Power Breakfast

For a great power breakfast, try out my new favorite:
2 block serving:
1/2 cup grapes
1/4 cup cottage cheese
1 tsp walnuts
1 tbs protein powder
1/3 cup oatmeal

To turn it into a 4 block:
1/2 cup grapes
3/4 cup cottage cheese
2 tsp walnuts
1tbs protein powder
1 cup oatmeal

I use blueberries instead. They are just around our house more often:)

Very filling and tastes great too! Enjoy!

Ali

Back At it!

Alright boys and girls, I am back. Not quite as in shape as I was but I'll get there before you can say "PaleoZoneChallenge". I will admit I got all pissy when I got hurt and screwed my diet up somewhat. I tried to eat at least 2 Zone meals a day but the snacks went and I ate garbage at least once a day. In hindsight that was stupid, I should have really tightened it down since I couldn't workout and kept the fat off. I only gained back a few pounds that now I can hopefully shed off pretty quick. I plan on doing it with these:

Grilled Buffalo Wings:


These really are about as good as any wings I have ever had and there is no frying involved at all. You can make them as crispy as you like or keep them tender and juicy.

Start with a few flats of whole wings from the grocer. Cut up the wings and discard the little gimpy wing that doesn't do anything. Next use 1 packet of McCormicks Wing seasoning. Just put all of the wings in a large mixing bowl, pour over the dry seasoning and mix it all up. Get a few cookie sheets out, line each one with heavy tin foil (this way there will be no burnt on chicken to clean up after). Lightly spray each sheet with non-stick spray and line all of the raw wings on the cookie sheet. Put them in the oven for around 45 minutes at 400 degrees. When they come out of the oven they are fully cooked but what makes them good is now you can throw them on top of a hot grill with your choice of wing sauce. They would be good without anything else but I put just a little Kroger Brand Hot wing sauce on them and burn it to the wings on the grill. Cook as long as you like but they don't need much.

Cooking them in the oven 1st is really the only way to grill wings otherwise they get so dried out on the grill alone. When you are done get your scales and pull the meat off of a drumette and the other wing section and see how many pairs of wings your blocks will allow. Unfortunately for the ladies probably not many but that's how it goes. Cook a ton at once and freeze the left overs..they thaw out about as good as they were when they came off the grill.

Enjoy
Clay Crocker

My Experience with RHABDO

First let me say that this is 100% Matt Baker's fault and I take zero credit for my ailment. JK Matt....kindof...

I won't go into what Rhabdomyolosis is, you can find that out with an internet search. If you haven't already read any of the Crossfit Journal articles on it you really do need to. Ask laura, at one point she had some copies at the gym If not I will get you a copy.

Last Sunday me, Matt, Dana, Amy and Dustin Baker decided to get a WOD in at Matt's house. I (let me repeat that I) decided we should do "Angie" which is a grueling:
100 pullups
100 pushups
100 situps
100 squats
in order
We all crushed it, I think my time was something around 22 minutes, the first time I did it it took me over 45 minutes to complete. I was feeling good, tired but good. Previous to this we hadn't really had a day off since Thursday. Well on to the Gym on Monday morning, I walked in and saw a workout on the Board with another 100 pullups and a ton of Knees to Elbows. At this point I was starting to get sore from "Angie" but usually soreness is a lot worse the 2nd day. My arms felt tight more than sore. I seriously thought about not doing this workout that was staring me down and taunting me up on that board. I asked Laura's advice and she said don't do the pull-ups, do Jumping pull-ups if anything. Of course I didn't listen to anything she said and stupidly started the workout.

It didn't hurt during the workout, actually my arms got warmed back up, stopped hurting all together but I did notice that those pullups were harder than any I had ever done. By the end of the pullups it was taking everything I had to get my chin over the bar and I was doing 3-5 at a time. I'm usually good for at least a set of 10 pullups no matter how tired I am. Then the knee's to elbows which sucked equally as bad. It was becoming hard for me to keep my grip on the bar.

