On the Twelfth Day of Christmas My True Love Gave to Me…

Date: December 9, 2014

Author: astottler

12 things that have changed in the past year.

Yayy! We’ve reached the 12th day of Christmas, and it’s officially my blogiversary! And this is one of my favorite posts to right because I think it is really interesting what has changed in a year. It’s absolutely crazy to me that I now have TWO YEARS of my life documented on the Internet. Thank you all so much for reading and commenting-your comments never fail to make my day! Stick around to the end of the post for a little something fun. So, let’s dive in!

1. I’m teaching spin now! Last year it was a big deal for me to be certified, but I never was too ambitious with applying anywhere. I finally took the leap, and am so, so glad I did. It’s so incredibly rewarding.

2. I actually have a more clear picture of what I want to do with my life that I’m happy with, and I’m laying out plans to get there. This one has been a constant struggle for the past 2+ years, so this is a major change. I don’t want to talk specifically about what it is yet because I have changed my mind a lot in the past, but I will say I’ve mentioned it here a while ago before.

3. I eat fewer “products.” Granted, this is partially because there are about 2 protein bars out there with nuts, so those are mostly out the window, but when I was thinking about last year’s giveaway post, I couldn’t even begin to think of my favorite items! This isn’t particularly bad or good, it’s just different.

4. I figured out how to eat ideally for my body. And then learned why it wasn’t sustainable. After avoiding processed foods completely for two weeks, I felt amazing. But it wasn’t necessarily practical for where I am now, and the backlash was pretty bad. I basically went crazy on sugar afterwards and basically undid any positive health changes.

5. I discovered roasted vegetables. Why I never really explored them before is beyond me. Roasted carrots are life. My roommate happened to be randomly roasting them one day and it changed my life.

6. I lived like a “real person” for the first time. I jetted off to DC this summer and worked a 9-5. I lived in the city for the first time. And loved every minute.

7. I’ve gotten more perspective. I’ve become friends with people who help me grow as a person. I’ve lived in a different place, and I traveled around the East Coast a bit and saw the world from different perspectives. I became a much more open person in college, but I think more than ever in the past year.

8. I firmly stopped believing in nutrition trends and fad diets. While I know they can be effective for some people, I felt like in the past I was either looking for a quick fix, or would believe anything. More often than not, when I see a headline I just roll my eyes now. I trust myself and my nutrition knowledge and research more than some over dramatized headline.

9. My interests have shifted. Don’t get me wrong, I still love nutrition and metabolism, but I guess I feel there isn’t that much there left to know, that much deeper to dig. I know there’s still so much we don’t know in this field, but maybe I’m a little burned out. I feel disillusioned or something. Blog content won’t change-don’t worry-but I don’t see that as necessarily being my life direction. Which, honestly, I see as even more of a reason to keep my blog up and going. If that’s not my career, I need it to be my hobby.

10. I HARDCORE avoid nuts now. After finally confirming my suspicions with an allergy test, I’ve been pretty good at avoiding them. And I know quite cleared when I screwed up. Did you know that a lot of Thai food is cooked in peanut oil? Yeah.

11. I broke my addiction to coffee. Or something. I definitely had it this morning…But I drink it significantly less. Partly it’s because I don’t live near close coffee and partly it’s because I actually get a decent amount of sleep, but after getting sort of caffeine dependent this summer and then getting over caffeinated to the point it was scary, I really try not to make it a habit. After that one incident, I had to go through a caffeine detox which was not fun. Versus last fall when I had a crazy school load and drank it about every day.

12. I’ve met some crazy awesome people in the past year! Whether through the Internet/my blog, or in real life. Seriously! It has been a great year! So I think it’s time I share a little something with you all.

What’s the one product I still eat very regularly?

Sunflower seed butter! I’ve gone on and on about how I love the amazing flavors from the Farmer’s Market, so to show my thanks, I will be giving away 2 jars to on lucky person.

The flavors are Cinnamon Brown Sugar Sunflower seed butter (amazing) and Chocolate Chip Cookie Almond butter (which I haven’t tried for obvious reasons but sounds amazing!).

