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Getting Back to It

Hey guys! Here I am-back for a second straight day! I want to talk a little about getting back into health and healthy habits, but first, why don’t we take a look at the day?

My morning started with a spoonful of butterscotch sunflower seed butter. Yes, that exists.

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I then proceeded to lock myself out as I was leaving for my track workout. I keep my keys on a lanyard, and it has this fantastic habit of ejecting keys, so as the building door closed behind me, I realized my key had fallen off. Whoops!

My track workout was 10x400m. Guys, I have gotten SO much faster in the past month or so. I was killing my paces-my goal was 8:00 pace, and I was always under it. I was probably averaging a 7:45 for the first 5, and I picked it up for the very last one with tired legs for a 7:30 pace. I’m feeling optimistic about my race coming up! I also think I’m going to do a timed mile next week-it’s time!

Post workout, I went to the dining hall with the best pancakes.

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Is it weird that egg whites feel like kind of a treat? They’re so fluffy compared to the normal eggs I eat! I also went back for another pancake.

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Once back at my dorm, I had to wait a little bit for someone to let me in. It wasn’t too bad, but I was still running late. I pride myself highly in my ability to go from athletic to socially acceptable in a short amount of time though!

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(I haven’t mentioned this in a while, but I’m crazily getting near the end of my year of selfies-where did the time go??)

Class was class. We’re doing the endocrine system in Physiology which I like! I think Physiology is the coolest thing, and I’m excited I’m going into that field! I just want to know everything about everything.

Lunch was at the dining hall, and it was one I was pretty excited for. My favorite cabbage salad was on the menu, along with arugula, pear, and bleu cheese pizza.

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I had a little nonfat mango froyo for dessert.

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My afternoon was spent doing laundry and catching up on things. I broke in the late afternoon to hit up the gym for some spin. It’s been far too long since I’ve been on a bike, so I did a 45 minute ride on my own with about 20 minutes of HIIT intervals in the middle. Those are killer!

Since I had a snacky afternoon, I wasn’t super hungry for dinner so I went with a basic yogurt bowl with raisins, cereal, and sun butter.

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I haven’t had one of these in far too long, and it definitely hit the spot!

So…getting back into healthy eating, healthy habits, healthy living. One cool thing about having a blog is that you get to look back on old pictures and posts and see what you were eating a year or two ago, and what exercise you did, what your life was like. I’m not going to go on a rant about how I’ve been eating terribly and need to hop back on the bandwagon and be super strict and eat super healthy, because that’s not true. I’m not eating terribly, and I’m not skipping a ton of workouts. But there is always room for improvement-old posts offer inspiration. For example, I’m reminded by all the healthy dorm room snacks I used to make and haven’t thought of in a while. I would really like to get back into the less-sugar laden dessert alternatives I used to enjoy-right now all I’ve been having are sugary dining hall desserts or dark chocolate (which can cause other issues with the caffeine and my sensitivities to that right now). After this race, I also might kick it up a little with the workouts while my weekly mileage isn’t too crazy. On that note, here are a few old pictures of ideas and snacks I’ve loved:

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Whole grain cereal with chocolate milk and peanut butter (the nut butter is no longer an option though for me!).

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Chocolate Greek yogurt- yogurt, cocoa powder, and brown rice syrup. Perfect for post workout recovery!

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Apple microwaved with cinnamon.

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Microwave eggs with cheese, pesto, and avocado (although I’m allergic to most pestos now…)

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Yogurt bowl-the best ever is made with vanilla Greek yogurt, pumpkin bread, and sun butter.

What are some of your go-to healthy desserts/snacks?

 

Day 1

Well, it begins. My 4 week long project! One day in and I’m feeling excited and ready. And I may or may not already have decided that the first thing I’m going to eat when this is over is froyo…I digress. 

In terms of data for this-this morning I took weight and general observations (I’m hoping my foot problems magically disappear-a girl can dream, right?) about how I feel. Tonight, my sister is going to do blood pressure. The blood sugar tests came in time, but the kit didn’t come with the lancets (the things that poke you), so I didn’t do that. Since I still haven’t made it to the store to get them, there’s a good chance I’m just going to prick myself with a (sanitized) needle tomorrow morning so I can get the reading. 

A lot of you wanted recipes for this process, so I’m going to go over everything-I did a lot of food prep today and yesterday, so instead of just dumping every recipe on you guys today, I’m going to post recipes/foods as I eat them. 

Here’s some of the prep that I did though.

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(This will be in more detail tomorrow.)

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Yeah…I’m pretty sure we’re set on meat. Which is probably good-whenever I clean up my eating, I start craving meat like crazy! Last night for dinner, my dad grilled Greek seasoned chicken for our salads, so he threw a few extra things on the grill for us! The turkey burgers are pre-seasoned with Italian seasoning (but don’t worry-nothing weird!), plus garlic powder and salt and pepper. The chicken is seasoned with garlic powder, salt, pepper, and an Italian herb blend. I’m planning on freezing some of this for next week-seasoned and grilled chicken is way better than just plain chicken!

