12.1 Done and in the books:
Quote of the Day: “When I started crossfit last year I couldn’t even run a mile. The box had a goal setting speaker from Lululemon and I made a goal to do a half marathon. Today I achieved my goal and actually ran the first 7 consecutive miles which would be unheard of a year ago. I finished the race and feel amazing!!!! I stepped out of my box when joining crossfit which has made me step out of the box with new athletic activities I would never try normally!!! Thanks for having a box that makes me step out of the box!!!” ~ Angie
Congrats Angie!
Greg knocks out another burpee:
“Down. Up. Down. Up” from CrossFit Delaware Valley (PA).
Lucy agreed to share her outstanding “Stop the Slop Challenge” Essay talking about her Whole30 experience and what it meant to her. Read her very open and honest account below of what she deals with in having celiac disease and why eating clean and doing CrossFit can be truly lifechanging. Thank you for sharing your story!
My Whole30 Journey: Lucy
The WOD for me is the easiest part.
Don’t get me wrong I hurt and I ache and often long for it to be over. I have shed blood, sweat (lots of) and tears during WOD’s, but I can take the pain. None of that compares to the daily battle I have with myself.
Too much information I hear you shout! I’m British, we don’t like to bare our souls, or what the Brits see as ‘weakness’. But really I want to share this, because for me it is at the heart of what CrossFit and The Whole30 is and has done for my life.
I have always been ‘sporty’ from riding, swim team, cross country running, field hockey during school and rowing for University, then for a London rowing club. Being ‘fit’ , an athlete and slim was just who I was, I didn’t know any other way.
This all changed when I went to Africa in 1996. I got Giardia, while I was there and from that day onwards I didn’t feel good. Not at all! My heart would race, I started to gain weight and cellulite (shock, horror). I was lethargic and couldn’t train with my crew anymore (I was Women’s Captain of the Rowing club at the time). I would have panic attacks and bouts of depression. I couldn’t sleep. I would catch every bug going (and when you live in London, that’s a lot of bugs), I started to have IBS and had to run out of client meetings 2-3 times every hour, because I couldn’t wait. I developed a horrendous, raw, blistering, painful, swelling and rash around the eyes, which often made me look like I had endured 10 rounds with Mike Tyson. I was ashamed of my face and doing my job became hard. I itched and ached all over. My joints hurt. The week before we married I couldn’t have engagement photos taken, because my face was so swollen. On my wedding day, I didn’t feel beautiful.
I was desperate to find answers, I was angry.
The doctors gave me steroids, told me I was stressed (too right I was), anti-spasmodic drugs for my bowel, anti depressants…the list goes on. They thought I was a hypochondriac, I lost faith in the medical profession. I took matters into my own hands and visited Nutritionists in Harley Street, Dermatologists, Gastroenterologists, Ayurvedic healers, Naturopaths, Homeopaths………all had different angles, but none of them an answer.
Finally, one day after a business lunch with lots of white bread sandwiches and cookies for lunch, I was terribly sick. It suddenly occurred to me, that I was always really ill after white bread. I started to cut it out of my diet and felt a bit better.
Over the next year or so this helped, but I still experienced periodic symptoms, sickness, general malaise and had gained weight, which I was unable to shift.
Only in 2004 when we emigrated to the US at my first doctors appt., did the doc say she thought I had Celiac disease. Hallelujah! Gluten was the enemy! From that day onwards life got immeasurably better. It took me two years to get to the heart of what I could eat and what I couldn’t and find places that sold it, but life was finally good again. I started eating a whole food diet with lots of whole grains, organic vegetables, pulses etc, plus juicing too.
In spite of this turnaround, the cost of all of this was I had lost my old self. I was plump around the edges (more than), puffy, had huge cravings food wise, either for sugar or carbs and was bloated a lot of the time. I had accepted and resigned myself to being grey, over weight and middle aged and I looked old. After all isn’t that what happens when you hit forty? I just looked like a lot of my relatives did at my age, right?
Truth is, my body was starved of nutrients, there were holes in my gut from years of consuming gluten, that were still healing but leaking stuff into my system, my blood sugar was wreaking havoc and I was still totally out of balance diet wise.
Then I met Michelle and Tom.
They were and are bright eyed and bushy tailed and freakin’ fit! How did you look like that? How do you get like that? I asked Michelle one day, walked into their garage gym the next and two years later I am fitter than I have possibly ever been, I am happier than I have been in a long time and I cannot imagine a life without CrossFit and my SnoRidge CrossFit family.
But, as I said, the WOD is the easy part for me.
The Whole30 was and is still the toughest challenge, but the big turning point for me. It is really hard. Hard to stick to, hard to plan, especially with the crazy lives we lead, hard to ignore the incessant craving in the first two weeks, hard to resist the pressure of family and friends to just have one drink, or just one slice of pizza, so hard not to have cream in my coffee, hard to sit in front of the tv and not comfort eat, hard to keep to the serving sizes….hard to turn down the fries….its a constant mental dialogue and battle. But, it’s so worth it.
I am still fighting to lose that last 20 lbs, my body is still healing, I still get sick if I digest even the tiniest amounts of gluten, but I know that, slowly, I can get back to optimal health and well being by eating The Whole30 way. Only now, without all grains and dairy, is my body finally healing. When I do it and stick to it I feel amazing, there is clarity in my life, I look shiny and clean and have boundless energy. It doesn’t get much better than that. I have that fit, zippy, forty something in shorts, socks and a vest in my sights and I’m not stopping now.
Right now, one month in, I too am bright eyed, bushy tailed and one day in the not so distant future 20 lbs. lighter. I don’t feel old anymore. I’m not angry any more. Whole30 is the only way forward for me.
I am, finally, me again.
~ Lucy