Before I dive into the food, there was something I wanted to talk about today. Last week I talked a little bit how I want my blog to be a little more than just “this is what I did,” “this is what I ate,” and more of a resource for healthy living. I was watching some fitness youtube videos this morning, and both were inspirational and geared towards helping people and putting out content that can aid people in their health journeys.

Today I want to talk about my motivation for being healthy (full day of eating at the end!) and eating healthy. My view on health and fitness has changed a lot since I started this blog. I think I’ve been through a bit of a journey, and I want to share some of how I transformed.

Like I discussed in my #transformationtuesday blog series (link here), after struggling with college weight gain for my first 3 years of college, I finally managed to lose about 25 pounds.

For a while before then, I also struggled with a lot of food stress and a negative relationship with food. Which created toxicity in trying to be healthy. It created a desperation. A few things have changed how I look at food and eating. First of all, I think I’ve matured a lot since then. I’ve grown up. I’ve also realized that there are other things in life worth worrying about (ayyy vet school apps!). I’m realizing that with maturity also comes a sense of calm. I’m realizing I’m more of a low-key person than I realized (or than I was) and a lot of things don’t phase me that used to. (Most things really aren’t that serious. Panic almost never makes a situation better. It’s funny because pre-college when I was playing softball I considered myself emotionally tough and calm, then through most of college things got to me a lot more, and here we are, full circle, calmed down again.)

I think the number one thing that changed everything for me was getting so sick, and then working to get healthy from that. When I was first dealing with my “mystery stomach condition” and didn’t know what was going on, I felt powerless because I knew what I ate mattered but I couldn’t tell what would make me feel better. Once I started to get a handle on how to eat and what was going on, a switch flipped. I now had a different, much more important reason to eat healthily. To feel good, sometimes just to function.

(Carrot apple ginger juice and BFFs <3)

I had to eat a certain way to not feel sick. That way of eating happened to be pretty darn healthy. (Minus the instances where I had to survive on crackers because that was all I could handle.) I was eating to fuel my body. I was eating with a purpose. Even now that I’m SO much more recovered from my illness, eating to feel good has stuck around. That made all the difference.

When I make food choices, my main goal is to eat what I think will make me feel good. I KNOW vegetables make me feel like superwoman and high fat foods have me feeling yucky (not advocating for low-fat for everyone, this is just what works for me with my stomach issues).

Full disclosure: I do count calories but not with a specific caloric goal. Mostly because it helps me manage my stomach (if I eat large meals I sometimes have issues). I eat whatever amount will make me feel good.

(Kale salad= feel like a rockstar)

I stopped trying to cut out sugar. Instead I try to eat it in a way that won’t make me feel bad. I have dessert every night. But I choose Halo Top for ice cream because I know it won’t make me feel bad like full fat ice cream.

If you are eating healthy for purely aesthetic reasons or just to see that number drop, it is so much harder to stick with it. Because the moment you have a piece of chocolate when you feel you “weren’t supposed to,” suddenly your day of “good” eating is ruined so you eat the whole bar. If you eat to feel good, you eat the chocolate. And you realize, “ok, I still feel good. If I ate the entire bar, I might not feel good. So I won’t.” In feeling good, there is no black and white. It’s all a spectrum. You could always feel worse by throwing in the towel and eating tons of junk.

And if you’re eating to feel good, the scale doesn’t carry so much value. I’ll be honest, sometimes I crave ALL THE FOOD and overeat sweets. But I accept that that’s what my body wants at that time, know it will pass, and move on. If I wake up heavier the next day, I realize it’s because I have extra food in my stomach and it will pass. I don’t freak out. If you base your value and self worth entirely on the scale, you might wake up the next day and say “screw it,” feel defeated, and continue unhealthy habits. Trust me, I’ve been there. If you’re eating to feel good, the next day you might realize you don’t feel the greatest from all those cookies and choose more vegetables because they make you feel better.

And while I’ve been referencing food in terms of “feeling good,” it also applies to exercise. I am extremely fortunate in that I genuinely love exercise and have a lot of fun with it. But I also feel 1000x better when I start my mornings with a workout, which makes it easier to get up when that 5:30 alarm goes off.

