Monthly Archives: May 2014

One Day to the Next

Date: May 21, 2014

Author: astottler

Hey guys! Want to know something crazy? I slept for 9 hours last night, and it was FANTASTIC. I can’t even remember the last time I did that! I decided to try to run in the afternoon (spoiler alert-it didn’t happen), because at this point I really needed the extra sleep!

Breakfast this morning was leftover lemon poppyseed oatmeal with sunflower seed butter. It was definitely better yesterday-I think the poppyseed started to disintegrate a bit so it was a tad bitter! Also, one note I should have made yesterday: if you make lemon oatmeal, you should probably use non-dairy milk or water. It definitely curdled a bit-I was expecting this but I didn’t have anything else to use so I just lived with it.

Lunch after Bio was enjoyed in the sunlight. More frozen meatballs, half an avocado with lemon sea salt, and some roasted veggies.

Today was actually really hot, which I totally wasn’t expecting. I didn’t even think to check the weather! However, I was smart and brought a warm jacket to Bio because that lecture hall is always FREEZING!

After finishing eating, I was still a bit hungry and realized I didn’t have many carbs with the meal, and I was craving lemon. As a result, I picked up a bar at a local cafe.

And since I’m on this lemon kick, I have an idea of something to make! Hopefully this weekend I can make it happen-and hopefully it turns out! Any guesses? 😉

As a snack before Crossfit, I ended up having some carrots with avocado, and a banana with sun butter. Which was large enough to eliminate my run. On the plus side, all my Advil, ice, and elevation seems to have paid off-my Achilles was much better this morning, and nearly perfect by the afternoon! It’s so bizarre how it flares up-but it’s good that I can treat it fairly well. To be perfectly honest, 50% of the time that it gets bad, it’s totally my fault. If I’m really with with ice after runs and Advil, I can usually manage it much better than I do. One problem with running in the morning before class is I sometimes run out of time to ice.

Crossfit today was some work on cleans, and then am AMRAP of push ups, double unders (I did singles-didn’t want to push my Achilles too much!), and single arm dumb bell snatches. I must say, the single arm snatches brought me back to my high school weight lifting days-I used to do them all the time, although I landed in a split stance!

In terms of fitness, I’m kind of on the fence on…well, everything. I really miss the weight lifting workouts I used to do with my trainer in high school. And I’m pretty sure if I did some of them on my own (I wrote a lot of them down), and made some of my own lifting workouts with a specific schedule/program, I could get a lot stronger, faster. But I really do enjoy Crossfit-it’s something I do for fun! And I guess I don’t see an immediate need for getting super fit. So it’s something to think about I guess! And it’s not like I’m going to do 2-a-days with weight lifting just to fit them both in!

After Crossfit, I was hungry enough to decide to forgo the run, but full enough from my big snack earlier that I wanted something on the lighter side. I made a giant salad with lemon dressing, and had a few pieces of pesto on the side. Hit the spot!

Today, I got my housing assigned for next year! Junior year has the worst housing, but I got exactly what I wanted-a 2 room double on the quiet side of campus (and next to the shiny new gym), right next to the best dining hall on campus! Win!

WIAW-Nothing Crazy

Date: May 20, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

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?

Dish Hike

Date: May 19, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

How’s your week going?

The tiredness is finally hitting me. I was up lat last night working on a presentation and studying for today’s midterm-today has been a bit of a whirlwind! After my midterm I rushed to my softball game, which was super fun!

However, I did some interesting things Friday that I want to catch up on!

For breakfast, I decided to stop being lazy and actually break out my blender for some overnight oats. I used this recipe for mango-banana oats.

The verdict? Ehhh I wanted to like them but they just weren’t for me. I think it’s partly because I really dislike the flavor of really ripe banana, and the banana was a bit strong, so maybe next time I’d omit the banana. Also-and this is totally my fault-it was pretty runny because I used rolled oats instead of quick cooking steel cut oats.

Friday afternoon, I hiked a nearby trail (it’s on campus, so super close) with some girls from my sorority to get to know the new members. As always, it was a beautiful day, and I have to share pictures!

It was the last of the pretty hot days, and I got a fabulous farmer’s tan. After sweating it out, we were all dreaming of a cool drink, so we went to Philz coffee for iced chais. So good!

That evening, my friends and I went out to eat (*gasp* we got off campus!) to a Korean place. I got a Bi Bim Bap bowl with chicken and it was delicious! The dish is served in a ceramic, super hot bowl, and the rice gets nice and crispy. The downside is I always spent the whole time burning my tongue!

