A CrossFit Girl's Guide to Surviving the Holidays

Tis the season. For crazy food consumption, lots and lots of drinking, sequins and sparkles, and mistletoe (oh please, let there be mistletoe!). From tomorrow (Thanksgiving) until the second weekend in January, I will eat approximately my body weight in food (and not healthy food) and drink at least that many holiday themed beverages - come'on, red wine is totally holiday themed.  Red?  Duh. 

How is a girl to manage all the food and crazy holiday party business without putting on 10lbs of sugar/bready/non-paleo diet weight?  Good freaking question.  For the next two months, here are my general life goals:

• Make time to workout at least three times a week. 
• Pass on the bread bowl.  I'm definitely not going to skip on all of the next two months of sweets/breads/holiday goodness - that's torture.  But... I can pass on the breadbowl.  
• Social drinking only!  There are enough social events for the next two months that I'm literally running around several days a week.  (Just for clarification sake - 'social' only has to entail one other person. I don't want to set the standard too high.)

In other words - try not to do what I do every other year - gorge on sweets, drink too much, and abstain from athletic activity. (I say this as I am making candied yams.  Pretty much my favorite dish ever with only three ingredients - yams, brown sugar and butter.  Delicious.  And awful for me.  AND... I didn't go to the gym today. Winning!) 

I'm also hosting Thanksgiving this year.  First Thanksgiving in my new house.  My folks are here from MT and they brought their adorable, 8-week old puppy.  She's really so ridiculously cute and is having a blast jumping all over my dogs head.  If anyone wants to join the chaos - we'll have plenty of food (and I've got enough booze to survive the zombie apocalypse) and I can bribe you with an adorable puppy to play with. 

See?  Who can say no to this face?!

To Clean or Not To Clean...

This literally has so many meanings...
#1 - My house is a total disaster. 
#2 - Cleans are totally kicking my ass at the gym right now. 
#3 - Seriously considering hiring a maid service to just scrub my house from top to bottom.  It would be worth it right?  Does that make me lazy?  It totally does, doesn't it.  Damnit.  
#4 - I also need to have my car detailed and do laundry.  Apparently I'm failing a little in the domestic department.  

Back to cleans at the gym - these are just not working for me lately.  And it is seriously pissing me off.  It makes me want to swear.  Actually, it does make me swear.  A lot.  Shit.  

Something about the motion isn't working - fundamentally, I know exactly what I need to do.  I just can't seem to do it.  My shoulders are shrugging before I get the bar halfway up to wear it's supposed to be - my elbows refuse to go high and outside - and there is absolutely nothing quick about my movement.  I think I'm getting in my head about it and the frustration is making it worse.  Blah.  Damn cleans.  Killing me.  

Anyways... tonight's workout also killed me.  Loved coaching it this morning.  Hated doing it.  Overhead squats?! Blah.  Had to bail on one.  That is the worst feeling in the world.  I did 59 of them just fine (or good enough) - and had to bail on one right in the middle.  I just totally lost it.  Ugh.  Whatever.  Going to focus on the 59 good (or decent) ones. 

Okay... as promised... a few highlights of things I ate in Vegas: 

B&B - the Mario Batali Italian restaurant in the Venetian
Totally expensive but totally good.  I have never spent so much money on a meal for one (actually, I've probably never spent so much money on a meal for two either).  It was great - but certain dishes were actually slightly disappointing.  We did a full three course meal.  I had an amazing beet salad to start - seriously, the best beet salad I've ever had.  Yes... I like beets.  This is new.  I'm just going with it.  The next course was  gnocchi with lamb ragu and mint.  Hmmm... didn't love it.  I'm somewhat of a gnocchi connoisseur - it's my favorite Italian dish - and this was just 'eh'.  The last course was a veal chop.  I'm not sure what I was expecting... but it wasn't what I got.  It was good... just not what I was expecting.  Dessert, however, was AMAZING.  I don't even remember what it was called but it was a lemon souffle with fresh honey poured in the middle.  Umm... I die.  It was phenomenal.  The wine was also exceptional.  And the service was impeccable.  Overall... a totally winning experience.  

D.O.C.G. Enoteca at the Cosmopolitan
Woodfire pizza is always my favorite thing to eat.  That didn't change just because I was in Vegas.  Amazing.  Except for one thing:  sopresatta.  Umm... not my favorite.  And I remembered this the second I took a bite of it.  It is a terrible tasting Italian sausage.  Don't love.  Ick.  And then Tara announced that it tasted the way that cadaver lab smelled and now I will always remember that whenever I see it on a menu.  So... there's that.  Ick.  But... the appetizers and our margherita pizza were scrumptious.  And again, total win on the wine front.  Soppresata = bad.  

I ate several other things too.  They were also good.  The croissants at the Wynn were the best croissants I've had outside of Paris.  No lie.  Freaking amazing.  Also - the yogurt parfait was ridiculously good.  I know - yogurt parfait?  Borderline life changing.  

Moral of the story?  I ate approximately my weight in food while I was in Vegas.  And most of it was delicious.  Except for the sausage that tasted like cadaver lab.  That was less than pleasant.