Tag Archives: keto

New Business, Progressive Diets, More Weight Loss – What’s CrossFit?

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Since the last time I posted, I’ve started a new business, gone full on OMAD with a mostly keto approach, given up CrossFit (not because I hate it, but because I don’t have enough hours in the day) and have lost about 20lbs.

Is this 20lbs of muscle? Maybe. I’m still strong. I can still lift heavy shit. Can I go and do 350lb deadlifts? Probably not, but I’m lighter, leaner, I feel better, I’m not injured, and I don’t have enough time to care about anything else, really.

I started making camera and bag straps. What? Yes. I couldn’t find what I wanted online, so I bought a bunch of supplies, and figured out how to make them myself. Dave saw my stacks of new supplies and about killed me.. “You’d better sell some fucking straps!” is about what he told me. HA. Okay! I can do that.

Fast forward about 8-9 months, and we now have a full blown camera, bag, and guitar strap business. Blossoming like whoa, I can’t keep up with sales or demands. I’ve been doing markets just about every weekend and selling them like crazy. They are a total hit, and the patterns and color options keep everyone coming back for more. SoRetro Straps is a play on my last name which is Soret. Get it? It’s become so successful that I’ve been able to book shows around the country. I will actually be traveling to Michigan for the summer to do various events and craft shows throughout the state. I leave in mid June, and won’t be coming back to FL til the end of September.

Dali is still charging ahead at full speed, so it’s Dali by day, and Straps by nights and weekend. It’s insane. I’ve been to CF once in the last month, and I’m hoping to go back sometime before the end of May, but I have the Jacksonville Jazz Fest coming up, along with another show called Vintage Market Days in Green Cove Springs. Anyway, this post isn’t supposed to be about straps, but about me. So..

OMAD. Or, One Meal a Day. I started doing this out of necessity, because with my craft/market events, I haven’t had time to eat more than once a day. So I decided to go full blown OMAD and just make it easier on myself. This means, I eat one meal a day. Usually just a nice big tasty lunch, but when I’m doing events, I’ll eat after the event is over with, or not at all depending on what time I finish. My meals usually consist of a giant salad with dressing and the meat of my choice, or a ton of chicken wings, or 3 or 4 hamburger patties with cheese and mushrooms, etc. Sometimes I go a little nuts at Five Guys, or I’ll eat a whole plateful of fajitas.

Where it’s strayed a bit from keto is what I have along with my meals. If we’re getting Mexican food, I’ll eat the corn tortilla chips. If I go to a BBQ place, I’ll have some cornbread. If we go to Five Guys, I’ll eat some french fries. And, if we go to the wing place, I’ll have tater tots, corn on the cob, or fries in addition to my food. It’s been working for me because I’m down more than 20 lbs since I started about 2 months ago, and at the lowest weight I’ve been in 12+ years. I weighed in at 189.2 this morning.

The biggest jump in weight loss came from cutting out the heavy cream in my coffee and switching back to unsweetened coconut cream from the can. This was also my initial start to it, so it could’ve just been a combination of everything. I’ve been wanting to cut back on dairy (again) and I finally made the switch off of cream again. The weight fell off, it seemed! Anyway. It was hard in the beginning to go back to OMAD, but that was simply out of being used to eating at night. When I started evaluating if I was really hungry, or if I was just used to eating, the answer almost always came down to I was just used to eating.

So, here we are. My 8 year CF anniversary is next month. I’d like to say I’m going to go, but we’ll see. I’ve been doing nothing but working nonstop and I love it. I’m visiting my mom right now in Madison, which is really the only reason I have time to even write this, but don’t worry, I brought a whole shitload of straps to sew while I’m here, and I’ll ship them all back to FL at the end of the week.

Your favorite Keto CrossFitter is still here

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But apparently I forgot I had a website to maintain. The CrossFit Open 2018 flew by, I got my first ever handstand pushup.. but not just 1… I did like 6 or 7 or them. It’s been so long that I don’t even remember, but I did it, and I’ll probably never do those again. (195ish lbs upside down on my spine and head just wasn’t what I was meant to do..)

We went snowboarding out in Colorado after Texie passed away. I had purchased new bindings before we left, which Dave installed for me on my old board, but then I won a new snowboard at a raffle, and she’s absolutely beautiful! My old trusty Head board with my old bindings are now proudly hanging on my office wall where they belong together. The new h0tness is ready to go for next year. I only got to ride her one day and already felt a huge difference. I was also exhausted from crushing it nonstop with Dave around Breck and then Winter Park, but it was really nice to go, and spend time with his family, as well.