In summary: why should you want to be healthy? Because it feels amazing! We don’t always need to complicate things with numbers and measurements. How would that food make you feel? Amazing? Then eat it! If it would make you feel less than stellar, but you decide it’s worth it, then I would advocate for going for that too. Healthy isn’t perfect. And there really is no “perfect” when it comes to being healthy.

PHEW. After that long winded intro, let’s get to the good stuff!

Breakfast:

Flapjacked double chocolate mighty muffin. For some reason I’ve made these a Tuesday breakfast thing. Plus some amazing jumbo blueberries. (The key to these microwave muffins is to get them gooey in the center. Also: I often add extra water to the mix until I feel like it’s a batter consistency. I feel like some of the muffins have a little more or less dry mix than others so I adapt accordingly.)

Coffee:

I’m back on coffeeshop Tuesdays. This was a decaf cappuccino, as per usual. I was back at Foundation Grounds this week for it’s coziness factor and closeness.

Snack:

I headed to Crossfit from the coffeeshop, but since it was lunchtime Crossfit I grabbed a few of these crackers as a snack beforehand.

Lunch:

Post-workout I was more than ready! I headed to Panera for some of their Autumn Harvest soup. It was my first time trying it and I liked it a lot! So silky and smooth. I also had an apple and crackers on the side.

Afternoon snack:

I didn’t love these bars at first but they’re growing on me.

Dinner:

I found these at the grocery so naturally I had to dig into a few of them.

I really love this simple and easy salad. It’s vaguely Greek I suppose. I used to pack this with a hard boiled egg for lunch between classes. Salad with champagne vinaigrette, goat cheese, roasted red pepper hummus, and an over easy egg. Plus some GF toast with Earth Balance.

Dessert:

A little while ago I bought a can of pumpkin pie filling. I pulled the other half out of the freezer today and made a little microwave pie/custard thing. It was delicious. 1/3c pumpkin pie filling+1 T egg whites+1 T semisweet chocolate chips. Microwave until cooked.

Post-Dinner:

It’s the World Series. I decided it was as good time as any to try a local beer I’ve been wanting to try.

This was pretty good but a little bitter for me. I normally like dark beers but this wasn’t quite for me.

Since it was so bitter, I need a bite of something sweet after drinking it so I ate a Dove milk chocolate ghost.

What is your motivation to be healthy?

So, I feel like I haven’t been very real on the old blog lately. At this point I probably have a pretty different set of readers as I did 2 years ago, but if you read any of my old posts, the tone is pretty different. I don’t know exactly what it is. Maybe I’m burned out on blogging. I think a lot of it is I don’t really want to psychoanalyze my eating habits on the internet anymore, because when I go back and read those posts, I feel ridiculous. Maybe I’ve read too many blogs and feel like I’m just adding white noise to the world of blogs. I think healthy living blogs in general have changed a lot in the past 2 years.

(Baby HLBer Aurora)

I also think that somewhere along the way, I lost my passion. I became apathetic. And honestly, I feel sort of lost. I’m having a hard time finding inspiration for something I used to be so passionate about.

(Totally should not have been eating this, totally allergic to it. But baby HLBer Aurora didn’t exactly know this.)

College is a pretty big transition in life. I think I’ve become apathetic about a lot of things. To be honest, I also feel lost without a sport. Softball was my life in middle and high school, and rowing was my life freshman year of college. I honestly feel like food is my only extracurricular and source of fun.

I feel like another reason I’m losing my passion for fitness and nutrition is I feel like I don’t live up to it anymore, if that makes any sense. The more I lose it, the more unhealthy I get, which makes me lose the passion even more. When I read my old posts, it makes me happy yet sad because I feel like I’ve lost a lot of that.

(I don’t miss the freezing cold days on the water though.)

And since we’re being honest here, I guess I’ll talk about the one thing I never talk about but occasionally mention and complain about and then never change anything.

(One of the first food-y things I posted. That smoothie had WAYYY too much mint extract.)

Yeah, gaining weight in college is real. I feel like my eating habits have become apathetic (yeah, totally overusing that word in this post). I’ve gained weight, and I’m not comfortable with myself. To be honest, ever since that happened, I haven’t really felt like myself. And to be even more honest, I feel like living unhealthily is sort of wasting my college years. I feel like this has leaked into other areas of my life. And I really, really want to change, but it seems so impossible and far away.

