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Learning When to Step Back + Basically Running a Kennel

Hello friends!

I have to say, while Blogmas was a blast, it feels sort of nice to be back in the swing of things with normal posts.

Before we get into the food+fitness+animals (#prevetlife or something), I wanted to talk about one thing that’s been on my mind these past few days.

I love exercise. That’s no secret. And I’m lucky that I happen to love something that is so good for my health. But one thing I’ve struggled with in the past is knowing when to take a step back.

Yeah. Hello, stress fracture.

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For years, I always felt like I had to work out every day, more than once often. Otherwise I wouldn’t be “fit.”

Ever since my stress fracture, I’ve exercised significantly less (but still regularly, to be clear). And guess what? I’m fitter than I was before, with all those extra workouts.

I thought I had to be dragging my body through workouts day in and day out; I had to run 3-4 times a week, spin, Crossfit 4 days a week, who knows what else. It was about quantity, not quality. But then I hurt my foot. And I got busy with various internships. I no longer had the free hours in the day to work out that I did in college, and ever since then, my fitness level has improved. Quality over quantity. In St. Louis, I found I didn’t really like doing runs the morning after a hard evening Crossfit workout, so I stopped doing Crossfit the night before. In the past, I would have struggled through the run. But now I decided I didn’t want to feel awful for the run.

This week, I had to convince myself to take a step back. My stress fractured foot is healed, but sometimes it gets a little bit sore, especially when I’m either wearing the wrong shoes, or jumping a lot. After walking around the city in boots on Monday, and then doing lots of box jumps at Crossfit Tuesday, my foot was bothering me a little bit. I didn’t want to step back, but I remembered how much worse it was to have to immobilize my foot for 6 weeks, so it was better to take some time off now than get that far again. I scaled my Crossfit workout this morning to take the jump out of burpees, and instead of my normal Thursday run, I decided to go to a much needed, low impact yoga class, and spend Wednesday off my feet for the most part.

I guess the main point here is, you have to listen to your body, and you don’t have to exercise 12341234 hours a week to be fit.

Back to life.

For some reason I have not been feeling yogurt in the morning, but I went with it because I thought it would go well with my amazing pears (it did). I had Fage 2% with Cinnamon KIND granola and sunbutter.

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Tuesday was another packed lunch at the library, but I made it a little more festive by making a salad with pear, leftover turkey, and cranberry goat cheese. Plus crackers.

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Persimmon bread was my afternoon snack. Plus some other random things because I’ve been so freaking hungry these past few days. That usually means Crossfit has been especially hard.

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I’m not super big on pizza (especially with the whole GF thing), but my parents really like it. We went to a place that had GF crust, and my family and I split a brussels sprouts salad, and then my mom and I split a GF pizza margherita.

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I got some ice cream for Christmas dinner that I really liked and wanted to get more of, so we walked to a local Italian grocery after dinner to pick it up. It’s really not exotic; Dreyer’s slow churned frozen yogurt, chocolate vanilla swirl. But I also picked up a couple of GF cookies! Chocolate chip, and chocolate mint.

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Wednesday morning I tried Chocolate Cheerios for the first time, pre-workout. I like them! They’re definitely subtle.

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Mid-morning, I took the crazy pup out for a walk at a park with some friends. They got to see crazy Chloe: at one point she was just running and jumping around in a circle, which is an interesting sight given I was holding her leash…

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I have a problem with her riding in the car right now. She wants to sit on the center console. She does that with my mom which is fine for her, but problematic for me since she’s always really close to shifting gears in my car. On the way home, I tried having her in the front seat and she eventually settled down. Not ideal, but better.

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And then began Aurora’s kennel. My parents were out of town for the day/night, so I was on full pet duty. Throughout the day, Chloe has been following me around (but being an angel), sleeping in every room I’m in. It’s actually adorable. I move rooms, and a few minutes later she comes in and settles down near me.

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I had a lazy day. In the afternoon, I did a little baking. I made marble bread by making half persimmon bread, half chocolate banana bread. It came out really well!

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I do enjoy spending one on one time with Chloe. She’s honestly much better behaved with just me, and it’s good to have some pup-sister bonding. We went for a nice long walk before dinner. It’s the end of December and despite the 30-something degree mornings, I can’t complain about the fact that I can wear shorts and walk Chloe outside (ignore the fact I was wearing 2 jackets). And this area is so darn beautiful.

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With my family gone, I had the opportunity to crank up the heat. I swear, my mom and I have totally different internal body temperatures. This morning, both kitties were huddled under the blanket for warmth. I clearly wasn’t cranking it up enough though, because Lilly was camped out on the heat vent.

