concretecavewoman

Do they see you roll on.... your segway?

Thanks, Laura! Feeling all better now. Amazing what a ton of sleep, tea, and video games can do. My roast pork is the following: 3lb pork shoulder spice mix of: unsweetened cocoa chile powder smoked salt garlic powder onion powder dried thyme pepper coat the shoulder all over with the spice mix, and roast in a 275 degree oven for 3.5-4 hours. Makes your home smell amazing, too! But oops, you asked for the bolognese. I should write up the recipe and post in on my blog in the next day or two.

Cool, thanks for the input. I've been thinking of switching over to SL in part because the 3x/week schedule works a bit better with my schedule in general. And while with Wendler I've seen progress on my deadlift, I haven't seen too much with my squat and press.

Day 3 Sick Day :/ Keeping it super low key. Only thing I did today was listen to the newest Paleo Solution podcast and paint. Maybe I'll get crazy and play some video games. --- Workout --- Workout goal: Weak Zilch Steps: 1500. Enough to get to the tea kettle and back --- Food --- IF Goal: Good Paleo Goal: Good Lunch: 6oz grassfed beef bolognese over 2c steamed broccoli, roasted kabocha pumpkin Snack: mango, lots of tea Dinner: thai takeout - chicken with eggplant. I'm sure the chicken isn't pastured.

Applause on the wheatlessness! Are you friends and fam pretty comfortable with the notion of you being voluntarily wheat-free?

Hullo to the squad! Former vegan runner (gasp). Trying to make up for lost years of epic weakness. I'm on my second Wendler cycle. Started weight lifting about 3 years ago where I mostly puttered around and did some stuff from NROL. Started with something like a 40lb deadlift but never really took the whole linear progression thing seriously until this year. My current DL (as of this week) is 115 5RM, squat is around the same. Looking to boost all of my numbers courtesy of lots of meat and newbie syndrome. Eventually, I would like to get awesome at more gymnastic stuff, but I'm just trying to build a strength base for now. General question: How does SL compare to Wendler?

Research is boss! What field are you in? Good job on the H2O intake

Any ideas on what 3 new things you're going to try?

Day 2 --- Workout --- Workout goal: Good 10k run, 56 min. in VFFs, breaking in a newer pair. 3x8 30lb 1-arm dumbbell row 5x inverted rows (just trying to keep up the back strength) Steps: 16000, yay! --- Food --- IF Goal: Good Paleo Goal: Good 30g BCAA Lunch: 8oz pastured pork shoulder, 2 c. spinach salad, roasted kabocha pumpkin Snack: buffalo jerky, lots of tea Dinner: 7oz grassfed beef bolognese over mixed greens. A little more roasted pumpkin (maybe should cut back on the starch for dinner?) S: mango Tomorrow I'm going to get more convenient, steamable sorts of veg. Adding a second "life" challenge: On the second to last day of this challenge, I have a, well I guess you could call it an event. I'm going to take a class at a nearby farm to learn how to butcher and process a whole pig, and at the end of the two-day course I will take home the full pork. The pigs are pasture-raised on a small farm with lots of grass/produce and no corn/soy feed. I've really wanted to move towards buying meat in bulk from local pasturing farmers (I currently get all my chickens and most eggs this way) but I feel like I (and many others) eat meat in a callous way, ignorant of how it gets to the plate, and that I have responsibility to understand this process end-to-end rather than let anonymous factory workers in far off slaughterhouses do the dirty work for me. Personally, this is a pretty intense challenge as, like most urbanites, I've never directly seen an animal die, nor been directly part of the process - meat has always come conveniently vacuum-packed at the grocery store in perfect edible increments. But it's a life and I guess I feel like I ought to make sure that the animal has the best and most respectful end possible, and make sure that none of it goes to waste (I'll be making stocks out of the bones and skin, rendering out the lard, making sausage, etc etc). The farmer has warned me that fainting is a risk. It makes me nervous but I think it will ultimately be a good thing.