Afterwards, my roommate had a wild night-we went to the grocery and I bought my first Ben and Jerry’s! (Which fueled my 1am blogging Friday night.) I have to say, out of the ones I tried, Chocolate Therapy was my favorite!

And seeing as I don’t currently have ice cream running through my veins, I’m about to fall over I’m so tired! Have a great day!

Bay to Breakers 2014

Date: May 19, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

I had every intention of getting this recap post up last night, but wifi was down throughout the whole campus. Let’s just say doing research for a presentation you are writing at 1am ON YOUR PHONE is not the most fun thing ever. But here were are!

Yesterday, I ran Bay to Breakers, a 12k in San Francisco that goes from the Bay, to the Pacific Ocean (breakers).

I awoke at a fantastically early hour (4:50) to get ready to make the trip up to the city for the 8am start. For those of you that don’t know, Bay to Breakers is a crazy, wacky race. Everyone dresses up-that is, if they dress at all.

Upon arriving in our corral, we were immediately greeted by flying tortillas. Yes, flying tortillas. There were tons of people just will bags of tortillas, flinging them everywhere.

This is the first tortilla that hit me.

As you can see, I didn’t go alone! I ran the race with 2 friends.

This was my first time running with people, and it was a lot of fun! I will admit though, it was a bit difficult turning off that competitive instinct and not worrying about time.

In terms of my outfit, I obnoxiously wore all blue-shirt, pants, eye “black”, and then a tutu. People dressed up as all kinds of things. One motivated runner carried an inflatable palm tree the entire way! I also didn’t see as many naked people as I was expecting, although I soon lost count.

My face paint was probably not the greatest idea-I was expecting it to dry, but it was oil based and never did so it was super easy to smear! Right before we started, I was smacked in the face with a flying tortilla, which majorly smeared it-plus got stuck in it! Ew!

The race started about 30 minutes late due to some issues clearing the course, but eventually we were off! I actually carried my phone with me for this race so I took lots of pictures!

That bacon suit cannot go undocumented!

A mile or two in, we reached Hayes Hill-there was a challenge to sprint up it-the fastest person won a large sum of money. Hint-it wasn’t me! I have to say though, there was a lot of hype about this hill, but it was NOTHING compared to the hills of San Francisco of some of the halfs I’ve run!

It was such a beautiful day for running! It was pretty warm last week, which equals not totally freezing in the city!

The route was different than any of the halfs I’ve done-it went through a completely different area. We spent about half the race running through Golden Gate Park!

Around this point, we started debating how long 12k actually was. I thought it was 7.8, and one of my friends thought it was 6.9 As we passed Mile 7, it was determined that it definitely wasn’t 6.9!

As we debated, a friendly fellow runner informed us that it was actually 7.5 miles! Almost there!

And done!

See? Breakers!

Overall, this race was a lot of fun, and less crazy than I was expecting. Although this is likely because I was in the 8:00-10:00 pace corral, and the really drunk people were much farther back-but there were definitely some! There were a lot of very drunk spectators as well-but that meant the crowd support was awesome! I didn’t realize a good portion of the crazy would be drunk college students-especially those in Greek life!

I also saw quite a few people I knew throughout the day, which was fun! I would definitely recommend this race as a fun run-it definitely gives you a sense of San Francisco! But if you’re planning to race it-well, just don’t. There are a lot of people walking, there are a lot of people staggering around, the spectators sometimes blend into the race course-if you’re trying to go anywhere in a hurry, you’ll probably be incredibly annoyed by everyone. The key is to embrace it and just have fun! I know I did!

And you better believe a celebratory brunch was in order! I was starving-I took this race much less seriously and just ate a granola bar before around 5am, so I was more than ready!

Such a fun day with amazing people, and an amazing city.

Have you ever run Bay to Breakers?

At a Crossroads

Date: May 17, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hey guys! It’s currently Friday night at 1am, but I can’t sleep because my room is 1000 degrees and I have ice cream running through my veins (not a decision I regret though). I’m sitting outside (much cooler) watching drunk people slowly trickle back from one of the wilder parties of the year. I wasn’t feeling it-I spent my night with my only friends I need:

Kidding. All jokes aside though, I’ve never actually had Ben and Jerry’s, so my roommate and I decided to fix that! But today’s recap is for another post. I have a slightly more serious (how serious am I ever? Let’s be real here) post for tonight. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and reflecting. I guess this past month or so I’ve been feeling a bit of blogging identity crisis. What’s the point of what I’m posting? Is it interesting? Deceptive? (I hope not). Who am I writing to? Who am I trying to please?

