Starting the Whole Life Challenge

My CrossFit box is doing the Whole Life Challenge, an 8 week challenge in making life style changes. It started Saturday and I'm now heading into the first work week. I don't think that this is going to be a big deal, because my strict paleo challenge (posts here, here and here) at the beginning of last year helped cement some good practices.

I eat pretty clean and cheat rarely.  My only exceptions to paleo eating on a regular basis are all to support working out - a Clif Bar before 6AM CrossFit and a protein shake afterwards.

Unfortunately, these two exceptions don't fly in the Whole Life Challenge.  I can eat a date or two on the way to CrossFit, but I've got to work on some substitute for the protein shake.  I'm pretty lean and need to build muscle mass.  So, for these first few days, I'm just going to take the hit and lose the nutrition points.

Heather and I went to the store today and really, really looked at labels.  There is added sugar in so many things!  Almost all of the dried fruit had added sugar, which seems kind of silly, given how sweet fruit is to start.  Even the uncured bacon, no nitrates used, has sugar in it.  Without bacon, this challenge might get a little harder.  Not.

I've made bacon before in my smoker, and given that its winter time and cooler here, my smoker might stay cool enough for making bacon and not cooking the pork belly.  I'll take a stab at making WLC compliant sriracha sauce during this challenge.  I'll try making some Lara bars too, since I found a big box of dates at Costco.

So, stay tuned and watch this blog for updates.  I'll cook some good food and see how this challenge goes!

Did you make any fitness resolutions or are you participating in some kind of challenge?


Note:  Because my wife Heather has a pretty big blog, she convinced the Whole Life Challenge people to give her 2 entries to the Challenge.  I got one of them and though they didn't ask me to write anything, I'll be sharing my experiences in my words.