, I found out that I very much STILL have Butt Wink.

On the right is the alignment where your butt should be… and on the left is the no-man’s land where my butt ends up. Notice how my lower back is extended and hem of my shorts is way further under my leg… that’s because my butt just winked.

Butt Wink is an unfortunate mobility issue that pulls your butt way under you at the bottom of a squat, causing flexion in your lower back. It kind of looks like your butt is winking at you, hence the really cute name. And last night when I was squatting, TJ took a video of my butt (pretty sure CrossFit is the only place that having a video taken of your butt is totally normal), and dang guys. It’s bad. Like, really bad.

And then TJ said, “This is your new goal. Your new Facebook goal or blog goal or whatever. It’s just your new goal forever. Work on your hamstrings.”

So I went home, and I spent 10 minutes doing nothing but banded hamstring stretching… and then I realized that I couldn’t really remember any other hamstring mobility moves that are easy to do at home. Sure I can do lunges and things like that, but it would be pretty impossible to avoid kicking my very stupid curious dog in the face while doing leg swings, and I am not even flexible enough to have static stretching be an option. I can’t even touch my toes. It’s a problem.

So, I am creating a new category of goals: Every Day Goals. Similar to Daily Goals, in that it’s something I have to do every day, except they don’t change like my Daily Goals do.

And while we’re on the subject, let’s do a little recap of my Daily Goals from the past week:

June 6: Drink 3L of water. Check! Felt awesome but I think 2-2.5L is probably plenty for most days.

June 7: Go to bed at 10:30. Check! I never thought going to be so early on a Friday night would feel so awesome. But it did.

June 8: Spend 30 minutes on mobility. This goal ended up getting moved to the morning of June 9th, as we were out and about in the mountains all day on the 8th. So, not a total success, but I didn’t totally abandon it!

June 9: Meal Prep at least 3 days worth of Sugar Detox Meals. Check! Although with getting sick my Sugar Detox has gotten off to a bit of a false start, but I’ll write more about that tomorrow…

June 10: Sinus infection day. Sleep and drink water. Check!

June 11: Sinus infection recovery day. EAT! Check!

I am loving these daily goals. It is kind of fun to think of a little something to focus on for the day, and it is even more fun to get to the end of the day and feel like you accomplished something just by remembering to fill up your water bottle all day. However, I think that now that I’m getting the hang of setting daily goals (and now that I am recovering from my Adventures in Mucinex), it’s time to start setting some slightly tougher goals.

So today’s goal, on top of my new Every Day Goal of 20 minutes of hamstring mobility, is to spend 15 minutes before tonight’s WOD (yes, that’s right, BEFORE! I will actually have to get there EARLY!) working on muscle up skills. In case I haven’t talked about it enough, my B-HAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) for the summer is to get a muscle-up! I found a little training program called “12 Weeks to Your First Muscle Up” on Google, and while I don’t plan to limit my work to just what that program prescribes, it definitely gives me some good ideas for accessory work and how to structure my pull-up sets. So THAT is what I am going to be working on tonight!

And now I need some advice… What are your favorite at-home hamstring mobility moves?

And, if you have a muscle up, what moves were the most helpful when you were building up to it?

Offshore CrossFit recently hosted a mobility clinic with a local physical therapist. Can you see my mom’s head poking around the big guy in the blue shirt?

As Claire’s mom I’m just as susceptible to being inspired by her as you are. I took up Crossfit in January, and I’ve enjoyed it immensely. Sure, I’ve had relationships with weight lifting, running, and swimming, to name a few activities, but Crossfit is my soul mate. Offshore Crossfit in north county San Diego is my new home.

I love being totally exhausted at the end of a WOD. I love the fact that I have new muscle, although I have to squint really hard to see it. I love that I can push myself to be stronger under the watchful guidance of coaches who know what they’re doing.

And like any new activity, I’m painfully aware of my limitations. When I started Crossfit, I thought it was just my colossal lack of skill and strength that made me feel like I was going to tear my shoulders out of their sockets if I fully committed to an overhead squat. And that’s true, but something else was missing that I hadn’t heard of before Crossfit. Mobility.

Mobility is a Crossfit term that is similar to what I’ve always known as “range of motion”, but mobility is more. Most range of motion that I’ve experienced is measured on a passive scale – if you can raise your arm to a certain point, then that is your range of motion. Warming up and stretching are great for that. At Offshore, our coaches have our entire class do a pre-WOD walking lunge set, and I feel better if I do about 20 minutes of stretching before I even do lunges. As a dancer, I have experienced firsthand the difference between a cold start and a warm start, and I’ve injured myself from not warming up sufficiently.

But unlike dancing, Crossfit requires more than just making sure we’re warmed up or limber. Mobility takes the range of motion past where we can simply reach, and measures where we can engage with weight and balance. Dancing also involves weight and balance, but it doesn’t come close to what I’m asking of my body with Crossfit.

When I ask everything of my body as I reach for the sky with more weight than I ever thought possible, I need to be able to take that weight where it needs to go, not a limited edition thereof. Whatever the proper structure is for the movement, it has to be 100%. There’s no doubt that a lot of this is about skill. But it’s also about the geometry of the body. If my body needs to create a particular position to balance a weight over my head, then I need to be able to move my body into that position, not adjust the position to accommodate my mobility range.