So, here’s how it will work. There are 3 ways to enter.

1. Comment on this post with your favorite nut/seed butter or something that changed for you this past year.

2. Instagram the following picture and tag me! fitnessissweet

3. Tweet about it and include the following picture, and tag me! @fitnessissweet. Alternatively, you can retweet my tweet about the giveaway.

Each person can enter each way once (so up to 3x). I will chose a winner 12 days from now, at 5pm on the 21st of December!

Good luck!

Taper Eats

Date: September 5, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Guys, we’re officially 2 days away from race day! In terms of workouts, I’m taking it easy. Wednesday was my last run and my last Crossfit. Thursday I planned to do a short run but opted to rest my feet instead so I did absolutely nothing. This morning I went to spin and ran 1 mile to get my legs moving, but tomorrow is another full rest day!

The good news is in terms of running, I feel ready. I still haven’t picked a goal pace so that’s sort of a problem. The bad news is my plantar fasciitis has been flaring this past week and it hasn’t warmed up in my runs like it always did before-I think it’s because it’s not 90 degrees here…

Since I’ve been tapering, I’ve had plenty of time to dream up dinner/lunch ideas. I ever did some more experimental baking! (And then the subsequent eating of course.) So here are some of my “taper week” eats!

Leftover chicken with ketchup, plus roasted carrots and cumin roasted cauliflower. I love the color of the yellow cauliflower! Next time I’m getting purple!

Pumpkin Noosa (yogurt). It’s good-I think it’s a Target exclusive though! Also good-Coconut Noosa.

Cheesy Garlic and Herb Brussels Sprouts-Garlic and Herb Laughing Cow, Maple Apple Sausage (chicken), and shaved brussels sprouts. I also love that this is a super easy dorm meal!

Cinnamon laughing cow+baked (ok, microwaved) peaches. So delicious. Next time I think I’d sauté them together on the stove.

A sandwich from the popular local sandwich shop-turkey and avocado! Plus roasted carrots.

I actually did another little baking experiment-and it came out amazingly well! Like-eat half a loaf in one day well. I’m carb loading, right? Recipe should be up tomorrow.

Oh my gosh. I found this puppy at the local Farmer’s Market-it’s every bit as good as it sounds. I also picked up some maple cinnamon pumpkin seed butter. There’s a stand at the local Farmer’s Market with all kinds of amazing nut and seed butters. I also tried a S’mores sunflower seed butter which was AMAZING but more dessert-y than I was looking for at the time. I’m crossing my fingers that in the coming months a pumpkin spice sunflower seed butter will pop up…

Post-spin chocolate protein smoothie this morning. Man, I forgot how delicious these were! I used frozen banana, Chocolate Designer Whey, cocoa powder, milk, and a handful of spinach.

And lunch today-leftover chicken and leftover cumin roasted cauliflower, plus some spoonfuls of the above sunflower seed butter. Yum!

How do you eat during taper?

Sun Cups

Date: December 19, 2013

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Let me just preface this by saying that I’ve never done a product review on Fitness is Sweet, because I really believe in only talking about things for a reason. When Sun Cups reached out to me, I immediately agreed to do a review. Why? Because like so many others out there, I can’t eat nuts, and sunflower seed butter saved me.

A little over a year ago, my skin inexplicably began breaking out terribly. I could not figure out what was happening, as my skin had always been clear. Fast forward about 6 months-I knew nuts were for some reason causing my skin to go crazy, but I was so addicted to peanut butter that my skin suffered. A few months later, I discovered sunflower seed butter, and it saved my skin. While I’m lucky not to have a dangerous reaction to nuts, my response to them are getting worse, and many are much worse off. I want to share Sun Cups with you all because they are such a great option for those who cannot have nuts-but for those that can, they are delicious and definitely worth having over a Reese’s.

Sun Cups sent me these samples to review a few weeks ago, and they were a big hit in my house!

Lilly especially loved the box they came in!

I was expecting the Sun Cups to be good, but what really blew me away was the quality of the chocolate. It was amazingly rich and creamy, and so, so smooth.

