Monthly Archives: June 2016

What I Ate SUPERSPEED

It’s been another long day. I’m learning so much, but I finish the day totally wiped, with my feet aching. In exciting news, I went for my first post-stress fracture run last night. It was more like a shuffle, and max .5 miles, but the ability of the human body to heal if you let it is amazing. 4 weeks ago, I thought now I might still be in a boot.

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Jet lag stinks too. I haven’t been able to fall asleep as early as I would like, so I’ve just been SO tired. So let’s hop to it!

Breakfast:

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Plain Greek yogurt, GF vanilla crunch cereal, sunbutter. These are Carolina blueberries. They taste okay, but they’re squishy. They pale in comparison to what you can get in CA, but they are alright.

Snack: Banana

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Lunch:

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Quest BBQ chips, salad with peach, chicken, and goat cheese.

Snack:

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Workout: A few push ups+40% of Blogilates 1000 squats video.

Making Dinner Snack (It’s impossible for me not to snack while I cook so I at least go for something healthier. The grapes are frozen!)

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Dinner:

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Sweet potato noodles in the microwave this time, veggie burger (x2 because I was still hungry), and salad with Bolthouse Farms Creamy Garlic dressing.

Dessert:

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Dorm Room Food+Fitness

Greetings (again) from Tennessee! I’m currently blogging from my dorm (I just graduated and am back in dorms already—haha! This is seriously the nicest dorm ever though…apartment style). I’m in the kitchen while steaming some snap peas. The snap peas were pretty awful raw—super fibrous and hard. I’m hoping I can soften them up a bit!

I think it’s been hot here, but I’ve actually been FREEZING all day inside! And I didn’t pack  single long sleeve shirt to wear for warmth. IMG_7750

I wanted to talk a bit about food+fitness while I’m here. I currently don’t have a gym membership or a Crossfit membership, and I’m trying to figure out how I want to do things. I’m not off soon enough to make any evening Crossfit classes, but I could potentially make a 5:30am one. That being said, what I’m doing is important and I really don’t want to be tired all day, or the days will be rough. I might get some drop in Crossfit classes and go 2x/week, or I might do a gym membership and go after I get off. Crossfit is about 4 miles closer than the nearest gym though, and a lot of gyms are really hard to join for a month (because they’re impossible to cancel). This all would be a lot easier if I could just go for a run for exercise! I’m hoping that by the end of my time here I’ll be able to a bit. So far, my foot is feeling good, despite long hours standing on it.

Workouts so far this week:

Monday night (after dinner): 15 minute Blogilates abs video: Extreme Abs 3. Who knows, maybe I’ll be crazy out of shape but have super strong abs by the end of the summer??

Tuesday night: I did the inside of Murph (sort of). There’s plenty of space in my dorm to exercise, so I did 100 sit ups (in place of pull ups), 200 push ups, 300 squats. I broke that up into 20 rounds of 5-10-15. It felt SO much easier than actually doing Murph! I did work up a little sweat though.

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That did have me craving harder workouts again though! Still not sure what I want to do.

In terms of food, I’ve been sort of lazy. Breakfasts have been Luna bar+fruit (I had the BEST watermelon on Monday!). Lunches have been packed—nothing complicated because I was super tired by the time I got to the grocery and didn’t buy much, plus I wasn’t sure how much time I would have. They’ve just been sunbutter and raspberry jam on gluten free bread. The bread is frozen, so I actually make my sandwich on frozen bread, then stick the whole thing in the fridge the night before. It’s been pretty good by lunchtime! On the side, I’ve been having some of the awful snap peas. I also threw in some blueberries today that I brought with me all the way from California! They are far better than the blueberries I’ve been getting here. For a snack, I’ve been having chocolate cupcake Luna bars. I think they’re growing on me, but today was the last one I had, and they’re hard to find!

Dinners have involved this exciting find:

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I mostly was excited to find thin sweet potato that I could quickly sauté up. Dinner on Monday was this served alongside some spinach patties (frozen).

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Since this was clearly not enough food, I also had some snacks (banana+frozen grapes, sunbutter and jelly toast).

I actually planned my workout around tonight’s dinner. I wanted to roast some stir fry veggies that I bought, so I wanted something I could do in the dorm while those all were roasting.

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I actually ended up eating the entire container because they shrunk SO much! I had that with a hemp+greens veggie burger. I actually loved this! I loved the subtle hemp flavor.

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That’s all for now! Still not sure what tomorrow’s workout will look like. I also desperately need to hit up the grocery for more veggies!

What is your favorite at home workout? 