And I feel emotional even writing this post because it saddens me how much I’ve changed since coming to college. I feel like I just care less about things in general, and that’s no way to live your life. I was going to do a whole post about how I feel like I lost my Type-A-ness and how that’s a bad thing but I guess that will come up here too. So I don’t know what this means for me. I’m not sure what to do. Maybe if I start being more authentic on here that will help reignite that spark, but I also don’t want to be ashamed or embarrassed by anything that the whole world can see. So that’s where I am right now.

(My gosh I love cats though.)

Let’s start with my last meal at home-vegetable soup with cornbread!

Does anyone else eat their cornbread with honey? So good!

On Monday, I started my “meal plan.” Just to clarify, but “meal plan,” I really mean meal planning. It’s not so much only eating certain foods as it is getting into a routine and making my meals the night before, so when I running out the door with a minute before class starts, I have something good to grab!

After Monday’s Spin+Run, I wasn’t super hungry but knew I needed fuel and would be super hungry later in the day if I didn’t force myself to eat a decent amount. Here is a giant bowl of overnight oats-I used Julie‘s recipe, which is 3/4 c oats (which happens to be one packet of instant), 1/2 c unsweetened vanilla almond milk, a tablespoon of chia seeds, and a container of yogurt. For this particular meal, I used mango chobani.

After my one class on Monday, I ate my packed lunch in the sunshine (sorry East Coasters)-prepared over the weekend at home. Greek seasoned chicken, sage-brown butter mashed yams, and Garlic Balsamic Roasted Brussels Sprouts. 

This was perfect-it’s great to have well seasoned food at school!

For a pre workout snack, I ate some dried persimmons, made and brought to me by my wonderful roommate.

I also had a slice of chocolate chip banana bread, another item prepared over break.

For my new quarter eating schedule, I’m a little unsure of whether or not I should eat snacks. I know it’s totally counterintuitive to most people to skip snacks, but more often than not, snacks mess up my stomach really badly-it doesn’t seem to matter what the snack is! A few minutes after Monday’s snack, my stomach was twisted in knots. 

But I guess it’s really hit or miss-on Tuesday I had 2 snacks without issue, and was hungry enough that I felt they were the right decision. Our bodies our so complicated!

Monday night, I also had my first dining hall meal of the quarter. It wasn’t a bad one-they had 2 different types of brussels sprouts!

Besides brussels sprouts, I stuck to my basic formula of a carbohydrate and a protein-brown rice and cod. 

And for dessert, I threw half a chocolate chip cookie dough Quest bar in the microwave. 

This is kind of ironic given I recently purchased a couple of Quest bars for after dinner treats (because yay chocolate!), but today I found this article. It talks about the nutritional merits of Quest bars. I don’t really know what to think of them. I’m sort of against them because a)I don’t like the taste of stevia and b) they sometimes give me stomach aches. But sometimes I crave them. I guess what bothers me is that they are touted as a super natural protein bar, yet I have never heard of half the ingredients, and would never be able to buy half the raw ingredients in a store. But who knows. I’m also a little suspicious of stevia, just because there has been so little research on it. But I don’t know-to each his own!

Tuesday morning I was up bright and early-I had to be at the gym at 7 to train the school quidditch team! I’m leading weight training for them, and today was the first day. It went really well-even those who hadn’t lifted before had good form by the end! And I’m pretty sure they’ll hate me be sore tomorrow…We broke the training up into 2 days, so I have the other half of the team Wednesday morning. I never realized how much I love teaching something I’m super knowledgable about! And I can’t wait to see everyone get stronger.

We allotted a full 2 hours for the first session so we wouldn’t be rushed, but it only took 1:15, so I had plenty of time to grab coffee and eat my packed breakfast before class.

First cappuccino of the quarter!

Same overnight oats as on Monday. 

I didn’t exactly need coffee today, except for the fact that I had over 2 hours straight of Organic Chemistry today-Tuesdays are rough because of this! However, I don’t think I’ll have a problem getting through them because the first class of the day is Human Nutrition! Today, I sat in class with the biggest smile on my face. I love learning and doing things I’m passionate about. Leading weights+Nutrition class? How could I go wrong?

Lunch was also a repeat of yesterday, eaten in class.

Note to self-next time pre cut the chicken if eating in class. Don’t attempt to eat with only a fork…

After class I went to read Bio in a little cafe and grabbed a snack-it wasn’t my first choice but it did the job!

