Alaskan Floundergirl

[AKLulu]

That's me!

AKLulu is a recent development of my online personality, so I just thought I should introduce myself properly.

A little about me:

I grew up in a very small town in rural Alaska. I'm from a HUGE family and love every moment I get with them (my moments with them are few and far between now that I live in Oregon). I've spent most summers (actually about six weeks each summer) of my life commercial fishing for sockeye salmon on the shores of Bristol Bay, AK, so I may make a great pillow currently, but I know I've got some strength deep down somewhere because pulling a tote full of hundreds of pounds of fish at the drop of a hat (or rubber glove) is no small feat. We also put up a lot of salmon for subsistence purposes along with moose, caribou, ducks, geese (and occasionally things like ptarmigan, beaver, and porcupine) and as many wild berries as we could manage to pick between all of that. I find myself wishing that I had that freezer full of game now that I'm trying to go Paleo with my life.

Now I work for a tribal organization that is trying to preserve and replenish salmon populations in the Pacific Northwest. It's a great job and I get to spend most of my summer working outside and generating loads of vitamin D in Eastern Oregon (I like to pretend it makes up for my rainy winters in Portland).

Why I'm here:

I've had issues with my weight since I was in elementary school. I've always wanted to "get healthy," but have never gotten around to putting in the effort. Sometimes I think it's because I love myself a little too much, so I didn't have much other incentive to change. Don't want to toot my own horn too much here, but I'm kind of awesome, you can ask anyone I have always been able to be active when I needed to, so it didn't seem like a huge deal. I've been hearing about the Paleo diet for several years now, but never really felt like it was something I could dedicate myself to trying. I hadn't done the research and didn't completely understand why grains were bad for me. Not to mention I was just lazy. Let's be honest. Well about 6 weeks ago I started doing CrossFit and was sore for the first month straight. I haven't seen huge changes yet, but I can feel it happening, so I decided it was time to kick it up a notch (so now I'm sound more like a cooking show than a gamer, but I swear Zelda: Ocarina of Time is my favorite game EVER) and try to go Paleo. Fortunately I'm Catholic and have the perfect built-in excuse - Lent. I was doing a lot of online research in the week leading up to Ash Wednesday and ran across Nerd Fitness and knew I belonged the moment I opened the page. So here I am, committed to Paleo and CrossFit for (at least) the next 40 days. I'm so excited to be making positive changes in my life and to be a part of the epic Nerd Fitness community!

Feel free to shoot me a note or chat me up any time. I love meeting new people and am always willing to type a paragraph or four (as evidenced by my somewhat verbose intro).

-Lulu

[ebm1224]

welcome aboard! you sound like you've had alot of interesting experiences that will help you on your quest to fitness. also, alaska is beautiful. i was there for 10 days a couple years ago...i took a cruise which was not fun (i'm not a boat person and we hit some bad weather) but going ashore and just taking in how beautiful that part of the world is was amazing!

[AuroraNorth]

Hey, a fellow Alaskan! I miss it so much!

You've got a great cheering on section here- have fun!

[AKLulu]

Alaska IS beautiful and I miss it tons too. I hope I can manage getting back there at least once a year, but we'll see how this crazy life unfolds. Thanks for the welcome! It's nice to know there are some other Alaska-philes around.

[Howlin' Moose]

After being so courteous as to wade through my intro and comment, I figured I could return the favor.

This may sound kind of weird, but honestly I'm a little jealous of your fishing job. It may be rough work but I like physical jobs more than ones that involve a lot of sitting around. Which is kinda ironic (maybe I'm using the wrong word here) since I wind up doing too much lazing about during my day.

And man does eating lots of hunted game and foraged fruit sound fantastic right about now. At some point in the future I have plans to get involved with cowpooling, but that's about as close as I can get until I find the time and resources to take up hunting.

And, of course, the fact that you're from Alaska is pretty cool. Never been there but it seems like a place I'd like. Almost took a trip to Barrow, once, for kicks, but that fell through.

Oh, and I think I'm gonna go add you as a friend on here or something. It's nice to know some people.

