Today, I’m linking up with WIAW (thanks Jenn) for Blogmas, but today, we’re doing it a little bit differently. We’re doing it VLOG style.

So, enjoy the video! Check it out through the link here.

Details/pictures of what I ate are below!

Breakfast:

Fage 2% yogurt with cinnamon KIND granola, sunbutter, and persimmon sauce. For the persimmon sauce, we put persimmons in the slow cooker with a little vanilla, brown sugar, and a couple of cinnamon sticks. It’s basically like applesauce but persimmons don’t really break down in the same way.

Lunch:

Crackers, cinnamon spice tea, and Creamy roasted carrot, garlic, and rosemary soup. I really like this one. The rosemary is key! (PS: That water bottle is Sip by S’Well and it’s awesome. My tea was hot after 12 hours!)

The soup was leftovers from the previous night’s dinner, so I’ll show a prettier picture.

Swirled with a little creme fraiche. (And avocado toasts.)

Just a note: our carrots were abnormally large, so we had to had to add a little broth. Also, for the “salt and pepper to taste”, we used Trader Joe’s truffle salt.

Snack:

Luna bar+persimmon.

Workout: Crossfit

Strength: Our disgustingly long sets. 20 rep set of squats @ 130#, 20 rep set of strict press at ~47#.

WOD: 7 minute AMRAP of burpees. Ew. I got 77.

Dinner:

We made my grilled peach and chicken salad with goat cheese, but instead of grilled peaches, we used grilled persimmons. Plus a little toast with butter on the side.

Dessert: Leftover bread pudding (this is a family recipe) (the sauce solidified a little bit, but I adjusted the recipe to fix that). With whipped cream, and cinnamon of course!

What is your favorite family recipe?

For those interested in health, the holidays can be a tumultuous time. There are conflicting tensions between the desire to maintain physical health while still enjoying holiday foods and festivities.

I knew in the past this has been an issue for me. I LOVE LOVE LOVE the holidays. I love the traditions, the food, the special events. But I also value my health. In the past, this tension would make me crazy, anxious, and angry around the holidays. I was always trying to avoid sugar, resist the goodies. But I would be miserable and feel like I was missing out. And I would inevitably give in and eat all the foods anyways, eat a ton of them, and feel terrible.

By the time the actual day of Christmas rolled around, I would be a mess. And every year around the holidays I would gain weight.

Last year was the first holiday season in many years that this didn’t happen. It was partly because I was still so sick then with my chronic stomach issue. I physically couldn’t go crazy eating things without my body turning on me. But that changed my perspective, because I appreciated what I could and did eat more. I think that experience, plus some maturity and changes in values, has shifted how I look at food and the holidays. That being said, I wanted to share some of my thoughts on how to stay “healthy” throughout the holidays. (Note the quotations).

1. Don’t think of it as “surviving the holidays.” Think about “enjoying the holidays.” I know it’s easier said than done, but the holidays are not about dieting and resisting delicious food, they’re about family, traditions, and joy.
2. Similarly, I really don’t recommend trying to avoid all the holidays foods. In my experience, that leaves me miserable and craving them even more. Life’s too short to not enjoy eggnog, or a Christmas morning mimosa, or your Grandma’s special homemade pie. Letting go of that restrictive mentality isn’t easy, but it’s freeing.
3. Trust your body. Don’t stress the changes. Here’s the deal. No one is going to wake up every single day weighing precisely the same amount. So many factors go into play. We see these stats everywhere: “Americans gain an average of 5 pounds every holiday season.” Here’s the deal. I guarantee that is not 5 pounds of pure fat. Carbohydrates hold 4x their weight in water. If you eat a lot of sugar or bread products over the holidays, your body will retain water. But guess what? That will disappear when you return to your normal routine. I finally started trusting my body. If I eat a big, delicious meal and lots of sugar, I realize that I might gain some weight but I don’t freak out because a) it’s not that serious and b) I trust that when things return to normal my body will too.