@ Laura, thanks! Failing at failing would be awesome But failing would be an alright outcome too.

Day 1 --- Workout --- Workout goal: Good Wendler 5/3/1 Workout 1, Week 2 Deadlift 40/5, 60/5, 90/3, 110/3, 115/7 Good morning 40/15, 40/15, 40/15, 45/15, 50/12 Hanging Leg Raise 10, 10, 9, 8, 6 Clean and Jerk 60/3 Steps 6500 (lame) --- Food --- IF Goal: Good Paleo Goal: Good Also weaned myself off coffee over the weekend. BCAA @30g Lunch: 8oz pastured pork shoulder, roasted pumpkin, spinach salad with no dressing. tea throughout the day. Snack: buffalo jerky and an apple Dinner: 6oz grassfed beef bolognese over sauteed swiss chard and cabbage, a little more pumpkin while I was cooking. Protein for the day: 95g. Not as good as I would have liked but not bad for zero whey. Tomorrow: eat even more protein. Keep up the trajectory. Walk more.

Reality check, Day 1: Height 5'6" Weight: 154 (wtf, I weighed in at 150 yesterday. Ok, we'll see how this goes...) Bust: 34" Waist: 28.5" Hips:40.5" Squat: 115 5RM Deadlift: 120 5RM Running: Avg 9'30" mile in VFFs (somewhat faster in conventional running shoes) Upcoming Events: Gladiator Run 10/29

Planning on finding another IT job or moving fields altogether? Nothing like a big life change to help cascade lots of other positive life changes.

Fully barefoot? That's awesome. What kind of terrain are you running?

All I want for Christmas is a visible rectus abdominus... And oh yeah, a better squat. Gingerbread cookies are NOT a human necessity for a happy holiday season (maybe ginger tea is, though). This is my first NF challenge so I wanted to focus on my perennial demons: the diet of Paleo AND. Paleo AND is an insidious dietary conjunction. It allows for things like a steak AND a baked potato. An apple AND a sack of dried fruit. A cup of coffee AND a big dollop of heavy cream. Sometimes it even causes things to happen like dinner AND a scoop of ice cream, because ice cream is full-fat dairy and that's kinda paleo, amirite? So no more ANDs. Even if I think I can/should eventually reintegrate things like full fat dairy back into my diet, it's time to kick them to the curb for a while. Also, I'm looking to give Intermittent Fasting a serious shot. I have the rather superficial goal of wanting to look great for my upcoming April beach vacation. And also have lots of energy and not spend a ton of my day having to nosh I have a packed work schedule and lots of meals just doesn't jive well with days of meetings and evenings of code monkeying. In support of this I'm on my second Wendler cycle. I'm sadly realizing that IF might not play nicely with my love of distance running, but I'll keep it up for the first week and see how I feel. Otherwise I'm not sure what my 3 non-Wendler days during the week will look like. Ideas? Fitness Goals 1. 6 weeks pure paleo. I'm always cutting corners on full fat dairy and whey protein, time to cut it on principle. (also the dried fruit sugar monster) 2. Intermittent fasting, per the Leangains protocol. I think this will help me avoid my beloved shakes. This also means that I need to be way more buttoned up about having a hay-oooooge protein-packed lunch prepped for work. 3. One full Wendler cycle in order to put 15 lbs on my 5RM squat. My current is 120; it's super modest, but achievable. Life Goal 1. Leave the office at 4:30 pm on Fridays. No exceptions. Fail Goal 1. Fail at developing a popular, marketable fitness app for a mobile platform. Not failing would be awesome, too. Current training regimen: M/W/Sa: Wendler 5/3/1 T/Th/Su: Running. Long run is usually Sunday, ~8 miles. The remaining runs are 3-5 miles. Goal Dietary regimen: 6am workout/BCAA noon lunch: mad protein, veggies, and safe starch (practice safe starch, kids) 4pm: buffalo jerky and apple snack 7pm: mad protein and carb-minimal dinner. green veg all the way. I spent yesterday getting prepared: roasted a pork shoulder, rendered a ton of pastured pork lard for cooking, roasted up some squash and pumpkin, and cooked up a bunch of ground grass-fed beef. Om nom no-excuses. Will post other starting stats tomorrow.

