Booze 101. By: Haley

I know have touched on the topic of alcohol in a previous post. However I am currently in a Paleo challenge which forbids booze, so the subject is on my mind. Before I begin, I want to make it clear that I know alcoholism isn't funny. So if I do offend anyone its just for the sake of cheap laughs (which is the motivation behind most things I do in life.) But, while alcohol can be a touchy subject, I have never been one to fear making others uncomfortable, so here we go. Today I want to talk about the fine, and often VERY blurry, line between responsible drinking and having a problem. 1,2,3....GO!


In my opinion, responsible drinking allows for the occasional “ Oh my effing God” wake up the next morning. As long as you aren't driving and you are in good company, there is nothing wrong with having a few too many and getting a little inappropriate. You can't really say “ OK, you can be super drunk 5 times a year,” but if every couple of months you find yourself a little unsteady of your feet and talking extra loud, it isn't the end of the world. It IS the end of the world when you find yourself embarrassed, sick, lacking a memory of the night before, and with a stranger in your bed every single Sunday morning. So here is my advice on how to stop the madness...

Since this blog is theoretically dedicated to a Paleo/CrossFit lifestyle, I will begin with physical health. Alcohol is not Paleo. This means it should not be consumed in large quantities on a regular basis. This is because alcohol is simply not good for your body. Its poison. Its poison that makes you have a shitty, or even non-existent, workout the next day. This is why, if you are serious about health, you should prioritize your physical fitness over booze. This is obvious. Everyone knows alcohol is not healthy or conducive to kick-ass workouts the next day. But there are some other ways that booze holds us back that are not quite as apparent.

People who feel the need to consistently binge drink (even when it causes them a lot of problems) are insecure. Think about it. If you don't feel good about your conversational skills or your physical appearance, walking into a party or a bar filled with people is scary as hell! I remember the days of being a super fatty and marching into parties thinking everyone was just in shock of my ginormous body. But a couple Miller Lites later, I was feeling a whole lot more confident! Do you see how this could become a problem?

Self confidence is another area where Paleo/CrossFit saved me as a person. I was ALWAYS a good conversationalist (love talking, really funny, nice teeth...its just a euphoric experience talking to me,) but I was not confident about the way I looked. Now that I am, I could care less about drinking to feel more comfortable at the party. And maybe you are fine with your physical appearance, but you are worried about saying the wrong thing to that hottie with the body you've had your eye on, so you slam down 54 beers every weekend and hope for a sloppy make out rather than a conversation. Bad idea. Why not try to muster up the courage to be yourself rather than hide behind a waterfall of vodka and redbulls? I can guarantee that the real you is much better than an obnoxious, drunken alter-ego taking over your body. Just sayin...

To end this post, I just want to say that while a combination of eating Paleo and doing CrossFit was what helped me figure out what was important in life, I know that everyone (unfortunately) is not me. Maybe scratching your ass makes you feel better about yourself, I really don't care. My point is, if booze is your first priority, it is hard to have a second priority. Masking your self esteem issues with alcohol is not even a temporary fix, its an addition to the problem. Get an effing hobby. Try CrossFit. Give up drinking for a month. DO ANYTHING. I am the first one to say that booze is fun as hell, but again, there is a fine line between LOL and WTF. The end.



Hey...Nobody's perfect.

Oh No!

Well, this is definitely true. And maybe you don't know this, but I have two cats that sometimes when I think about how much I love them, I cry. I am not afraid to admit it. Definitely not a crazy cat lady, but those little guys are cute as hell!

So, if you like this blog, don't kill my cats! Get to the gym, NOW! Guys like girls who are so sexy and slendahhh and girls like the hunnies with the muscles. This all happens at the gym, not sitting around eating while innocent kittens die because of YOU!

For some reason, there has been about 45 feet of snow per day falling on Massachusetts. I get it, this makes it hard to drive. I once crashed my car in a snowstorm and it was terrifying. I get it...terror. So plan ahead, dumbass! If the weather forecast says "Oh no, Mother Nature looking like she really needs to take a giant white shit on Masachusetts on Wednesday" and Wednesday is a gym day, plan to be in that gym burpeeing it up on your rest day. Thats the way it goes, homeboy. True champions don't miss workouts. I mean it.

That Feels Weird

Everyday a new body part hurts for me. Right now I feel like my boobs detached from my body, went to a rock fight, lost the rock fight, and came back. Some days my ass hurts so bad I will hold in my pee for 4 hours to avoid getting off the couch. These are the side effects of exercise, and often times people quit working out because they can't take the pain. I think these people are wimps and losers. I like the pain. I love it when my legs feel like Vince Wilfork had sex with a manatee on them for 5 hours. It means that all my hard work is paying off, and someday when someone tries to rape me in the liquor store parking lot I can be like “Oh, hell to the mother effing no” and kick them unconscious. Then I will be on TV and everyone will know about Health Gone Wild, and I will finally have the riches that I should have already used my stunning good looks to acquire. Where did my life go wrong?