Since my car was still in the shop, I had to bike to Crossfit today. It gave me time to reflect-and I realized, I’m in such a good place in my life right now. I’m happy. I’m doing things I’m passionate about. I love teaching weight lifting. I absolutely cannot weight to teach Spin-my playlist is ready to go! I love the fitness industry, and I love Nutrition. I’m branching out and trying new things this quarter-Mariachi band? What? 

I feel like I have so many opportunities right now-I’m going to talk to my Nutrition professor about different careers in the field-I don’t particularly want to be a Nutritionist, and I would probably prefer something on the research side of things. I’m considering signing up for a conference in San Francisco about the obesity epidemic-one of my favorite scientists ever, Robert Lustig, is going to be there. (Yes, I know I’m a nerd for having a favorite scientist!) Also, my friend in my sorority asked me if I could lead some type of fitness-y event for our winter recruitment, like yoga or spin (my suggestion). I’m planning on gathering a some friends and hopefully some of the quidditch team, who I sort of have control over now, to practice teaching a spin class to real live people! 

Another new thing? I went to the weight lifting class at my Crossfit gym. The weight lifting class isn’t exactly an add-on-it’s its own program. I love Olympic Lifting, and I just don’t get enough opportunity to work on it in Crossfit, especially this particular box. 

I forgot how much energy Olympic Lifting takes! I didn’t even lift that heavy, but each rep really takes it out of you! It’s also mentally exhausting. Oh, and it lasted an hour and 45 minutes. I was doing snatches and clean and jerks for 105 minutes straight. My body just kind of felt numb afterwards. Not exactly tired, not out of breath, not necessarily burning muscles, but without energy. I don’t even want to think about how many squats were involved today. It’s been a long time since I’ve done any significant amount of Olympic lifting!

Oh, and I may have agreed to do a weight lifting competition. (Not a Crossfit competition, Olympic lifting!) It’s in February, but at this point in my life I feel a little unprepared. In the last year and a half, my technique has faltered a bit, but I’ve gotten stronger, so when I nail down technique, that should be awesome, right??

On that note, I was craving protein like crazy when I returned to campus. Specifically, MEAT. It’s interesting how our bodies know exactly what they need! This may be kind of strange, but when I eat less sugar, I tend to crave meat more. But I’ll roll with it!

Greek salad, some not super excitingly cooked kabocha squash, a few brussels, and MEAT-chicken with ketchup. Lots of meat. It was heaven. 

After dinner, I finished the other half of my Quest bar from the previous day, as well as the last of my double chocolate banana bread.

A couple of days ago, I started tracking my food intake on My Fitness Pal, more for interest than anything else! It’s cool to see the ration of carbs to fats to proteins-my protein ration was pretty low, so I guess it was no wonder I was craving it! What drives me crazy though is the sugar count. I really wish it was divided into added sugars and natural sugars. There is a BIG different between lactose sugar and high fructose corn syrup! I also don’t understand how my sugar consumption was insanely high today, especially compared to yesterday, when I ate basically the same thing both days? I’m not reading too much into it though-I feel really good, likely thanks to balanced meals and more veggies in my life! 

That’s all I have today! I swear this post would have been insanely upbeat BEFORE the lifting drained my energy! 

Tomorrow morning, I am training quidditch again and then will do another run through of my spin audition playlist. AHHHH can’t wait! So much excite happening right now!

What exciting things do you have in your future?

Marvelous is…

Thanksgiving break is in 2 short weeks! Between now and then, the two big things are a Chem midterm and Spin training next weekend! Over Thanksgiving I’m going to Napa, and will visit my home friends and hopefully my home Crossfit box! 

Thanksgiving circa 2009.

Marvelous is…

Christmas music! It’s not too soon, I promise! I especially love Spanish Christmas music. Yes, it’s a thing. My favorite is “Un Nino Se Llama Jesus,” but there are also Spanish versions of English Christmas songs. Sigh-I miss taking Spanish!

Marvelous is…

Spin certification class next weekend! I’m beyond excited. Plus, I’m stopping by home for dinner on the way back (it’s 9-6), and I get to be reunited with this guy:

Marvelous is…

A clean(ish) room and a clean and well stocked fridge! I finally had an ounce of time and now everything is soo much better.

Marvelous is…

Meal plan dollars. That buy me kombucha. I still have 75 to use in the next 3 weeks of the quarter. That’s about a kombucha a day, if you’re keeping count.

