The Wagon: I fell off it and now I'm back on it

I didn't realize it's been a full month since I last updated the blog, but with everything going on in my life I guess it really has been that long. I'm a fulltime intern with Company A and part time intern with Company B, plus I'm doing my best to XFit as often as possible. Add on top of that it's kickball season, the NHL playoffs start tomorrow (GO SABRES!), I've been babysitting and I'm still trying to keep up with social life, sleep, cleaning, and reading. Ya know, doing everything.

How am I doing on my path to being the best I can be? I guess I'm doing alright. I've been eating Paleo at a pretty consistent rate and I'm down a belt notch. I'm doing okay on my finances, but not as good as I should be at all! I put my entire tax return toward my credit card debt (score) and then decided it would be okay to re-charge a good chunk of it on clothes and accessories for the new job. It's an investment, right??

With everything I have on my plate right now I am trying to keep up with everything the best that I can. You can only focus on kicking ass at so many things before you are burnt out, over-extended, or half-assing. At the moment my primary focus is working and sleeping with a side of CrossFit.

Hey, I've started working out at 6am which is definitely something to be proud of!

Well, CrossFit is officially addicting

T-minus 4 days until my very first CrossFit competition and I've already registered for my second. I guess I'm a little over-zealous?

Every year CrossFitters across the United States begin to train and compete for the national games, and just like any sport they have to work their way up through victories. Starting tomorrow we will all compete in Sectionals in hopes of doing well enough to get to Regionals. I have a better chance of sleeping with Ryan Reynolds than I do of getting on our Regionals team! Yet I can't turn down the opportunity to compete with the other Elite athletes and try and prove myself. Maybe even get stronger? Better? Faster? The whole point behind CrossFit was to excel and dammit I will.

On a happy note... I am now acquainted with the blue band for my pullups. Boom.

Bye Social Life, It Was Nice Knowing You

Sometimes to take a big step forward you have to take a big step back to brace yourself for the leap and the landing. That's exactly what I'm doing with my life right now by taking an unpaid internship to gain the valuable skills needed to continue with my career in public relations.

Yesterday I had an interview with a second internship and against all luck, I got it. I actually rocked it so hard they said I'm "too talented" for the actual internship and they're going to create a specific task and title for me. Also, this company is my DREAM company so yesterday was a great big ego boost and success.

However, that now means I will be handling two internships at once. After my interview with Dream Company I came in to the office for my primary internship and my boss informed me we have about four major events coming up in the next two months we need to start planning for.

How will I balance both? I have no clue, but I'm going to have to do it.

Let's not forget I also CrossFit pretty regularly for a few hours a day so my life will basically revolve around busting my ass, in a literal and figurative way. This is good though because my ass needs to go down in shape anyway...

Hopefully I can balance it all and gain some great experience to make me a contender for a full-time position somewhere?

In the meantime I guess it's safe to say my social life is going to disappear in a few weeks... it was nice knowing you.

Training

I officially began training for Three's Company last week and all I can say is... I'm tired. Working out twice in the evening is definitely a bit exhausting, but in a good way. I was working on movements I'm unfamiliar with and getting more flexible.

As an added bonus I was able to get three months of unlimited yoga and pilates (free!) to help me work on my core and flexibility. Day 1 of Pilates was definitely a butt kicking and I had no idea just how out of shape my abs are. However, now I can alternate yoga and pilates daily plus running and CrossFit to ensure I'll be in top shape for the competition.

To go along with this intense work out regime I will be eating a lot, drinking a lot of water and sleeping like there's no tomorrow.

Attention world: I will be out of commission for the next three weeks until the competition is over.

Tomorrow will be a far better update, I swear... Sunday Funday got the best of me and I have an Entourage marathon calling my name.

113 Days

On I Used to Be Fat the teens have roughly 110 days to lose X amount of weight before a big life-changing event, specifically going away to college. That's three months to dedicate your life to fitness and healthy-eating habits to transform yourself in to who you want to be and what you want to look like.

Attached is a picture of me when I was 19-years old at an Auburn football tailgate. I was skinny, but skinny fat, meaning I wasn't working out at all, I just had lucky genes to carry me through the beer and fast food. However, that luck ran out during my junior year and I proceeded to go from 140lb and a Size 4 to 180lb and a Size 12 when I graduated college.

I want to look like that again. I want to fit in to the gameday dresses, designer jeans and other cute clothes I bought when I was skinny. I don't want to be self-conscious about my body and refuse to wear skins and shorts, tank tops, tighter shirts, anything. No more hiding in jeans and baggy t-shirts!

It is 113 days until June 1, the peak time for everyone to be in bathing suits and preparing for summertime festivities. If I dedicate myself to 113 days of focusing even harder on working out and eating right, maybe I'll get back to that size or will be the best size for my age. I know I may not be exactly the same size because my body has changed in the last six years and I will be gaining muscle with CrossFit.

I will not say I'm going strict paleo or giving up drinking until that day because I know I won't. Why set a goal you know you cannot obtain? In March I begin kickball season, beer festivals, St. Patty's Day and much more. I will be drinking and I don't want to set myself up to fail and feel guilty about it several times out of the month because I had something to drink. Life is short so enjoy it, but there is a fine balance too.

What can I do to battle the cravings and stick to the plan? Well, work out more and harder. I officially decided I am going to compete in "Three's Company" next month and I need to start training. I also want to run a 5k next month without stopping to catch my breath or walk a little bit. These are small goals, but goals! Great goals!