All those were more ways to mentally approach the holidays. While I definitely preach enjoying everything, I also want to make it a priority this holiday season to still feel good so I can fully enjoy everything. So I do want to talk about some ways to do that as well.

1. Maintain your normal routine as much as possible when not at events. Go to holiday parties on the weekends, have a good time, and enjoy good food, but eating cake and cookies at a party on the weekend doesn’t mean you have to say “screw it” and eat junk all week. Stick to your normal workouts, eat your normal meals. I guarantee you will feel better.
2. Make some healthy holiday treats. Some healthy swaps you won’t even notice. If you’re making gingerbread, why not look for a lower sugar recipe? If you’re making your own treats, why not make some healthier ones to have on hand? I personally plan on making some healthier treats that I don’t feel bad about enjoying on a regular basis. That way I never feel like I’m missing out on anything (And check back here for some recipes!)
3. Get physical. No matter what I’m eating, I always feel 100x better when I get some exercise in.
4. Start some new fit traditions. One of my favorite traditions that my family and I started doing was the Santa Run. It’s a 5k that finished at Christmas in the Park, a little Christmas village in downtown San Jose. It gets us in the holiday spirit! Last year on Christmas day, my family started our morning with a dog walk/run along the bay, followed by festive drinks, and it was an absolutely beautiful morning. Plus, Chloe got to join in! Take a night walk to look at lights (especially if you live in CA like I do and it’s not freezing!) Not every holiday tradition has to revolve around food.

Those are my thoughts for how to approach the holidays. Trust your body, and just think about trying to feel your best to enjoy the season. Again, it’s not that serious.

On that note, let’s finally dive into WIAW, Jenn‘s baby! Now that I’m home, my food is a little bit more interesting so I want to share it more!

Pre-Workout:

My new favorite pre-workout food is Cheerios. I don’t even know what time zone I’m on right now, but I had plenty of time before morning Crossfit to eat! I had a bowl of pumpkin spice Cheerios. (We ordered a few boxes online from Target because they were getting hard to find!)

Workout:

I did some technique work on snatches. I used 65# for a complex of a power snatch, overhead squat, and full snatch. Then we worked on bar muscles ups (LOL). I practiced some turnovers (assisted) and worked on negative pull ups. The WOD was a 7 min AMRAP of 5 power cleans and 10 toes to bar. I have toes to bar, but the coach and me do knees to elbow instead so I could really focus on getting into a good position that should later help me string together toes to bar. It was a lot more shoulder intensive the way he had me doing them! I used 85 for the cleans.

Breakfast:

I had the same breakfast most days in St. Louis and I’m finally sick of it. I discovered some chocolate KIND granola in the pantry, so I centered my breakfast on that. I made a yogurt with with Fage 2% a little bit of maple syrup, and cocoa powder. Topped with granola and crunchy Sunbutter. I had jumbo blueberries on the side.

Lunch:

I had more leftover lemon chicken rice soup, with added spinach. I also seasoned it with thyme lemon bay sea salt, and topped it with feta. On the side are leftover roasted shaved brussels with truffle salt.

Snack:

I had another sea salt chocolate bar from 88 Acres (more info here) as well as a Medjol date, since it had been so long since I had one strangely enough. So good!

I also nibbled on some Cranberry Orange bread while cutting up some slices for the freezer.

Dinner Part 1:

I volunteered to sub a 7:30pm spin class this evening which is a super awkward time for me, especially since I’m still sort of on St. Louis time. I decided to eat a light dinner pretty early.

Trader Joe’s GF cornbread with a little whipped butter.

And a small bowl of butternut squash and chicken soup.

To be honest, I wasn’t sure if anyone was going to come to a spin class that late, the week of Thanksgiving. Since it’s at the university, most people are gone for break. Luckily, I had a few people, and had a blast! It’s different teaching here, and it’s good to be back.

