On that note..here’s breakfast-the end of my cottage cheese and the end of my berries+sunbutter.

I went to noon Crossfit. My did dad lifts for strength, and then a tough WOD. I was still feeling sort of bad so I didn’t expect it to go well, but I actually felt significantly better when I was working out. Here it was:

3 rounds:

30 wall ball

30 double unders (90 singles)

30 dumbbell snatches (45/25#)

But here was the catch-every 3 minutes (starting at 0), we had to do 7 burpees. I ended up finishing in 17:27.

Lunch was just chocolate milk, cheese, and crackers in my dorm. I wasn’t super hungry but I knew I needed something!

Later that afternoon, I promised to work out with some friends and my sister, so I chose the 1000 rep workout from Jen.

Yeah, I think my friends loved me for that choice….we ended up making the group decision to cut it off after 7 rounds, making it the 700 rep workout! Still-not too shabby!

Also noteworthy today-it’s pouring down rain. We got drenched walking back from the gym to grab dinner. Dinner was pretty disappointing, as is typical for Fridays.

I made myself a little salad, plus chicken and some veggies.

The real event was a girls’ ice cream night. A couple of my friends and I met up at Smitten because I really wanted to try the flavor of the month:

Earl grey with chocolate chunks! For those of you that aren’t familiar with Smitten, they make ice cream to order with liquid nitrogen! Pretty cool! I got mine with chocolate sauce.

It was good, but I think I like the chocolate ice cream a lot more. They also apparently have cookie dough pretzel which I may have to try at some point in the near future!

This is arguably my favorite post I do for 12 Days of Christmas. So here’s a peak at the best things from the past year!

1. This raspberry pastry thing from the Danish Christmas town, Solvang. It was sort of like a fancier, better, moister pop tart.

2. Chocolate ice cream from Tin Pot. This is my absolute favorite ice cream, and I’m pretty sure it’ll make the list every year.

3. Nutella-filled chocolate chip cookies with sea salt. My roommate made these right before winter break and they were AMAZING. (Note-this is before I started avoiding nuts 100%.) Picture perfect chocolate chips cookies, and then stick nutella in the middle. And the sea salt on top? Perfect.

4. Guacamole from the restaurant Reposado in downtown Palo Alto. It was amazing. I think it may have had cheese mashed in?

5. Salmon from fancy restaurants in DC. My parents came to help me move in and get settled, and we went to a couple of nice places, one of which was in our hotel. Both were delicious!

6. Guacamole greens salad from Sweetgreen. The amount of times I had this over the summer was ridiculous. The salad was fabulous though-it tasted just like fresh guacamole!

7. Maryland crab cake at the Nationals ballpark. I have rarely had crab cakes, but my grandma insisted I needed to have something with Maryland crab while I was over there. When it was my last weekend and I still hadn’t had any, I opted to get a crab cake at the ballpark, and I’m so glad I did! Phenomenal! I may be a crab cake person now.

8. Arepa from a place at the Oxbow market in Napa. The place was featured on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives, and I can see why! This sweet corn arepa had tofu, platains, avocado, cheese, and black beans.

9

9. Pumpkin soup at Thanksgiving in Napa. Last year, butternut squash soup was on the list. Now-I think I’ve moved on! I can’t wait to make this over break.

10. Sibby’s cupcakes. Honestly, I think this place deserves its own post. After searching all over DC for the best cupcake, I found it was right under my nose, 10 minutes from my hometown. I have nothing but amazing things to say about these cupcakes.

What is the best thing you ate in the past year?

After my trip and race, I’m back to what I suppose is my normal routine for the next week and a half, so here’s what I ate!

For breakfast, I had leftover cheesy mushroom quinoa (with excessive kale) and some cherries.

In terms of my workout, as promised, I have a lot of cross training in front of me while my plantar fasciitis stops flaring so I went to the gym and did a spin workout on my own. It was a good workout, but not my best playlist ever. After my workout, I met my mom and sister on campus for lunch at my local cafe.

I started with a cappuccino (decaf).

