Monthly Archives: March 2017

WIAW- Spring!

Happy WIAW! Thanks to Jenn for starting this!

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I started my morning with Crossfit. We worked on pull ups, and then did 21-15-9 toes to bar and box jumps. I worked on trying to string together my toes to bar better!

Breakfast:

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Flapjacked Double Chocolate mighty Muffin and blueberries.

Snack:

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I needed to be out of the house, so I went to a coffeeshop and blogged/discussed careers with my mom. I had Hibiscus tea, and brought pumpkin spice Cheerios (yes, I still have a stash!).

I start work next week, so I’m trying to try some midday fitness classes this week. I went to a noon spin class. It was…bizarre. First of all, it was sensory overload. The lights were off and there were black lights and intense disco lights. Normally I would consider this a pretty cool feature of a spin class, but it was just a little too much, which is saying something for me! In addition, the music was mind-bendingly loud. Again, for me this is saying a lot! I couldn’t hear the instructor very well at all, and because it was dark it was even harder to follow. On top of that, as a spin instructor myself, I didn’t really approve of some of the things we did. We spent a lot of time running out of the saddle, and part of this was doing arm raises and such, sometimes with no hands on the handlebars. Honestly, that’s an injury waiting to happen. Then, towards the end, we turned the resistance up crazy high such that our legs basically weren’t moving. And to top it all off, in the last song, we were running out of the saddle, and instead of holding onto the handlebars for support, the instructor came up to one woman and held her hands. It was just sort of weird. It’s good to try different things, but I can’t say I’ll be back. All that said, I decided to maintain a positive and open-minded attitude throughout class and get a good workout in.

Lunch:

Leftover lemon ginger chicken soup with GF crackers.

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With a view! The cherry blossoms by the gym are in full bloom!

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After lunch, I went to try on bridesmaid dresses for my sister’s wedding! It’s getting real, my friends!

Snack:

Half of a Fitjoy protein bar+decaf latte.

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Dinner:

I had small meals during the day, so I was hungry and snacked on some Mochi crackers while cooking. I’m really into these right now!

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For dinner, I made spaghetti squash Pad Thai. I’m honestly not a big noodle person, so this was perfect! I love how it came out! Served with mandarin oranges.

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I made a couple small changes to the recipe. I doubled the sauce and used sunbutter in place of almond butter. I used half a large spaghetti squash for 3 people, and for the veggies just sautéed a stir fry mix. I also made a full egg per person. It was delicious though, and I will definitely make it again! Because I just microwaved the squash, this can definitely go in the Quick and Easy category. 

I had a sip of champagne with dinner to celebrate successfully finding a dress for both me and my mom!

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Pink champagne <3

Dessert:

I had a few chocolate chunks and scraped the last bit of cookie dough out of this allergen free sugar cookie dough (it is SO good).

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Snack:

I was hungry a little bit after dinner so I munched on some blueberries.

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Girl’s Night:

One of my best friends from college finished her Master’s degree that day, so we celebrated with a wine and baking night. We chatted away, sipped on chardonnay, and baked my special banana bread.

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Is it spring for you yet?

Weightless: New Beginnings

I know I’m a day late on this, but happy spring! While I’m grateful I’m not being subjected to East Coast snow, the rainy skies here in California don’t exactly feel like spring!

New Year’s is a time a lot of being get reinvigorated to change their lives. I would argue that spring is as well. The sunny skies and blooming flowers bring a renewed sense of hope. Of possibility. When the sun comes out, all I want to do is get outside. I want to move, I want to make changes and be productive. It’s no secret that cold temperatures zap motivation, both for me and many others. I find that when it’s warmer out, it’s much more inviting to be active. I’ve started walking Chloe more. I enjoy our bonding time alone together (especially when she’s well behaved), and I started listening to informative and interesting podcasts during our time together.

Obviously, it’s ideal to be consistent year round. But if you find you’re not happy with how things in your life are going, spring is a great opportunity to make a change. Embrace the changing weather, and let it inspire you.

For me, I’ve been switching things up both nutritionally and fitness-wise. I decided to challenge myself to try different classes at the gym, and have sort of reverted to my fitness roots as a gym rat. So far, it’s been fun, and I’ve found some new things that I both like and cause me to grow as an athlete. Following 17.4 on Friday, come Monday my body wasn’t ready for intense bending (yay lower back). In the morning, I tried a new spin class. It was all intervals, but it was on the shorter side. It was perfect for a quick sweat! In the evening, I returned to Core Yoga, which I originally planned to be a one and done, check that off the list class. However, moving my body in a different way felt really wonderful, so I headed back. In addition, I felt like my back could use a deep stretch!

