Tag: Paleo Challenge

End of the Paleo Challenge

One month ago, we started a team Paleo Challenge at Survival Fitness. I promised myself that I would try to go 100% Paleo for the entire challenge, and with one small exception (shredded cheese and croutons on a salad), I did it. I’ve seen incredible results in my fitness, my body composition, and how I feel.

I started the challenge at 12.3% body fat and 181 pounds. In less than 2 weeks, I had dropped to 172 pounds (home scale)! I was losing too much weight, so I increased my protein sources (eggs, meat, fish, etc.) by 50% at each meal. As an example, I went from eating 4 eggs at breakfast to 6. This brought my weight back up into the 175 pound range where I’ve been able to stabilize. This morning at my final weigh-in at the gym I was 178 pounds (not sure how I got back up that high) and 9.8% body fat. That’s a drop of more than 20% of my starting body fat %. I have a visible 6-pack, which has always been a goal of mine. I can’t believe the changes in my body is one short month. A key point is that I had already been eating 80-90% Paleo since I started doing CrossFit, but going 100% made a huge difference!

After taking the rest day yesterday I was feeling great this morning. I attended the 9am class so I could get the benchmark WOD done early. Can you say pizza and Mountain Dew for lunch and dinner? Seriously!

Warm-up

4 rounds

  • 15s Zombie Kicks
  • 15s Jumping Jacks
  • 15s Butt Kicks
  • 15s Mountain Climbers

12:00 AMRAP

  • 150m Run
  • Rest as long as the run took

I started out pretty fast, but realized 12:00 is a long time to do sprints, so I slowed down to a 30s pace in order to save myself for the WOD. It is a warm-up after all. I think I completed 13 runs.

WOD

We partnered up again so that we could count each other and get a bit of rest.

5:00 AMRAP

  • Burpees

4:00 AMRAP

  • Wall Balls

3:00 AMRAP

  • Air Squats

2:00 AMRAP

  • KBS (Russian)

1:00 AMRAP

  • AbMat Sit-ups

I improved in each of the tests:

  • Burpees went from 82 to 91, an increase of 10.9%.
  • Wall balls went from 77 to 95, an increase of 23.4%.
  • Air squats went from 101 to 112, an increase of 10.9%
  • KBS went from 76 to 82, an increase of 7.9%.
  • AbMat (“cheater”) sit-ups went from 67 to 81, an increase of 20.9%
  • Total reps went from 403 to 461, an overall increase of 14.4%.

I had one of the top 5 scores for the first assessment, so I figured improving wasn’t going to be easy. I’m thrilled with a 14.4% improvement. Hard work pays off! I’m really happy with my burpee and wall ball improvements because burpees are such a great overall cardio and full body exercise and I knew wall balls were one of my weaknesses. My air squats are still pretty weak compared to the best in the gym, but getting better. It’s hard to improve on the Russian KBS, except by increasing weight, because you can only do them so fast. In the first test I took one short break, but went unbroken for the entire 2 minutes today. I’m not concerned about the sit-up number because it was doing the cheater standard, which I’m no longer doing.

With all of the rest time, I don’t feel like I had to work very hard overall, even though I pushed as hard as I could go. I may try attend 8pm open gym and do a strength WOD since I’ll be out of town for the weekend.