Marvelous is…

Home cooking. I’m still finishing off the chili my mom brought me last week! So delicious.

Marvelous is…

A well-earned rest day. As in, I was supposed to run 60 minutes today but I can’t move and every muscle hurts so that’s not happening.Between Crossfit on Friday (deadlifts), and a make up Crossfit workout on my own yesterday (squats and lots of abs), pretty much everything hurts. 

Marvelous is…

What will almost surely be a kick butt running workout tomorrow. Tomorrow has a 30 minute tempo run on the schedule, but I also want to do a timed mile and I missed today’s long run. So I’m planning on combining them all for a timed mile (after a warm up), followed by a jog for a total of 60 minutes of running. I desperately need to do a timed mile, but I’ve been dreading it so much, and dreading doing it early in the morning because I’m way tighter then. But then it finally hit me that if I want to run fast on race day, I need to run fast! So I’m just going to bite the bullet and do it. 

Marvelous is…

New running shoes next week! My old ones have taken my through running and training for 2 halves, and now it’s time for a new pair. 

Marvelous is…

I actually made a meal plan! The last couple weeks I was so swamped with work and lack of sleep that my nutrition was really awful. No Aurora, coffee is not a food group. And 50,000 dates doesn’t count as a meal. I’m ready to get serious about getting faster, and that means sticking to a plan that will fuel my workouts and help me get stronger. 

Marvelous is…

I didn’t fail my Physics midterm! I actually did really well! Yay!

Marvelous is…

This cake for my dad’s birthday. YUM.

What’s marvelous for you?

First, I want to start out by saying I’m kind of uncomfortable talking about my dietary guidelines. I can’t exactly explain it. Maybe I feel really vulnerable. Mostly I feel kind of silly. I feel like I have a lot of “WOW I just figured out this amazing style of eating and it’s going to be awesome and I’m going to do it and it’s going to solve all my problems, abolish world hunger, and bring world peace…” Also, I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but I can’t stick to anything. At least in terms of my eating habits. I’ve had a few no-sugar challenges that were successful, but I never completed them. I only really stick to my weekly goals for a few days. Remember Operation: Get Healthy? Yeah, that fizzled out. What I’m saying is, I feel stupid for having all these failed a-ha moments, only to restart on something new. I’m a food and fitness blogger, aren’t I supposed to have everything together?

Well, now I’m done. I’m done trying to fit other’s eating habits into my own life. I seem to love giving myself food restrictions-Paleo, no sugar, gluten free. I guess in some ways it just makes things easier. And maybe it’s an excuse to eat as much as I want- I’m Paleo, so if I eat 3 tons of wild buffalo I’ll be healthy, right? 

I never had these types of restrictions in the past, and I was a lot healthier. I guess when you’re looking for a quick fix, it’s easier to say “Ok, I just won’t eat this and everything will work out.” I’ll be 100% honest. College destroyed my eating habits. Rowing didn’t exactly help, because I was burning so much I could literally eat anything and not gain weight (never mind the fact that I felt awful). 

I finally got my blood work back. It seems unlikely that I have a gluten sensitivity, so it’s likely I’m suffering more from portion control than anything else. (Also-my allergy test came up negative for nut allergies, but I was expecting that. Given nuts just give me SUPER bad acne, it didn’t exactly seem like an allergy thing. Maybe it’s something hormonal-I’m still going to avoid them.)

It’s likely that I just crash my blood sugar my eating too many carbs. I’ll do another post on this soon-I just want to refresh myself on the science of it and look over my old nutrition notes first. In short, everyone has a different point at which a certain amount of carbs will crash their blood sugar, mine might be low. 

So instead trying some food group restrictive eating pattern that leaves me desperately craving pancakes (I swear my love for pancakes only came about in the past year), I’m just going to eat food. I’m not going to avoid gluten, I’m not going to be Paleo. I’m still going to try a Whole30 for a week when school starts (just because I’m curious and I won’t immediately get in the habit of eating pancakes every day). Lately, I’ve just been working on incorporating lower amounts of carbohydrates into my diet. 

