WIAW-Where’s My Protein??

Date: January 14, 2014

Author: astottler

Happy Wednesday! As per usual, I will be linking up with the fabulous Jenn for What I Ate Wednesday!

My morning started bright and early. I quickly gobbled up my raspberry goat yogurt overnight oats, before heading to the gym to train quidditch.

The weight lifting went well-some people had to come early because they had to leave early, and the barbells were full when we started lifting, so I had to improvise a bit-everything worked out in the end! I also taught them correct rowing form, as they requested a rowing component for this workout. For those curious, here’s the workout I took them through.

Warm Up: Dynamic Stretching and Leg Swings

4 sets of 6 push presses

3 rounds:

6 bent over row

6 kneeling press

12 lunge jumps

20 calf raises 3 ways (toes forward, toes in , toes out)

1 min plank

Then-conditioning:

1 partner rows 500m while the other does oblique crunches-2 times through so everyone rows 500m two times

They shouldn’t be as sore as last week’s leg focused workout, but everyone was feeling by the end!
The best part? We finished just in time for me to grab a cappuccino before running to class. Which is probably why I felt so good all day!

Lunch was a mish-mash of things. I’m well stocked on veggies right now…and that’s about it. I didn’t make it to the dining hall the night before to steal things for lunch, so I was caught without any protein. In the end, I decided to try out my new blender bottle, and a packet of vanilla chai protein drink mixed with almond milk.

Also on the menu were blueberries, asparagus with Italian herbs, and butternut squash with cinnamon and a touch of honey. I have to say-this meal was a little lack luster because the butternut squash wasn’t quite seasoned enough, and asparagus is hard to eat out of a bag. Without a knife. With tough ends. And…i really didn’t like the protein drink. At all. When will I learn? It was kind of bland and the predominant taste that came across for me was fake sugar. I only made it through about a third of it! But I was SO full from all the veggies, so I guess it evened out!

I had class until 5 today, which meant I had to go to Crossfit later-at 6:30. For a pre-workout snack I enjoyed a Square bar, as well as a small tangerine from our CSA box and a handful of garlic roasted pumpkin seeds.

Crossfit was deceptively difficult. For strength, we worked on heavy snatches. The WOD was a 16 minute timed workout-3 rounds of 10 overhead squats and 150 jump ropes, followed by a ladder of 25m shuttle run and 1,2,3,4… burpees. It was a leg burner!

By the time I finally made it back to the dining hall, a lot of the food was gone. Since I was running kind of low on protein, I wanted to make that a main part of my meal. Guess what they didn’t have? Literally the only protein source was a couple of leftover hard boiled eggs, so I added one to my salad.

Salad, cabbage, polenta with mushrooms, and roasted potatoes with ketchup.

And I guess this counts as protein?

I’m feeling pretty good about this quarter. I have a couple of classes that I need to work my butt off for, but I also have Human Nutrition, which is basically the best thing ever. You know a huge difference from last quarter? I actually have friends in all my classes now. In the past I felt like I was always doing my own thing, but now I pretty much have someone to sit with and chat with in all my classes-yay for new friends!

It’s difficult to explain, but I feel like I’m finally coming into myself this quarter. (Of course that’s easy to say in week 2…) I’ve tried new things that I thought I’d love, without giving it a second thought that they were new or I wouldn’t know people (Mariachi and weight lifting.) I also finally feel like a leader. Teaching weight lifting to quidditch has made it apparent how knowledgable I really am. And practicing for spin like crazy makes me feel like I really can lead a class. I’m at the point in my life where I feel like I can inspire people, I can make changes is people’s lives, and I can make a difference in the world. I feel like I can do anything! One thing I signed up for on a whim that I’m SUPER excited about is the Bay Area Childhood Obesity Conference. It’s really cool-there are speakers, as well as break out groups where the participants get to discuss things.

In addition, I’m starting to think about what to eat during the project. For breakfast, I’m thinking high quality yogurt with homemade sunflower seed butter, and homemade mixed berry compote? (No added sugar of course-just berries!) Or maybe overnight oats with a higher quality grain than instant oatmeal? Like quinoa? Or is that weird?

One of the biggest question marks right now is dinners-should I try to cook them myself? Make do with dining hall fare, but being very careful? Lots of planning to do!

Do you have any good whole food recipes that are quick and easy? Please link them up!