In honor of spring, we spent a lot of time working on inversions and inversion progressions against the wall. I didn’t do anything too crazy, but I can tell I’ve made progress in terms of shoulder strength and flexibility. Handstands are one thing in Crossfit that I both can’t do, and I hate. I can wall walk into a handstand, but I can’t kick into one, which I absolutely should be able to do at this point. This is partly because I hate them. But I really think that it’s something I need to just get over and work on if I want to grow as an athlete.

Now onto the food.

For breakfast before spin, I had a simple Luna bar.

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After spin, I snuck in a walk with Chloe before the rain. We walked for just over an hour which is on the longer side for us, partly because I wanted to finish my podcast and partly because Chloe needed some exercise given the week’s rainy forecast. Post walk, I had a glass of cranberry kombucha.

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Finally, it was lunchtime! I was feeling hungry, so instead of just the soup and fire roasted veggie crackers, I cut up some red pepper. The soup was more leftovers.

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For my afternoon snack, I dug a slice of whole grain persimmon bread out of the freezer, and ate it alongside a mango.

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The persimmon bread is just my banana bread recipe made with persimmons in place of bananas.

For dinner, we threw together a delicious salad with roasted butternut squash, herb goat cheese, dried cranberries, rotisserie chicken, and homemade balsamic vinaigrette.

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On the side, I had gluten free whole grain bread with herb and parmesan olive oil dipping sauce.

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For dessert, I made an ice cream bowl with vanilla Halo Top, chocolate chip pumpkin bread, and a dab of whipped cream.

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In my opinion, there is no reason desserts can’t be part of a healthy diet! I also believe that a life without desserts just isn’t worth living.

For a nighttime snack, I had a brown rice cake with whipped chive cream cheese.

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I’ve made the decision to try and push my nutrition a little bit. It’s not because I’m not happy about where I am now, but because I want to see how much better I can be, both in terms of how I feel and athletic performance. In the past year, my eating habits have been very stable, which is not something I can really say about any other point in my life. Because of that, I feel ready to try and up the nutrition a little bit. I know my body well enough at this point to know what I need and to know what makes me feel good or bad. I’m definitely not doing anything crazy, I’m just making more of an effort to balance things. For instance, I added back in an evening snack. My body reacts so much better if I split my nighttime calories up a little bit, and so far I’ve felt a difference. I’m making an effort to meal plan for the day such that things are more balanced. I haven’t decided how much I want to get into this kind of thing on the blog in terms of specifics, progress, etc, but of course I’ll continue to post my meals and meal ideas like normal!

Do you feel like spring is a fresh start?

Avocado Con| Lemon Ginger Chicken Soup

I love California. I really, really love California. But we’ll get to that. First, I wanted to share another Quick and Easy meal: Lemon Ginger Chicken Soup. This recipe is something I threw together in St. Louis, that came out surprisingly well!

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I absolutely love soup, and love having a big pot around for lunches throughout the week. That being said, soup can definitely be time consuming and require a ton of different pots and pans, or even a blender. I wanted something that was easy to throw together, in 20 minutes. This soup is just that. You can really use any veggies here; I chose carrots (just baby carrots from a bag, ready to go) and zucchini.

First, I started by bringing a carton of chicken broth to a boil, and boiling the carrots in that. Meanwhile, I sautéed a package of (pre washed) mushrooms with reduced sodium soy sauce, garlic, olive oil, and green onions.

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Add the other veggies to the broth as necessary, depending on how long they take to cook. I added the zucchini about 10 minutes in, and cooked it for 10 minutes. Once the veggies are ready, add the mushrooms and some pre-cooked chicken (I used rotisserie chicken).

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Finally, squeeze in half a lemon’s worth of juice, some fresh ginger, and additional soy sauce to taste. If you can find it, the fresh ginger from a tube is a super easy source!

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And now, the moment you’ve been waiting for: Avocado Con! Yes, that is exactly what it sounds like. Yes, only in San Francisco. It was basically a collection of food trucks serving special avocado goods. There was everything from avocado fries, tacos, poke, and corn dog battered avocado, to avocado ice cream, avocado cupcakes, and avocado chocolate mousse.

