Day in the Life: Spring 2016/ WIAW

Date: April 19, 2016

Author: astottler

I made it through my hell weekend! Yippee! I think I left the house all of once on Sunday. But I think I made it through relatively unscathed! I want to do a pair of day in the life posts. I wanted to do a Monday/Tuesday pair, but this Monday was my test and I didn’t want to spend the time documenting it. The reason for 2 days? My schedule is super variable. Mondays I have 8 hours of class. Tuesdays I have 1.5 hours. So I’ll document next Monday!

And while we’re at it, why not make it a WIAW?

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Before I get into my day, I want to share an awesome dinner from Monday night. Since my class is in my hometown, I go home for dinner beforehand to beat traffic. My mom made an awesome slow cooker tomato bisque. The trick? It’s filled with veggies! Zucchini and celery. I included the recipe in a homemade slow cooker cookbook I made my mom for Christmas, but I dug it up an fit can be found here. My mom also made killer “croutons,” which were gluten free bread toasted and crusted with parmesan. Insane.

6:30 am: Get out of bed. It’s 30 minutes before my alarm, but I like waking up before my alarm because it makes the morning a bit more relaxed.

I then start the getting ready process. Pre-workout snack is more lemon blueberry bread. We tried adding some lemon juice this time, and honestly I think it tasted no different. It’s my current favorite lemon blueberry recipe though!

7:40: Leave for 8am Crossfit. Love the 8am time. It doesn’t require what I would consider getting up early!

8:00: Crossfit. The WOD was a doozy. 2 15 minute workouts of every minute on the minute, which means that each move is completed every minute. Ideally you would have about 15-20 seconds of rest each minute, but it didn’t entirely work that way. This was a LONG one.

I love my new Nike Crossfit shoes, but there’s a defect and the sole is coming off (I’ve had them less than 2 weeks). I need to contact Nike and send them back. It’s on the long to-do list of things put off until life is less crazy!

9:00: Breakfast in the car. I wanted to mix up my yogurt today, so I added vanilla Progenex protein powder and cocoa powder. The verdict? Pretty good. But I think that anyone who likes the taste of artificial sweeteners/stevia is 1. lying or 2. wrong.

I did feel really recovered with all the protein though. I also had some pineapple. It came in my fruit and cheese of the month shipment, and I brought it home on Monday to cut. It’s delicious and sweet!

9:30-10:30: Squirrel watching. This is why I ate in the car. I go straight to a local hiking trail to observe squirrels for an hour. For one of my classes, I have to observe a wild animal 2 hours a week, and because I have a deep connection to squirrels, I chose ground squirrels. We are doing a research project on the behavior of our animal of choice, and I’m honing in my research topic.

Today, I worked on tweaking my ethogram, now that I have a better idea of what I want to study. An ethogram is a detailed list of all of an animal’s behaviors.

I’m convinced my 2 hours of squirrel watching is going to make me tan.

10:30: Hydrate! It was a warm one today so I wanted to make sure I got some fluids after sitting in the sun for an hour. I sipped on some sparkling water while finishing up some reading for a class.

11-11:45ish: Get ready for the day, more leisurely than normal because I had extra time.

11:45: Hash. For my house, every week we are required to help set up one meal, and mine is Tuesday lunch.

12:00: Lunchtime! Today was a good one. Veggie stir fry+crispy rice noodle salad, with chicken.

I also had some frozen fruit (since this is WIAW after all).

12:40: Work on my resume. I’m applying for jobs, and my advisor had some feedback on my resume, which I am working on incorporating.

1:30-3: Class! This is actually funny. This was my 2 person lab animal enrichment class, and we spent the day making an ethogram for lab bunnies, for our research project for that. What are the odds I would be making 2 ethograms in one day, for different classes? #biomajor

3:15: Afternoon snack! I grabbed a bite of gluten free pasta salad…

A few of the biggest blueberries ever…

…And then a S’mores Luna and pineapple. I was opposed to the new formula of the S’mores flavor, but it might be growing on me (although the old formula is definitely better, I may be able to tolerate the new). The new S’mores flavor is super crumbly though.

The rest of the afternoon was spent relaxing, taking a brief nap, and sorting laundry in preparation of a much overdue load.

5:30-6:15: Spin! I’ve been going to a local studio 1x/week since I’m currently teaching one class a week. (Although I am subbing an extra this week.) It helps keep me inspired! I found an instructor I like, and it’s fun.