We tasted milk sunflower butter, dark sunflower butter, dark mint, and milk caramel. Despite being a family of dark chocolate lovers, the milk sunflower butter stole our hearts. The milk chocolate complimented the sunflower seed butter so perfectly.

We were also impressed by how fresh the mint cup tasted.

Just in general, everything tasted so fresh. Let’s just say these didn’t last long.

Besides the taste, one of the best things about these guys is the ingredient list.

No high fructose corn syrup, and no weird artificial sweeteners. Let’s compare to a Reese’s: one Reese’s cup has 10 grams of sugar, while one sunflower butter cup only has 7. That’s almost a teaspoon of a difference, in one candy!

I would definitely recommend Sun Cups-I haven’t seen these in stores much but you can order them on their website here. This would be the perfect gift for someone with a nut allergy, or even someone wanting a healthier treat.

*Full disclosure-Sun Cups sent me samples to review, but all opinions are my own.

WIAW-Dessertless

Date: August 13, 2013

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Happy Wednesday! That means, it’s time for another edition of What I Ate Wednesday. Thanks so much to Jenn (who is welcoming a new little human to the world pretty soon!)

I’ll make this post pretty short-I need to study for tomorrow’s Psych final! But all you really care about is food anyways, right??

One quick aside-I went to yoga today. Owwww. I haven’t been in over a month and I’ve gotten soooo tight! Lack of yoga could definitely contributed to my calf problem-it felt much looser after class. I need to make weekly yoga a priority as I train for my next run! And just to clarify-I’m only doing the half of the Nike Women’s marathon. To be honest, my feet couldn’t handle more than that. Exhibit A: It’s a week and a half since my last half and I’m still waiting to regain some of the feeling in my toe. So until I get that figured out….

Ok, onto the food. As you may know, I’m doing a no sugar challenge this week. I’m not doing 0 sugar, just no desserts. So a lot of my eats will feature healthier, no sugar “desserts.” Enjoy!

Breakfast burrito pre-roll. Tip: make the eggs for this in the microwave. It saves dishes and time-the texture is only a tiny bit off and you can’t even tell in burrito form.

Breakfast burrito post-roll.

Lunch sides require their own plate.

Tortilla pizza fail-I sort of overestimated the amount of toppings necessary. This was all cheese and sauce. Whoops…First “dessert.” I’ve been loving my fruit bowls lately-especially anything with peaches and banana, topped with sunflower seed butter. Indian food out of a pouch-hey, good enough for me!

Imitation coconut Chobani. I can’t find anything but the coconut flips, so I took matters into my own hands. After attempt #1, this was spot on. I used Oikos vanilla greek yogurt, which was a better choice because it’s slightly sweeter than my normal vanilla yogurts. I added unsweetened coconut and, this was the key I was missing, coconut extract. I then let it sit overnight so the coconut would soften up. DELICIOUS.

I’ve been loving my lunch plates lately. Where’s the other half of the English muffin you ask? I had the biggest fail splitting it, so it came off in chunks unfit for the toaster.

I took it as a great sign that I was craving grapes for dessert after this meal. I’ve also been loving my dried mango lately (the unsweetened kind). But that could just be major mango withdrawals-I haven’t found much fresh mango lately.

Cheesy polenta with mushrooms, a side of asparagus.

Another delicious fruit bowl as a post-softball snack. (I finally hit a homerun!)

Imitation PB&J crackers. Sunflower seed butter and a raspberry on top of a whole grain and seed cracker.

And I’ll leave you with this 🙂 How can I possibly study with that face to distract me?

Sorry for the short-winded post, I have lots of studying in my near future!

What’s the best thing that happened to you this week? What does your cat look like? Have you ever gone dessertless? Results?

Throwback (Run) Thursday

Date: June 13, 2013

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hey guys! Check out my guest post on Mangoes and Miles! I wrote about a topic near and near to me-avocados.

Yesterday was my first day of summer, and I must say, it was a really awesome day! I slept in until…5:10…but hey-it was well worth it to attend my favorite spin class! Plus, my kitty came into my room about 10 minutes before my alarm demanding to be petted. And waking up to a purring cat is way better than waking up to an alarm!