In this post, I’m going to attempt to piece my thoughts together in a way that makes sense, as much as possible.

Tonight, I spent some time reading through some really old posts from another blogger-one that inspired me to blog wayyy back when.

Additionally, my blogging was slacking for a bit there, thanks to my so-called food rut.

I guess here’s what it comes down to. When I’m eating junk and feeling bad, it’s hard for me to be passionate about the things I care about and love and find SO incredibly interesting-nutrition, metabolism, etc. It’s something I truly am passionate about, but when I’m not following my own advice, it’s hard to find that spark.

I feel like my blog has really more fallen into what I tend to call it, a food and fitness blog, versus a healthy living blog. This isn’t inherently a bad thing, but it ends up turning into lazy posts where I throw up pictures of my food and say “This is what I ate.” Don’t get me wrong, this is fantastic for me to look back on. But what value is in that content? A lot of what I’ve been eating hasn’t been particularly healthy, so who am I hoping to inspire?

On the other hand, I find myself not talking about my exercise and fitness-just brushing it off. Even though, as a food and FITNESS blog, this could be a big thing. And it’s a big part of who I am that gets neglected quite a bit! But here’s where I run into trouble-and as I’ll probably elaborate on in a minute, maybe the source of my blog rut-I’ve been worrying too much about what people will think. Will they say I’m exercising too much? But here’s the thing. Everyone is different. My exercise routine is balanced, and I look forward to most of my workouts. Crossfit is fun. I pick and choose the workouts I go to based on what I would find the most fun. If it wasn’t fun, I wouldn’t go. Also, I’ve been an athlete my whole life. I’m in good shape. But I tend to be self conscious about the fact that I usually run in the morning, and then do Crossfit in the evening. So I don’t discuss these things. But I really should! It shouldn’t bother me what people think because I know what works for me. I love running, and training for races, and I love Cross-training. So be it.

And onto the topic of caring what others think…I’ve ALWAYS wanted Fitness is Sweet to be a positive place. I don’t want to be negative in my posts. And there’s one topic I absolutely hate talking about, but I’m going to talk about today. This is a weird one though-I’m not worried so much as to what others will think, but rather what future me will think. I cringe at all those past-Aurora posts freaking out over this or that, and all those random “a-ha” moments (OMG I need to eat Paleo! OMG I need to avoid gluten! UGH.)

So this post is probably not one I’m going to look back and love, but it is what it is. Because the one topic I HATE talking about is weight. But hey, why not talk about it then?

I’m in college. It’s spring quarter. Nutrition seems to once again have gone by the wayside. So here I am, up a few pounds. And running SLOW (priorities, right?). And as much as I HATE discussing this, here we are. Because as much as I preach a healthy lifestyle, I never really did figure it out. I never returned to my pre-college weight, which drives me crazy, and I never returned to my pre-college eating. I’m active, which is fantastic, but my eating habits clearly leave a bit to be desired. Sure, I eat my vegetables, but a lot of sweets and snacks never make it to the blog. I guess I’m at a crossroads because I’m ready to really dig into this issue, but not too sure where to start because after all this time I’m still not there!

I feel like the extra pounds are really holding me back, in terms of my confidence and my athletic capabilities-I really want to PR my half this fall!

This past week, I’ve been trying to focus on staying calm and mindful, which helps but is still hard to stick with!

And at the same time I want to make myself healthier, I also want to have healthier content. I want to show delicious, nutritious meals, not just thrown together pictures of froyo and muffins.

However, I firmly believe that a negative attitude and negative relationship with food is never going to help with weight loss, so there is going to be none of that here. Which is why I have zero regrets about that Ben and Jerry’s-it was delicious! And it’s over, and I don’t regret it. I don’t plan on eating it every night forever, but it is what it is.

So I guess the summary of this long and super rambling post is that I’m going to take better care of my health and also work on improving my blog content-but I also think the two go hand in hand!

So if you made it this far, thank you! I know this post will probably make me cringe later, but I also think it is important. As bloggers, it’s easy to paint a healthy glow on everything, but we’re not always as healthy as we make ourselves seem to be! That’s very important to remember!

What makes you uncomfortable?