I wore my fun pants, AKA BRIGHT blue (although you can’t tell here). I can’t teach in them because they have a thin waistband, and I have to clip the mic to my pants and they just wouldn’t stay up :/

6:30: Dinner!

I got the last piece of GF pumpkin bread, which was super exciting. For the actual meal, I had swordfish (eaten with ketchup), chickpea salad, corn on the cob, and Greek salad.

I also had a bit of vanilla ice cream (unpictured).

7:15: Throw laundry in (finally), make a couple more resume edits, start typing up this post.

8:00 Dinner #2/Snack

Pineapple, GF pasta salad, roasted sweet potatoes.

8->on: Folding laundry, making a spin playlist (see below), finishing this post, and then schoolwork. I still have 2 animal behavior papers to read and a short write up about my squirrel project. It’s looking to be a longish night, so I’ll wrap up here, but hopefully I’ll be in bed by midnight! (It’s 9:30 as I finish this.)

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Guacamole Salad

Date: September 18, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

I sincerely wish I had an amazing and exciting recap for you guys, but in reality all I’ve really done this week is start packing for school. Somehow I accumulated an insane amount of junk in my dorm room last year, so the goal this year is to simplify and streamline what I’m taking! I guess as a consolation for my boring life right now, I have a recipe to share today! I’m trying to make more of an effort to actually keep track of the recipes I make! On a related note, I FINALLY gave my recipe page a much needed facelift, so check it out!

In other photo worthy food news, I’m enjoying the last of the summer’s figs! I LOVE figs, and I’ve had a lot of fig eating to cram into the last 2 weeks I’ve been home in CA. Yesterday morning, I enjoyed them with fancy vanilla yogurt.

If it’s in a jar, it’s automatically fancy. Fact. But then the jar was tiny and I couldn’t fit enough figs in, so I poured everything into a bowl and topped it with sun butter. Perfection.

Minus the recipe, nothing has really been photo worthy. This may have something to do with a new Costco purchase-sea salt caramel and chocolate pretzel clusters. Oh yes. Buy them. Or don’t. It’s a huge bag and so, so addictive.

One thing photo worthy I suppose is my shoes.

I think I kind of like that model of shoes, you think? I decided to take a family photo because my oldest two pairs are going off to the Goodwill. I actually got a new pair when I went to the running store because my foot doctor told me I needed good shoes. After a full running/walking/shape of my foot analysis, they brought out…the same shoe I’ve loved for years. Seriously-I’ve worn these shoes since my sophomore year of high school (almost 5 years if you’re keeping track). I had no idea they were the same model when I got my first pair of this year’s version, and was shocked to find the new shoes I had loved were the same as my old ones I loved! I’ve had at least 3 running store workers analyze me and pick out the same shoes so I think it’s safe to say they’re good for me!

Ok. I promise I’ll get to the recipe now! This recipe is a knock-off of one of the Sweetgreen’s salads I had all summer. I don’t even feel a little bit bad about copying their recipe given the nearest Sweetgreen is 3000 miles away. This salad is based off of the Guacamole Greens salad they had, which was the one I got most often. I tasted like fresh guacamole!

Here’s their version:

And mine:

Guacamole Salad

Serves 3

Ingredients:

8 oz cooked chicken (two small breasts)

1 medium tomato

1/4 c chopped cilantro

1 small red onion

1.5-2 avocados

1 c crushed tortilla chips

3 handfuls of lettuce

For the dressing:

3 T lime juice

2 T olive oil

1 t salt

1/2 t pepper

Shred the chicken, mash the avocado, mix up the dressing, and toss all ingredients together.

Throw on a sombrero and enjoy!

WIAW- A Healthier Vacation

Date: September 10, 2013

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hello, hello! I’m back from Maui, just in time to celebrate What I Ate Wednesday. Thanks to Jenn for hosting, although I’m sure she’s super busy with her adorable new baby!

This post will cover the last couple of days of vacation plus Tuesday. First, I wanted to talk a little bit about being healthy on this vacation. My family’s vacations are often centered around food. And in Hawaii, with so many delicious things around-how could it not be? To be honest, I was a little nervous leading up to the vacation about staying reasonably healthy. The last time I went to Hawaii was almost 4 years ago. I remember getting back from that trip and being 10 pounds heavier than I left. I was not aware that was possible. While I may be a tad flabbier than I left, it certainly is nothing significant, and I returned feeling healthy and strong. So what changed?