The rest of the evening didn’t go as planned. I drive an older car, and it can be pretty finicky. I had a lot of issues with the engine when I first started driving it a few years ago, but since then it has been fine. It didn’t appreciate not being driven too much while I was gone, it turns out. It took a while to start driving there, and when I got in to drive home after spin, the engine started shaking like crazy and then just died. Thereby stranding me 25 minutes from home. The worst thing was I was able to get out of my parking spot before it died, so I was directly blocking in a few cars. I called Triple A to get it towed, and my mom came and picked me up. Thankfully the process was relatively painless all things considered, and I’m grateful I didn’t even make it out of the parking lot and it didn’t die on the highway. That being said, I don’t have a good feeling about what may be wrong with it.

When my mom and I drove off around 9:30, we were both on the exact same wavelength: froyo. When I had mono freshman year of college, I ate mass quantities of froyo so I still remembered more or less what places were open until 10! We stopped at Yumi Yogurt, which is pretty big in my area. I got a butterscotch flavor burst with mini m&ms. Sadly, aesthetics were sacrificed in favor of more toppings but this was delicious, and the perfect post-workout refuel!

While it’s never fun watching your car get towed, I’m thankful the situation wasn’t worse. A

And on that note….

How do you approach the holidays?

I kicked off my wild Friday night with some coffeeshop studying. I was sitting next to some pre-meds working on a chem lab report. Felt like home. I went there for dinner, which was a Mediterranean salad, with delicious warm GF bread on the side. Plus a GF cookie. I’ve had so few GF baked good since coming here, so I went to that coffeeshop just for that.

I had been putting off a quiz for my online class, and decided I just needed to bite the bullet and take it Saturday morning.

Saturday morning, I taught my usual 8am spin and then headed to the store. My Target trip had 2 highlights: lightbulbs (my room was super dark) and these cookies:

I don’t care if you’re GF or not, you should buy these cookies. They’re AMAZING. I’ve had this brand in other flavors (a highlight is the key lime), so I was expecting nothing less! I guess my post-spin 10am time is turning into my “try new pumpkin products” time? Last week it was pumpkin ice cream. I only have one serving of these cookies left, they’re that good.

For lunch, I made a simple egg sandwich with cheddar, and a side of extra bread, an extra egg, and asparagus.

That afternoon, I walked down to a strew festival happening in my neighborhood. There was a bouncy house, and a bunch of local restaurants selling food and drinks. Since it was scorching out, I got salted caramel ice cream from a microcreamery.

The main event of the weekend though was a trip to City Museum with my coworkers. We went downtown and trapped dinner at Pi Pizza first.

This was super delicious. I can’t even remember the last time I had pizza!

Then it was time for City Museum.

This is certainly not your typical museum. It’s usually described as a giant playground for adults. There is an indoor and outdoor portion that consists of all kinds of structures and tunnels to climb through and lots of slides, including a 10 story slide.

This included climbing through caged tunnels many stories off the ground. It was a workout, and involved a certain level of strength to pull yourself up through tight spaces. I think the most terrifying thing was actually the 90 degree drop slide. It wasn’t that crazy high, but you had to essentially drop straight down into a hole, and couldn’t see what the slide looked like on the bottom.

We unintentionally ended up pursuing tickets to the roof portion, so we climbed the 200+ stairs and 12 stories to the top.

We enjoyed the view of the city while waiting in line for the ferris wheel.

Being on a ferris wheel 12 stories up was also slightly terrifying. Again, amazing views though.

After the museum, we went back to one of the intern’s places and watched a horror movie, since I had never seen one before. Honestly, I didn’t find it scary because it seemed so incredibly unrealistic. It was an exorcism type of movie, and it just seemed a little ridiculous to me. I think I would find a psychological horror movie much more frightening.

Sunday morning I lounged around a bit before heading to Forrest Park to run. Honestly, it was not a good run. My legs felt like bricks. Possibly from all the stairs and crawling/climbing the previous, night, I don’t know!

For lunch after 3 miles, I made a simple egg white omelette with garlic and herb laughing cow, and had it with a nectarine and of course some more of those pumpkin cookies.

That afternoon, I went out for coffee and to work on my online class. I’m playing around with a few different study methods to see if I can increase efficiency. I figure this is a good time to play around with these things, before grad school. I went to another coffeeshop on the list, Park Avenue Coffee.