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I cooked myself up a simple but delicious dinner. Scrambled eggs with high quality cheese is always delicious. I used cheese leftover from our wine and wine night, and paired my protein with some olive-fig tapenade, avocado toast, and leftover Christmas green beans that I added truffle salt to.

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Chloe and I planted ourselves in front of the TV with a movie, and I enjoyed another bowl of ice cream and a cookie half.

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The other part of my kennel duties came later than evening when I had to take care of our little visiting kitty. He’s almost 19, which is crazy. We’ve taken care of him before, so he’s staying with us for a week. He moves amazingly well for such a senior kitty, and he’s a big sweetie. He, however, wasn’t a fan of taking his pill. I got it in him eventually, but he was a master at somehow spitting it out and gave me a run for my money!

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And with that, I’m signing off!

WIAW-Summer Food and the Official Start of Half Training 4.0

Happy Wednesday! I feel like this week has already been flying by! Only 2 days left until the weekend-how is that possible? Let’s celebrate with What I Ate Wednesday!

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Before I get into the good stuff (aka the food) I want to talk about a few things I’ve done the past few days! Sunday, I went to the Dupont Circle Farmer’s Market, and got some fresh peaches and greens for my favorite summer salad. Afterwards, I went to Target to pick up a few things. Prior to the weekend, I had only rode one Metro line. Sunday, I rode them all. I’m pretty sure I officially live here now! One thing I want to do sometime is play Metro roulette. Get on a random line and then get off at a random stop to explore. We’ll see.

On the fitness front, Monday kicked off the official start to my training cycle for my 4th half marathon! How crazy is that? 4? I knocked out an early morning 3 miles. For some reason, my Garmin kept losing me, so I’m not sure if I’ve actually gotten slower or if it was losing its little mind…Either way, I have no problems waking up for these views.

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Can you guess which picture I stopped to take, versus just shooting on the run?

Now, onto the food. I’m insanely, insanely proud of Sunday’s meal. It was probably my most beautiful creation. I made my Grilled Peach and Chicken salad, but baked the chicken instead of grilled it and sautéed the peaches on the stove.

Plus a hunk of farmer’s market fresh whole wheat bread. What more could possibly say “summer”?

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I feel like I should just stop there with that picture. This also marks my first time cooking chicken. That’s right-I’ve never cooked chicken. I’ve done ground turkey and even fish, but never chicken! (At home my dad would usually grill). It was insanely easy and came out way better than I was expecting!

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Also, feel free to ignore the fact that it’s in a loaf pan. Kitchen tools are a bit sparse around these parts…(But a loaf pan was clearly a priority.)

For breakfasts, I just haven’t been feeling the yogurt+berries+sunbutter, although I need to eat that tomorrow before my berries go bad. Instead, I’ve been feeling the lighter fruit salad with sun butter. Currently in the mix is a banana and blackberries. Monday this was prepared and eaten in 3 minutes flat. Not ideal, but better than nothing!

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In terms of lunches, I packed lunch on Monday. Baked chicken, plus roasted broccoli and cauliflower, and mashed sweet potatoes with sage.

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Lunch on Tuesday was bought from the cafe at work. I needed to buy something. I had the pleasure of only doing half my laundry on Monday, and being one quarter shy of actually being able to dry it (and how the heck do you hang dry socks??). I’m spoiled at school because our laundry is free, but I managed to not have any bills the quarter machine would accept. Hence why I needed to buy lunch-just to get quarters and smaller bills. I got a hummus veggie pita on a whole wheat pita.

These things are massive. The pita is stuffed with tons of veggies, hummus, feta, and provolone. I was glad to be eating this alone because it’s kind of a mess!

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Plus an impulse buy of marble bread. This seriously is my weakness.

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After Crossfit today, I went grocery shopping. Twice. Apparently coconut flour is much more rare here? I was at Trader Joes and couldn’t find it, and with the knowledge that dinner would therefore be a ways off, I grabbed a protein bar. I’m not a proponent of artificial sweeteners in general, but it is what it is. This is one of the few protein bars out there with no nuts, and I munched on it as I walked to grocery #2.IMG_8311

 

Even at Whole Foods, I barely found it. In CA, there would be like 5 different types…

Once I FINALLY made it back, I whipped up a quick dinner. Coconut flour quesadillas, from Blogilates. With plenty of avocado and a side of grapes.

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It didn’t come out as well as I would have liked-I didn’t add enough water to the batter so it was sort of dry. Take 2 is tomorrow night though so I have a chance to fix it! This may be my go-to easy meal for a while because the recipe calls for 4 oz of meat, so I was left with 12 oz leftover, which I cooked up and froze. Now that I have coconut flour, the other ingredients are staples. So maybe I can get food on the table before 8:30!

That’s all I have today-I have an early workout (followed by lots of coffee) on the Lincoln Memorial steps!

What is your favorite summer food?