And then my mom and I shared a couple of dishes.The first was called Beverly Hills Chopped Salad, and was mixed greens, olives, avocado, gouda, chicken, and asparagus tossed in a balsamic vinaigrette.

The second was an arepa filled with gouda cheese.

Before dinner, I went to my favorite yoga class and stretched out my tight muscles from the race. I think going to yoga more should help my plantar fasciitis-the stretching felt good and the one legged poses really made it apparent how weak the little muscles in my ankles and achilles are.

For dinner, we made a barbecue chicken salad. My dad grilled chicken with some of the new BBQ sauce we got in Napa, and we served it over a salad with corn, red pepper, tomato, onion, and avocado in a simple lime juice and olive oil dressing.

Plus some tortilla chips on the side!

For something sweet, I had the last of a container of caramel ice cream with caramel sauce from Napa. I didn’t get a picture, but I want to take this moment to share with you the best ice cream ever (although this wasn’t the kind I had last night because it was long gone).

This stuff is AMAZING but I’m pretty sure you can only get it in CA since Straus is a local dairy. Their dairy is the most amazing, creamiest, smoothest ever-the yogurt is amazing-and my favorite ice cream place uses their dairy. So it’s no surprise that this ice cream is ridiculous. SALTED toffee pieces. This is by far my favorite store bought ice cream.

And that’s what I ate!

What’s your favorite store bought ice cream?

First-the food. Breakfast was plain yogurt, fruit, granola (mine was gingersnap!) and coffee. The granola wasn’t crazy sweet either!

Lunch was an amazing salad-some type of green and creamy dressing, chicken, giant white beans, carrots, and lentils. What was really great about this was that the veggies were all actually seasoned!

There were also plenty of snacks. This bar was a favorite of mine:

Plus some other little things.

As a college student, you know there’s no way I’m saying no to free food-especially good food!

There were also some people doing a blender-bike demo outside!

So let’s get into it, shall we?

The first speak was Dr. Robert Lustig. He’s the guy fighting against sugar as the cause of obesity, and his book is was my whole project was based on. So I was super excited to see him speak!

He didn’t go super into the Biochem, but he did talk about one specific chemical reaction that I thought was super cool, and I’m so glad I learned about sugars in OChem this week because it made so much sense! I was actually going to nerd out and use my chemical structure drawing software to show you guys the reaction but I’ll spare you that. The gist is that the browning reaction that happens when you cook meat? That happens in your body as you age. And sugar makes it happen faster. If anyone loves Organic Chemistry or Biochemistry and wants me to go into more details, let me know!

One interesting point he made about scientific studies is that you really need to look at the funding source to get a sense of the study. A lot of studies are funded by the food industry, and the results are often different. Out of some of the studies he discussed of sugar on weight gain, only 1 of 6 studies funded by the food industry reported that sugar had an impact on weight gain. On the studies NOT funded by the food industry, 10 of 12 reported that sugar had an impact on weight gain. So much of our food policy and governmental nutrition recommendations are tied up with the food industry. One interesting thing is that if you look at the currents nutritional guidelines, when referring to what you SHOULD eat, the guidelines discuss specific foods such as fruits and vegetables. But the foods you shouldn’t eat are listed as general food groups, such as “bad fats.” Because the meat industry would have gone crazy if the government had recommended eating less animal fat!

Here’s something else that is scary and relevant about the national health problem we currently have. 30% of our population is obese. However, obesity does not equal disease-metabolic dysfunction equals disease. Metabolic dysfunction (such as insulin resistance) leads to things like type 2 diabetes, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, heart disease, and cancer. Of these obese people, 80% are metabolically ill. Fair enough. But get this: of the normal weight people, 40% are metabolically ill. Which means they have the same high risks of disease as those 80% of the obese! A general indication of metabolic disease is liver fat, and lots of sugar (or alcohol like the more traditional fatty liver disease) directly leads to liver fat. 