1. I didn’t go crazy on desserts. Last time, I remember eating so many chocolate covered macadamia nuts that I felt sooo sick. While sure, I ate more sweets than normal, I didn’t really gorge at any one time. With the exception of a very large piece of chocolate cake that left me feeling off for 2 days after…

2. I split meals. Restaurant portions are often huge (especially at touristy places). Before the trip, my mom and I agreed to split things and it worked out perfectly. We didn’t split a couple of times and both agreed afterwards that we should have.

3. I exercised. I continued to follow my half marathon training plan, so I ended up running 4 times on my 10 day trip. I also visited a few local Crossfit boxes- in Lahaina, Upcountry Maui, and Kihei. Some of my favorite days of the trip were the days I got a tough Crossfit workout in, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence. On one of my no-workout days, I was feeling really sluggish. I busted out a quick 5 minute workout, and I felt like a different person.

4. Eat a healthy breakfast. On vacation, we generally buy food to eat in our room. I was really excited for all the tropical fruit. A healthy breakfast helps you feel good going into your day. Example A: my tropical yogurt bowl-plain yogurt, mango, banana, passion fruit, sunflower seed butter.

I came home feeling pretty strong. Before I get into a ton of delicious food, I wanted to talk a little about the last Crossfit I visited- Crossfit Kihei. I had heard from another Crossfitter that they weren’t very friendly. Well…that was kind of right. Myabe they don’t get as many visitors-I don’t know. I wasn’t exactly comfortable the whole time, in contrast to the other Crossfits where I felt like part of the team. The coach was really uninvolved, and there was no group warm up. Plus, for the WOD, I Rxed it when I really shouldn’t have. It was 50 snatched with squats mixed in. No one else Rxed it and I ended up finished wayyy after everyone else, which was a little embarrassing as I was just a visitor. It was a good workout though so I can’t complain. My shoulders really are feeling it today.

Ok-food time!

Vacation food:

Turkey sandwich which I got for the avocado-plus it has cranberry sauce-how fun!

Ice cream! I regretted this choice. I don’t like coffee…and this didn’t have quite enough fudge. Oh well-you live and you learn!

Salad with bleu cheese and asian pear.

DELICIOUS dinner-macadamia crusted Mahi Mahi with pineapple salsa, jasmine rice, and veggies. My dad and I split this, and they were kind enough to serve it on separate plates.

Lilikoi (passion fruit) cream pie.

Chocolate cream pie. Sooo funny story. When my family ordered these desserts to share, my dad asked the waiter for 2 forks…for himself. And yes, he did use both. My family takes our dessert seriously.

Airplane food. You know you’re a blogger when your first instinct is to snap a shot before eating, even on a plane. There were a few pieces of lettuce under there for garnish-you better believe I ate those-vegetables are vegetables!

Aaand that leads us back to today. This morning I ate my typical pre-run breakfast-a ThinkThin bar plus fruit, and ran 8 miles. I would be so much faster if my foot wouldn’t act up! Regardless, I didn’t worry too much about pace. PRing this race will be hard since it’s a very hilly course (Nike Women’s in SF). This weekends long run is 10 miles. And that will be my last flat long run. I have a very hellish run planned for the 11 miler. Anyone from around Palo Alto knows the Dish trail-yeah, that will be smack in the center of my 11 miles. Kill me now….

I went to Whole Foods for lunch and groceries.

I’m in love with Probiotics.

Chicken, avocado and kale salad, chinese chicken salad, and a few fried plantains. I’m starting a mini Whole30 a week from Friday (I’m doing 7 days), and I want to try to ease myself into it. I’ve been thinking about it, and the list of things I wouldn’t want to give up to eat more Paleo is shrinking. Hummus for salads. Goat cheese. Laughing cow. Gummy vitamins. Run fuel. That’s about it. In the future, I may be sort of Paleoish. The big thing for me is watching the grains and sugar I eat since my blood sugar seems to like to crash.

I also couldn’t resist trying these since I love dark chocolate. They’re good!

For dinner, we made Greek salads topped with spicy avocado hummus and a runny egg.

I also got another kind of hummus to try, which I ate with cucumbers. It’s really interesting and different!

And dessert was some of the pineapple we brought back from Maui. So good.

A couple of random other things- I got new shoes to replace my walking around/general workout shoes. My old ones were blue and neon green. The new models are blue and pink. I don’t know about the pink though…What do you think? I might get neon green laces. That way I can accidentally match still since all my clothes seem to be neon green and blue.