After spin, I had a 4 mile run to do. I decided to do a throwback run-last summer I clearly remember one of my first training runs. I went to early spin and then drove to a neighborhood fairly close by, which is flatter and prettier than where I live. I completely forgot to bring my Garmin, so I decided to run for time instead. I planned on 40 minutes, but I lengthened it to 45 because I kept stopping for pictures, plus a had a minor goose incident. More on that in a minute. I made a playlist on my phone of all the songs I listened to last summer to really throw it back. Confession: for some reason whenever people do throwback Thursday on facebook with their pictures, it drives me crazy. I have no idea why…

I enjoyed the wildlife of suburbia- geese!

Ignore the slant-this was my first attempt at a picture while running (without stopping). What’s funny is this lagoon is actually where we rowed some of the time. It’s also a 2k racecourse, so I would have raced here quite a bit if I had continued with crew. That’s so weird to me because I never knew people rowed here. I mean, I basically grew up in this area; half of my friends live here, and I went to violin lessons right around here, and then, I later rowed here.

There are geese everywhere around the lagoon. If you were to see the geese as they were in this photo, you wouldn’t think anything of it, right? You’d just run through and expect them to move. So I started to run towards them. But…they didn’t move! SO I decided to just run through them and run around them. As I got closer, they started hissing at me! They were hissing and screaming and running closer to me!

So naturally I stopped to take a picture. What you can’t see is that there was a goose right next to me on my left hissing. At that point, I was kind of stuck. I was in the middle of the pack, and I didn’t know which direction to go in!

Luckily, I did get out in one piece, unscathed. But it was terrifying. I guess the bird around this lagoon are kind of aggressive. One of my teammates had a scary experience with an aggressive swan chasing her!

Being done with spin and a run by 7:45 am is such an awesome feeling. Breakfast was cottage cheese mixed with chia seeds and thawed blueberries.

An even more awesome feeling than that? Taking a midmorning nap with your cat. He’s such a sweetie! Sadly, I have no pictures, as I was unconscious.

Lunch was a leftover turkey burger and freeze dried sesame edamame.

I also had one of these guys-it was good, but similar to the coconut creations I’ve made in the microwave, so in the future I’d probably just do that.

A little later in the afternoon, I met up with Kaitlin for coffee. She’s about to graduate, so I was lucky to catch her before she leaves! We went to Philz Coffee, which was a cute little place where they hand make everything.

We were both a little overwhelmed by all the different types of coffee! Since I know very little about coffee, and I didn’t want to have much caffeine that late in the day, I went with iced chai tea.

I got mine with milk and honey. They add mint leaves to it as well. I really, really enjoyed this. It was super refreshing on a hot day, and while the chai flavor was subtle, I really liked the flavor the mint added.

I also enjoyed an oat bar, which had various types of dried fruit.

I had a really great time talking with Kaitlin– I’ve never met up with a blogger before! She’s totally awesome and you all should check her blog out.

Thanks Kaitlin!

We met up more near school than home for me, but that worked out really well because I kind of forgot to turn my room key in, and school was on the way back. I had to say goodbye to people again! I also had to help my sister move out which was…a process. For the record, I was out in an our (besides the packing). I was there for 3 hours, my parents were there for longer, and she’s not even completely moving out! She’s living there (kind of-it’s complicated) this summer! But I did score a homemade cupcake from her fancy cupcake holder which she made for a class project.

In addition, she and her boyfriend made cinnamon rolls from scratch that were ready right before we were done!

They were sooo good, but I could only have a few bites before my heart started racing!

And FINALLY we were home for dinner. My family was having pesto pasta, but I felt like I could use protein more, so I microwaved egg whites and spinach and topped that with pesto instead.

And dessert:

I had been out of sunflower seed butter in my dorm for quite a while, so this was AMAZING.

Have a great day everyone! Kitten nursery post to come, as well as my recount of Crossfit (my first class is tonight!).

Where is your favorite place to run? Have you ever met up with a blogger?