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Veggies getting cooked up.

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A week of lunches all packed up. 

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Homemade ketchup from The Fat Chance Cookbook (which was my inspiration for this project).

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Pre-workout Energy Balls. This is a recipe I’ll go ahead and post now! I kind of just threw it together-for me, it’s functional more than anything! I need something in my stomach before morning runs, and what I had been eating was Thinkthin Divine bars, which are chocolate coconut. I ended up using coconut flour instead of coconut, which worked out amazingly well, as it completely held these balls together. This recipe is functional more than anything-it may be a bit bland, so feel free to add a little honey, chocolate chips, raisins, nuts, etc!

1 banana, heated and mashed

1/2 c rolled oats

1/8 coconut flour

1/2 t vanilla

1 T cocoa powder

2 T chia seeds

Mix well, and roll into balls.

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So…I’m sure everyone is curious-what did I eat today?

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Homemade cappuccino-my mom really wanted me to try one from her Nespresso! It was good, but not quite the quality of my favorite place!

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Breakfast-two sunny side up eggs and blueberries. It occurred to me that I won’t have a chance for some nice eggs in a while-dining hall eggs are much more suspect, and this is way more interesting than hardboiled!

After breakfast and food prep, I headed to the track for a speed/Crossfit style workout. I was disappointed I couldn’t do today’s Crossfit workout-squats are not happening for me right now (although my knee is definitely getting better), so I’m looking at this as an opportunity to really work on other things. 

I started with a half mile warm up, and then did 10×200. And then this WOD:

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This was originally going to be 4 rounds, but it was taking forever! The lunges are 50 EACH. I broke up the middle parts into 2 sets of 25 lunges, 20 sit ups, 15 push ups, and 10 hollow rocks. I did both back and front lunges (about half and half) to mix it up. My legs were definitely feeling it by the end!

Lunch was quick.

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I made my butternut squash soup with cranberry relish, but for the relish, instead of adding sugar, I swapped out about half of the cranberries for one apple so it wouldn’t be quite so tart. Topped with creme fraiche. I also had a few bites of grilled chicken, and a small piece of 100% chocolate.

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(This is the cranberry relish.)

I had Chem section today, so I rushed back in time for that. Afterwards, I had a small snack of one of my energy balls and a little sunflower seed butter.

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I really like this sunflower seed butter-the only ingredients are sunflower seeds and salt-the other brand I normally buy is lightly sweetened, and their unsweetened type is pretty bad. 

I went to a Yogalates class as well today. I’m not sure if I mentioned this before, but somehow I committed to teaching yoga at one of my sorority recruitment events, and given I’m the most inflexible person ever, that will be interesting. Anyways, I wanted to go to a couple of classes before then. This was mostly Pilates, but I definitely felt the burn!

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Here’s dinner-a turkey burger with homemade ketchup (although these turkey burgers are so good I’d actually rather eat them without), lettuce leftover from our ski trip supply, homemade Balsamic dressing, and roasted cauliflower with cumin. I’m not normally a cauliflower person, but I really like it roasted this way! It’s basically just olive oil, cumin seeds, salt, and pepper, in the oven for about 20 minutes. The recipe called for a yogurt sauce-yogurt, a pinch of salt, and fresh mint. I actually might have liked it better just as is, but I think I like the idea of adding mint and yogurt to salads. Also-homemade ketchup+yogurt for a healthy 1000 island? Maybe?

I had a lot more salad than this afterwards-it just wouldn’t fit! And then I ended with an orange. It turns out the oranges from last week’s CSA boxes are blood oranges!

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So….how was today? I ate well. I didn’t miss anything. But I’m tired. I’m definitely low on sleep from ski trip, and without my usual daily shots of sugar, I’m feeling it a bit more. After section, I had to keep reminding myself that I was not hungry, I was tired. So yeah. Sleep would be good. Lack of sleep probably does lead me to eat worse things in general. However, I’m not looking at a TON of sleep in the near future-at least not tomorrow. I still have a million things to do today and I can’t sleep in tomorrow because I have to train quidditch. So we shall see…

But in terms of food-I feel really good! I felt happy today (until the tiredness hit), and I’m excited about this. Everything is pretty much already laid out for me to eat the rest of the week, so I don’t anticipate too many problems. I’m confidant that I won’t cheat on this, because I’m much more committed than just saying “I’m not eating sugar for a while.” I’m  taking data and trying to prove a point, so I’m not giving myself the option to not make it through. Plus, with all this delicious food, it shouldn’t be an issue!

What else do you want me to touch on with this project?