I’m sure we all know I like to rant about sugar, and while it’s definitely not THE ONLY problem leading to obesity and metabolic disease, it’s a BIG one! What compounds this problem is besides just the metabolic dysfunction, we have sugar “addiction.” I use that in quotes because whether it’s technically an addiction is debated, but I’m sure everyone here can think of a time when they just could not stop shoving sugar down their throats. And it becomes an even bigger problem when sugar is the norm. Heck, I couldn’t even stick to the project for a month! But the changes in my body after JUST TWO WEEKS without sugar and processed food where dramatic. My fasting blood sugar dropped almost 20 points! It was at the upper range of healthy, and after just 2 weeks, it was lower than it’s ever been as far as my records. I also lost 7 pounds, and looked noticeably different (although it should be noted that carbohydrate holds onto a lot of water). And that’s just 2 weeks! And I’m reasonably healthy! It’s crazy. 

I had the chance to quickly talk with Dr. Lustig between speakers, and I asked him for resources about the mechanisms of the metabolism of sugar metabolism, since again, as we all know, I’m kind of in love with it and think it’s the coolest thing ever. There is NOTHING out there! He suggested a book that is coming out sometime within the year, but other than that, there is nothing! This got me thinking-if there are facts out there that could guide public health policy, as well as nutritional studies, we need to be using them! And I guarantee that when the people in charge of public health make decisions and statements, they don’t look at the Biochemistry. I’m totally biased since I’m a scientist, but if we can explain a process, why not use that information to guide us? To find a solution, to predict an outcome? Ok, rant over. Moving on!

The next speaker discussed intervention in schools in terms of food and health education and school meals. Kids today eat 35% of their calories at school, and many schools even serve up to 5 meals a day! She also discussed how in low income areas, the life expectancy is significantly lower. But what I think is really powerful to take away from her talk is this quote: “Facilitate change, but give up the illusion that you can direct change.” As my generation starts trying to change the world, I think this is important to keep in mind. People don’t always want to change, and you can’t just order someone to do something. However, you can guide them in the correct direction. 

One of the last things I want to discuss is the speaker who discussed child psychology in relation to the obesity epidemic. I think this applies to far more people than just children, and I think a lot of you guys will be able to relate to this. First-happiness and joy are not the same. All joyful moments are happy, but not all happy moments are joyful. Joy is that sense you get when you think of those you love the most-it’s the sensation that runs through your body when it’s a beautiful day and you’re off to see a loved one. Joy is created through love and deep connections with others. And when we don’t get joy, we turn to artificial, short term rewards such as screen time or ice cream. She described 5 brain states: 1 is joy, and 5 is the most absolutely stressed. In states 1-3,  which she termed the “homeostatic circuit,” we are capable of reasoning with ourselves are making rational decisions. But when we hit states 4 and 5, we are stuck in the “allostatic circuit,” or the “survival” circuit. AKA the fight or flight response. In the allostatic circuit, we are stuck in unstoppable drives with no shut off switch-it’s just how our brain is wired. Once this gets triggered, there’s no stopping your behavior, whatever it may be-such as binging. The cool thing is that you can change the wiring of your brain by having a different result come from times of stress-such as a loving connection, which while make you stop going to food for that artificial comfort. Her overall point behind all of this is that these behaviors happen because the way our brain in wired, and often times we replace love with food. Which is especially relevant for children growing up in a stressful environment. 

That’s all I have from the conference! I really, really enjoyed it and I definitely feel inspired and even more sure this is the area I want to work in. I would definitely attend this again next year! I hope you guys were able to get something out of the reviews, or at least not fall asleep! So let’s look at more food, shall we?

One of the speakers today discussed food marketing. He works for Bolthouse Farms, and they are trying to sell carrots as “the next junk food.” They came out with this cool idea of seasoning carrots, just like chips! These were ranch, and they were really good!

And after a day of eating VERY well, I was inspired to eat some veggies at the dining hall! It’s parent’s weekend, so they definitely stepped it up! I had a salad with olive oil and vinegar, plus HUMMUS. We never have hummus! And I discovered I like beets much better in salad form…Plus some herbed spaghetti squash-something else we never have!