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I drove to the city with my college roommate, donned in my most appropriate avocado leggings. We waited in line for a little while to get in, and then did reconnaissance. For lunch, the clear front runners to me where avocado crepes or pupusas with guacamole. I absolutely love pupusas, so that won out!

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There were a variety of pupusa flavors to try, and I chose a chicken and cheese, and a spinach and cheese. The two pupusas came with beens, sour cream, guacamole, a mix of chips, and fried plantains.

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They were SO delicious. I think the chicken was my favorite! And you really can’t go wrong with fried plantains. The avocado fries also looked amazing, but the line was crazy and we wanted to save room for dessert!

For dessert, we split avocado frozen custard with chocolate sauce.

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The avocado flavor was subtle, but it added an extra creaminess!

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The fact that events like this exist is fantastic.

After eating, we decided to find good coffee since we were in the city. We found a Blue Bottle a little over a mile away, and took a nice walk through the city, past the ballpark, to get there.

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I absolutely cannot wait for baseball season!

Naturally, I got a decaf cappuccino.

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It turned out to be such a nice day. Obviously it was foggy because it was San Francisco, but the temperature was moderate and it wasn’t too windy. A nice day to spend outside in the city!

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Days like that make me happy to stay in California for vet school!

 

Chloe’s First Brewery| Pizza Eggs

I hope everyone had a fabulous weekend!

I want to start this post with a recipe for my new Quick and Easy series, and then I’ll recap the fun had this weekend.

The meal idea? Pizza eggs! Not only are these absurdly easy and delicious, but they’re a fantastic use of extra pizza or tomato sauce. Tip: if you’re cooking for one or two people, freeze individual servings of pasta sauce out of the big jar in baggies for later, and defrost as needed. I can never get through a jar before it goes bad!

We made tortilla pizzas and had a little extra sauce, so I took the opportunity to make pizza eggs.

It’s super simple. Start with eggs (and spinach, if you want it!), and when the base of the eggs starts cooking, add mozzarella and pizza sauce on top, omelet style.

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Then flip.

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And serve! (Avocado toast with everything bagel seasoning is everything.)

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And now the recap! I started Saturday with a spin class from one of my favorite instructors. I figured it would be a good idea to get a little movement in before all the stiffness and soreness from 17.4 set in. It felt surprisingly good, but it’s possible that it was just in comparison to how much pain I was in during 17.4. Either way, it was nice to get a little movement in before laying low a lot of the weekend.

Saturday afternoon, my Flapjacked cookie mixes came! I’m a huge fan of the muffins, so of course I had to give the cookies a try. One thing I will say is that the nutrition facts are a little deceptive. They look pretty good, but they’re actually just for the dry mix, not counting the 6 tablespoons of butter that you add!

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That being said, they tasted delicious and felt a little bit healthier than the average cookie.

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They had a denser, more oat-y texture than your average chocolate chip cookie.

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They get my stamp of approval! That said, there’s a full tablespoon of butter in a serving, which is a lot (especially for someone like me who is very fat sensitive). I think I’m going to try and make them with applesauce in place of butter (or half of each) to see how they turn out. I’m eating these as a healthy cookie, so I wouldn’t mind a healthier texture.

I went to the grocery store to pick up ingredients for dinner, and had to snap this picture:

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For most, wearing flip flops to the grocery store is not a big deal. For me, it is! After numerous foot injuries, especially my stress fracture, I truly didn’t think I’d ever be able to wear flip flops again. The fact that I can just gradually slip them on and go to the grocery is huge!

Also huge? I started playing grocery store monopoly. I’ve been asked about a few times lately, and I figured, hey, I’ve been doing the shopping a lot more for my family lately, I could see myself getting really into that!

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Man, is it addicting! I’ve one away from winning a lot of things! (although obviously I do not have high hopes). There are some instant wins and coupons though, so now I have enough instant wins for my family to get free donuts! Win!

That night for dinner, and I made a soup for my Quick and Easy series, which should come up next week. Served with Brazilian cheese bread. This frozen delicacy takes any dinner form good to great in 20 minutes.

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After dinner, we tried out an incredibly local brewery (it’s like a block from Crossfit). Even better, it was dog friendly, so Chloe had her first brewery experience!

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She was bad, then good. She was pretty barky with another dog at first, but then calmed down. EVERYONE wanted to love on her, so I guess she got away with some of that behavior because she’s cute? Eventually she settled in with her bone though.

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Bone=uninteresting unless I’m holding it….

Most of the beers were IPAs, which we knew coming in, but I got a porter blended with brandy that was really good!