[AKLulu]

It doesn't sound weird at all that you're envious of my fishing job. I probably would be too. I'm.... I guess I couldn't say that I'm struggling with winter season in the office right now, but it definitely is dull. This is my first "real" job and all previous jobs have been fairly physical (commercial fishing, working on a test fishing boat, brush cutting). I still get to be out in the field during the summer in my current job - sloshing around in streams doing surveys and taking other fun measurements, so the prospect of that looming in the not so distant future is what's keeping me going right now Also part of the reason I want to get fit! I'm very much the same about being lazy if I don't have some sort of "required" activity (i.e. a class or something for a job).

I definitely wish I could maintain a subsistence lifestyle down here, but alas, it's a bit hard to do in the city. Portland is pretty good at being green though, so I do the best I can with organic foods. I also love the farmers markets in the summers! One of these years I'll get a hunting license and go find some deer or grouse or something... Oooh, and I do have garden boxes at the place I'm moving into next month!

Your posts didn't take so much wading, but I appreciate anybody reading mine. It's nice to not go completely unnoticed in the blogosphere. I fully support you going to Alaska someday... I may be a little biased, but it is fairly awesome. And thanks for adding me as friend! We cold-blooded northerners have to stick together! Not to mention I've enjoyed your posts so far and I love making friends One of these days maybe I'll even have enough friends that someone will be on NF chat!

[JKey]

I'm a huge fan of the Discovery show "Deadliest Catch", and I always wondered what it would be like to have a job like that. I grew up in the snowiest city in the lower 48, and between working 1am-7am outside in the below zero temps for the winters and an indoor office job from 8-5, I much prefer the outside physical labor!

Anyway, I digress and probably don't make a ton of sense. (That's what happens on Day #3 of a sugar detox!)

Welcome aboard! I, like you, am new to the forum but not new to paleo/primal. Trust me when I say, you will LOVE it, once your body adjusts. It's the first week that gets you, and it's totally worth it!

[AKLulu]

Well, my commercial fishing wasn't nearly on the level of Deadliest Catch. I did almost get hypothermia once, but that was more due to stupidity than anything. Here's a video if you want an idea of the kind of fishing I do (that's sockeye salmon, folks!) <

Also, here's a video of the other style of gill-netting that happens around there (made by one of my cousins' crew members) <

Thanks for the welcome! You make plenty of sense, don't worry. Or maybe I'm just really good at interpreting nonsense? I'm pretty excited about sticking with Paleo. I guess I've only been doing it for about 5 days, but it hasn't been very problematic for me (I do let myself have a square of dark chocolate now and then and a small glass of red wine at night per the allowances at Mark's Daily Apple - I think it helps keep me on track.) and I've already noticed that I'm not hungry as often.... and that my tummy talks louder, but I think that's beside the point. The only thing I've really craved at all is cheese. Since I've never had a problem with dairy, I'll probably add it back in a bit later, but I wanted to start off right.

[JKey]

This is my second go-around with Paleo. Last year at this time we got on board with Mark's Daily Apple and rocked it for several months. We went through the "carb flu" for the first few weeks, but after that it was amazing! Taste buds really change, or appreciated real food, either way...it's worth it. We're going down this road again now, and the tummy rumbles have started with a vengeance. Helps to tell your body to eat the fat if it's so hungry.

And like you, I couldn't give up the dairy. So I allowed myself one small glass of milk a day and a few slices of cheese. That didn't seem to affect the scale, much.

As for the fishing you do, AWESOME!! We'd love to get up to Alaska and spend about 4 weeks exploring. It's near the top of our bucket list. So beautiful up there!

[AKLulu]

Good for you! Sounds like you're on a great track And I love my little spoonfuls of coconut oil now and then when I have a particularly rumbley tummy.

I think four weeks would be a great amount of time to spend exploring Alaska. One of those cruises into Southeast Alaska would be neat, but that's all most people do, so I don't feel like they get a good picture of the real Alaska.

[AuroraNorth]

Totally agree- I grew up in Interior Alaska and there's so much more to see than you get on the cruises.