This is not a diet: Week Four: Food Focused

The broken workouts continue - much of the same. A lot of rowing, snatching, DB push press, and hang power cleans from my knees.

I went to the gym yesterday, hoping to modify my squats. The problem with a boot is the curved edge at the back of the boot. I’m sure it has some reasonable explanation for it’s existence, but I haven’t found it yet and it’s impossible to get full range of motion on my knee without running into it and rubbing the skin off the back of my thigh.

Coach Steve and I tried putting a target down for squats - no go, still too low. So, I was left with two options: floor press or strict press (but from the floor). While I’d immediately have chosen the floor press, my heel has been hurting a lot lately and that felt dicey.

My least favorite lift, instead: strict press. This time, from the floor.

A video posted by Mia Rommel (@mrommel) on Oct 26, 2016 at 3:24pm PDT

As I’ve said before - if you’re getting to a 1RM in strict, you’re tempted to do a tiny little push at the end. Lifting from the bench does a lot to remove that small hip drive, but from the floor, you remove the ability to do that little kick that you’d get on the bench. I did have to sit on a plate to compensate for the lift of my boot when my legs were on the ground to remove the little back sway.

Coach Steve is a saint. I was swearing up a storm about why everyone else got to squat and I was stuck doing strict press and blah blah blah. So I go to do RDLs (10 reps after every strict press set).

Considering I was lifting somewhere around 33% of my deadlift 1RM, you’d think this would be a walk in the park. The thing about doing 50 RDLs in increasing weight, albeit low, is that you have a sudden appreciation for how much your hamstrings want to help out. My left hammy is going I THOUGHT WE WERE STILL ON VACATION.

Pro-tip - a 10 plate is nearly equivalent to the lift in the a boot.

On the other side of things is food. I decided to give the Four Week Challenge meal plan a go with one of my friends. It’s basically a mix of zone and paleo - but frankly, it reminds me of what my friends on the body building track eat.

Full disclosure: I don’t like chicken. I just don’t. If I cook it, maybe we’re ok. I’ve had it prepared deliciously, but the big turn off for me is that horrible moment when you take a bite and it’s gristle, tendon or something and your entire meal is ruined. So when I looked at the menu and saw chicken and egg whites, I knew I was in for a ride.

So far, I think my desire to drop a few pounds to help my heel and eat super clean to speed up that calcium depositing has kept the cravings away. Also possible is that I've been eating so much damn volume in food that I don't care.

The hardest part has been for me, someone who cooks to relax, is to accept that sometimes food is fuel and that's that. I've been trying to "fix" a lot of the foods so that I'm not just eating lukewarm egg whites and feeling grumpy.

Thus, breakfast has turned into:
Egg white omelet with spinach and salsa and that very excited bowl of oatmeal with blueberries (actually one of the things I look forward to most.)