Whole Life Challenge - Final Days

There are a mere 5 days left of the Whole Life Challenge.  This has been an interesting 8 week challenge to say the least.  I have not blogged a ton about it, but this has really been on my mind a lot.

The bottom line is I am torn by the results.

The Good
I absolutely love how I feel from eating this clean.  Never before have I cut out the things that I cut out.  It has given me new perspective into the food I eat and what I need to do to properly fuel.  I used to have entirely too much sugar, and that was just in the pre/post WOD drinks I would make.  Not to mention what I would have through the day.  I feel better throughout the day, not at all bloated or even starving like I thought.  As odd as it sounds, being so restrictive on food places a lot of limitations on what you can eat but it also frees up what you can eat.  Strange, but it makes it harder and easier at the same time.

The Bad
This is not a challenge where anyone looking to get stronger should participate.  At least in my opinion.  I believe that if you have never been working out, take on this challenge, and start to workout, you will probably see gains in that area.  Me on the other hand, with the exception of a few lifts, most are off my 1RM by 20-30lbs. I think a great test of this challenge, for those who disagree, would be to make the fitness benchmark the CrossFit Total.  Do that before and after and see if the numbers go up.

While I want to improve in all areas, strength is the most important to me.  It is what I enjoy the most.  To see it suffer has been tough.  The only reason I have been able to tolerate it is because I feel like I am getting rid of the bad inches so I can put on the good.  I guess what I see in the mirror has been balancing out what I am not seeing on the barbell.

Is it really possible to lean all the way out while at the same time continuing to hit PRs on all of your lifts?

Summary
Moving forward, there are a lot of concepts from this that I want to continue with.  I think there were far more good than bad.  Don’t read this like this challenge sucks and isn’t worth doing.  I very much like the no grains, no dairy, and yes, no sugar part of this.  I feel like my body is responding to that in a good way and I like limiting the amount of processed crap that I put in my system.  Now, that is not to say that I think pizza is a sin or if you have a cheat meal you are burning a pit of eternal damnation.  I plan on having a cheat meal from time to time.  But I don’t plan on my nutrition being something so restrictive that I am basically living from one cheat meal to the next.  I want to eat good, clean, healthy food, couple that with an active lifestyle, and when I want to have some freaking pizza, then I am going to and I am not going to feel guilty about it.

I also love the mobility/stretching requirement.  That has helped me a lot and I feel better in the mornings when I wake up as a result.  As I have found, just 10 minutes of mobility each night and doing something active every day makes a big difference in how I feel and move.

Finale
At the end, my wife and I get to do measurements again and will retest our fitness benchmark.  While I do not expect to have lost much, if any, weight, I do feel like some inches will have come off.  I am not looking forward to doing the 7 minutes of burpees again, but want to shoot for 90.  I think I can hit that and would be a really good improvement, especially when compared to last year’s Open when I only got 72.