After the workout I felt whooped but don't we always. I went on to work that day with a level of fatigue I don't normally have. Monday was OK, I was just tired. When I woke up on Tuesday I noticed it was hard for me to straighten my arms. I was getting sore...really sore. My forearms were tight as rubber bands and my lats weren't much better. We all met at the track for our Tuesday morning run and after a few laps around the track I was loosening up a little. I finished the run and went home to get ready to take my daughter to a Dr.Appt. Now my arms starting hurting again, really tight and hard to straighten out fully. The whole time my daughter was in her apointment I was rolling a little rubber ball up a down my arms trying to get in there and loosen up the muscles causing the pain and tightness...it hurt pretty bad. Bad enough I had to take deep breaths as I was rolling to keep from moaning like a weirdo in the doctors office, I felt stupid enough already with people looking at me like "What's up with the dude and the racketball?".

I was a little familiar with RHABDO from reading my Crossfit Certification guide and the articles I had gotten from Doug and Laura. As Tuesday went on the pain was ever increasing. I could hardly drive my truck, couldn't lift my arms over my head, definitely couldn't scratch my back and in NO way could straighten out my left arm. Around 3 pm that afternoon I was pretty sure something was wrong other than regular muscle soreness. I jumped in my truck and headed to the Guilford clinic. When I got there I asked if they were capable of doing a blood test for Rhabdo. They said they could do blood work but it wouldn't be back to me for 2-3 days, that wasn't good enough. I knew if I had Rhabdo I needed something done NOW. Well a nurse heard this conversation and came out to the waiting room and said they could send blood work off to the hospital and get it back in a few hours so I agreed to be seen by one of their doctors.

When I told them I suspected I may have Rhabdo (hopefully not but maybe) they didn't really discount my suspicion but found it hard to believe. They wanted to take a urine test 1st to see if they found anything before they started doing blood work. I obliged and within 15 minutes they had found blood in my urine and I was dehyrated. In came the IV of fluid and the blood work. They said they wanted me to take 1 bag of fluid and if I felt better I could leave. Then the blood work came back. I showed some signs of a little Liver Damage and my creatine levels which are supposed to be in a range from 40-300 ppm were at 19,000ppm. I had RHABDO and I was hurting bad. I could hardly move my upper limbs because of pain. I could tell they were not very familiar with this when the doctor came in and showed me his IPhone where he was researching what to do! Anyway 4 bags of fluid later it was closing time at the Guildofrd Clinic, he really wanted to send me to the hospital but I convinced him I would be a good boy and go home and drown myself in as much water as I could stomach and I did.

Wednesday was the worst day. I didn't sleep very much Tuesday night because it hurt my back just laying in bed. I actually thought at one point I would have to cut my shirt off because no matter how hard I tried I couldn't get it off any other way. My arms were on fire and my lats weren't much better. I stayed home from work and basically stood over a toilet all day taking water in and letting it out. My left arm had swollen considerably at this point from the muscle damage I had caused it. I was hurting BAD.

Thursday I woke feeling a lot better. Swelling had gone down a little and my right arm was feeling a ton more loose and flexible. Everything was still really sore but I could function and move around well enough to go to work and do whatever I could. I could finally lift my arms over my head enough to get dressed by myself. It was getting better and I kept the fluids coming.

Friday (Today) I woke feeling even better than Thursday. I can straighten my right arm with little pain, most of the swelling in my left is gone but it is still jacked up pretty bad. Can't straighten it yet, not even close. I now probably feel like you do after a really heavy WOD still really sore but I can manage. I'm not yet sure as to the amount of muscle damage I caused, I won't know that until I decide to come back and do a WOD but I believe I will be considerable weaker in a few areas. It is expected but hopefully I will recover my strength quickly enough to be of help at the Tough Mudder next weekend.

The Moral of my little story is NO ONE is immune to Rhabdo. Be smarter than me in your workouts and don't do things like 100 pullups on back to back days, even if you didn't cause Rhabdo it's not doing you any good. Maybe I have learned my lesson in that you DON'T build muscle in the gym...you actually destroy it in the gym. You build muscle at home resting/sleeping. I think a lot of this was caused by my lack of hydration. I never used to drink enough water to support my activity level and that will get you one way or the other. Listen to your body and remember that trying to be Superman all of the time will eventually land your ass in the bed for a week or two watching every one else WOD up!

Authentic Enchiladas - In the ZONE

This is a recipe for Chicken enchiladas that have few ingredients but taste terrific. I counted everything up and this recipe will yield 1.2-1.3 blocks of each protien, carbs and fat per enchilada. 