And lastly-my haul of Crossfit shirts from my trip! I swear, all I bought on the trip were 3 t-shirts but my suitcase was waaaay more full. Huh.

And I’ll leave you with that! Have a great day!

How do you approach vacation? Has anyone done a Whole30? Tips?

What is your favorite ice cream flavor? Coffee-yay or nay?

WIAW-Paleo-ish

Date: June 25, 2013

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Happy What I Ate Wednesday! I feel like this is basically a holiday, except it happens every week! Yay! Thanks again to Jenn for hosting the fun!

As I’ve mentioned before, one of my goals this summer, I want to figure out what foods work best for me. And yes, I promise I’m going to get tested for gluten soon!

(I had way too much fun making this banner.)

My summer shape up goal for this week was to try a mainly Paleo style of eating, as I’ve felt pretty good in the past when I’ve tried eating in this way (although it was only a few days in the past). My basic guidelines have been to avoid dairy and grains, so not totally Paleo. So without further ado, here are some of these new eats!

Spaghetti squash and turkey meatballs, topped with almond milk mozzarella. For the meatballs, we simply balled up Italian seasoned ground turkey, and they came out really well! As for the almond milk cheese-it’s pretty good. I wouldn’t necessarily eat it in something where cheese is the focus, but it works in tons of different things.

Leftover blueberry lavender smoothie from Gina. For this, I used egg white protein powder.

This is a Turkey and Havarti sandwich from Cooking Light. My mom and I both LOVE this recipe! This is hers- bread, mustard and mayo, arugula (spinach works), red onion, havarti cheese, turkey, and sliced apple. Put in the oven on broil until the cheese is bubbly, then top with ground pepper. The pepper makes it! Here’s my Paleo version:

No bread (hence the tinfoil), and almond milk mozzarella cheese. SO delicious! Make this-you won’t be sorry!

Chocolate covered frozen banana-the chocolate fudge sauce isn’t exactly Paleo, hence the “ish.”

My new obsession! The mango-cocout flavor is so good!

Snacks. The Thinkthin Divine bars are sooooo good. They are gluten free, and MOSTLY kind of Paleo.

href=”http://www.blogilates.com/videos/healthiest-quesadilla-ever-obesity-as-a-disease” target=”_blank”>This quesadilla from Blogilates. This was a great use of almond milk cheese-this meal is totally Paleo!

Mangos which I am obsessed with. Remember when I had over 20 mangos in my dorm room? Yeah, not one went bad :)<a

See’s dark chocolate (left over from Easter…). One thing about avoiding grains is my desserts are mostly just dark chocolate, or Baker’s chocolate with raisins. This is likely keeping me sane.

Any Star Trek fans out there? Yes, my family owns a Starship Enterprise pizza cutter.

In other events in my life, I finally picked up my new shoes, and they’re ever prettier than I was expecting!

I wore them this morning for my 3 mile run and I’m in love! (Sidenote-I think 3 miles is my mental limit on the treadmill…) I can’t wait to wear them for my 10 mile run this weekend. To clarify, I can’t wait to wear the shoes, I’m terrified for the run!

Today also marked the beginning of summer quarter. I went down to school yesterday to get instructed on the research I’m doing for a Professor, and I went back today as well. It’s not glamorous work (looking at pictures of mouse carcasses) but hey, I’ll take it! Wednesday is my first day of Health Psychology, so I’ll be sure to share anything interesting I learn from that! Hope you all have had a great week so far, and have eaten some deliciousness!

What are you thoughts on Paleo? On food sensitivities?

Cold and Wet…Again

Date: December 31, 2012

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Today was day 2 of our 3 workouts a day. We left the hotel at 6 am, and on the way out I grabbed a piece of whole wheat bread with peanut butter and an apple (same as yesterday). It was soo cold, just like yesterday, and although it wasn’t raining when we first got out there, it started pouring while we were in the boat. I had my rain jacket on so I didn’t get too wet, but my shoes sitting on the dock did. Once we were off the water, I changed out of my wet pants, but there was nothing I could do about my wet shoes.