Me posing with my new Never Summer Infinity 2017 snowboard, with new Flow bindings

Fast forward to the last month or so. Life is absolutely insane. We just finished one of our biggest jobs of the year so far, where we did all the signage (and when I say all, I mean like, all the fucking signs and banners and fence scrim) for Rolling Loud Miami, which is a massive hip hop festival. P.Diddy/Puff Daddy/Sean Puffy Combs/Diddy called it the Woodstock of Hip Hop while he was there last weekend. Supposedly this is a big deal. I also can’t believe that was just last weekend. We spent weeks printing and cutting and grommeting banners and signs. We went through rolls and rolls of banner material, we printed miles of the stuff, including the perimeter scrim all outside the Hard Rock Stadium, it was a big deal. Anyway, yeah. That sort of put a halt on reality. Everything stopped so that we could get that job done.

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The day after we got home (last Tuesday) we hit the ground running with a Lululemon install.

I made it to the gym Wednesday for Bring a Friend Day, hooray! I’ve been sore the rest of the week from it. Two weeks of no CrossFit + 1 hour of CrossFit/Cardio/Wall Ball nonsense will jump start your soreness career all over again. Excited to get to it tomorrow and get back into my regular routine.

Keto is still great. I’m sitting pretty at 199 right now. I had gained weight back after the pups passed, just from lack of caring? I still stuck with Keto, I just ate too much. I was up to 205-206, which was mortifying. I worked so hard to get down to 189, so being at 199 a few days ago was really exciting for me. My goal weight is still around 180, although seeing as how hard it’s been just to stay in the 190s, I’ll just be happy to stay here for awhile and maintain.

I gave up on the coconut cream in my coffee stuff and went back to full fat heavy whipping cream. I didn’t see or feel a difference, and decided that ordering dozens of cans of full fat coconut cream off Amazon wasn’t worth the effort and expense. I will say that I have this horrible guilt every time I consume beef or dairy products, but I try to ignore it and just make sure the animal products I buy aren’t wasted. I have considered eliminating beef altogether, and I have actually cut back quite a bit on beef consumption, but it’s nothing to write home about. Maybe someday I’ll man up and make the big change. It’s honestly a topic I don’t care to get into or argue about, because I don’t like that I do it. So, we’ll leave it at that.

I have started following a more OMAD lifetyle though. Keto OMAD. OMAD stands for One Meal a Day, and in my next post, I’ll go into more detail on how liberating this really is. Thanks for sticking with me. 🙂

Finding the progress even when it feels like nothing is happening.

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Hello! Here we are for out monthly update, and happy thanksgiving to all of my fellow Americans. I can’t believe a few things here:

  1. My dog is still alive. (she has cancer yay, 90 days post op!)
  2. My other dog is still alive. (he’ll be 16 this week whaat)
  3. It’s fucking the end of November.
  4. I skipped over decorating for Thanksgiving and skipped right to the Christmas decorations
  5. I’m capable of (and that I even care about) decorating a house in the midst of my chaotic life

Exciting stuff, I tell you. So.. Facebook memories decided to show me a super horrific picture of me Saturday. It was so bad, that I actually went to the gym for the Saturday WOD instead of going straight to shopping instead. It was a tough sell, but it was a bad picture. I then pestered Tom repeatedly to take some good pictures of me so that I could create what you will see below. I’m sure I was less than thrilled when he sent me the good picture, but now that I have my little timeline collage put together, it all worked out. I am capable of making far more flattering faces, but apparently he didn’t think those were picture-worthy. Thanks, Tom!

Here we go.

Left Photo. First starting CrossFit. I remember hating the picture. Look how fucking ginormous I am. My ass, my arms, my stomach, seriously what the fuck. Look at my clunky tennis shoes, good God, fat lady. Get your shit together.

Middle photo. What you can’t see is that there are like, 2 15lb plates on that lady bar. That puts that weight at a whopping 65 lbs, I know right?! 65lbs for me is laughable now. I can’t even tell you what I do with 65 lbs now. Nothing..? I usually skip right to 95, but that’s cool. 65 lbs on the bar, it is. And I look like I’m riding the struggle bus, hard. And what am I doing, deadlifting?? Seriously, I’m deadlifting 65 lbs here. Great job, lady. Crushing those 65lb deadlifts.