It was a little disappointing. Not bad, but not on the same level as my top contenders. I would rank this second to last on my list. It should be noted though that this wasn’t their original location, so it’s possible it’s different? Also it definitely needs to be noted that they have tons of delicious looking kinds of gooey butter cake. Gooey butter cake is a St. Louis thing (that and pork steak?), and while I haven’t tried it, I think it’s pretty much exactly what it sounds like! It looked amazing.

After working for an hour or so, I ran some errands and braved the Sunday night grocery crowd. I was a little frazzled by the crowds, and apparently had some major slip ups.

For dinner Sunday night, I planned on totally winging a ginger chicken soup recipe. Basically, through things in a pot and hope. Slip up #1 was forgetting to buy spinach. Slip up #2 was buying cucumber instead of zucchini, which I realized when I started to cut it. The sad/embarrassing thing is, this isn’t the first time I’ve done that. Also, I really hate cucumber…

So instead, I worked with what I had on hand, and it surprisingly turned out amazingly well.

Here’s what I did:

I started out by boiling a bag of carrots and a little asparagus I had on hand in chicken broth. Meanwhile, I sautéed mushrooms in olive oil, garlic, and soy sauce. Protip: you can buy garlic paste in a tube, as well as other herbs, and it’s amazing. I also got tubed ginger (it’s fresh still), because I want to keep all my gingers an dither’s no way I could mince it finely enough to pull off.

Then, I shredded up rotisserie chicken, and added everything together, along with squeezy ginger, the juice of a lemon, pepper, and soy sauce.

It tasted SO good. The ginger gives it the perfect amount of spice, and despite the unplanned addition, the carrots really worked. And, I have TONS of leftovers!

For dessert, I mashed up half a banana with cocoa powder and served it with vanilla Halo Top and whipped cream.

It’s also possible I found my way back to the pumpkin cookie bag. So good…

That was my weekend! I’m excited for some actual cooking this week. Also on the menu is vegetarian chili, which I also will be winging.

What’s your favorite kind of soup?

Roasted vegetable soup with chicken from Cooking Light. This was different than a regular chicken/veggie soup recipe because before being added to the soup, the carrots, onions, and celery were roasted which really brought out the flavor. In the future, I think I’d roost the veggies a little bit extra.

Ginger chicken scallion shiitake soup. This was a broth soup with rice noodles, chicken, scallions, and mushrooms!

I feel like this picture doesn’t actually show much. This soup is essentially chicken noodle, but with zoodles! (aka zucchini noodles). Served with Trader Joe’s cornbread (GF) because I am obsessed.

The obsession continues. This was triple lemon blueberry muffins from Sweet Tooth, Sweet Life in bread form. I’m still on the search for the idea lemon bread recipe, and so far this recipe has been the best! It was delicious, but doesn’t have quite as much lemon flavor as I’m looking for. It does have a really good flavor though, a hint of vanilla. I think next time I’m going to try this recipe again, but try adding some lemon juice/other sources of lemon. I’ve been enjoying this pre-workout for the last couple of weeks though!

Other fun food as of late that never made it to the blog:

While home, I experimented and made some cheesy green onion potato pancakes. Just nutritional yeast, baked potato, spices, green onions, and egg. They were delicious!

Also while home, post-long run avocado+egg on GF toast.

While home, I got some cereal for my yogurt, and have been enjoying it in yogurt bowls since!

My fruit and cheese of the month came. These grapefruits are amazing, and when I first tried this type a few years ago, it was the first time I ever actually liked grapefruit!

Mango salmon over greens, with avocado quinoa. Also, GF banana bread which was perfectly moist.

What recipe have you tried lately?

Well, that wasn’t where I was planning on going with that. Where I was planning on going with that was WIAW with Jenn (and friends).

Pre-Workout:

Cranberry-Orange bread from the freezer. Currently my favorite pre-workout bread, and also the only one I have in the freezer right now. I have my eye on this recipe though for possibly the next one, although I usually like to keep the pre-workout breads a bit lower sugar.

