Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Paleo Challenge: Day 3

I am now a proud member of CrossFit 919. It has quickly become my favorite activity and being there means it's my favorite time of the day!

One reason why I (finally) chose to drink the CrossFit Kool-Aid (figuratively, because that's so not paleo... and neither is Gatorade) is because I want to be stronger.  I am at athlete at heart, having played either softball or soccer since my preschool years.  However, after college, I stopped playing team sports and became a runner.  I loved (and still love) running.  However, I missed the conditioning aspect of working out as a group... the stuff that really makes you push your body instead of just allowing yourself to slowly jog a 10 minute-per-mile pace, never making yourself work too hard outside from your comfort zone.

Well, it was time to push myself a little harder.  I didn't just stop with joining Xfit. I also decided to sign up for the Paleo Challenge.  It's a 9-week eating commitment with Benchmark WODs to be completed at Xfit. About 20 of us signed up as a team so we can encourage each other to eat "clean."

Anyways, I could go on about Xfit and the Challenge, but for the rest of this post, I just want to share my first attempt at making bison flank steak. I have never cooked a steak in my life (as I stopped eating steak in middle school), but the Whole Foods man told me to cook it on very low heat for an hour or so. And I did. It was a little overcooked for my taste (pun intended), but not bad for a first try. I had this with sautéed spinach, onion, garlic, and mushrooms.


Also, Sunday night before the challenge, bf and I were celebrating his younger brother's 18th birthday. We brought treats from Whole Foods for the occasion, so these were some of my last non-paleo foods for a while.  I'm not craving any sweets yet, but I'm not sure how long that will last... this weekend, I may try out my first paleo baking experiment.