Also, I can continue to make smart decisions about drinking. Not drinking on weeknights is a lot easier than I thought it would be and as long as I'm surrounded by supportive friends it's easy. I won't drink during the week except for Kickball Thursday and if it's a big social event on the weekend. I have training to do on the weekends and if I get hammered on Friday I won't make it to the run or early morning WOD.

So here is my pledge... in 113 I will be a different girl. I will have sexytime thighs, hopefully a hint of some abs and I won't have fat face anymore. How will I achieve these goals? Sticking to the plan and putting everything I have in to it.

Or Jasmine, Lis and Kristen will kick my butt in to the ground.

Shout out to Becky for being an ever present motivator. Thank you for being such a great friend. The next 10lb are for you!

Feb. 15, 2011 - You Suck

Yesterday was Valentine's Day and it should have been the day that emotionally embodies all of my frustration, fears and pissiness because I'm single. Valentine's Day is the one day a year (if you're single) that you look at your life and go, "Crap, I need to get it together!" You weigh your successes in life against your ability to maintain a man's attention. If you don't have a boyfriend on V-Day you might as well be a cast member of Maury with an additional 100lb and a worse skin complexion. So to make yourself feel better you make terrible food decisions (my personal favorite is fried chicken, macaroni and cheese and ice cream) and you booze it up either by yourself with Bridget Jones' Diary or with a bunch of girlfriends who are bawling in to Kleenex just as much as you are.

But what did I do? I went and worked out and ate a Paleo-friendly dinner. Valentine's Day went without any crying, screaming or self-loathing. I smashed my scale in with a sledge hammer and I watched Gossip Girl. I defeated the dreaded Valentine's Day and I smashed it in to the ground.

But today...

It's bad enough I'm sitting in awkward and painful anticipation of two internships that I recently interviewed with and I haven't heard a peep from since. It's bad enough I spent another day sitting around in my pajamas and not showering until normal people were leaving work for the day. It's bad enough I'm eating Paleo and I haven't had carbs since January!

But today...

The Things That Made Me Want To Scream (in chronological order):

1.) I was denied food stamps. I actually applied for food stamps as a 25-year old college educated American. And I was DENIED. Why??? Because I have bad timing. If I had applied for food stamps two weeks ago before my unemployment benefits were approved I would have gotten food stamps, no matter what happened with unemployment benefits, for six months. I would have gotten roughly $150 a month for groceries. But because I decided to wait and be a normal human being and not work the system until my dad finally pressured me in to it, I was denied.

2.) I have unemployment insurance through my auto loan and thank goodness I was smart enough to add it to my policy last year. Well, Mr. Insurance failed to inform me when I sent in my paperwork that there was an error and it needed to be corrected before they could stop my automatic payments. I didn't find this out until I called them to make sure everything was fine and the guy said I just need to fax over a new form and it should be processed in 10 business days. Now I get to pay roughly two more car payments aka $350 before my insurance kicks in.

3.) My favorite magazine came in the mail today. Funny enough I actually got two copies of the magazine which is peculiar. I mean, why would a magazine send me two copies?? But somebody was playing a cruel joke on me... Guess what the featured food on the cover for this month is? MACARONI AND CHEESE! My favorite food on the entire planet. The reason I have thunder thighs. The reason I get out of bed sometimes. Macaroni and f'ing Cheese. And they had the audacity to put, "Hands Down, The Tastiest Version We've Ever Made and other sumptuous baked pastas." Bon Appetit is getting some fan mail this month from a disgruntled and famished reader living in Atlanta, GA...

4.) I randomly decided to open my cell phone bill that came in the mail. I am always the same amount every month and I was under the impression I have unlimited everything so I don't have to worry about surprising fees. HA! I guess I was a sucker for that one because guess who went 810 text messages over this month? Yes, 810. How in the world did I text 810 messages more than I do any other month? So now I get to pay $81 extra on this month's cell phone bill. For those who haven't been keeping up with my current events, I Am Unemployed and I Do Not Have Income.

5.) To make everything so much better... I am not allowed to drink alcohol. That's just another recap for my close friends and family.

Whoever has the Tori Allen voodoo doll, I'm begging you to please stop and leave me alone for the rest of February. I need to finish the Paleo challenge...

It's All Mental

You need to have a lot of strength and endurance to succeed in CrossFit, or to at least survive the WOD's that are scrawled on the whiteboard. You don't have to be Level 1 Certified to get through it, but you need to be physically able to endure the pain.

You also need to have the mental capability to take the WOD down as well. Today I did not have the mental strength to defeat Dead Cindy. I didn't even have the mental strength to sorta kick its ass because it kicked mine.

Today really was like any other day heading in to the gym and I even had the Scale Smash 2011 to look forward to at the end of the workout. However the minute I attempted the first deadlift I knew I was in for trouble. Everything went downhill from there with every deadlift or air squat.

I guess I let my personal struggles affect the way I was performing today. Every time I threw the 125lb of deadlift to the floor I said to the coach, "I'm just not feeling it today." With every failed attempt to lift the weight I thought about my "failed" attempts and struggles with life recently. Every airsquat I thought to myself, "you're unemployed" or "you cheated on your paleo diet" or something to the negative nature. I let myself beat myself up, Dead Cindy didn't even have to lift a finger.

Going forward I need to remember that I'm not always going to be on fire and I'm not always going to be a winner that day. Today should have been an extremely positive day for me because I have a good chance at an opportunity and I can finally begin my career. It's not exactly what I wanted, but when in life do you ever get exactly what you wanted? With every deadlift I should have remembered that statement and made that my personal mantra for the day. I need to stop beating myself up at every turn because I am kicking ass at life, no matter what the whiteboard or resume says. I guess sometimes I need to get my butt handed to me to remember that.