Day 18: The First Syllable of Diet is DIE!

Since today is my rest day, I thought I'd blog about something that is equally as challenging as the WODS.  Dieting.  Mehhhh!

All my life, I've tried to "diet" and the only time it really worked for me was when I was combining dieting with exercising.  I learned you can't just do one to lose weight. 

My freshman year of college, I found this random work out dvd called Emergency Workout by Minna Lessig:

Megan and Abby, you remember this!

and quickly, I was obsessed.  I found another workout DVD by Minna, and I again....obsessed.  This opened a whole new world to me.  I joined dance team, started taking mountain biking classes, snowboarding, swimming, but I was missing one thing DIET. 

Freshman year I believe I weighted a whopping 165 and got down to 155 by just exercising, but I couldn't get below that, and I couldn't figure out why.  I thought my diet was ok, but it was all guess work. 

So I started calorie counting. 

I used my palm pilot and a program called "Calorie King" to figure out how many calories I was allowed per day to lose about 1 lb a week.  Everything I ate was measured, counted, and recorded.  My college friends thought I was completely insane BUT I went from 155 to 140 (My lowest weight ever) by running an hour a day and restricting my calories.  The nice thing about calorie counting is that you can eat anything you want, as long as you have the calorie allowance to afford it. 

This lasted for about a year, until I went on a cruise (all you can eat and major boozing) gained 10lbs back in a week and felt hopeless since I basically ruined a years worth of work. 

Since then I've tried to get away with exercising without dieting, and always the same disappointing results. 

So now I have 100% committed to Crossfit (exercising) and Zone/Paleo (Dieting). 

I'm just one of those people that has to watch what they eat.  It's truley a sad story because I love all the wrong foods.  Pizza, Bagels, Pizza Bagels LOL, Chinese Food, Cheese, Nachos, everything bad!  But on the flip side, I can avoid sweets like no other which is helpful. 

The Paleo part of the diet just means that I have to follow these rules for each meal:

Lean Meat
As Much Greens
Nuts
Berries
No Starch
No Sugar
No Alcohol

The Zone part of the diet is that I have to block my meals into:

Protien
Carbs
Fat

It takes a lot of prep time and planning, but who am I kidding, I love Prepping and Planning! 

If I cant Zone, (like tonight when I go out for dinner) I try to keep my meal as Paleo as possible and I have to keep in mind that I can't have good/great results if I don't comitt to both diet and exercise. 

And I have to remember I'm giving up these unhealthy foods for a reason.  So I mentally celebrate when, people say I look like I've lost weight, it only takes me one outfit try to get dressed in the morning, the scale shows a number that I like, I can buy cute clothes and wear them confidently, and when I feel fit and healthy and ready for anything!