To add to my original goals, I'm building in a system of rewards every two weeks over the course of the challenge to keep me motivated. I want to be really dialed in, and these little granular milestones should help me get there 1st two weeks: Massage 2nd two weeks: zoom teeth whitening 3rd and final two weeks: TBD. Hitting my goals should be the reward?

I'm in. And no better time than the beginning of the holiday season, right? Fitness Goals 1. 6 weeks pure paleo. I'm always cutting corners on full fat dairy and whey protein, time to cut it on principle. 2. Intermittent fasting, per the Leangains protocol. I think this will help me avoid my beloved shakes. This also means that I need to be way more buttoned up about having a hay-oooooge protein-packed lunch prepped for work. 3. One full Wendler cycle in order to put 15 lbs on my 5RM squat. My current is 120; it's super modest, but achievable. Life Goal 1. Leave the office at 4:30 pm on Fridays. No exceptions. No meeting is that important. Seem reasonable?

BS in Comp Sci, Masters of Software Engineering, and very glad not to be doing homework anymore. At 62% with a bachelors I believe that puts this forum ahead of even the most educated cities in the US. Hooray for selection bias!

The trails are emptying out too. All the fair-weather runners are going back into hibernation

Hi! I'm new 'round these parts. 27, code warrior by day, gym rat by night. Short term goals: Get back on track. With paleo, with lifting, with being consistent in general, bolstered by community support. I started the lifestyle about a year and a half ago. Did super well for about 6 months, then began to flounder in part due to a heavy work travel schedule. I switched jobs and am not traveling nearly as much, but find myself spending longer hours in the office and getting just plain lazy about things, so it's time for me to get my a** in gear and learn to reintegrate paleo with my new work-lifestyle. Long term goals: Get STRONG. No barbie weights, thanks. I was a tennis player for many years and then a runner, neither of which helps with the whole "strength" thing; now I split my time between running and lifting with a bias towards the latter. While I know these are not generally thought of as complementary goals, my dad was both a competitive power lifter and marathoner, so I think it can be done. I'd also love to try boxing at some point, but really don't feel like I'm strong enough to try at my current level of fitness. A little history: I guess you could say I've always been a "fit geek", always been active, but when I wasn't playing sports I was reading books and umbilically attached to video games. Over the years I've tried a lot of different approaches to health and fitness. In my teens it was tennis and vegetarianism; later I tried veganism and running; when I got heavy into MMOs I became waify thin while leading raid groups (yeah, how does -that- happen, I'll tell you how: running incessantly and quinoa). In my early 20s I recovered from the veg-induced madness and became a "CW healthy" runner gorging on whole wheat bread and granola. My health and fitness flatlined and I became kind of pudge-tastic. Then, a couple years ago I discovered the New Rules of Lifting, and have been gradually retooling from a cardio-only person to a 60-40 weights-running/metcon person and really making an effort to increase my protein intake. Paleo and crossfit helped accelerate that process along, but I'm still trying to sort out the day to day tactics of it all. What I do now: 3x/week I do Wendler 5/3/1, adding in some jump rope and/or C2 rower sprints. 2x a week I run a total of about 15 miles. I also play racquetball and tennis. I have a standing desk in my office, which is pretty killer. That said, I'm kind of a neophyte at the lifting heavy stuff business. What I eat now: Very inconsistent paleo. So let's call it, "paleo". Or paleo + heavy cream + the occasional "paleo" brownie + lots of fruit + too many nuts, etc etc. Other random stuff: My deadlift PR is 140lbs. I'm 5'6". I have a slightly disturbed yen to run a 50k next year. I've been working on reading every Hugo award-winning novel (not in chronological order). I've attended the Penny Arcade Expo 5 years in a row. Looking forward to jumping in! From what I've read perusing the forums, people here seem very cool.