Breakfast was at the training center. This time however, I had a plan. One of my favorite ways to make oatmeal is by cooking a banana into the oatmeal in the microwave, with vanilla unsweetened almond milk, and then topping it with peanut butter. At the cafeteria, the oatmeal is already made, so I couldn’t exactly cook a banana into it. My solution was to microwave a banana in a bowl for 1 minute, mash it up, and then mix it into the already prepared oatmeal. It was pretty good, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as the real thing. Partly, I think my peanut butter from home works better with it. The peanut butter here is sugary and doesn’t have as much peanut-y flavor.

Also pictured is vanilla yogurt with berries mixed in and a hard boiled egg white for protein. Just a note, I don’t avoid egg yolks because I am afraid they are going to negatively impact my health, I simply don’t like them. Whenever I ate hardboiled eggs when I was younger, I always gave the yolks to my dog, Billy.

For breakfast, I also had a mystery muffin. Some of my teammates claimed they were corn muffins, but they tasted more citrusy to me, though not that sweet. I enjoyed it with a dab of butter.

After breakfast we were back on the water for another row, and the weather was much nicer, thankfully. We wrapped up around 11:30 and were back to the cafeteria for lunch. Literally all I am doing is eating, sleeping, and rowing.

For lunch I had a bowl of salad with olives, tomatoes, and baby corn (which I LOVE), topped with Greek dressing and a piece of BBQ chicken.

I hate how some of the time the chicken here has bones. It is so much more difficult to deal with. On the side, I ate a buttered whole wheat English muffin with fresh and dried fruit.

After lunch, I had just enough time for a quick nap before our afternoon workout. Naps have seriously saved me on this trip! I never truly appreciated naps until I began morning workouts. They are possibly the best thing ever!

I woke up hungry again, and finished my granola bar from yesterday, as well as a small chocolate cookie my teammate was passing around.

For our workout, we drove to the beach. It was pretty cold, and didn’t rain on us until the very end, so we didn’t get too wet. We removed our shoes for the workout, and the sand was cold! Our workout consisted of 15 reps of different exercises on the TRX. After each set, we sprinted across the beach to some kettle bells were we completed 15 lower body exercises, and then sprinted back. We did this 6 times. The TRX cable was attached to a lifeguard building, and we were a little worried that we would pull down the whole thing!

After our circuits, we played a game of leap frog, which is actually a pretty decent workout! By the time we finished our workout, I was damp and sandy.

The highlight of my day came after our workout.

Nike outlet store! The outlet mall were went to was basically on the Mexican border. As in, we could see the border from the mall, and were one exit away from a trip to Mexico.

I absolutely love Nike, and loved the sale items even more! Here’s what I walked away with:

I got a new pair of running shoes, similar to the running shoes I have now which I really like. They were half off! And the striped shorts I got for only $3. How crazy is that?

After our little Nike expedition, we returned to the cafeteria (again…3 meals a day for the whole trip…) for dinner. I helped myself to a chicken breast, black beans, steamed veggies, a coupled of roasted potatoes, and some mac and cheese. Basically a little bit of everything! I had originally planned on a salad, but the veggies looked good, and I was still a little cold so I went with it.

Dessert was chocolate and vanilla fro-yo (who am I kidding, it was mostly chocolate) with a dollop of peanut butter. I also snacked on a few bites of granola, and dried fruit and pretzels with peanut butter. And then my arm was twisted into trying some vanilla pudding, because we weren’t sure what it was.

I’m sorry that my posts are fairly boring and cut and dry. I really don’t have a lot going on right now besides rowing, and all my meals are coming from the same place, which seems to have mostly the same stuff. So I guess this means I have 10 days to optimize my meals based on the options available to me. Hopefully I can create something interesting tomorrow.

This seems like as good a time as any to discuss how to make it through multiple workouts a day. Food and sleep are key. Anytime I have multiple workouts, it is infinitely better to get a full meal between workouts. If this is not possible, it is important to at least eat a snack of protein and carbohydrate, and at minimum carbohydrate, because that will provide energy for the second workout. Some great options are milk and banana bread, or an egg sandwich. Milk is a great option, simply because liquids digest more rapidly.

If you have an opportunity for a nap between the workouts, take it! As I said before, naps are saving me this week! My body feels so refreshed after my naps, and I don’t feel very tired from the morning workouts at all. Another tip: if you have the option, put as much time between your workouts as possible. The more time your body has to rest, the better. You may notice that in your evening workout, you won’t feel an early morning workout from the same day at all.

Despite what you can manage to do between your workouts, always be sure to replenish your body at the end of the day, and get plenty of rest that night.

Do you ever have multiple workouts a day?