Workout:

UGH. We’ve been doing these yucky sprint intervals at Crossfit that I’m pretty sure are really good for me but they stink.

We started out with 5×3 power snatches. I did those at 55#, and then a set at 65#. I’m pretty sure that’s the heaviest I’ve gone overhead since my shoulder injury! The weight felt easy, but I’m still weak stabilizing at the top so I’m definitely not going to push the weight anytime soon.

WOD:

Every 3.5 minutes for 5 sets:

200m run

7 push press (I used 55#)

5 over bar burpees

7 push press

I actually really enjoyed the running portion, because I felt fairly fast compared to other people, especially by the end. In general, I’m definitely not the fastest but I’m pretty consistent! Every set was within 3 seconds of the others.

Breakfast:

I’ve been really loving my fruit compote with yogurt again lately. This week’s combo is a real winner: cherries+peaches. On top of full fat yogurt and a side of sun butter. In terms of yogurt, I basically just eat whatever my house/dorm buys. I much prefer Greek plain, but otherwise I could go either way full fat vs. fat free and tend to switch week to week.

Lunch #1:

Leftover sweet potato, pear, leek soup with GF croutons, and a side of roasted veggies, mainly sweet potatoes. I think those were leftover veggies from diner at the house last night, and I was able to snag the last bit!

Lunch #2:

A turkey sandwich on GF bread that was from lunch at the house (which I missed due to class) and a Honeybell. Honeybells are a cross between a tangerine and grapefruit, and I’ve been really enjoying them this past week!

I also had a few bites of other things—some snap pea crisps and granola, and a Ghiradelli raspberry dark chocolate square.

My gastroparesis has been better lately (knock on wood), but even when it’s not flaring, I have to be really careful about how much I eat at once or I’ll get a (moderate comparatively) stomachache. I think I’m finally honing on what this amount actually is, although the content of the food also has a big effect! After lunch #1 today, I actually felt really good. Like, normal. Perfect even. Lunch #2 ended up being a little too big (with the random bites). For the most part, I think the magic number is 400 calories. 400 calories and below for a meal, and I seem to be good (assuming I’m not in a bad flare). 400-500 is usually okay, but I don’t feel as good. Over 500 and I’ll have some problems. 600 or significantly above and I start risking a flare up.

Obviously, that’s not very much in one meal, hence why I have lunch #1 and lunch #2 (and the same for dinner). I honestly think I can get a lot healthier as I start to figure this out more, but it can be really difficult to stick to, especially when the food is especially delicious, or if I’m at restaurants. It’s going to take some practice, as well as remembering that I CAN eat everything, I just need to come back to it in a few hours. It’s also difficult if I get a lot of sugar/carb cravings, but the more I stick to what makes me feel good, the fewer I have (because my blood sugar is much more regular).

Workout:

Teaching spin! Lots of hills today, including a 4 song hill (I normally do 3 song hills). I also wrote tomorrow’s class this afternoon, which includes HIIT in place of a second hill. We’re going to do 5 rounds of 1 min max effort on/1 min recover.

Dinner #1:

BBQ chicken leg, red beans, rice, kale.

I also had some frozen mango and another Ghiradelli raspberry square.

This dinner comes back to the perfect number theory. Unfortunately, I was a little over the magic number and am feeling it a bit. But it’s all a learning process and I do think I’ll get there!

Dinner #2:

A new to me bar. Sesame products can be really hit or miss but this was good!

Do you eat 3 square meals or more snacks/mini meals?

Now that I’m (hopefully) getting into a groove with my new eating habits, I thought I’d do another WIAW link up with Jenn and the gang.

Before Crossfit, I had another piece of Cranberry orange bread. Love it.

Crossfit was really tough. The workouts at this Crossfit are hard, I’ve determined! Haha. They tend to be longer. This one took me about 14 minutes.

3 sets

15 box jump w/step
10 no push up burpee
5 power clean and jerk
250m row
Rest 1

Post Crossfit, I had some fage 2% with homemade cranberry sauce and sun butter. Cranberry sauce is the easiest thing to make. I had no idea. I just threw leftover cranberries on the stove and eyeballed water and sugar. This is probably tarter than most which is fantastic!