And then at the end of the day my parents wanted to see me, so we went to my favorite ice cream place and I actually got something different-but equally delicious. Salted butterscotch with chocolate fudge. 

And yes, I realize this is after I totally ranted about sugar. But it was delicious!

A lot of people are doing reflections on the new year posts, but to be honest, I just don’t see the need, since I basically did the same thing for my Blogiversary. I’m also not really doing New Year’s Resolutions this year. I have some general goals and ideas of things I want to do or change in the future, but it’s more of a concept and the fact that I have no idea where my future lies in terms of exercise.

(Not relevant but I had to share this picture.)

I could set running goals, but I really don’t know what my running future holds. I want to PR a 5k this winter. I’m signed up for a half in April and am planning on one in the summer. But here’s the thing. I’m REALLY loving 5k training and speedwork and running fast. It’s fun. And right now it’s a little hard to look past the constant pain in my feet. I have tendonitis in my achilles, which is straining my feel and part of my arch, which is really painful. And that doesn’t include my mystery pain and numbness that comes with longer distances. I have a doctor’s appointment in a couple of weeks to hopefully begin treatment, but once again, it’s hard to look past this issue which for some reason popped up in the last couple of months. My 10 mile run a couple of weeks ago was painful and pretty much demolished my feet. In addition, I’m starting to get serious about teaching spin, and I have no clue where I want my weight lifting to go. 

But let’s back it up a little, shall we?

Yesterday morning I went to an abs class, which was really hard and I’m currently suffering from the aftermath. Then, I took some of my high school friends over to my college campus for a hike.

We tried to eat lunch at a couple of places on campus, but everything was closed. We ended up going off campus and making an amazing discovery-a little place that was pretty much an Indian food version of Chipotle! You could choose a bowl or a burrito type of thing, and choose rice, meat, sauces, and veggies.

My masterpiece was a bowl with brown rice, chicken, tikka sauce, yogurt sauce, date sauce, and veggies. So delicious! 

Then, we finally tried a fancy gourmet ice cream place called the Tin Pot. I sampled sweet cream with balsamic swirl, but ended up deciding on the San Francisco chocolate Tcho ice cream. Such a good decision.

All the ingredients were local, and the texture was insanely smooth. And in the cone was a little surprise-they fill the bottom of the cone with chocolate to keep the ice cream from dripping, and the chocolate at the bottom of our cones was still warm and gooey. 

That evening, I was off to Crossfit for Crossfit totals, with dreams of PRing. Crossfit totals is basically taking one rep maxes of the back squat, press, and deadlift. 

I haven’t done a ton of max lifting in the last year and a half, and I’m definitely lacking mentally here. It’s silly, but I get nervous for the lifts. However, after failing to PR my backsquat, probably due to lack of focus and losing some of my form, the nervousness turned to fire. I PRed my press my 10 pounds, and my deadlift by 30 pounds! For anyone interested, my total was 495 lbs, which is all the maxes of the three lifts added together. I’m really happy about this-I also feel that I would get a lot stronger at my home Crossfit. I may try the weightlifting class at my school Crossfit though. I love power lifting and I don’t think I get to do it quite as much at my school Crossfit. Anyways, this was a great end to 2013. It was funny-I only did a few reps of each exercise in the hour, and felt simultaneously like I was totally normal yet I was about to fall over. Lifting heavy is a strange thing! Dinner afterwards was a good one-turkey burgers with brussels sprouts and parmesan, and sweet potato rounds. 

This morning, I went back to Crossfit to tackle “Murph.” Murph is a hero workout, meaning it was named after a fallen soldier. Hero workouts are usually long and brutal. This one?

1 mile run

100 pull ups

200 push ups

300 squats

1 mile run

This might be one of my favorite Crossfit workouts ever. And I’m glad I was able to do it at home! There’s a lot of strategy involved with pacing. I did the first mile in 8:36, which I was super happy about because it felt good, and means my speed work is probably paying off! I broke the middle part into 20 rounds of 5 pull ups, 10 push ups, and 15 squats. The pull ups were with a fairly light band, and the push ups were form my knees since we have to touch our chests all the way to the ground! The squats made my legs very heavy by the end! I had to push hard to make the 45 minute cut off, and finished my last mile under 9:00, so that my overall time was 44:29. Another great workout conquered!

