So I have an announcement to make to my loyal followers: I’m pregnant 

If you would like to see what I’ll be up to during this new chapter in my life, I have a more personal blog that I’m using as a training blog.  CLICK HERE to be taken there and add me to your feed. Enjoy!

If you live in the South Florida area, come out to the Seminole Hard Rock Casino this Saturday to watch the all women’s competition “The Heraean Games”, hosted by Sarah Wilson of Fashletics. 3 Individual and 3 Team Events. It’s gonna be awesome!

First things first, we have an AWESOME seminar coming up for WOMEN ONLY next month at CrossFit Soul. Carey Kepler from CrossFit Central and Aly from Rx Stars will be coming over to give a weekend retreat full of confidence building, skill work, motivation, and tips and advice to be the best YOU can be! I highly encourage all of you to attend!! It’s gonna be a really fun weekend with the girls, which I know most of us can always use. This is the first event of this kind in Florida so make sure you don’t miss out!!

The deadline to sign up is coming very soon so please register ASAP! You can find more information on how to register at www.rxstarchampion.eventbrite.com. You can also check the Facebook page HERE to find out more about the event.

Until my next post, I’ll leave you all with a recipe for some paleo “chunky munky ice cream”, created by me! No sugar, no sweeteners, just four simple ingredients:

stolen picture of paleo ice cream, since i ate mine so fast i counldn't take a pic!

1. 1 Frozen Banana
2. 1 TBSP Unsweetened Cocoa Powder
3. 1 TBSP Coconut Milk
4. 1 TBSP of either almonds, walnut, pecans or macadamias

• Add all ingredients to the food processor or blender.
• Pulse several times until banana creates a smooth “ice cream” consistency. I
• If you need to, stir it up some and keep blending till smooth. Enjoy!!!

Pumpkin Spice Crepes

Ingredients:

• 3 Eggs
• 1 Banana
• 2 Tbsp Coconut Milk
• Pumpkin Spice to taste

Directions:

1. Place eggs, banana, and coconut milk into a blender and mix until smooth.
2. Stir in pumpkin spice.
3. Pour a thin layer of mixture into a pan coated with coconut oil and cook on medium heat, waiting for the top of the crepe to bubble up almost completely.
4. With a large spatula, carefully fold over edges until you can flip crepe over.
5. Cook another minute or so until crispy on each side.
6. Top with pure maple syrup, honey, fresh fruit, bacon… whatever you want! My husband suggested bacon would be awesome with this. I think that stuffing the crepe with bananas or berries would be amazing… even some almond butter. Get creative!

Please share your thoughts!

I’m gonna go on a little rant here – sometimes when I’m feeling a certain way and I know it’s messed up I think it’s important to share it. It’s funny, but those words “you’ve gained weight” can have such a dramatic effect on people. Last month (maybe two months ago) I decided I wanted to put on some muscle. I started tracking my calories and realized that I have not been eating NEARLY as much as I should be, given how active I am. Sometimes eating clean can be really hard to get calories in… Using a calorie tracker (which I hate by the way) I put EVERYTHING in, from the honey in my tea to the coconut milk ice cream late at night. For about 5 weeks straight I was consistently eating 2600 calories or so (up from about 1800). I felt good, stronger, and had more energy.I PR’d my deadlift by 25lbs, my bench by 10lbs, and I easily did a hang clean with what WAS my last power clean 1RM.

So my goal was to put on 10 pounds… of muscle. That would be hard, I had to train regularly and make sure I didn’t get lazy on the days I was tired from being at the gym all day. As of today I have put on 7 pounds… haven’t done my body fat yet to see how much of that is muscle but I’m pretty sure a lot of it is. I am happy about this!! So why is it that when someone tells me “hey, you’ve gained weight dude!” it leaves a bitter feeling in my mind?

Body image issues. They are a major problem today… Not just with women either, men suffer from trying to get leaner, more muscular, and stronger all the time. The media puts these ideas in our heads about being skinny and lean (or big and muscular), but most of it comes with a super unrealistic quick fix weight loss or muscle gain solution… like steroids… or HcG Diets.

