Posts by AO

This afternoon, I sat on the exam table at my regular skin cancer check, with my new dermatologist. She ran her fingertips over my arms and then arrived at the palm of my hands, startled."Oh, my! Why do you have such hard callouses on your hands?""I'm a weightlifter. I do CrossFit." "Oh! I have heard of that! I attended a wedding over New Year's where the bride and groom and everyone at the reception were CrossFitters. That's how the bride and groom got together, in fact. What ...

It's a really common saying - not just in CrossFit, but in life - "Don't compare yourself to others." It's incredibly sound advice, given the vastly differing histories and context that go into each person's development. Comparing your training to someone else's will rarely leave you feeling more confident about your progress, in large part because it's easier to spot someone else's biggest successes and harder to perceive their struggles, their setbacks, and the other countless inputs that they brought to the table.However, I'll submit that in certain ways, comparison ...

About 10 days before the end of the month, my husband and I scroll through our Amazon Subscribe and Save subscriptions list. We usually pare down the list, often for items we added previously on a one-time deal. Then, we have the fun of shopping for temporary monthly coupon deals on Amazon that we couldn't find elsewhere. We are often able to combine up to 3 different discounts on Amazon to get the best deal possible, shipped free to our door.Here are some things we scored this week in our ...

Last fall, when I was doing the Whole Life Challenge with my CrossFit box, my good friend was suffering some major chocolate cravings about halfway through the 8 week long challenge. We were permitted unsweetened chocolate at our chosen level (intermediate) of the challenge, so as a "hang in there" gesture, I came up with these.These are paleo-friendly raisinets, and if you are involved in a challenge that permits their ingredients, they are little tasty nuggets of, "Phew, OK, I can do this."Here's the dealeo:Spiced Paleo RaisinetsMakes ...

I recently stumbled across this picture taken of me in June 2011, about 3 months before I started doing CrossFit. I was probably sitting somewhere around 40{4dd43735419885e2296c717ac798d5bb3483a708b4c1340b99a8b965668bd4df}+ body fat.I had two gorgeous daughters, but physically, life was not fun. I remember feeling winded from the slightest activities, like tall flights of stairs. Clothes never fit right, and dressing rooms were a nemesis. I simply wasn't comfortable in my own skin.I had never been athletically gifted; even though I did swim team and soccer in high school and a year of ...

Soccer snacks, kicking itold-skool.Good people! What. Is. UP?! Over the last two weeks, the weather broke into deliriously uplifting springtime temperatures. I heard the collective sigh of my fellow midAtlantic parents, "Ahhhhhhhhhh!!" as the children regained school and activity routines.Among our routines that kicked back off was spring soccer season. I love my 7 year old daughter's coach because he goes through the effort every season to ask parents to bring healthy snacks. While he does not get overly specific on what is not healthy, he encourages ...

Greetings, fellow captives of Winter 2014.If you live anywhere in the mid-Atlantic all the way down through Florida, you are all too aware of the...*ahem*...variant weather patterns we are experiencing this season. Since the start of 2014, our county has had exactly one intact week of school - by which I mean one week without cancellations due to snow, ice, extreme cold, and so on.I'd love to direct you to the pictures on the right - of travel-sized spray bottles filled with food-coloring-tinted water."Oh!" ...