All you can eat Stec

So I finished my first week of crossfit - I have to say, I absolutly love it.  It is exactly what I am going for.  I’m pretty stoaked and diving into it headfirst and soaking up as much knowledge as I can.  I’m trying to progressively move up intensity, but sometimes its hard because the motivation is there.

So before I was doing bodybuilding, and training for 5k’s and 10k’s.  I was so frustrated with the fact that the two were kind of counterproductive.  And on the other hand, I like my body to look better but more importantly, I wanted to be a machine in the gym.  After all the lifting weights that I’ve done in my life, all that it’s really helped me with is squatting a massive amount of weight in a weird way.  Whenever I get to the basketball court or do something else that doesn’t involve lifting or running in a straight line than I quickly get winded.  Crossfit seems to be something that can take me where I want to go in all around fitness, even though it is a unconventional method.

Even better — it involves timed challenges, which is why I love the 5ks!  You do these workouts they post for you, and then you post it and compare with others.

Sure, now I can’t even finish the workouts with the weight and amount they prescribe, but I guarantee I’ll be there in 6 months.   And thats where the fun begins.

Oh, and as far as my gym goes, I spent saturday crafting a medicine ball, parrallelettes, and a 10′ and 20′ plyometrics box so I am good to go.  All three for under 50 bucks!

Oh and I ordered my still rings too so I’m pretty stoaked about that.  I can start working on my muscle ups!

So the first week back from vacation and I’m still trying to get into the rythm of tracking my calories.  I was doing so good for a while there, but on vacation it’s impossible so I don’t do it.  I get back and didn’t do it this week.  As I result I lost a few pounds and got down to 180, I guess thats good and bad.  I’ll have to check the measurements to see if I’ve lost some muscle.
Another miss this week - Things got busy, and perhaps I got a bit lazy and I didn’t run on Tuesday.  I almost missed my run on Friday as well due to laziness but I went out late and got it done.

So I ran twice (you can see the stats on my homepage on the front of my bodyblog) and lifted 3 times.  I’m upping the weight each time, and the weight on my squat is getting VERY VERY VERY VERY heavy.  Today my whole body was pretty sore from ‘em and iced my knees.  Pain.

One good thing for this week is that I’m REALLY getting into a rythym from running.  I did five very strong .625 mile intervals at a fast pace, the first 3 were painful.  The last two I seemed to get into some sort of trance and I felt like I could run that fast for miles and miles.  I went back and checked my calculations — on those last two intervals, I ran 10 seconds faster per mile and my heart rate was substantially lower.  It was really weird, just like swimming or anything else when it really really clicks.

Some numbers from the last two weeks, hopefully people can swing by and leave comments on what they would do to change.  I am cutting slowly as to not lose muscle, 3 lifting days/week, and 5-6 days of cardio/week.
Avg Food Intake:                             Avg Calories:
Cals:  2622                                                 Avg Calories burned: 3,032  (according to fitday)
Fat:  73 (25%)                                         Avg Logged Activies/day:  514
Carb: 293 (42%)
Protein: 206 (32%)

And the result?
No change in weight
2% Change in bodyfat (not always accurate, calipering myself) from 16-14%
1.1" increase in chest size
No change in arm size
-.8" hip size
+.1" thigh size
-2.1" shoulder size
-.3" waist size
Running is improving
See my bodyspace for picture changes…

These aren’t bad results and I’m generally happy about ‘em, just the question is,  is there anything I can do to get the results faster?

Overall not a bad week - didn’t do cardio on Monday to make my rest a bit longer, and I skipped working out alltogether on Friday to get ready for my 10k.  (posted below)

Here are the stats:

Food intake:
Calories/day: 2490
Fat % - 22
Carb % - 45
Protein % - 33

Exercise:
1:20 of lifting (2 sessions)
30 min of stationary biking (1 session)
Nearly 3 hours of running (4 sessions) (Around 18 miles) - Click below for the stats.
http://www.runningahead.com/profiles/3227956200f1439cb3152f66bdbd0773

Well it was a great week.  I felt good the entire time and I felt like I met most of my goals.  In addition to lifting 3 times and doing cardio 5 times this week, I signed up for the 10k next Saturday in Junction City.  It’ll be nice to get a baseline to see how fast (err.. slow) I really am.  I also felt like I really improved on the squat, especially on my form.  I’m starting to hit a weight thats difficult using Rippetoes workout program and my form is still pretty solid.

Exercise:
Three Lifting workouts
4+ hours of cardio per week that includes:
One swimming workout (800 meters) — 1 session
At least one hour of running (22.8 miles) — 4 sessions (Most miles in one week)
I didn’t get a bike workout in this week.  Next week for sure.  Going to cut one run out.
Food:
Avg 2823 Calories per day
27% fat
38% Carbohydrate
33% Protein
One Cheat meal on Saturday (1348 calories)

Had a very good week, for the week:

Exercise:
Three Lifting workouts
5+ hours of cardio per week that includes:
One swimming workout (1.2 miles) — 1 session
At least one hour of running (15.02 miles) — 3 sessions
At least one hour of biking (14.32 miles) — 1 session

Food:
Avg 2592 Calories per day
21% fat
46% Carbohydrate
32% Protein

I felt pretty good this week.  It was kinda a busy one but because I planned ahead and knew what I was going to do everything fell into place as far as workouts go.  I felt a little frustrated at the end of the week and completely changed how I measure — especially the hip, thigh, and waist measurements so I threw out all the data from previous measurements on those.  My measuring used to come from fitday.com, but because that site is unreliable and worthless I changed to the bodyspace measurements.  Oh, and my bicep measurement went down as well and I don’t know exactly why, but going forward lets see what happens.  I’m going to try get a few important measurements at least bi-weekly so I can see how to adjust my diet.

I busted it out this week — Ate right and met all 5 of the following goals:

1.  Three Lifting workouts per week
2.  5+ hours of cardio per week that includes:
a.  One swimming workout
b.  At least one hour of running
c.  At least one hour of biking

2h 40m of running — 15.8 miles (ran a NICE 10 miler with jake in the jogging stroller)
1h 46m of biking
1h 50m of weight lifting (3 sessons)
45 minutes of swimming (.8 miles lap swim)

Avg calories: 2499
Fat 23/Carb 43/Protein 33

Avg calories burned: 3183