Right photo. I’m getting ready to run my 100m run in our partner relay. Yes, I ran like, 6 times on Saturday! Not usual, not common, but it was the only thing between getting and not getting that red-lettered RX on the board, so I sucked it up. (and my feet have been suffering since, so ridiculous.) And when I say run, I mean like, slow jog. People lapped me several times. Clearly I cared. I’m probably yelling at my teammates here, cheering them on, looking all tough and shit. I imagine this is likely the face I make on a regular basis when I’m out in public. Lady your kid is screaming, what the fuck. Hands on the hips, pissed about something, and looking rather formidable. Or ready to stomp on someone. Or ready to say something inappropriate. So feminine! Such a lady.

On the left, size XL shirt, size XL pants. Giant arms, giant face, giant ass. Belly that went for miles. Entirely miserable. Wondering if I’d ever be good at something. Pretending to be happy. I probably bent over like that thinking it would conceal something on my body. Nope.

Middle. Same. XL everything. Calves so big my socks slouched down. Probably left rings around my ankles.

Right. Size Small t-shirt. Size 10 lululemon. I could wear size 8, but I have too many size 10s I need to wear out. I’m thrilled the size Small shirt was comfortable enough to wear that day.

Over 40 pounds lost – Finally in the 180s!

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As of this morning, post workout, I was 189.6. The last time I weighed this was probably the first 6 months that Dave and I dated. We ate a lot, we started a business, we rode our sportbikes, we didn’t exercise. The weight piled on for both of us. But here I am, under 190! I feel amazing. I am so proud of myself. I get compliments all the time, which I am still not used to, but they all make me smile. People are actually noticing! This is incredible!

My initial goal weight was 180. Now that I’m less than 10 lbs away from that, I’m reconsidering my goal weight, and possibly pushing it back a bit to more like, 175. We’ll see. I will assess and adjust as necessary!

One of the biggest issues though. I hate complaining, but I’m going to complain… is people asking me how to do Keto. Here are some of the questions I’ve gotten from people over the last couple months, and they pretty much all have the same fucking answer.

“Hey Alicia, if you could just give me the quick rundown of this keto thing, that would be great, thx.”

“Girl, tell me how you do this! What is keto?”

“I did some research and it’s kinda difficult because all I get is recipes and we both know I’m not gonna cook… I need the most basic form where I can like meal prep and know… how much I’m supposed to eat of each thing… I was wondering if you could help me out…”

“Are you on the keto diet? Any info you can provide would be awesome!”

“Wow you look great! I wanna do this, how do I do this?”

“Looking good! I’d love for you to send me this new diet of yours!”

“I just need someone to tell me what to do…”

While I love inspiring people, I am not your personal coach. I am not going to just give you all the answers. I will not sit down with you and write up a meal plan, for fuck’s sake. That’s your job. I did my research, you can do it too. If you would like to PAY ME to tell you what to do, I’d be happy to, and my going rate for unprofessional, uncertified diet and exercise advice is about $150/hr.  I’ll even take your happy ass to CrossFit at no extra charge and give you a good ass-kicking. Let me know.

I DO recommend that everyone who is interested run out and buy this book called Keto Clarity. The book answers so many questions, and breaks it down so simply.  It’s not difficult, but it does require dedication. For God’s sake, just GOOGLE IT! How the hell do you think I got all this information?? I didn’t create the diet… And the second someone responds with “Oh my god I could never do xyz.” I am instantly turned off, I’m sure I make a not-so-nice face, and typically respond with, “You’re right, good luck!” {turns and leaves..}

And after I finish this post, I will be putting together my own guide to keto, so that the next time someone asks me about it, I will just link them to here, which will then link them elsewhere.

Negative post? Sure. Honest post? Absolutely. Mad at me? Okay, fine. Don’t read my shit. But you know what? It’s also a really awesomely positive post, because, I’m in the 180s, bitches! I fucking deserve this! I’ve worked my ass off to get here, and I’ll be damned if I don’t fucking celebrate it!

 

Our 3-Way Quad Off Last Night at CrossFit.

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Almost 40 lbs gone. Keto is Amazing.