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Froyo was on the way home, and I’m not one to pass up that kind of opportunity.

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Dulce de Leche, chocolate, and hot fudge.

Check back tomorrow for soup and a little California flare!

 

 

17.4 on St. Patrick’s Day

I hope everyone had a fantastic St. Patrick’s Day, wore plenty of green, and ate plenty of Irish food!

I began my day with a greenish smoothie. I added spinach to my typical smoothie with banana, salted caramel protein, milk, and just a touch of cocoa powder (so as not to ruin the green too much).

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On the side, I had half a packet of maple brown sugar oatmeal with some extra plain oats thrown in to cut the sugar.

For lunch, I made a wrap that I’ve been loving lately. I’m planning on doing a full post on it for my quick and easy series, but basically it’s a tortilla stuffed with white cheddar laughing cow cheese, turkey, spinach, and red pepper.

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I actually rarely like red pepper, but I do in this context! I had that with a very simple salad: just high quality blueberry balsamic vinegar!

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For a little lunch dessert, I had the remaining bite of a leftover Rule Breaker brownie. I think the brownies taste better than the blondies, but they would be improved with chocolate chips.

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Friday was all about preparing for the death that was 17.4. I made sure to carefully fuel myself. In the afternoon, I had some tea (the house was cold!) with a Luna bar and a ginger chew.

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Cat nap:

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And then about an hour before leaving, I had a few crackers and another ginger chew.

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Then, it was time to get pumped up to go!

17.4 was 16.4.

13 minute AMRAP:

55 deadlifts (155# women’s RX)

55 wallballs (14#)

55 calorie row

55 handstand push ups

First of all, I remember last year being awful well enough, but I also have blog documentation. I was super happy and proud of how I did last year. I finished the row in 12:59, which was perfect since I don’t have handstand push ups. The problem with that is that I felt like I needed to improve upon last year, and I was happy with last year, so anything less than last year’s performance would be disappointing. On the other hand, I knew this workout played to my strengths a lot more than some of the other ones.

I actually looked to last year’s post for how to do my deadlifts. I started with 2 sets of 10, then moved to sets of 5, and smaller at the end. (In retrospect, one method I heard was good was going 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1). I was actually in theory far better trained in deadlifts this year, because we did weekly 20 rep sets at a fairly heavy weight. I definitely regretted 1. not going as heavy as I probably could have during those workouts and 2. missing so many due to travel!

I think the deadlifts crushed me roughly equally this year vs. last year, but maybe I was a little stronger. It’s really amazing how much you just lose all core strength! After the deadlifts, I did the all too familiar 16.4 waddle from the bar to the wall. Last year, the wall balls absolutely destroyed me. This year, interestingly, not so much. I feel like with the workouts that have been repeated, it always surprises me what has been improved. Last year in 16.5 which was a redo of 14.5, I was shocked by how much “easier” (it’s all relative) the burpees felt. This year, the wall balls were shockingly fine. I did my first set as 15, and then did sets of 10 the rest of the way. Last year, I was getting no repped (or coming very close to it) and couldn’t do more than sets of 5 or less. I only got no repped once this time. Maybe all the long, heavy sets of squats and presses helped this? I got off the wall maybe 45 seconds earlier than last time?

The row was not fun. I don’t think I had as much grit in me here as I did last time, because I was pretty sure at that point I could make the time cap. It was not fun. I wanted to die. I didn’t actually die though, so that’s good. I finished my 55 calories on the row at 12:43, sliding in 16 seconds faster than last year. Hey, I’ll take it!

Last year, I was immobile for probably a week after, so I immediately refueled with chocolate milk to try and ward off some of the impending soreness.

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I repped South City Crossfit (St. Louis) green for the workout!

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After watching a few other heats (I went first. Always.), I returned home to an Irish feast and my dad’s green pants.

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I of course had to have a taster glass of Guiness. I actually didn’t really like it. The flavor is good but it needs some fizz!

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And the meal: cabbage, roasted carrots and potatoes, rotisserie chicken, ketchup (necessary for chicken and potatoes), and Irish Soda Bread. For the soda bread, we basically just added dried cranberries and raisins to biscuit mix.

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For a little something green for dessert, I made a single serve sugar cookie with green sprinkles.

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That evening, I went out with a high school friend. We went to a British-style brewery, which was definitely a first for me! The beer I got wasn’t very fizzy, but it was full of (non-bitter) flavor. Interesting!
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How was your St. Paddy’s Day? Anyone do 17.4?