I spent the rest of the morning helping my mom take my kitties to the vet. Charlie is the biggest scaredy cat, and it was quite the task getting him into his crate. In the vet’s office, he hid in under the table the whole time. It’s so sad!

When we returned, lunch was leftover butternut squash soup with cheese and crackers. 

I guess I don’t want to set any fitness goals because I don’t know what my future holds. After my halfs, I may be done with distance running, at least for a while. Or maybe not. Maybe I’ll run a marathon. I don’t want to torture myself through tons of long distances if my feet can’t take it! 

In terms of life goals, I guess I don’t see it as much as a new year, but more as a new quarter in school. In general, I just want to be more put together. I want my room organized, my homework always done ahead of time, productive hours in the library, healthy and balanced meals. I guess I also want to spend less time on my phone or the Internet-it makes me a little more unaware of the world, and my attention span is currently non-existent. I think I’d prefer to set aside a particular amount of time for reading blogs or social media, instead of having it leak into my life. 

As for tonight? My friend and I are going to San Francisco, which I am insanely excited about! 

Have an amazing night and be safe!

My alarm went off this morning…freaking too early. 4.5 hours of sleep after a 5 hour of sleep night is just not enough. But that’s temporary. I headed to the gym for a lifting session. It was supposed to be entirely leg day (my Leg Demolisher workout, but I didn’t have a bar to use for overhead squats, so instead I made myself a little pull up WOD. Before that, I tested with the pull up machine how little resistance I could use and still be able to perform the exercise. GUYS. I’m only 25 pounds away from being able to do a real live pull up! Anyways, the WOD was 15-12-9 pull ups and box jumps. Short and sweet.

I also added on some planks. I’ve definitely neglected ab work lately, and after power yoga tonight as well, I can already feel it. 

After my workout, my sleep deprivation started to catch up to me, so I went to the dining hall for breakfast for the first time this year for some quick coffee.

Life saver. Except not because either dining hall coffee isn’t very strong or I’m just used to my beloved cappuccinos. I was very tired today, and we’ll leave it at that. Here are some other morning eats.

Dining hall fruit. Not too shabby!

Casually stealing eggs from the dining hall in a glass…That’s totally normal…

I really tried to rally after finishing the days classes to go to the lab, but the banana was just not going to be a substitute for sleep. I decided I wouldn’t be able to do good work anyways so I returned to my dorm for a glorious, glorious nap.

After my nap, I made a half asleep decision to have a snack of pumpkin cream cheese and pumpkin butter on crackers. I say half asleep because I could not for the life of me remember making that decision…but hey, it was a delicious one! Aaaand let’s just say the pumpkin cream cheese may kinda sorta be gone already. 

I spent the rest of the afternoon finishing this week’s problem sets (yay!) and skipping my run because I napped for so long. I’m fine with this-my original plan was 3x a week, so the 4th run is icing. 

Chicken, balsamic salad, and root vegetables that tasted how horses smell. But maybe I’m just not a root vegetable person. 

Baby dessert-muesli with a little grape jelly and almond milk-so happy the dining hall has almond milk this year! The whole “only pumpkin desserts” thing? Well…

They brought gourmet ice cream sandwiches to our house meeting…And once again, the free foods wins. Which is partly why I’m still awake.

Before the house meeting, I spent a ton of time on iTunes browsing new spin music. Did you know there was a genre called “hardcore dance”? Interesting…Well, I made a class for myself to do sometime this week. Which leads to the multitasking. I decided to listen to the playlist to get a feel for it while doing laundry (yes, it’s 11pm). I desperately needed to do laundry-I have no clothes left (specifically workout clothes) plus my sorority has a mixer on Friday and I won’t have any time on Friday to do it then. I decided to do half a load tonight and half a load tomorrow. So I’m currently doing laundry, blogging, and checking up on my playlist. 