When I was younger (high school and college) being “skinny” was always important to me. While I now know that comes mainly from the media, it bugs me that it has stuck with me over the years, despite what I KNOW is the truth and regardless of the industry that I work in! Knowledge really is power though, and I’m lucky today that even when I have those negative thoughts when someone tells me I’ve gained weight, I can change that negative thinking to realize that weight does not mean fat! “You look big” in here is supposed to be a compliment not an insult. and it is.. a compliment.

You might struggle with the same thing – but you wanna get over all that negative thinking? Start tracking your records in the gym (and being proud of them), measure your inches, and notice how your clothes fits differently. That’s real right there… The number on the scale is not. It’s deceiving. People’s comments (and compliments) and your head can be deceiving.

Pay attention to what’s real.

Most of us know that sugar is not good for us. Typically, in the health and fitness community most trainers and coaches will advise their athletes stay away from refined sugars as much as possible. We do the same at Soul, and to go a little further I wanna share some facts about WHY it’s such a big deal.

So how bad is sugar REALLY? Well, while traveling this month I came across a natural food stand at the York Fair, which had all kinds of info on health and wellness. There was a little fact sheet about sugar that I realized either most people don’t care to know, or like to ignore… pretty messed up. Here are the basics that stood out to me:

The damaging effects of sugar can start early:

From the day a baby is given store bought formula and even fed breast milk. If you consume sugar and breast feed, so does your baby! Eat healthy while pregnant and you have a baby that is pre-programmed to enjoy the same foods.

Sugar is an Unnatural Chemical:

Through refinement, sugar is stripped of all the nutrition that that it originally had in the plant itself. The chemical it becomes (C12H220) is foreign to the human body. Try to stay as natural with your food intake as possible.

This Chemical is Addictive:

Sugar’s addictive nature has been compared to that of heroin. The sweet taste can become habit forming, and the signals it sends to your brain cause a release of serotonin, making you feel relaxed and happy… just like a drug does. Get your body too used to feeling good with food and you have yourself a food/sugar addict. Pretty scary!

Other Damage:

You won’t see instant consequences of eating too much sugar; that can take years. The damage can eventually ruin your pancreas, adrenal glands, throw your endocrine system out of whack, cause tooth decay, bleeding gums, diabetes, hyper and hypoglycemia, is a major contributing cause to heart disease, mental illness, depression, hypertension, and even cancer.

Need More? Sugar also contributes to the following:

Increases Overgrowth of Candida yeast organism

Increases Chronic Fatigue

Can trigger binge eating in those with Bulimia

Increase PMS symptoms

Increase Hyperactivity in about 50% of children

Increase Anxiety and Irritability

Can increase panic attacks

Can make it hard to lose weight because of the constantly high insulin levels, causing your body to store the excess carbs as fat.

SO… what does this all mean? Make sure you read your labels when buying food! Sugar is found in almost EVERYTHING, even organic and health foods. Even worse, the food industry knows that we are catching on to this, so they try to hide sugar by calling it other things, like fructose, cane juice, sucrose, sucralose, or dextrose, to name a few. Remember that all the fruit you eat has natural sugars (fructose) in it, so while snacking on fruit is obviously MUCH better than a cake or muffin or whatever, your body still sees it as sugar. Be careful and don’t overdo it.

Mo’s FruitCakes

Ingredients:

• 2 Whole Eggs
• 1 Egg White
• 1/4 Cup Fruit Puree (I used apple and pear)
• 1 1/2 Bananas
• 2 Tbsp Almond Butter
• Pinch of Sea Salt

How to:

1. Melt about 2 Tbsp coconut oil in a pan.
2. While you wait, mix/mash ingredients in bowl until it makes a thick chunky batter. You will want the egg and almond butter to be completely mixed together. *Note: using a blender makes it too watery so make sure you do this by hand, with a fork.
3. Spoon into pan on med/low heat and let cook for about 3-4 Minutes.
4. Carefully flip with a spatula and cook for another 2-3 min. These can burn easily so make sure to watch it. They should be golden brown.
5. Serve with a side of bacon!!

How many times have you been in the middle of a workout, feeling like it’s never gonna end, and noticed the person next to you hauling ass like it’s no big deal? At that point usually one of two things can happen: A) You get really competitive with either yourself or that person and it pushes you to work harder, or B) you get angry and defeated. After the workout you might wonder why it comes so easy for them, why no matter how hard you train, you just can’t get your endurance/muscle up/pull ups/lifts/ insertsomeothergoathere right.