While I do love the aches and pains that let me know my fatty fat cells are melting, I effing hate injuries. There is a major difference between the pain after a hard workout, and getting your dumb ass injured. I have had 2 injuries that I can remember, and both of them happened at really embarrassing times. First, I pulled an ab muscle doing sit ups. REALLY? You learn how to do sit ups in kindergarten and I thought the worst thing that could happen is that you rip a huge fart in the face of the fat kid holding your feet and everyone laughs. NOPE. You can pull your abs. Hurts like a bitch and there is nothing you can do about it except wait and do exercises that don't hurt. The second time I got injured, I somehow managed to eff up my shoulder GETTING OUT OF BED. Worst part of that one is that it was after I got skinny, so I couldn't even blame it on the tremendous weight of my body. In both cases I had to modify workouts for about a month and then things stopped hurting. It sucked at the time, but I am glad I did it because if it got worse I would have had to stop exercising and we all know I eat too much to be sedentary.

The point of this all is that if you are injured, DON'T JUST KEEP GOING. I have a mega huge ego. I like to wow people with my super strength and I am the first one to admit it. Nothing pisses me off more than not being able to do something. I don't like to show up at the gym and deadlift a Twizzler, that's embarrassing. Twizzlers are for bicep curls down my throat, everyone knows that. So you can know I am being an honest, though somewhat morally casual, woman when I say that I am going to benefit more from writing this post than any of you will from reading it. If it doesn't feel right, modify it. A few adjustments to the workout can keep you active without further aggravating the injury. And if you refuse to listen to me and hurt yourself so bad that you can't exercise and turn into a big fat mess that never leaves the house because you are too busy laying in bed eating steak and cheese and crushing beer cans on your head, call me, I'll come over, I just got Laguna Beach Season 2 from Netflix. Holy run on sentence...Happy Humpday!

Cooking Time!!!!!

Who loves eating? I love eating! Time for a fricken bitch ass recipe that I invented!!! It is a rare occasion when I post a recipe on here, which is ironic because that was the whole reason I started this blog. But, I am not the kind of person that can have unrestricted access to post whatever the f I want on the internet and be expected to keep it to strictly recipes and workouts. So today, lets go back to the humble beginning of HGW with a delicious recipe that will help you melt off those holiday pounds that are making you look like a big bloated weirdo. Its true...you're fatter...but its nothing a little Paleo can't fix. Here we go!

Eggs Gone Wild

This recipe is great because it gives you an appropriate response for when some doucher out at the bar asks you if you'd like your eggs scrambled or fertilized in the morning. It also tastes good and only requires one pan (poor people friendly.)

I make this for two people usually, so if you are cooler than me and have a lot of friends just make more. You would have to be really stupid to not be able to increase this recipe.

Ingredients
6 eggs
one onion
one pepper
Frank's red hot
salt and pepper
salsa
butter
sausage (optional but why the f*ck not?)

Preparation:
Step 1: Dice up the pepper and onion. As much as you would like. I use the whole pepper and about half an onion.

Step 2: Dice up sausage. If you are so awesome like me and have organic sausage that comes in the casing, I cut the casing open and squeeze out the inside so its more like ground beef. You could also just use ground beef.


Cooking Directions:
Step 1: Melt butter in frying pan or skillet. Make sure bottom of pan is covered in butter, please.

Step 2: Throw in the pepper and onion. Salt and pepper the shit out of it. Wait until its all a little brown so the peppers aren't super hard because that sucks.

Step 3: Throw in your meat and move it all around a lot. More salt more pepper. Smash the meat into little bits. While this is happening, crack your eggs in a bowl, put in a splash of water and scramble them like there is no tomorrow (aka: move a fork around in the bowl so all the yolks break.)

Step 4: Add in a little salsa to the meat/veggie mix. However much you want. Couple heaping spoonfuls.

Step 5: Pour in the eggs. Directly into the pan and don't be nervous and ask 1000 times if you are supposed to do that. You are.

Step 6: With a spatula, move everything in the pan around a ton. Just keep flipping it all around with that spatula. While you are doing this, add some Frank's Red Hot and some more salsa if you want. More salt and pepper couldn't hurt either.

Step 7: When the eggs look cooked (yellow and fluffy with no brown burned parts) turn off the heat. Ready to serve immediately.

SIDE NOTE: I did not include cheese in this recipe as cheese is not Paleo. However, cheese is still low carb and delicious. I like to take a bag of shredded cheddar and just dump it on there during Step 7. Again, this is not Paleo if you use the cheese, homey.

So here is one answer to the most common question I get “ But, what do you eat for breakfast?” Try it out and let me know how it goes.