What I Ate While Traveling

Greetings from Tennessee! It has been quite the long day. I woke up at 3am for a 5am flight, and I’m feeling about ready to drop!

I thought it would be fun to record a little What I Ate in a Day Traveling edition.

Breakfast: on the plane, after sleeping for about an hour.

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Homemade butterscotch zucchini bread+cherries. Boy am I going to miss California fruit!

Lunch: I had a layover in Denver, so I grabbed food to eat on the plane. At the first cafe I stopped at, I was lucky enough to find a pre-made gluten free turkey sandwich, with garlic aioli. Perfect! I ate this with my last few cherries.

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Snack 1: I had a few bites of this bar with breakfast, and had the rest about an hour after lunch.

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Snack 2: Still on the plane, I had blueberries and crackers.

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I ended up renting a car for this trip because of my foot, but it meant I was able to get some things from the store. I was caught out in a thunderstorm—now I think I know what it would be like to drive in a hurricane!

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(Please note that I am parked in this picture.)

I ended up picking up dinner at the whole foods hot bar. Salad with parmesan and grapes, teriyaki chicken, roasted carrots, and African spiced sweet potatoes.

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And then later that evening when I was packing myself a sunbutter and jam sandwich for lunch on Monday, I had a few crackers with sunbutter+jam. I wanted to choose a local jam!

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And now I’m off to finish getting ready for tomorrow (Monday)!

What is your favorite travel snack?

Thunder from Down Under+Last Post from This Side of the Mississippi Round 2

Guys. It is currently Saturday night (this post will go up Sunday while I am in the air), and I leave for TN tomorrow. My flight LEAVES at 5am. Ouch. This is my last post from this side of the Mississippi! Recently on time hop, I came across my “Last Post from This Side of the Mississippi” from my summer in DC, so I guess this is round 2! I definitely want to blog about my experience in TN, but understand that I can’t talk about what I’m doing due to confidentiality reasons, so expect more of the usual food and fitness+weekend adventures!

This week has been crazy, trying to do everything before I go.

You may be wondering about the first part of the title of this post. My parents and I went to “Thunder from Down Under” Tuesday night, aka an Australian Shepherd playgroup at the local dog training/agility facility. Chloe LOVES playing with other dogs, and is a rough player. She hasn’t had the chance to play with a ton of Aussies. This was just the cutest idea! 6 dogs showed up, and Chloe stuck with the same one most of the time. I wish my pictures were less blurry, but crazy dogs=constant motion.

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Chloe and her new BFF, Bacon. It was so funny to see all the dogs play and interact with the same behaviors and mannerisms!

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About halfway through, they started to get a bit tired! When she gets tired, Chloe tends to just roll on her back and play from the ground.

Thursday was another busy day for me. I started with morning Crossfit. I did cleans for the first time since my stress fracture, 2 months. I was careful and kept it light, but was still sore the next day! My foot felt good during them. I went straight from there to meet my sister for iced coffee.

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And then from there, I ran home to pick up Chloe for a walk with my High School friends. I hadn’t driven her in my small car since she has been full grown, and she kept trying to come into the front seat/my lap! She’s too big for that! It was great to see my friends.

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Since my foot injury, I haven’t walked any sizable distance. That plus Olympic lifting that morning was a lot, and my foot was sore the next morning.

I was more than ready for lunch afterwards!

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Microwave quesadilla, salad with Greek Feta dressing, and chicken.

More food: Fig and Goat cheese salad.

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Microwaved gluten free blondie with caramel sauce and frozen yogurt.

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Friday, my dad and I went to the Giant’s game. Food, as always was the highlight. Cauliflower flatbread with truffle oil for me, plus a cucumber and feta salad split with my dad.

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Plus some of my dad’s hot fudge sundae.

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We ended up pulling out a win by inches…it was not pretty there at the end!

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As per usual, it was freezing. I had a long sleeve, sweatshirt, north face, and scarf, plus we had a blanket, and I was still so cold! I feel like I need to soak up the cold though before heading to TN!

It was fireworks night, so we stayed after the game to watch. While we waited, the birds swooped in!

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And then, it was time for fireworks. It was a great show—the fireworks were really sparkly and pretty, plus we were really close.

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The next morning, I drove down to my school Crossfit for the last time. I’ve been sad for a while about this day. This Crossfit has really become my family over the past 3 years. Through crazy school stress, illnesses, and two major injuries, it’s always been there. I spent so much time there over the past 3 years, and it really was one of the highlights of my college experience. While I still argue that sometimes you regret a workout (some types of soreness are brutal), I knew that whenever I went in, no matter what else was going on, I would leave feeling better. I think I’ve been there in every imaginable mental state. The workout was a great one to end on. A LONG partner workout, similar to the previous week but worse because of the addition of wall balls.

