WIAW-Nothing Crazy

Happy Wednesday! Here we are, in the middle of the week. Who’s ready to celebrate WIAW? Thanks as always to Jenn for hosting the weekly party!

Before I get into some eats, I want to talk about my nutrition and exercise as of late. I recently posted about some weight gain that I wasn’t happy with. As a result, I’ve been taking a closer look at my eating habits and I’ve been working on my nutrition. I read a few chapters from one of my favorite sports nutrition books-Nancy Clark’s Guide for Athletes-and formulated a plan that is reasonable and long term. I’m not looking for a quick fix because I have habits I developed in college that need to change. One thing I did decide to do was to build in a small amount of sweets each day. While I usually feel best when I completely eliminate sugar, I tend to also feel deprived. And this way, I’m not tempted by every sweet that comes my way because I know I’ll have a little something later.

Now let’s talk about today’s workouts! My Achilles was understandably inflamed after Bay to Breakers. It was feeling surprisingly good on Monday evening until I ran the bases during softball. Now, it’s flared up pretty badly. As in, I couldn’t really walk this morning. It’s always worse in the morning before I loosen it up, so I hobbled to the gym in hopes of loosening it up gently. I took a spin class, which helps because it’s not directly using the part that hurts, but it moves it enough to break through some of the stiffness. Then, I went to yoga because I think tightness throughout my legs is a big part of the problem. Just to clarify-neither of these activities were a major problem for it, and I was walking a bit better afterwards. In yoga, we sat with our feet up against the wall to begin class. Given my Achilles is inflamed, elevation definitely helps! After class, I was still in quite a bit of pain so I triple multi tasked by icing, elevating with my legs up the wall, and practicing my oral presentation (and I looked ridiculous).

It felt SO much better after that-though definitely still painful. I’m hoping I can reduce the inflammation through lots of ice and Advil in the next few days! I wanted to run this afternoon, but I decided that would be stupid. I went to Crossfit, which had no running, and nothing that would bother it.

The workout started out with 10 minutes of 3 reps of push press on the minute, with strict pull ups for the rest of the minute.

Then, we did 3 sets of 500m rows, with negative splits on each. I actually felt like the rows were getting easier-I felt stronger on the later sets! However, my legs were majorly jello. We followed this with abs, so I was pretty much just jello.

OKAY. Now, I promise we’ll get on to the food! One thing to note-I only have 3 weeks left of school, and I seem to have build up quite the supply of frozen meat (what? right??). So that will be featured quite a bit in lunches for a while!

Monday morning I had a strange but energizing breakfast of a much needed cappuccino (yayy 2:30am bedtimes!) and roasted carrots with an orange.

Lunch was courtesy of the freezer-frozen turkey/chicken meatballs from a Blogilates recipe, topped with Garlic and Herb Laughing Cow. Served alongside more roasted carrots. Notice all the roasted carrots? I finally decided to stop being lazy, and I made some in the dorm oven. The verdict? Definitely not the best I’ve made-they needed to be cooked longer!

Monday was spent frantically cramming for a midterm, so dinner was eaten with a side of Photosynthesis. I had a turkey burger with cheese (no bun), a salad, and originally rice, but I wasn’t a fan so I went back and got sweet potatoes. Also, there was a warm, buttered roll. It’s amazing how good warm bread with butter is!

Tuesday morning after my workout, I refueled with some oatmeal I had made in the microwave the previous day-Lemon Poppyseed Oatmeal! I loved the freshness of the lemon, although I did add some honey because the oatmeal was pretty sour-but this could be partly because my banana wasn’t super ripe! I topped it with sunflower seed butter, because everything is better with nut/seed butter of some kind, right?

I really want to try this recipe, but with key lime instead of lemon! (And omitting poppy seeds-maybe some graham crackers crumbs though?) This is so perfect for summer! (I actually ate this cold because I made it the day before.)

Lunch was more frozen meat-but clearly not in the frozen form! Plus more roasted carrots, and an avocado I picked up the other day.

Since my lunch was packed and I brought my avocado unopened, I wanted to salt my avocado, but I knew my salt shaker would spill salt everywhere if I brought it. Instead, I decided to try a new salt seasoning from Trader Joe’s, which has a grind dispenser. I really, really liked it! It tasted very summery as well-this summer may just be the year of the lemon for me!

Snacks through out the day included half a banana with sun butter, snap peas (such a good impulse buy the previous night), and a much, much needed cappuccino that tasted like milk of the gods. Let’s just say that I haven’t slept anywhere near enough lately and didn’t have time for one before my first class, so it was actually the best thing ever.

After Crossfit, dinner was at the dining hall.They had barbecue chicken today, which was a change, so I centered my meal around that. I put my chicken atop a salad with lemon vinaigrette-and I just realized that lemon really does seem to be the theme today! I also grabbed a mystery tamale which turned out to be chicken and cheese, and a few bites of polenta.

And for my daily dose of dessert?

Yummm.

That’s all I have for today. I’ve dead tired and my room currently looks like sorority exploded on it, as if it wasn’t messy enough already! It’s Big-Little week for my sorority so I’m breaking out the arts and crafts.

What’s one of your favorite summer flavors?