My first class today was at noon, so I packed a lunch and ate early. Miltons GF everything crackers+leftover Tuscan Chicken and Vegetable stew.

After a couple of classes, I came back and had my afternoon snack. I grabbed a couple of slices of turkey on the way in with a piece of avocado, and then had one of my Raaw Macaw bars.

After doing some reading, I headed to the gym for a short spin workout. The classes I teach start up again next week and I have a ton of new music, so I wanted to get a feel for the choreography.

I was hungry when I got back so I had a few more crackers to take the edge off.

One thing about having to eat small meals is I have to be careful not to get ravenous because I have to really be in control when I eat my mini meals.

Dinner came shortly after—for some reason this looks like more food than it was, but I had some roasted sweet potato, roasted garlic kale (SO good), and a small salad with rosemary chicken and sesame dressing.

Dessert #1 was an Enjoy Life gingerbread cookie. These are so good—soft and spicy! I prepackaged a few desserts before coming back to school to help with portion control and because it makes me feel more organized.

For the first time, I grabbed dinner #2 while getting dinner #1. This is mostly because I think I need more vegetables, and the vegetables are never present as leftovers from dinner.

I only ate about 1/2 of the drumstick because I wasn’t really feeling it. The disadvantage of getting food beforehand is that it’s hard to be intuitive about what I need so I’ll reconsider that in the future. For second dinner dessert, I had 3 GF chocolate covered pretzels.

And that’s a wrap!

What’s your favorite kind of quick bread?

Quickbreads are one of my favorite things so I’d love an idea as to what to make next

Christmas Eve began on an active note—12 Days of Christmas at Crossfit!

12 days of Christmas operates just like the song. You start with the exercise at 1 and do one rep. Then you go to the next exercise and do 2 reps of that, and one rep of the first exercise. And so on. I love festive workouts! I finished in around 30 minutes. And the best news? Earlier this week was the first time in 3 months that I have done snatches—the first time since my shoulder injury. On Monday, I used the training bar and worked up to 30 pounds, but I used 45 for the workout! Partly this was fine because these were power snatches so I did not have to squat down, which is easier on my shoulder.

To refuel, I heated up some chocolate soy milk and added mint extract and whipped cream.

Next, my friend who is cat sitting for me next week came over and brought her “kittens.” I can’t believe how much they’ve grown!

After lunch, we decided to pay a visit to the Humane Society to visit the kitties. We saw the kitty my sister is thinking about adopting soon as well.

We then saw the movie Sisters. Overall I liked it! There were some jokes that fell flat to me though. After the movie, we headed to Whole Foods for dinner and ingredients for the following day. For dinner I had some veggies and mashed potatoes. Since I’m not supposed to eat big meals thanks to my stomach, I wanted to break up Christmas dinner and have my potatoes early!

The evening was spent at home with festive red champagne.

We were up fairly early on Christmas morning. I ate a Luna bar for breakfast first thing because we were planning on going for a run/walk around 9am.

We then opened stockings. It was Chloe’s first Christmas and she seemed to enjoy what she got!

After breakfast and stockings, we drove out to the bay on quite the chilly morning. About 39 when we got up! I wore my Santa Run shirt for the occasion.

It was an absolutely beautiful morning, and so clear after the past few days of rain. We could see all the way to San Francisco!

I ran 3 miles at a hair under a 9:00 pace, which was the goal!

On the way home, we stopped at Starbucks for some festive drinks. I had a holiday spice flat white. To be honest, I wasn’t a fan because it was slightly sweet and I don’t like sweet+coffee. For anyone else though, I’d probably recommend it because it wasn’t crazy sweet like some of their other drinks!

Once home, we opened presents!

Lunch for me was Whole Foods Butternut Squash posole with cheddar and truffle salt (because why not?).