Overnight Oats

Date: August 10, 2013

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

It’s the weekend! This morning I did a killer workout at Crossfit-my arms were JELLO. It was a partner workout:

800m run

300 double unders (or 400 regular jump ropes)

200 hand release push ups

100 pull ups

Between you and your partner, you have to do that. Even with banded pull ups and knee push ups this was killer! I stayed an hour after class to steam clean the mats. Confession: my hands were getting blistered from this. #wimpyhands

Let’s back up a bit though, shall we?

Thursday night I played in an All-Star game for my slow pitch softball league. I was a little nervous going in-I hadn’t played in over 2 weeks because of my calf injury (which thankfully feels fine-I’m going to give it another week probably before I really start training again). Well, it turns out I had nothing to worry about! I played first base, which as it turns out, I like way better than outfield. In slow pitch everyone kills the ball, so outfield usually means chasing down home runs. I hit well too-and landed the title of female MVP!

I’m ready for playoffs next week!

We went out to dinner afterwards to celebrate. Since we were in Palo Alto already (my games are at Stanford), of course I chose to go to Lyfe Kitchen, which is basically my favorite place ever.

We started with guacamole and house made tortilla chips, plus garlic roasted artichokes.

The food came sooo quickly! For my main course, I wanted something with veggies (I had eaten a lot of carbs earlier in the day), so I ordered the quinoa crunch wrap, which comes with a side of hot sauce.

It was delicious and fresh-and of course totally up my alley since it was loaded with avocado.

For a little after-dinner treat, we went to a local pastry shop and found this:Have you guys heard of the Cronut? It’s a cross between a croissant and a donut. My spin teacher was talking about them last week-apparently there’s a donut place in New York that sells them, and they’re super popular! What are the odds that less than a week alter, I’d find them right here in Palo Alto?

I didn’t get one-they were out. To be honest, I’m not sure I like the idea of a Cronut…But I’d probably try it once. We ended up with some other assorted pastries to share.

My favorite was the twist-it had sweet potato filling!

Friday morning at spin class I got to tell my teacher about my findings-and of course enjoy a great workout. After spin, I took an awesome nap (5:45am spin…) and awoke with the biggest craving for overnight oats. This was really strange. Why? I’ve only made them once. And I didn’t really like them. But my mom bought me a few flavors of Chobani to try (pomegranate and banana), and I haven’t really been feeling my yogurt bowls lately. So, I whipped up a batch according to Julie’s recipe. I used the pomegranate yogurt for these. I then popped it in the fridge, and let it sit for…all of 10 minutes. Good enough for me! It still thickened up quite a bit! Topped with fruit and sunflower seed butter, and I was good to go.

The rest of the batch was enjoyed as a snack before Crossfit, topped with cacao coconut butter.

Not quite as photogenic, but still delicious.

Crossfit included wall balls which really stunk. On the plus side, nothing required chalk in the workout, so that made my job cleaning up a lot easier.

Also, the owner of my box gave me this Crossfit shirt-apparently when you finish the intro program you get it, but I never did that.

And finally, that brings us to today. For lunch, I tried my hand at avocado egg salad. The result resembled a cross between egg salad and guacamole. I have absolutely no problems with that. I mashed up avocado, hard boiled eggs, yellow mustard, garlic powder, lemon juice, nutritional yeast, and salt and pepper. I served it on a slice of whole wheat toast, alongside yellow watermelon (!) and carrots with hummus.

What a colorful lunch! I have never in my memory had yellow watermelon, and I really like it! It tastes similar to watermelon, but has a slightly different flavor. I found it at Whole Foods and just had to try it.

After lunch, I decided to whip up more overnight oats with the banana Chobani for when the craving struck later on. I split the batch in half, and added cocoa powder to one half. The rest of the afternoon was spent watching baseball and helping my mom bake a cake for my sister’s boyfriend’s birthday. And by helping, I mean licking the spoons. I’ll post a picture of the cake tomorrow!

Have a great night everyone! I’ll leave you with this-apples from my neighbor’s yard. I swear, his soil can grow anything! In our hard, we’ve had zero success. Do you grow any fruits or vegetables? What is your favorite type of cake? Thoughts on overnight oats?

Leg Demolisher and An Award

Date: May 16, 2013

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hey guys! I swear one of these days I’ll do a WIAW…but let’s just do a normal post, shall we? I lifted weights this morning. Since yesterday‘s workout included a bit of everything, especially arms (I’m looking at you snatches), I wanted to focus on legs. So, I figured, why not demolish my legs? Here’s a picture of what was on tap for my day, although the sprints and abs were in the afternoon:

I started with squats to a fairly heavy weight, and then settled into 135# for my typical back squat workout of 2 squats every 30 seconds for 8 minutes. I followed that up with the workout on the card, the Metcon Honky Tonky. Yeah. My legs were pretty much done. SO naturally the logical step was to move on to RDLs and calf raises. Go hard or go home, right? I finished with a few sets of single leg squats and hamstring rolls. Can you say JELLO? Legs=demolished.