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So as you may or may not know, I’ve been adhering to a strictly keto diet since January 2017. I am about 1 pound away from my 40lb mark, which is fucking insane. I don’t feel different, but I do. I don’t constantly obsess over how I look or feel, or how gross my body feels, or how impossibly hard certain cardio shit is. My skin has been clear for over 6 months now.. not that I ever had a skin problem before, but now I really don’t! I can go more than a day without washing my hair (unheard of) because it’s not all gross after 5 hours of existing. I am proud of myself, I am happy to see myself in the mirror instead of immediately sucking in at a split second glimpse of my reflection. I am thrilled to fit into my clothes, and to even have some be too big! Replacing my wardrobe with smaller lululemon stuff is not really budget friendly, but it sure as shit feels awesome to go from their biggest size, a 12, to 8s and 10s! From a men’s XL to a men’s M. I even had to buy new shirts for Dali printing.. my normal, everyday mens L to mediums, and I just bought a stack of smalls to take over to the printer next week. Seriously, what the fuck. This is incredible! I’m wearing a men’s size small?!

As I sat in complete silence yesterday at my favorite pedicure place, I opted to read one of my books instead of mindlessly browse Facebook. The one I chose was Fight Cancer with a Ketogenic Diet, Third Edition: Using a Low-Carb, Fat-Burning Diet as Metabolic Therapy which is a book I bought back in April, but finally started to dive into it.

My main basis for starting keto is still to help prevent cancer. My ancestry is riddled with cancer, and when I did my DNA testing with 23andMe, and then plugged in info into a 3rd Party site, Promethease, I was floored at the number of cancer results that showed up. Seeing people all around me, loved ones, go through chemo, usually unsuccessfully, I vowed that I never wanted to do that.

After years of hearing how important food is to our survival, the nutrients, the content, what we eat, how we eat, food is medicine. It can heal us, it can kill us! And seeing how it healed my Siberian Husky, Tex, of his chronic yeast infections in his paws, I really started to realize how this shit is real. What we eat can really be our answer. How we choose to use food is up to us. What is monumentally upsetting, is the people who continue to go to their doctors, keep taking their pills for their health conditions, their high cholesterol, their diabetes, blah blah blah, and then EAT LIKE SHIT. Pizza, subs, fast food, soda full of sugar, alcohol, cigarettes. Are you FUCKING KIDDING ME?!

And doctors’ responses are usually something along the lines of… “it’s easier to get someone take a pill than to change their lifestyle.”

It is baffling to see the amount of garbage people continually eat, and they just exist. They’re not happy, but they don’t even know. They don’t even know what life can be. This is something I cannot change. I cannot change stupidity, idiocy. I can only attempt to help those who ask me for guidance, or direction. People who see the problems and have taken a stand, made a commitment to themselves, to fucking knock this shit off and really change their life this time.

omg. Anyway.. And for those who are like, oh man, don’t you wish you could have xyz?? No, not really. The only thing I truly miss is Cuban food, and that’s because that’s deeply rooted in my blood! White rice, plantains, black beans, cuban bread. That’s about it. Sugar turns my stomach. Alcohol makes me queasy. Bread will send me reeling in the other direction. It’s poison to me! My body doesn’t want it. And it’s showing! With 40 lbs gone, and the best bloodwork results I’ve EVER had, not to mention, a solid foundation to a potentially cancer-free future, I’m pretty fucking happy with the outcome so far.

Happy with my physical keto results
Happy with my physical keto results so far!

Keto, Weight Loss, & Old Buildings

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First and foremost, I am down 29 pounds from Keto. I love it. The only reason I don’t love it is I’m not quite as strong as I was when I was 225 or 230, but everything else is great! I feel good, I am not self conscious, I am not hungry, I eat one and a half meals a day, I don’t care what others think or say, because this feels right and I feel good. I am so close to being under 200, for the first time in 10 years, it’s really awesome.

Dave is down 28 pounds since starting Keto back in early April! He’s been experiencing the same benefits; not hungry, we eat one big meal a day and then some snacks at night (or a small meal). The only thing that’s he’s experienced negatively from Keto is the keto cramps, which he’ll get in his hips or calves, but he’s been taking magnesium to help with that!