Well guess what? Some people are just natural athletes. Some people things come really easy for. Some people have to train a lot harder and more consistently to make things happen. The good thing is that you can really do anything if you have the desire and commitment to perfect it.

Focusing in on other people’s strengths instead of your own can be really destructive. Why? Cause the obvious reason: It takes the focus off of you. Everyone can gain confidence from this, everyone can learn something, and everything has something that they aren’t good at! Instead of letting it get you down, light a fire under your ass. Start working that skill, whatever it is, and MAKE it something you’re good at too.

One thing we like to do at Soul is make up GOAT wod’s – where you pick three movements or skills that you are the worst at and create an AMRAP. Try doing that at least once a week and see how it goes. After a month I bet that you would have improved… so instead of focusing in on that other person, focus in on your weakness and make it your strength!

This one doesn’t really need too much of a “recipe” guide, as long as you’ve grilled any other type of meat before. Season the meat however you want, my personal favorite is simple: Sea salt, pepper, garlic powder, olive oil. I seasoned the veggie skewers the same way. One thing I would suggest with the veggies is to wrap them in foil and rub with olive oil so they don’t dry out.

Boniato by the way is a white sweet potato. They are all over the place year-round here in South Florida… Peel it like you would a regular potato and dice it up. Boil it in water until it’s soft then drain the water. Add coconut milk, sea salt, and coconut oil (in place of butter) to taste. Amazing! Keep in mind this is a starchy root veggie so as good and tempting as it is, don’t eat it for every meal. 

Enjoy!

I learned how to do pull ups after 4 months of CrossFit. When I first came in I couldn’t even do a quarter of ONE…. really. I had no strength. Skinny, yes. Strong and healthy? Not at all. CrossFit taught me about fitness and what healthy really is. What it means to find your weaknesses and practice them every day so they become your strengths. So I practiced every day… literally. I tell people this all the time. If you really want something it’s gonna take work. Not some magical wish for it to happen and BAM! there it is, not some hope that your coach will one day give you the right cue and you’ll get it, just practice. Like anything else worth perfecting or learning.

So after 4 months of practicing the kip and kipping with bands I finally got it. First I used the green thick band. I got to about 10-15 unbroken and then I moved to the thinner blue band. Every day I would come in and do 3-4 sets of max reps. The next day, I would try to beat that number, even if it was by only one rep. Eventually I came in one day and a friend of mine had gotten her first unassisted pull ups. I was at about 15 unbroken with the blue thin band and said “shit, if she can do it”….. so I did 5 unbroken unassisted pull ups that night. It felt awesome. I felt strong and accomplished. Today, I can teach a real good kipping pull up and how to break it down perfectly. I can also do 30 unbroken kipping pull ups (maybe more) and a handful of bar muscle ups…. but that doesn’t mean shit.

Why? Well a few months back I took the Gymnastics Certification with Jeff Tucker…. hell of a guy with an awesome bummer face by the way. He taught me a lot about strength and why having a good kipping pull up isn’t really that great if I can barely do a handful of strict pull ups. What the shit?! How many strict pull ups CAN I do? I had never even really cared. CrossFit gets you so into wanting to do things quickly and efficiently. Doing the most amount of work in the shortest amount of time. But how strong am I, really? That weekend I wanted Tucker to help me get my muscle up. He basically told me no… not until you have the strength to do it. In a way, he’s still helping me to get my muscle up… I WILL get a strict one before I get one kipping, I’m convinced.

Anyway, so I went back to basics. I was really stumped as to why I could do so many kipping pull ups and not even one muscle up. I started to train everything strict. Strict handstand push ups (which I could also do a bunch kipping but barely any strict), strict pull ups, strict toes to bar, string ring dips, strict muscle up progressions. What’s gonna happen when HQ says “guess what guys? This WOD calls for strict”! This sport is also all about finding your weaknesses. As weird and as shitty as it is, my weakness is my base strength. I already know I can rely on momentum for all of these movements… and if I can also rep them out strict number one it’s gonna help me get through the WOD easier, and it’s sure as hell gonna help me whoop your ass when I’m next to you.

So take a step back and refocus. Find your base first, worry about momentum later. It will take MUCH longer, I promise, but it’s GOING to make you a better athlete than the next person… unless they train the same way, then it’s all about heart.

Now go get strong!