When I try a particular, restrictive style of eating, I end up either going crazy with the foods I can eat, or completely giving up and gorging on what I’ve missed. The problem with this is somehow that style of eating and kind of fizzled out my passion for nutrition. Now, I’m trying to eat more like I did in high school, and already this past week my passion for nutrition is returning. I haven’t cut out food groups. But I’m eating more moderately in terms of portions as well. And I feel awesome. I find myself craving healthier foods. I feel like I’m eating more like I have in the past, and that makes me happy. The only food I might ever consider cutting out is sugar, in the form of a no-sugar challenge. However, I see no need to do that now. I’m not struggling with my sugar intake. I find myself wanting a square of super dark chocolate as my sweet, and I’m ok with that. 

I love nutrition-it’s something I want to spend my life working on. It’s part of why I started this blog. Yet I haven’t talked nearly enough about it as I would like. I intend on doing some more research-I love the metabolism aspect of everything, and how our bodies process food. Plus, I really should have found some papers for one of my professors on sugar….I want to spend some time doing some research on my own. Maybe I’ll come up with a new style of eating-who knows. But it won’t prevent me from eating my pancakes. 

My first topic to figure out is how many carbs I should eat (i.e. how many pancakes I should eat) to fuel my workouts but not crash. I don’t want to talk too much about my fitness goals right now, but I’ll give you a hint-I need to be able to do an actual pull-up. 

Just to summarize, I feel silly trying out all these new styles of eating, only to ultimately fail. I feel like as a health and fitness blogger, I should have my life more together, but in reality I really don’t, and for now that’s ok with me. Saying no to pancakes is not an eating style that is going to work for me in the long run, but maybe I can succeed by eating one pancake instead of five. To be, healthy eating is all about balance. So, no more broad proclamations of my new greatest thing. The new theme here is moderation, and eating to fuel my athletic performance. After all, sports are how I got interested in nutrition. I don’t need to try so hard. I just need to put my passion into use. 

How do you feel about “diets”? Do you avoid any foods? What works for you?

I have like 8 mangos and I’m still thinking it’s not enough. Heehee.

Let’s talk Nutrition. It is a love of mine, although maybe it hasn’t gotten so much love lately. I haven’t really talked about my views on Nutrition much, and I have to say, my own eating certainly doesn’t represent my Nutrition beliefs.

Here are my 2 favorite Nutrition books, and believe me, I’ve read a ton. Now that I have a fairly formed belief system, I find it kind of amusing to read some of the books now. That being said, there is no one ideal diet that works for everyone.

This book a Nutritionist recommended to me. I ordered and read it immediately. Bonus: there is an app with all the recipes. My personal favorite is the granola bars. 

Also though, the Chocolate Lush saved me when I was stupid enough watch cupcake wars after getting my wisdom teeth out. It is basically warm, gooey chocolate cake. It was painful, but so, so worth it. 

The second is this book:

This is the iBook form, I lent my roommate my hard copy. The author was actually my professor for my Nutrition class Fall quarter, although I had already read the book! This is my all time favorite Nutrition book. It is the most comprehensive and easy to understand, and it is very thorough.

So what have I learned from all this?

Aurora’s Nutrition Philosophy:

1. We really don’t know anything about Nutrition. This is an exaggeration, but there simply isn’t enough data to actually know anything for sure. New studies come out all the time. It is fairly easy to manipulate a study to show the intended result (soda companies fund some studies). We don’t know enough about how the human body works at a more complex level to know, for example, whether you get the same benefits from taking vitamins as from eating them in food. Our knowledge is constantly changing, conveniently for the fad diet companies…

2. If possible, try to have a fat, a carb, and a protein, plus fruit or veggies at every meal.

3. Carbs are absolutely necessary for Post-exercise recovery, not just protein.

4. Sugar….let’s not get me started on it. Let’s just say it is not terribly good for you…

5. Fad diets never work. Crash diets never work. You know how they say if you starve yourself, you will lose muscle weight as well as fat? And fat comes back faster than muscle? I had some first hand experience with that. When I was sick, for a good 2 weeks I hardly ate anything (because I felt terrible). I lost weight, including a ton of muscle. And guess what came back right away? The flab. And now the muscle is finally coming back…

6. Whole grains are better than white ones.

7. Avoid saturated fats (eat healthy fats, especially those Omega-3s).

8. More research needs to be done on Nutrition. This is where I come in

Random picture because I had a ton of words…have you guys tried this stuff? It’s delish I just wish almond milk had more than like 1g of protein…

So why can’t I follow my own Nutrition guidelines?