2 Sets

AMRAP 5 Rest 1

Max Assault Bike Cals
16 Alternating DB Snatch

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Max Rower Cals
20 Wall Ball

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AMRAP 5 Toes to Bar + 5 Burpee
5 Pt Shuttle Sprint

For the final grouping, I subbed 25 kettle bell swings for the shuttle run, and push ups for the burpees. KB swings combined with toes to bar KILLED my grip! It’s funny; I haven’t done many toes to bar lately (not for any good reason), but they have still gotten WAY stronger for me since doing so much ab work while my foot was in a boot. I guess it does carry over!

At the end of class, I said my goodbyes which I tried my best (and failed) to keep it together for. I’m really going to miss that place.

After a failed errand, lunch at home was rotisserie chicken, avocado toast, and fruit (pictures is the nectarine, plus cherries and some pear).

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We had more errands to run that afternoon to prepare for my trip, but on the way, I wanted to get froyo. We ended up at Menchies. I love how they label all their nutrition info+allergens. And that they have sample cups readily available! I got some toasted marshmallow and some chocolate frozen yogurt, which I topped with hot fudge, strawberry,s and milk chocolate.

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Dinner at home was a good one. Cheese soufflés (it’s a Cooking Light recipe that we’ve made quite a few times over the years).

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Plus steamed artichokes and roasted Japanese yams. IMG_7729

For dessert+plain snacks, I made some more sweet potato zucchini bread, but with a few changes. I didn’t have quite enough sweet potato, so I threw in half a banana, and to change up the flavor a bit, I reduced the spices and put in butterscotch extract. It was a hit in my house!

And with that, from this side of the Mississippi, that’s all she wrote.

Where is your favorite place to go in the summer?

Big Changes Ahead

I thought I’d do today’s post in a more traditional style, since I was running around most of the day!

I began my morning with a 6am spin class. I woke up feeling a bit rough, but before my alarm since my room gets really warm at night. I had a tetanus shot yesterday, and my body felt really achy. Nothing a little Tylenol couldn’t fix, and I’ve felt fine since then!

The class was with one of my favorite instructors at a local spin studio. The class flies by, and she definitely makes us work hard! It’s one of those classes where your numbers appear on the screen—extra motivation for this competitive girl!

After class was breakfast. I had the last of my Harry and David mangos. Harry and David has the best fruit, and these were possibly the best mangos I’ve ever had. I also had some Strauss (<-best local yogurt, crazy creamy!) plain whole milk greek yogurt with KIND cinnamon granola and sunbutter.

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After breakfast, I rushed to get showered up for physical therapy. Its going really well—I just started doing “plyometrics” on my foot. I put this in quotes because they are wimpy plyos. I’m using a leg press to kick and land, with a reduced load. I worked up to 55# today, so we’re getting there! Once I hit my body weight, I should be good to go for real impact like running and jumping (obviously in extreme moderation, working up to it—I’m in no hurry!). I did some extra strengthening exercising today, so I actually got out later than normal, making me late for a coffee meeting with a recent vet school grad who was in my sorority at Stanford and graduated undergrad before I got there. Since I was late, I skipped coffee to have more time to talk. It was super helpful. It also made me realize that in the very near future, my life is going to completely change, forever. I feel like I’m basically pledging my life to cows, which I am actually feeling okay about right now. The unknown though is hard. As are apps.

We finished up at 11:48. I made the decision to race to noon Crossfit (I had my stuff with me in case I got out in time), and managed to change clothes, put my hair up, sign up for class, and drive there, with 2 minutes to spare.

The workout was something I could do completely! It was a low-key day. We did Farmer’s carries, windmills, weighted planks (which my foot finally allows me to do), hollow body holds, and glute bridges. We also had to do 6 60s sprints on the assault bike (these are terrible), which we did throughout the other sets.

I arrived home for a fairly late lunch, and snacked on carrots and a few crackers with apricot goat cheese while I prepped my food.

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Leftover avocado soup, minus the chicken since it was all gone. For protein, I made an egg. On the side, I had 1.5 parmesan corn muffins with some earth balance spread (I like the taste of it). I also had the last few bites of plum crisp.

After lunch, it was time to get to work on vet school apps. I input ALL my transcript info, which was a big step.

Dinner was grated zucchini sautéed and quesadillas—stuffed with monterey jack, spinach, mushrooms, and rotisserie chicken.

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I’m pretty sure other snacks were consumed throughout the day, but I can’t remember at the moment!