Then, it was time to start making dessert! We were lacking dessert ideas for a while, but I wanted to actually make something special. What I came up with was a modification of a chocolate silk pie. I used this recipe for the chocolate silk portion. The center is essentially just silken tofu and chocolate, which was perfect because I didn’t want something too heavy.

I started with a gluten free chocolate cookie crust and spread chocolate fudge sauce on the base.

Then, I made the tofu base, but I blended in fresh mint and a touch of mint extract.

Finally, I topped it with homemade whipped cream plus a crushed candy cane decoration.

Christmas dinner was definitely unconventional. As we all well now, I’m on a soup kick and I can’t tolerate big meals so I lead the effort to make Christmas dinner in soup form. We used a basic chicken veggie soup recipe, but substituted Whole Foods precooked turkey for the chicken. Side note: the Whole Foods turkey is quite possibly the BEST turkey I have ever had. We also mixed in a truffle gravy seasoning mix for added flavor. For the “stuffing,” I made croutons by slicing up gluten free bread, spreading it with Earth Balance garlic and herb, and toasting it in the oven. Cranberry sauce was served on the side!

We all agreed that the soup turned out quite well, and were satisfied with this twist on a traditional Christmas meal.

And finally: dessert is served!

Overall, it was an awesome and low key day! I would also say this is definitely our healthiest Christmas ever!

I want to add one thing. While I’m all for enjoying yourself with foods over the holidays, I do want to mention that thanks to my stomach issues and new diagnosis, I’ve had to be very careful with what I eat, and as a result, I was much healthier throughout the holidays. It was actually wonderful. I still enjoyed some treats, but overall I felt SO much better. Having soup for Christmas was perfect! I also love that my family supports me so much in the way in which I eat. Right now especially, I know it is not easy and I really do try to be as easy going as possible about it, but the reality is that because of everything, it is an issue. So thank you! (Because I know they are reading this :))

Merry Christmas!

Since I can’t eat a lot these days, for my meal I ordered a salad and fried rice. There were able to make it with gluten free soy sauce which was awesome!

Then, we returned home to make Christmas cookies and watch the Polar Express. I had only seen it once before, but I was in the mood for a different movie this year and really enjoyed it! For cookies, I made my healthy polka dot cookies.Since my sister was eating them, I threw in some honey for extra sweetness, and made about 1/3 of the cookies with normal chocolate, not mint, chips.

I started “Christmas” (Saturday morning) with a Crossfit workout. I worked on power jerks, and the then WOD was an ascending ladder of double unders and a descending ladder of kb swings. My double unders were actually really good that day for some reason!

Then, it was time to put on our fake Christmas best and head over to see my grandma.

For lunch, I had soup (shockingly)—Manhatten clam chowder—and then some of my dad’s sweet potato fries. It was nice to see my family, but unfortunately we had to run out of there after dinner to take my puppy out of her crate.

At home, we ate homemade desserts (this is cranberry apple cobbler) and made mimosas—both with fresh squeezed orange juice and with crane-raspberry juice.

Chloe enjoyed her first Christmas! She loved opening her presents from Grandma.

Rain has been in the forecast all week, but we got a reprieve from it on Saturday night so we decided to take the opportunity to visit a nearby neighborhood that goes all out for the holidays. We decided to bring Chloe to enjoy the sights and sounds!

Fake Christmas was fun, and it’s only drawing out the celebrating!

Anyways, that was quite a long winded way of saying it’s Wednesday-yay! WIAW! Thanks as always to Jenn for hosting.

You want to know why I’m loving WIAW right now? Because when I’m posting less, or posting about specific things, I don’t get to share what I’ve been eating as much, so I get this accumulation of pictures that somehow seem silly to post if not on a Wednesday. WIAW is an excuse for a foodie photo dump, right?

Pancakes+eggs+mandarin oranges at breakfast. I think I’m officially no longer a syrup on pancakes person. Butter all the way-it may have something to do with the fact that I’m a syrup snob and really don’t like the dining hall corn syrup/maple syrup. Yuck. On another note, I just bought a vat of Grade B maple syrup at Whole Foods. More on that in a minute.