1. Food tastes good. Oops…

2. Eating nuts makes my skin go crazy…so getting healthy fats in can be more of a challenge. And let’s be honest. I’ve basically been getting strictly Sunflower seed butter as my healthy fats as of late. Mix it up!

3. Grains seems to make me fall asleep….Not sure why, and not sure what grains specifically, or all, but that kind of complicates matters.

4. I may be addicted to sugar, hence avoiding it/not eating too much is a bit of an issue.

5. I swear normally I am better with my nutrition…not sure what happened…

6. Sometimes I try to do too much and it all backfires.

If you guys haven’t noticed, I’ve been seriously searching for my Nutrition as of late…And since you guys haven’t seen any cat photos in a while (I’ve been back less than 2 weeks, so I guess it really can’t have been THAT long…), here you go!

What is she doing?

I’ve been waiting for an excuse to post the recipe for my favorite banana bread! Here is the recipe, it’s super healthy and low to no sugar, depending on your preferences. I got it from Nancy Clark’s Nutrition book (there’s also an app with all the recipes). So here’s the recipe, which I’ve modified slightly:

Ingredients:

4 well ripened bananas

1 large egg or 2 egg whites

2 tablespoons canola oil

1/3 c milk

1/8 c honey (or more to taste, recipe actually calls for 1/3 to 1/2 c sugar)

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1.5 c whole wheat pastry flour

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350

Mash bananas.

Add all ingredients except flour and mix well

Blend in flour, stir until moistened

Pour into 4×8 loaf pan, I recommend lining it in tinfoil

Bake for 45 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center is clean

Let cool for 5 minutes (in theory, i NEVER do)

135 cal, serves 12

For this particular batch that I ate from this morning, I added no sweetener, and added blueberries. Yum!

After enjoying my banana bread, I biked over to weights. In shorts and a sweatshirt. Bad idea. It was probably in the 30s, and I couldn’t feel my hands AT ALL by the time I got there. This is the first time I’ve done weights as part of rowing, and it was interesting. I’m really glad I’ve done a ton of weights already and know how to do all the exercises, because the trainer basically demonstrated what we were doing once, and expected us to do it. He didn’t teach the new people how to do snatches, or anything like that, and I cringed watching them. I just hope no one hurts themselves! The type of weights we did were endurance weights, which was different and kind of strange. Most of the exercises were with an empty bar, but we did a ton of reps of each exercise, without much of a break between sets. For example, we did sets of 40 squats with just the bar. I’m used to ding like 3-5 squats, with a heavy weight on. But it was a good workout. Immediately after weights, we had to do a timed run (it doesn’t have to be right after, but most people do it then because it was convenient). I finished the run in 34:08. The run is a loop of campus, and I think it’s probably around 4 miles, maybe less. It was a comfortable pace to me, and I think it compared decently to other people’s times. The funny thing was that I apparently do the run in the opposite direction as most people, so I passed post of the team at some point going the opposite way, and it was fun to give high fives. Great motivation!

After the run, I rushed to breakfast so I would have time to shower before class. Breakfast was a letdown. I was banking on a smoothie, and all the smoothie ingredients were out, but there were no blenders. And I wanted to grab bread for lunch because I didn’t think I’d have time to go to lunch, but all I could grab was a whole wheat english muffin.

Ok I totally forgot to take a picture of breakfast, but it wasn’t that exciting. I had a bowl of yogurt with frozen fruit (wanna-be smoothie), which was soooo cold, plus half a whole wheat english muffin with regular and strawberry cream cheese, plus some scrambled eggs.

After showering, I was getting my things together, and decided to make a peanut butter sandwich with the english muffin for lunch, when I realized I couldn’t find the english muffin. I searched everywhere! I mean, who the heck loses an english muffin?? My theory is that I left it at the dining hall, which would be preferable to finding it in 2 months.

I didn’t think I’d be able to return to my room before practice, so I tried to subtly dress for practice. Scarves hide all!

Like the new scarf?

I had 2 morning classes. I thought I was going to be booked through until practice, but I ended up not having a chem section so I was able to get a real lunch. I’m optimistic about my classes this quarter. I wasn’t a big fan of my classes last quarter. My math class (linear algebra) was the hardest class I’ve ever taken in my life, by far. It was also pretty painful. I’m actually looking forward to my math class this quarter. It is Multivariable Calculus, which I actually took in high school, and the topic just makes so much more sense to me.

