Happy Valentine’s Day everybody! Is anybody doing anything special? I have a dinner with “39 of my sisters” as my coach likes to say. Instead of our usual on the water afternoon practice, we’re heading out to the beach for a run and then a team dinner. It’s always nice to get a break from the routine!
Long time no post though, right? I have tons of food to catch you guys up on, so I’ll just go over some highlights here in a minute. But first. Why haven’t I been posting? SO much work this week! Why does it feel like every week is such a hard week? Oh, that’s right, ROWING. Also, I haven’t exactly felt like posting because, well, I haven’t really been eating too well. And then this wouldn’t be a “healthy living blog,” it would just be a food blog, or, a junk food blog. To be perfectly honest, I’ve had a lot of difficulty eating well since the holidays. It’s been really hard for me to get back on track! And lack of sleep definitely isn’t helping matters…Does anyone have any tips for getting back on track? I’ve currently ditched all sweet items in my dorm room, as well as (most) nuts.
So how are my allergies? My skin was clearing way up…but here’s the weird thing. I replaced the nuts in my diet for a ton of coconut (yeah, I know, not the best strategy…) and my skin went downhill again. So what am I allergic to? This is really odd. I broke down yesterday and had a granola bar as well, so that probably doesn’t help matters….
Being the awesome person that I am, I wanted to do a little test for my allergies that I was pretty sure wouldn’t work (it didn’t). I put a little coconut butter on one side of my face, and a little peanut butter on the other side. I wanted to see if it would cause a breakout. It didn’t. But it was only on for like an hour (yes, I walked around with pb on my face for an hour…I’m pretty cool) and I didn’t really expect to see many results.
Ok, I will go through all the food in a bit (I don’t have my connector cable with me now, I’m between classes), but first let’s talk about this morning. I had a 6k test! For those of you who do not know, this is the most painful thing in rowing. It is basically 6000 meters on the rowing machine at an all out effort. This was only my 3rd 6k test, and I was really expecting to see a lot of improvement in my time and PR. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen, which I was pretty disappointed about, Given the fact that I’m fairly new to rowing, I really should be PRing more. My fastest 6k was my first one! At least this was faster than my last one, but still, it’s frustrating. This does make me wonder though; if I had better nutrition, would I have been able to PR? To be perfectly honest, I put on some weight since my first 6k test, and I’m thinking this could be seriously slowing me down. So now I have a new motivation to eat well! And I have a new plan. I have the tendency to reward myself with sweets: for doing something well, for a hard workout, for a good grade. So my new idea is to reward myself with peanut butter. That way, I will get to enjoy a reasonable amount of peanut butter and still feel like I’ve gotten that little reward. So instead of waffles, I can have a scoop of peanut butter on my oatmeal! This morning after my 6k? I made my favorite ever smoothie! Peanut butter and banana! Sidenote: I know that you’re supposed to remove the banana peel before freezing bananas. I just never thought about why. I was planning on this smoothie post workout so I popped a banana in the freezer last night so it would be really awesome. But I was in a hurry and just tossed the whole thing in. Yeahh that was not the best idea. In case anyone is curious, the reason it is bad is because it is impossible to peel (you probably figured this out). However, I was very determined. I wanted my smoothie, dang it! So I persevered. Here’s the recipe, it’s super simple!
Peanut Butter Banana Smoothie
1 frozen banana
1/2 c skim milk (or more if your blender is not powerful enough to blend)
1-2 T peanut butter to taste
- Add to a blender (break up the banana as much as possible for easier blending).
- Blend. Enjoy
So simple! The longer you blend it, the fluffier it gets! I don’t think I’d ever had one of these smoothies with a freshly frozen banana before, so it was extra frosty!
Well, this is a great transition into the food portion! Before my erg test, I had a slice of Banana Bread and a little milk.
After, to go along with my smoothie, I had half a whole wheat english muffin with cream cheese and egg scramble/egg whites. Plus like 1/3 of a pancake with syrup. I didn’t take a picture of this because my plate didn’t look very good. After my banana massacre…
But I did get some pictures of lunch! I ate an early lunch (around 11) because I was getting a little hungry, and my legs were starting to burn from this morning. Plus, who can sit in a cafe and work with food that close?
I decided on a chicken pesto sandwich, plus a bran muffin. I figured the bran muffin was a little treat, but definitely a step up nutritionally from last week’s giant apple fritter. Plus, it would not make me feel gross, especially on a 60 minute run!
No picture from dinner though! The beach run with my team was fun (well, as fun as running on sand can be…), but I ended up getting my feet and therefore running shoes soaked and sandy! So much for a Friday run! Our coaches brought us chocolate and apple cider for a toast post-workout at the beach before we headed out to dinner.
Dinner was a fun experience but the restaurant was frustrating. It was a seafood place, and they were out of every fish except for maybe one kind, as well as steak, and garlic bread. Plus, they ended up messing up our order, such that my table got our food at least half an hour after the other table. Luckily, I had nothing to rush back to do! I enjoyed a chicken casaer salad.
Back at my dorm, I went to Late-Night Dining with my friend to get a warm, gooey giant cookie. We have meal plan dollars that come with our weekly meal plan, which let you buy things from other places, like late night. I almost never go to late night, which is where most people use them up (yeahhh morning practice!). The quarter is already more than half over, and only a small portion of the meal plan dollars carry over. I realized I could buy 97 more giant cookies this quarter! That’s over 3 a night! Yesss. Haha, don’t worry, I won’t do that! But finally, let’s play catch-up on food!
Ok, I need to comment on this one. This was one of the best ideas I’ve ever had. Like ever. I brought back some fresh tomato salsa from Saturday’s Mexican brunch in a tubberware, and I had the genius idea to mix it with some salt, pepper, and avocado! This is seriously the best guacamole I’ve ever had. I ate it with celery sticks. I’ve made this multiple times and just cannot get over it. At home, whenever we would get fresh salsa, we would never finish it. Ohh how naive I was. This mixture is awesome, and super easy! 
This is my banana mix with regular cocoa powder, instead of dark cocoa powder. It is completely different! Maybe fruittier? Topped with unsweetened coconut.
These are the coconut truffles I made the other day. Yes, I was too lazy to actually make them balls. All they have in them is coconut (unsweetened), baker’s chocolate, coconut oil, and then they are rolled in cocoa powder. I actually started eating these in the morning before my workouts in hopes the caffeine in the chocolate would wake me up a little bit!
The biggest reason for this photo dump is that I seriously was planning on blogging, so I took the pictures, and I don’t want them to go to waste!
Another attempt at a healthy mug cake. This one actually worked out, but for some reason it exploded from the bottom…getting mug cake ALLLL over the microwave. This had banana, liquid egg whites, vanilla protein powder, cocoa powder, whole wheat pastry flower, a bit of dextrose, and some of my crumbled up truffles as chocolate chips. Not bad! I actually made this one other time, and it was pretty good as well! It would be 1000x better with real chocolate chips. 
This is me realizing I could make awesome French Toast in the microwave. European style bread soaked in egg white, vanilla, and cinnamon.
My first post-peanut butter attempt at Banana Oatmeal. I topped it with blueberries and coconut. Not too shabby!
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get this veggie sandwich for its massive amounts of avocado. This thing might have had 2 avocados on it. It was crazy, I don;t even think I was able to eat all the avocado!
Mug cake number 2! Way better/less messy attempt! Although it was close to popping…there was a giant air bubble on the bottom!
And now I leave you with one more picture. Happy Valentine’s Day!