Wow it’s been a while, but I think it’s finally time I come back to this space. I have a recipe! I’ve had the picture of the recipe jotted down on a sticky note sitting on my desktop for at least a year, so I figured it was time. But I figured, why not pair it with a full day of eating, one that includes said muffins?

These muffins are mainly pumpkin and sunflower seed butter. My dad is on a low-carb diet, so he loved them for this reason! It might be more fair to call them mini-pumpkin pies, as they have more of a soufflé texture. The can be made with any nut butter. Fair warning with sunbutter though, the reaction between the sunbutter and baking soda turns these green after a day or so! They still taste exactly the same, they just look a *little* less festive. So, let’s dive right in!

Preworkout: a handful of Trader Joe’s Pumpkin O’s while pondering life. I did a truly horrible workout yesterday that involved a TON of back squats and like 80 lunges so I woke up with my legs a completely new level of destroyed, and it took everything in me to go to my garage and get a workout in. I had to modify from my original plan because I really had no desire to bend my knees. My workout included strict press, RDLs, box jumps, and DB rows.

Breakfast:

For whatever reason, this has been my quarantine breakfast of choice, although lately I’ve been switching it up a little bit. Protein hot chocolate with soy milk, dark cocoa powder, 1/2 scoop of protein powder, and then for this one I added orange flavoring.

Lunch:

After a morning full of zooming (my current rotation is almost entirely virtual), I made a salad with turkey, dates, goat cheese, and Italian dressing. Some homemade chocolate for something sweet after lunch!

Snack:

A couple of green muffins in all their glory!

Dinner:

I door dashed kombucha the other day. I’m slightly embarrassed by this. However, the undergrads just came flooding back into town and I REALLY want to avoid going out more than I have to with COVID risks. I’m also traveling for school in a couple of weeks and in the process will be seeing a lot of people I don’t normally see, and I don’t want to bring anything to them either. Between COVID risks and the crazy wildfires, I haven’t left my house since Monday morning with the exception of the short trip to my garage. The fires this year have been scary, sad, and suffocating. When it’s smoky for months on end, and you see what all is getting destroyed and hearing about evacuations, it really does feel like the end of the world.

Anyway, I had some kombucha with dinner.

For dinner, I made a spaghetti squash bowl with Trader Joe’s fall harvest salsa and fresh mozzarella.

For something sweet and some protein afterwards (because my legs were still dying), I had cottage cheese with pumpkin butter. I know cottage cheese is a divisive subject but I mostly like it!

And to end the night, I had a protein bar.

And finally, a recipe, as promised!

Flourless Pumpkin Muffins

Ingredients:

1/2 cup sunbutter (or other nut butter)

1 can of pumpkin

1/4 cup maple syrup

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

3 tsp pumpkin pie spice

2 tsp cinnamon

1 egg

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Mix all ingredients into a bowl.
3. Scoop into 12 lined muffin cups.
4. Bake for 16-18 minutes.

We all know that nothing is normal right now. I’m starting to accept that this will be our new reality for a while now. With that realization comes new stresses and new challenges. While it can be hard, I’m still really trying to make the best of a really unfortunate situation and I definitely do not always succeed at that. With so many unknowns, from a personal perspective I’ve had a very stressful last few weeks.

Through all this, I’m extremely fortunate to have built up a pretty great home gym set-up, excluding my newest pride and joy, a spin bike. I’ve been on it on and off in the last month, but I was looking for a new challenge, so this past week, I decided to do one old spin class from each of the years I’ve been teaching. I have all my playlists online, and all my choreography on notecards in a big ziplock bag. So I have everything all the way from the beginning! Last weekend, I picked out my classes.

Doing that first class, it was crazy to think how my beginner spin teacher 20 year old self choreographed that all those years ago. Also, man has music changed…

That first class was hard. My legs were SHOT. But it was also SO fun.

The next morning was 2015.

The first couple of days, my legs were aching the rest of the day and I was pretty wiped out. While I’ve been doing some online classes on the bike, I haven’t done too many of my own classes and honestly my classes are just a different level.

It was also so interesting to think back on where I was in my life when I made these playlists. The 2016 playlist was the last class I taught at my undergrad before graduation. I got major half marathon flashbacks from my 2014 playlist because that was something I was big into during that time in my life.