A few days ago, Claire asked us about our daily goals. I’m going to commit daily to working on mobility, such as increasing upward rotation in my shoulders, and working with PT Tracy Temmel to find out what is making my knees hurt (I’m pretty sure it isn’t my knees). And, I’m going to stop acting like this is an optional aspect of Crossfit. The downside of not getting serious about it is greater for me than it is for you, because I’m 99% certain that I’m older than you are. But it’s never too early to pay attention to these things. SUCH a mom thing to say.

What kind of mobility issues do you have and what are you doing about them? If you have a youtube video that shows your favorite mobility exercise, let everyone here know!

I hadn’t really put a lot of thought into what I was writing, but that little “…daily?” bit sparked a little introspection about goal making. Why shouldn’t I be making goals daily? And why I felt like it was a good excuse to say that I hadn’t reached my quarterly goals because they were “too far-reaching”? Because once upon a time, I was really awesome at both making and keeping goals.

Four years ago (holy crap was it really that long?) I went on a NOLS trip to the Yukon. I spent a month hiking and canoeing (and pushing a canoe upstream through knee-deep, very cold water–but that’s a story for another day), and it was extremely hard but also the most incredible, transformative, and valuable experience I have ever had. And one of the most valuable things I took away from that month in the middle of nowhere was a new way of thinking about goals. Every day, we would set goals for the day, everything from small items like remembering to eat and drink water at the right times, to bigger things like working on group cooperation and communication. We would tell our tent group or our canoe partner or our instructor about our goals, so that there was someone to hold us accountable and ask at the end of the day, “Hey, how did you do with drinking water today?” or “Hey, were you able to find a better way to communicate your needs with your canoe partner today? I know you had been struggling with that.”

this is what the world looks like when there is nothing else around for hundreds of miles

Unfortunately, a lot of things about long-term backcountry travel fade pretty quickly once you get back to the frontcountry. Not only did I go into a little bit of shell shock (I actually had a nervous breakdown and started crying hysterically in a Tim Horton’s in Whitehorse the night after we got off the trail…after having had to meticulously plan and prepare everything I’d eaten for the past 30 days, the thought of choosing from a case of donuts was way too much for my brain to handle), but once you leave a tight community like that of an 18-person wilderness trip, it is a lot easier to stop thinking about your goals… because it is a lot easier to evade accountability. It is also a lot easier to go about your life and pretend that you are too busy to plan for your goals. Just a few minutes ago Jennifer from Wine to Weightlifting posted this quote by Steve Maraboli on Facebook: “Although goals are important, having a plan of action is vital to the success of those goals. Having a goal with no plan of action is like wanting to travel to a new destination without having a map.”

So, it’s time to make a plan. And luckily, for the first time in 4 years, I am back in a community that thrives on accountability. In CrossFit, if you say you are going to do something, you do it–and everyone helps you with it.

And when I really stopped to think about it, I realized that the problem was not just in accountability, but in the way I was thinking about goals. If I really want something to happen, I should be thinking about it every day, planning for it, obsessing over it–not just remembering about it when it comes time to update a post on the blog or re-test my squat max.

So, I am going to challenge myself, for the rest of this month, to set a daily goal. I’ll be posting my goals on Facebook, so if you don’t like this blog on Facebook yet, now is the time. I’ll also do a weekly round-up here on the blog. But here is where you come in. I know that ultimately, whether or not I accomplish my goals is up to me. But what I’m really lacking here is accountability. Are you up for the challenge of keeping me accountable this month?

So let’s get this show on the road: Today’s goal is to drink 3 liters of water! When I work from the office (aka my dad’s house), I have one of those Camelbak water bottles with the sippy cup straw and it usually isn’t a problem for me to drink 2 or 3 liters a day, but on Thursdays and Fridays when I work from my house, I NEVER remember to drink enough water. SO that’s the challenge for today!

Want to try setting a daily goal? I’d love to hear about what it is!

So I think that this summer I am going to try out monthly goals instead, and maybe try to pick a few that are a little more within my ability to work on by myself. So here we go.

June 2013 Health & Fitness Goals

Hopefully my pull-ups will not be as distressing as these little characters think they are.

1. Link 2 strict pull-ups
I’m very sad to report that after my months of working my butt off to get a strict pull-up, I have almost lost it again. I need to get back on the train with working on this all the time, instead of just checking it off the list and walking away. Plus, this is crucial for my BHAG (that’s a Big Hairy Audacious Goal for all of you non-Student Council Campers), which is a muscle-up by the end of the summer!

2. Do 1 strict ring dip
I would be pretty surprised if I tried this today and couldn’t do it. But I haven’t really tried it recently, and who knows, maybe I would be utterly unable to do it. This is also a very important goal on my way to a muscle-up!

3. Try 3 new hikes
Guys, I live in Colorado and I barely ever go hiking. Actually, that’s not true. We hike a lot, but always on the same trail. It is a tragedy. This state is freakin beautiful and I need to explore more of it.

4. Eat strict Zone for breakfast & lunch 4 days a week
You would think that after having such awesome results with Zone, I would have stayed on it indefinitely. And I wish that I could say that I have. But even though the measuring and weighing is really not that hard at all, I seem to be able to find every excuse to not worry about it. Let’s go ahead and stop that nonsense this month, what do you think?

5. Complete a 21-day Sugar Detox
This is a biggie. I have never done the Sugar Detox before and although I don’t typically crave sugar, going fruit-free for 3 weeks in the middle of the summer is going to be tough. But Joy and I have a photo shoot for some podcast promo pictures on June 30, so hopefully that will help keep me motivated!

Do you have any June goals? What do you find is an effective time frame for your goal setting?