Breakfast:Plain greek yogurt topped with granola and frozen blueberries. Plus a biscuit. I LOVE BISCUITS!

Aaaand here’s lunch: salad with a hard boiled egg and garlic hummus.After lunch, I had the pleasure of taking my Ochem midterm. It seemed difficult, but crossing my fingers, I think I pulled it off.

After class, this was waiting for me in my room:It’s Big-Little week! My big is awesome, I can already tell. I got more mangos today, and here’s what I got last night:She knows me too well! Mangos and avocados?? I’m soo spoiled!

After a quick snack of freeze dried edamame and a mango, I went outside to do some sprints and abs (see workouts above). The sprint workout was from my old agility/conditioning coach I used to train with my sophomore and junior year of high school. Is it weird that I get nostalgic about workouts? And then I started to really miss softball. I miss everything about it, pitching, hitting, running after balls. And yes, I did love softball conditioning. Sigh.

Before dinner, I whipped up some Overnight Oats. I’ve never had them before, but given I’m on a yogurt kick, and my last yogurt expires tomorrow, I figured I’d give it a try. I seem to have lost my almond milk…so I used sunflower seed milk. It’s not my favorite, but that’s ok. I also discovered after dinner when I was eating a banana with sunflower seed butter, that I have a nearly empty jar! So that’s going to happen. I swear, either a) my room eats things or b) I’m going to find a ton of random things when I move out (in three weeks!!!). Also missing: a bowl (I only had 2 so this is bad…), 2 knives, and now my almond milk.

Dinner was very unsatisfying (which explains why it was followed by the banana and a Thinkthin Divine bar). I had some avocados in the fridge which I thought went bad a while ago, so I brought those to dinner. The avocados were fine, but even they could not save a sub-par dinner. Our dining hall is so bad that NO ONE goes there anymore. It was pretty empty. How can a salad with chicken be so unsatisfying?Plus parsnips. Those were good, I’ll give them that. I eat so much more at the dining hall when the food is bad, ironically. So I made a vow to never eat there for dinner again for the rest of the year. I brought some spinach back to my room so I can make an omelet for dinner tomorrow, now that I know I have some decent avocados.

Also, I haven’t forgotten about this Miranda! Thanks for nominating me for the Versatile Blogger award!

The Rules:

1) Add The Versatile Blogger award photo on a blog post
2) Thank the person (or animal) who presented you with the award and link back to him or her in your post
3) Share seven things about yourself
4) Pass the award along to 15 favorite bloggers. Contact the chosen bloggers to let them know about the award.

7 Things You Don’t Know About Me

1. I have a Youtube video with over 38,000 hits. Find it here. But here’s the thing. It’s a softball skills video I made to show to college coaches. It should have less than 1000 views. I have ABSOLUTELY no idea why it has so many. If anyone knows, please clue me in.

2. I wanted to play softball in college, and got some good offers, but ultimately I turned it down in favor of the academics at the school I am at now. And I miss it like crazy.

3. When Lilly was a kitten, she loved sitting on shoulders. And heads. (Ok, this isn’t really me, but let’s go with it.)(Ignore the gross face and focus on the cat).

4. I drive a Prius (at least last year. Now My sister has priority access).

5. I’ve gone all over the country to play softball. Vegas, Southern California, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Florida. And of course all the armpits of CA: Hemet, Stockton, Fresno (sorry if any of you guys live there…but would you really disagree?).

One year in Vegas we played in 117 degree heat. Soo much fun. GAH I can’t believe I won’t be traveling everywhere this year!

6. I don’t think I’m a very patient person…

7. The one Midnight premier I’ve gone to is the Hunger Games, with all my friends in Senior year. The next morning was one of the first times I’d attempted coffee…and naturally I tried to drink it black. It didn’t work.

Ok, 15 bloggers! I’m not sure who has gotten what already, but here are some! SOrry if I missed you or if you’ve already been nominated!

1. Health Love and Chocolate

2. Spoonful of Sunshine

3. Road to RD

4. Modern Girl Nutrition

Hmmm pretty sure a lot of you other guys have been nominated! Have a great day!