Pumpkin bread. This is from last Wednesday-my Wednesdays are long days so I needed a little pick me up between studying and my last class!

This dinner was 50/50. Tilapia with mango and cucumber was on point, as were the roasted carrots. I wasn’t a fan of the lentil puff pastry though.

More breakfast. I was across campus at the track and decided to stop somewhere different. While it may look very similar to the other breakfast, the pancakes there are far superior. They’re sort of vanilla-y.

Dining hall lunch-balsamic chicken salad, veggie flat bread, and broken rice with scallions. Plus roasted butternut squash.

This was dining hall chicken masala. And I have to say, they nailed it. The chicken was SO tender and flavorful. Well done.

Whole Foods dinner-hihglights were the mushroom polenta and various colors of roasted sweet potatoes.

So…I’m kind of over the whole “eat a specific diet” thing (like Paleo, 100% real food, no sugar). One thing I’ve learned over my 2+ years of blogging about food is that 1. I don’t have time or energy for that and 2. It makes me freaking crazy. That being said, I wanted to shake things up a little and get more creative so I decided to roughly follow a new plan (note the word roughly-it’s very low key)-whole foods + unlimited chocolate. So to start my new healthy eating endeavor I went to Whole Foods and stocked up on mass amounts of quality chocolate. And Grade B maple syrup for homemade chocolate. Spoiler alert-the “plan” is going well. I like chocolate.

This is one of my favorite soups-and it’s really good cold the next day too (or maybe I’m just used to eating cold food out of tupperware at this point in my life). The best part is it has chunks of sweet potato!

On Superbowl Sunday, my eating schedule was bizarre. Lunch at 10:30, pizza at 3:30 (what meal is that even? Dinner?). I was a little hungry towards the end of the game so I went to the dining hall for a chicken fajita salad. This was quality guac.

Dining hall dinner-salad, stir fry tofu, sweet potato fries. Plus a mini corn and potato casserole. The reason for no picture? It slid off my plate and exploded on the floor. It took my a little time to gain the courage to grab another one!

And finally-one last breakfast! I brought back the berry compote! This is just cherries+blueberries boiled down. Full fat yogurt+berries+sunbutter. I missed this!

Wow guys, that was quite the roundup. I should get on here a little more often, shouldn’t I? I feel like this has been an eventful week in terms of life stuff, so I really should do more updates! Also I’m realizing as I grow up (…and that makes me sound young again) I’m gotten so much more introspective so maybe we’ll have some more reflective posts. That being said, everything is going well over here right now!

What is your favorite kind of chocolate (and where can I buy it??)?

With 12 days of Christmas, I haven’t gotten to share some of the random things I’ve eaten in the past week or so! How tragic would that be?

Also-another exciting note-I entered the lottery for the Cherry Blossom 10 miler in DC in the spring. I think the odds I get in are low but how amazing would that be??

Ok. Food. As promised.

Spinach and artichoke soup, from a Buzzfeed article of all things! Topped with parmesan.

Post-turkey trot, pre-Thanksgiving breakfast of mini frittatas and a crumpet.

A really freaking amazing salad in Napa. Avocado, fresh mozzarella, tomato, olive oil, and sea salt. Simple but perfect.

Baby fruit tart from Napa.

Chocolate sea salt caramel cupcake.

Trader Joe’s mushroom risotto with some spinach tossed in.

Carrot soup with cilantro.

Tupperware lunch of leftover broccoli and chicken. (Plus a sweet potato that was scarfed down earlier…)

Dining hall dinner. Roasted veggies and chicken, and a mini veggie pot pie. The highlight was the zucchini, which was roasted with garlic and cheese.

Back to my typical breakfast of yogurt+sunbutter+peaches.

Dining hall lunch on a rainy day-eggplant parmesan, veggies with Alfredo (not my favorite veggies served that day so you gotta do what you gotta do!) and polenta with sundried tomatoes.

And a bonus because how cute is he?

What is something that you haven’t had in a while?

For me it was the eggplant parm-I don’t think I’ve ever had it before!