Ingredients:

Either 1 whole chicken, cut up - or a pack of chicken breasts with shin and bones.

2 onions

1 large clove garlic

some fresh cilantro

1 jalepeno raw - more if you like it spicy

1 large can of Tomatillos or 12-14 raw ones but alot more trouble

Chicken stock - made from boiling your chicken, no need to buy it

1 pack of Corn Tortillas

1 tbl canola oil

2 tbl sour cream

1-2 ounces of Cotija Cheese (mexican parmesean) or regular parm will work fine.

Boil all of your chicken in a large stock pot. Throw a cut up onion in with it as well as a little salt and pepper to give the broth some flavor. Do not over boil the chicken, a whole chicken cut up shouldn't take more than 10 minutes. Secret to boiling chicken is letting it cool in the pot, this will make it much more juicy. Boil for 10 minutes then let it come to room temp. Pull all the skin off the chicken and shred it up with your fingers by pulling it apart. You will need around 10 ounces of this chicken. Save the broth for later. Add 2 tablespoons of Sour cream to the bowl of chicken and dice up half of an onion and throw that too. Mix well and set in fridge till needed.

Next open your can of Tomatillos and dump all of them in a blender. Add 1/2 of an onion, the clove of garlic, the jalepeno pepper (seeds removed) and 4-6 sprigs of the cilantro (you can't really overdo this so don't worry about what a sprig is). Puree all of this for around 20 seconds, nothing should ever be blended for more than 20 seconds. Now take a frying pan and get a tablespoon of your oil hot enough to make a drop of the puree sizzle when it hit the pan. When its hot pour all of the puree in the pan. Continue to cook this until the color darkens slightly and thickens, around 4-8 minutes, you wll have to keep it stirred. Next add 2 cups of the stock you boiled the chicken in. Continue to stir and cook until it thickens enough to stick to the back of a spoon - around 8-10 minutes.

Preheat your oven to 400. At this time get your tortillas ready by getting a flat pan piping hot on the stove - no oil. I used 9 tortillas for this and it came out close enough for my blocks. Place each tortilla in the hot pan for a few seconds on each side. remove and stack on a plate. All you are doing here is heating them up and making them pliable so they wont break when you roll them up.

Get a small casserole dish ready, you don't need to grease it. Get a small plate loaded with a little of the green sauce. Take each tortilla a dip in the sauce on both sides, I just lay it on the plate and then flip it over back into the sauce, you are just coating it with a little of the sauce. Next do your best spooning enough of the chicken mixture into the tortilla so you will run out of chicken when you run out of tortillas. Roll each tortilla up and lay in the casserole dish. 9 fit perfectly in my little dish. Take all the remaining sauce and pour it over everything. Finally top it off with the cheese, sprinkle over the entire dish. Cook in the oven for probably 12-18 minutes but keep and eye on it. Take it out when it is bubbling around the edges.

Your done, this is one of my favorite meals ever full of healthy ingredients. I know the tortillas are not the best carb source but they are better than flour and the Onions, tomatillos, garlic and pepper are great for you.

Enjoy

Discipline

I like to think of dieting as discipline for the body.  I have lost 2 pounds, but I feel like I should have lost 10!  When thinking about this, I realize, its more helpful to forget about the weight loss and strength goals.  Instead, I focus on how eating efficient amounts of nourishing foods helps to train the body.  However, this takes time!  Too often in the modern world we are used to recieving information immediately and we have to realize the body isn't as quick as email.  Soon enough the body will adapt after eating healthy meal after healthy meal, and BOOM, results.  March 16 is coming no matter what.  The only difference in your life on that day will come down to one question.  Did I stick to my diet? or not?  So I am going to continue to train my body into living with a healthy lifestyle.  I mean, why not, there is endless research out there to prove you WILL live a healthier (and happier) life.

Hebrews 12 v.11
No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful.  Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.

PS.  The cajun seasoned salmon at Publix is Delicious! 

Also, invest in a steam basket for tasty and delicious vegetables. (try 3" cut asparagus, 3" strips of zucinni, and diced yellow squash.  Just boil 2" of water and then steam veggies for 5-6 mins.  Add salt and pep at the end)