Since I was planning on a peanut butter sandwich for lunch, I decided to do that at the dining hall.

Pb on whole wheat bread. I was planning on just having a garden salad with it, but I couldn’t pass up some type of brussels sprout salad either. Plus, I had to have one of the stuffed tomatoes, stuffed with breadcrumbs and cheesy goodness. And of course, I came prepared.

I brought my own peanut butter! I’ve probably consumed a ton of trans fat in the form of peanut butter at the dining halls here and at training camp, so I really want to prevent that.

Are you ever influenced by watching people eat? I have a bad habit of seeing someone eat something, and then deciding I have to have it, like it was somehow justified because someone else was eating it too. I never realized that would happen when I saw a stranger eating something. That led to this

:

It’s some type of raspberry crumble bar. It’s oaty with raspberry filling, and is pretty good, but nothing special, it’s at the dining halls all the time.

After lunch I stopped by my dorm to grab a jacket for practice; BEST DECISION EVER, practice was cold! I had one more class of the day before practice. I was a bit concerned about getting to the pick up location by 3:15 if class ended at 3:05, but there was another girl from my team in my class, and we made it no problem. Before practice, I snacked on this:

It’s by far my favorite NuGo bar. It has way more flavor than the other NuGo Slim bars, and the regular NuGo bars are too sweet for me.

Practice mostly consisted of re-reigging the boats. We had the world’s shortest row afterward. However, something did happen. We got stuck in the sand. I never realized that a) that was possible and b) I should be concerned about it. The tide was super low today, so I guess that was the problem. It was bizarre, we were rowing along, and then all the sudden it got heavy and we weren’t moving. Since I was in the back of the boat (but the front in terms of what hits the sand first), I was about ready to climb out and start pushing. We ended up getting out of it by backing, but in the process we came dangerously close to hitting a channel marker. It definitely didn’t help that it had already gotten dark. There’s something really cool about rowing in the dark, it’s so peaceful, but it can also be difficult when I can’t see the water. I’ve never rowed at night before, but I think I prefer rowing in the early morning.

We made it back in time for dinner (yay), although dinner wasn’t spectacular.

Spinach salad with raspberries, which was good, but eating spinach is difficult to do neatly. I had some steamed cabbage and brown rice, and some random roasted veggies with mushroom gravy, plus a few potatoes. I topped it with a piece of grilled chicken for protein. It was an ok meal, nothing to write home about. Dessert?

It’s definitely a dangerous thing to have unlimited access to frozen yogurt. I had half vanilla half chocolate, with cocoa puffs and peanut butter (yes, the trans fatty kind. ugh.). Some habits die hard, and apparently having chocolate peanut butter and cereal was a habit I developed at camp. I was feeling pretty decent about my day of eating, not too bad for a first day back.

However. Back in my dorm….I chatted with some of my friends, who happened to share my love of food, which naturally ended in snacks. They were reasonably healthy, dried fruit and nuts, plus naturally I had to finally crack open my favorite peanut butter! I also opened my new 99% cocoa dark chocolate. I love super dark chocolate. I will eat straight baker’s chocolate, but 99% is so much better because it was way smoother. But my roommate also brought back a Costco sized pack of Hazelnut chocolates….

I have the tendency to want to eat whenever anyone else eats. Sympathy eating, if you will. If I want to survive college, it’s probably not the best thing. Especially if I’m eating meals with my crew teammates who are a foot taller than me and outweigh me by like 50 lbs. At least if I want them to still outweigh me by 50 lbs! Tomorrow I’m having a Guacamole party with the avocados I brought from home, so I want to try to plan that into my day in terms of meals. What concerns me most is if my food gets in the way of my workout. And as my workout intensity increases, nutrition is key. As I said before, old habits die hard. So basically I just need to get back into better habits. As I think I’ve talked about before in another post, I’m a huge underdog in terms of rowing. I need to take every advantage I can get, and my knowledge of nutrition could be that edge I need. Interestingly enough, I find that when I’m better at resisting sweets, I’m also better at pushing myself through physical pain on while rowing. Go figure. Here’s to a healthy week! The good news? Tomorrow’s workout is on my own, and no class until 12:30 so I get to sleep in !

How was your day?