Also-I was stupid enough to throw all my clothes in the dryer and press start…before realizing it was the dryer and not the washer. Yes, it’s been that long since I’ve done laundry.

And after all this spin talk, guess what??

I finally registered for spin certification training! So, I’m actually doing it-I’m going to teach spin! The class is 9am-6pm. I’m HOPING we’re not on the bike for the whole time….

That’s all I have today! My laundry calls!

The first night I went to a luau with my family. I showed you guys some of the delicious food in WIAW. I wanted to highlight some of the other cool non-food things as well though. 

Tiki carver!

This luau had some of the best dance performances as well-there was humor integrated as well as some really impressive fire dancing. During one part, the dancers (men) put out fires with their grass skirts. Ouch.

Check out that aerial dancer-how impressive is that??

Sunday morning began with a 6 mile run. It was…not terribly fun. hot. I had been on my feet a lot the day before-it didn’t feel great. I’m SO not used to heat and humidity. I’m pushing this week’s long run back until I’m home!

The activity of the day was zipling-something DEFINITELY new to me!

We went to the Maui tropical plantation-somewhere we’ve visited many times in the past. The zipline was new to us though! It was really terrifying at first-we were up high and it was windy so the whole tower was moving. We were hooked in the whole time though, so it was totally safe. It ended up being a ton of fun!

The tropical plantation was beautiful as well.

My favorite day overall was probably Wednesday though. It began with a visit to Lahaina Crossfit. They were so friendly and welcoming. I met a few other visitors from California as well, and it was fun to visit a different box. Plus, it felt so good to get a tough workout in. Sooo now this vacation is turning into a game of “how many Crossfit boxes can I visit on one trip.” Tomorrow we’re touring a pineapple plantation in the middle of nowhere, in a tiny town, and there just happens to be a box there. So you better believe I’ll be there before the tour!

On Wednesday, while in Lahaina, we visited a pet/plant store. Let me start by saying that I’ve been to this same store a few times when I was much younger, and those visits are precisely why I stopped eating pork. 

OMG TEACUP PIGS. They are sooo adorable. I’ve wanted one as a pet for years. Since we had been in the store for kind of a while playing with birds, the owner of the store let me sit in with the pigs and feed them from my hand.

They were so sweet! They behaved just like dogs- they had wet little snouts and made little snorting noises.

They eat an entirely vegan, organic diet. 

The birds were super friendly as well. This guy-Prince, is 27 and has never bitten anyone. Another parrot was so funny-my mom and I would say “hello” to her, and she’d say hello back. When my dad said hello to her, she let out the LOUDEST squawk right in his ear, and then proceeded to laugh. A girl after my own heart.

I don’t want this to get too long, so I’ll stick to those activities for now. But since this is supposed to be a food blog as well, I guess I should add some of those as well.

Half of a chicken teriyaki plate (shared with my mom).

This is my dad’s-it has pork so I wouldn’t eat it-but I wanted to share it with you since it’s a traditional Hawaiian dish, and my dad’s favorite food ever. It’s called lau lau- it’s pork wrapped with ti leaves. 

Pineapple ice cream with an oatmeal papaya cookie. This was soooo good. The cookie was PERFECTLY chewy. Yum. 

Do you see the SIZE of this avocado? We don’t make ’em like that in CA! That makes a LOT of guac! While these are definitely fun, the California ones still have my heart. The island variety is a little starchier and less flavorful-definitely less creamy. It was a little hard to mash, and made for some chunky guac. We paired it with a nice salad-chicken, salsa, cheddar. The dressing was olive oil and lime juice, plus salt and pepper. Yum!

Sooo I guess I don’t have NEARLY as many fruit pictures as I thought when I named this post…but don’t worry-lots of tropical fruit is being consumed. Mangoes, papayas, passion fruit, coconut, and guavas. I can’t complain!

Have you ever been to Hawaii? What did you do there? What should I EAT here?