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WIAW and Sunshine

Happy Wednesday! I’m going to link up to WIAW today because I have lots of unshared food pictures!

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Before we get into that-on the fitness front, I’ve sort of switched around my schedule. In the past, I tended to run in the mornings versus do Crossfit in the evenings. The problem with that is when I do Crossfit in the evenings, it’s really difficult to make it back in time for dinner before the dining hall closes! Plus my evening motivation to make it to Crossfit is too low! That being said, I’m officially in 5k training mode with (hopefully) lots of speed work coming up!

In terms of actual workouts, I went to one last spin class at the gym from home (it’s halfway between home and school so it’s not outrageous to go once) before my membership ended. Of course, it was fantastic.

Monday morning we tested our 1 rep back back squats for a final time during the squat cycle we’ve been doing. Mine was sort of meh, sort of improved. I improved 5# from my 1 rep max at the beginning of the cycle, but I was still 10 lbs below my all time 1 rep max (205#). It was meh because 195# felt easy, but I kept missing 200#. Back squats are frustrating because the second you give in, you’re not making the lift!

After back squats I had the pleasure of doing and AMRAP of I believe it was Crossfit Open 14.4 last year? The Open workout at the time was probably the worst Crossfit workout I’ve done. 21-18-15-12-9-6-3 thrusters and over the bar burpees. Thank goodness, we did a 12 minute AMRAP, which meant I didn’t make it all the way down the ladder! But now my squatting muscles are scorched.

Tuesday’s Crossfit workout was lighter. I went to the 6am class since I have 9am class on Tuesdays. We did hang power cleans for strength and kettle bell snatches, wall balls, and 400m runs for the WOD. Then, after spending hours in the library, I went for a 3 mile tempo run (5k training!). I have a ways to go…but I kept my tempo pace pretty closely. It’s a good start! Ok-food time!

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I went to a yoga class last Thursday and went to Eric’s deli-cafe afterwards for dinner with my parents to discuss pre-vet stuff. I had half a turkey and avocado sandwich, and a house salad.

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My mom got me a couple of these protein boxes. They’re pretty similar to the ones at Starbucks, but sun butter instead of peanut butter! Good and easy. I had 2 meals of this on Friday. We don’t have to mention the fact that I didn’t have a single vegetable…

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Saturday morning, I had to drive a ways to get gas. Long story short, my car is SUPER picky with the gas it will take and the check engine light was on and the engine was shuddering so I topped it off with “better” gas. Anyways, Whole Foods was close so I stopped in for brunch. Maple french toast casserole and chilaquiles were the highlights here!

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Mexican dinner at the dining hall! But more importantly-GUAC! I made myself a salad.

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Salad I picked up from Whole Foods.

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Dining hall dinner-BBQ chicken on salad, and cheese and broccoli mini-casserole.

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Dining hall breakfast-eggs and roasted veggies! I LOVE when they have those!

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Cappuccino because I woke up before 5:30am and I’m a college student. However, I’ve gotten a lot of coffee lately and I’ve been generally over caffeinated so there’s that. I get to my 9am and announce to my friend that I got coffee. Her response? “I can tell.”

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Lunch courtesy of my freezer. Balsamic roasted brussels sprouts, grilled chicken, and mashed sweet potatoes.

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My favorite morning glory bread from a little cafe on campus.

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A greek salad with chicken, roasted carrots, and sweet potato fries. This is pretty much my ideal dining hall dinner right here.

And lastly? The weather here lately has been insane. Sometimes I forget how lucky I am to be here.

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What is your ideal meal?

Happy Pants

First of all, let me just say, I am so jealous of everyone going on the BLEND retreat this weekend! Beth from Mangoes and Miles had the great idea of trying to put together a retreat for college bloggers. How awesome would that be??

My morning began with a quick workout- 3 sets of stairs. Each set- single leg hops (each leg), squat jumps, 2 sprints, and 25 (ea) scissor kicks. Then I followed that with 4k on the rowing machine.

I tried to finish my workout a little bit early so I had time for a photo shoot for my pear. Food blogging at its finest. Image

This is one of my birthday pears from Harry and David! Harry and David has the best pears ever. Sweet, juicy, and the perfect firmness. I seriously can’t eat any other pears.

Guess what? My duct tape solutions to my bike’s woes actually worked. My brake works fine and my basket stays in place. ImageImage

Pshhh who needs to go to the bike shop?

A couple of shots from last night?

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I do not like being locked out. Thank you car key lanyard for looking exactly like room key lanyard.

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I had to walk to the library last night because my bike key is attached to my room key…which was in my locked room. But at least I got a nice picture!

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My Big is seriously awesome. How great is this? 2 of those pictures are Lilly. Can you find them?

So this morning, my flowers all of the sudden looked….really really bad.

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This thing drinks like crazy, I even watered it yesterday! I swear I’m not a bad plant mama!

Today was such a nice day. I got to pretend to be on the quidditch team and ended up with a free Ike’s sandwich. If you aren’t from CA, you probably don’t know what Ike’s is. If you are from this area, you are incredibly jealous. It was veggie with garlic and pesto!

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And since we’re on the topic of food…

Guacamole complements of my Big. She gave me the MOST PERFECT avocados, and since I have guacamole mix, this whipped up to be a great snack!Image

The other half was used for dinner on my egg scramble with pesto.

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See how much better the flowers look already?? Phew.

Now let’s get to the meat of the post. Today in Psych, we had a lecture on the Psychology of Health. Did you know that when you are stressed, you are way more likely to get colds? Ok, you probably knew that. But there are tons of other interesting studies. Apparently, you get sick more when you’re lonely as well. What I don’t get is how the researchers got the approval to administer the cold virus to tons of people…I would not want to participate in that study! Anyways, when you are stressed out, it is as if your body is in a continual fight or flight response. Cortisol has signals for the cells in your immune system that kill them off. Basically, your body focuses on the fight or flight issue, and conserves energy by shutting down your immune system. Yep, sounds about how I got Mono. Crew 5 hours a day, no sleep, and no clue what was going on? Yeah.

We also talked about the amazing benefits of exercise. Exercise can significantly reduce depression and anxiety. It has been shown to work as well at alleviating clinical depression as anti-depressants. How cool is that? This whole lecture got me thinking. What stresses me out? What is valuable to me? What makes me unhappy?

I realized, I exercise most days. I do hard exercise. That is awesome. I need to appreciate myself more, and what my body can do for me. I need to appreciate the world more. I feel like this past week I’ve really had my head in the clouds. I do feel like I got quite a bit of schoolwork done, but not a lot in terms of social interactions (which are SUPER important). And although it was technically a good week, it was just kind of blah.

The takeaway? I am trying to look at everything with a super positive light. I want to experience things more, and stop being concerned by the things that really don’t matter that much in terms of everything else.

I have some fitness goals that I set for myself. I had a reward planned for each goal. But I simply wasn’t meeting them, and it was getting extremely frustrating. So I decided to stop being so hard on myself, and appreciate myself for what I can do. So I went out and bought the first item on the list.

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Did I need these? Absolutely not. But I decided that they are going to be my Happy Pants. They reflect a decision I made to appreciate and celebrate myself (wow that sounds incredibly selfish…). When I wear them, I want to remember that. On a different note, I am smack in the middle of the midterms. And I want a bit of time to myself to try and figure some things out. Anyone interested in doing some guest posts for next week? Shoot me an email at astottler@gmail.com.

Thanks guys! I’ll leave you with this-my current phone screensaver.

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