And continuing the Keto conversation, my Mom started Keto last week when I was up there with her and is down 8lbs already! Yes, I am quite excited and incredibly proud. 🙂

I’ve been doing a ton of exploring, or.. a little bit of exploring but really blowing it up on Social Media, which is fine, because it’s been consuming me so much that I even dream about it. The ole UrbEx. Inspired by our abandoned Ford manufacturing plant here in Jacksonville, designed by the great Albert Kahn, who is also known as The Architect of Detroit. How cool is that? Our plant here is 165,000 square feet, and was thriving in the first half of the 1900s. After Ford vacated and sold it off, it had a few other businesses and occupants, but largely has been sitting abandoned and empty since the 70s. Which is horribly sad, and it makes me cry when I’m there, because it’s this gorgeous building, beautifully designed with a purpose and now it sits and rots.

Beautiful old doors, still original, at the Albert Kahn Ford plant in Jacksonville
Beautiful old doors, still original, at the Albert Kahn Ford plant in Jacksonville

 

The current owner bought it a couple years ago and his plans for the building are unknown. I hope they don’t plan to just tear it down and start over, it’ll just be another gem destroyed like so many others. Because of fear of demolition, I feel like I’m running out of time with the building. I feel like one of these days, it’ll just be gone, and then forgotten. So when I go visit, each time is a different experience. I notice different things, pay attention to new details, and savor the old ones. The skill and the passion that went into designing this place over 100 years ago, the care for the workers, creating natural light for a better work environment, the gorgeous location right on the water (how great to come to work every day, to open those beautiful crank windows that line the ceiling the whole length of the building, and see the view of the water and the Mathews Bridge?)

View of the Mathews Bridge from inside the Albert Kahn Ford Plant in Jacksonville
View of the Mathews Bridge from inside the Albert Kahn Ford Plant in Jacksonville

 

Even as it sits without a known purpose, it’s still breathtaking. I’ll continue to visit for as long as I can get away with it.

I also need to update you about my trip to Wisconsin and Michigan from last week! My tour de abandoned Detroit, and all of its marvels.

Low Carb, High Fat. The Keto Diet and Why

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I started strict keto – which means very low carb and very high fat, with moderate protein – after a weight loss challenge inspired by Dave’s uncles and stepdad (Richie, Alan, and Walt!) But it goes way beyond that.
 
Last year, I did my DNA test with 23andMe and then plugged my info into Promethease which stacked up my DNA results against this huge database, and told me the various likelihoods of developing certain diseases/cancers/etc. Or as they put it “a literature retrieval system that builds a personal DNA report based on connecting a file of DNA genotypes to the scientific findings cited in SNPedia.”
 
Right.. So anyway, I always want to know the WHYs and WHATs behind things. Why is this happening, why do I feel this way, what can I change, how is my environment influencing these things, what can I do to be proactive, how can I be better.. My results were literally ALL cancer related. Page after page after page showed increased likelihoods of cancer. So… I dove into the research. What can I do? How can I stop and prevent this from happening? Of course, the internet has been my source of knowledge and information. I found several books, and bought them all up.. 
As I posted on Facebook,

These books are my bibles. It’s not just about weight loss, and strength building, but about being proactive for my future. My whole family has been affected by cancer of various types. I’ve lost some of the most important people to me, I’ve seen what they went through to try and fight it and I don’t want to go down that same road.After doing my DNA testing with 23andMe, I downloaded my raw data and plugged it into Promethease. From there, I saw dozens of crazy results showing that based on my DNA data, I have a higher chance of developing several different forms of cancer. It sounds scary, but it motivated me to dive into the research.

Food is medicine. And poison. Food can cure and it can kill. I started searching for ways to prevent cancer by way of diet. What can I eat to lower my risk? What can I eliminate? I even searched in an incognito browser, so that my internet history didn’t skew my search results. The responses kept pointing to keto and reducing inflammation in the body.

Eliminate the sugar, the starch, the inflammation, maintain a state of ketosis, and you can theoretically starve the cancer cells. I’m hoping that by starting early, I have a better chance of preventing it before it starts. I suppose we’ll see.

The books I purchased are the following:

The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Performance
Keto Clarity by Jimmy Moore (who’s co-hosting KetoCon!)
Fight Cancer with a Ketogenic Diet 
Tripping over the Truth
and newly added:
I am halfway through Keto Clarity, and I just started the last one, Tripping over the Truth. I’m only a few pages in and it all clicks and makes sense to me. I am excited for my health. I am excited to see how I can solely, personally fix my future. Can I prevent my own cancer from happening?
My Keto Bibles
My Keto Bibles

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