I Call This One....Emotions....

I know I said I was going to post on New Years Eve, but I needed some more time to get this together, so if you are that mad, don't read it (please read it.) But here it is: 2010; A Riveting Reflection. By: Haley.

Success is a strange concept. Everyone always says they want to be successful, but who defines what that really means? I mean, lets take Bret Michaels for example. The dude might look just like me, but that doesn't mean the same things make us feel successful. I definitely don't consider myself to be a huge success just because I pass my weekly chlamydia screening (which I do, most of the time.) That's the difference between me and Bret. He gets through another day where his bandanna doesn't fall off and you better believe it that he will be hopping in his Rock of Love Bus to pour champagne on a gaggle of trannies in celebration. I AT LEAST, have to get some sort of praise at work or something before I bring out the trannies. Bret is so friggin tacky.

But all feminine looking male celebrities aside, in 2010, a lot changed for me. I mean, the changing most likely started before 12:00am on 1/1/10, but if I had to pinpoint a specific time when my life had a major turnaround, I would have to say 2010. Prior to good ole' twenty-ten (ahh..the glory days,) I had been interpreting the idea of “success” all wrong. Success to me was what other people told me it was. I thought I was successful if the people around me were happy, even if I wasn't. If nobody was pissed off at me, I was doing everything right. And guess what? My life sucked. Thankfully, around the beginning of last year, as I began getting really into CrossFit and just paying more attention to my health in general, my eyes opened to the fact that I was living like an idiot. And no, I didn't drive drunk off a cliff or almost choke to death in a gang bang and have some “awakening” experience. I just slowly transitioned into a new lifestyle that encouraged looking inward to find my definition of success, rather than constantly trying to find it through others approval.

Once I began doing CrossFit and getting my diet in check I realized something important. Nobody is going to take care of me except for me. Taking care of myself physically made me feel and look great, and I began to realize that I was feeling better emotionally as well. In the past, when people had lashed out at me because I wasn't living life according to their rules, I had always assumed there was something wrong with ME and would feel so much remorse for upsetting a friend or family member that I would end up giving into their demands. 2010 Haley learned how to tell people to go f*ck themselves. If you care about me, you will be happy that I am living life the way I want to. If you want to bitch at me, like I said, go screw. I determine my own success these days, and to me that means, working out consistently, eating right, maintaining healthy relationships, and bringing positive energy to any situation I enter.

OK, enough angry black girl. The point I am trying to make here is that 2010 was the best year of my life so far. It was the year I started to alter my definition of success from pleasing others to pleasing myself (so obviously my dreams of someday being a call girl to the rich and famous went right out the window.) A huge part of this change is owed to my experiences with CrossFit. CrossFit provides a person with an environment that I have not witnessed anywhere else. It teaches people to take accountability. If you show up to class and suck so bad, you can't turn to the person next to you and yell at them for doing better than you. The only person you can blame is yourself. If you have a big ego or a bad attitude, you take one class and you don't come back. I've seen it a thousand times. CrossFit weeds out the wimps pretty quick. No whiny douchebags allowed. And being surrounded by non-whiny douchebags at CrossFit has helped me to see that I am a smart, funny, positive, unique, and GOOD person who does not need to tolerate being treated like dirt for not living my life the way other people think I should. Worry about yourselves people, and if you ever feel like you need a positive change, come check out a free intro class at CrossFit508. Separates the super cool from the super d-bags. Which one do you think you are?

All in all, 2010 was awesome. It was the year that I finally became me. It took something as consuming and challenging as CrossFit to help me realize that I had been living a life I wasn't loving. Now, I am happy everyday and I'm not lying. Obviously I have my moments where I scream and yell and want to commit heinous murders, but I no longer have that feeling of constant anxiety that the next choice I make is going to displease someone else. I was the battered wife of the world and now I am effing OJ Simpson...too much?

The reality is, you only get one life. You need to live the one life you get for YOU. If other people don't like it, who gives a f*ck. I am not speaking to those people out there who torture their loved ones with drug addictions and steal money from blind old ladies and act like total dicks. You people suck. I am talking to those people who are like me. The people who spent too much time basing their success off of what others thought. The people who just wanted to be happy, but didn't have the courage or the resources to make a change. This could be your year! 2010 was my year so you can't have it, but 2011 is up for grabs mofos! Its never too late to stop measuring your success by what others think, and start looking internally to find out what really makes you feel successful! Here is some added incentive: If you truly achieve personal success this year, and decide to throw yourself a little soiree...I will pose as Bret Michaels at the event. I'll even provide the trannies.

Happy 2011, everyone! May this be the year HGW (just made that up) gets its 20th follower!




This is a picture from Christmas Eve 2010 at CrossFit508. I didn't take the picture, it was put on Facebook. I didn't win a prize :( but as always, it was a great day!