Around day 4, things started feeling significantly easier and better. I could literally feel my fitness level changing just over the course of a couple of days.

Throughout this week, I had days where I was super stressed on the bike, super anxious on the bike, super sad on the bike. But coming out of today’s ride on day 6, I felt strong. I felt like myself again. What I love so much about spin, is it has the power to break you down and then build you up even stronger. Finding myself again on the bike is something I experienced the several times I went to IDEA World and did like 12 spin classes over the course of 4 days. I remember right before I started vet school, I went to IDEA World. At the time, I remember being so scared to start, so scared that it would be hard and I wouldn’t be able to do it. But on the bike while there, I had the realization that I can do hard things. And I can still do hard things. Here I am, 3 years later, in my last year of vet school, and I more than survived.

I’ve said this before, but throughout all kinds of life changes, the bike will be there for me. Granted, it wasn’t for most of COVID, but now that I have my own, it’s stuck with me!

Also, interestingly, I kept track of average power output for each class to see if I’ve become a harder or easier teacher, and it’s actually been just about the same for each class, the only classes that were a little bit lower were a couple minutes shorter. So I guess I’ve always been tough!

I can’t wait for the day that I can be back in a spin studio teaching again, but until then, I’ll continue to ride.

Hello hello! My last full day of eating I did was when we were 100% sheltered in place. Now, I’m still mostly home, but my current rotation lets me spend the mornings at school since we’re seeing appointments outside. It has been SO NICE going in every day, but I think Jackson has gotten used to me being home 24/7 so he has been extra needy….so let’s dive in!

Breakfast:

For whatever reason, this is the breakfast I’ve been having on repeat lately. Half a chocolate rice cake with sunbutter and protein hot chocolate. I make my protein hot chocolate with soy milk, cocoa, and chocolate protein. Lately I’ve really stepped up my game and got a few extracts, so this one was orange hot chocolate!

Lunch:

It’s funny, this has been my go-to lunch every day for years but I haven’t had it in months! Grilled chicken, peach, goat cheese salad, with a few crackers on the side.

Homemade chocolate for dessert!

We actually had rounds from 12:30 straight to 4 on Zoom, so I grabbed a bar as a snack during a 5 minute break.

For my workout, I took a pre-recorded spin class on IG live from my garage! It was 95 degrees out so that was less than ideal, but definitely not as bad as I was expecting.

Dinner:

This was a winner! I made taco meat with turkey, taco seasoning, truffle ketchup (I promise it’s not weird, it’s like extra good tomato paste), and little garlic. I put this on top of spaghetti squash, with cheese and guacamole. I have leftovers from this and I’m really excited to have it again tonight!

Dessert:

A serving of this ice cream.

Snacks:

A glass of red wine for Bachelor night, and then an unpictured caramel rice cake with sunbutter before bed.

Here in California and across most of the country, things are starting to slowly open up. I’m slowly but surely starting to spend some time in the vet hospital, and every day I get to go in, it’s so fun, so exciting, and such an amazing learning experience. In my first two weeks, I was only able to go in 4 days, but in that time I had the cutest kitten patient with a complicated issue, and I got to perform minor surgery by myself. That being said, it’s frustrating and challenging that we are still home SO MUCH. That’s kind of the purpose of my post today.

Given how amazing and fun it is the hours or days we get to go in, it’s really easy to think about what this year should have looked like. In the hospital every day, seeing multiple cases every day instead of a few a week, lots of hands on time, time collaborating with classmates and friends, wine nights with friends after a long week of work.

But when I step away from comparing my year to how it could have been, things feel much better. This week, I get to go in every day, albeit only for a couple of hours. I’m on the Behavior rotation, and with everything I’m learning now, I feel like I’ll be fairly competent to deal with some issues in practice. Extra time at home means extra snuggle time with the kitties. I’m learning how to cook all kinds of new (albeit basic…) things. I’m staying active. I’m way more tan than I ever expected to be this year…Last week I had the realization that with all these changes and a lot of time learning virtually, it really is up to me to take charge of my own education. This means more study time for things I feel like I will need in practice. There are a ton of online resources coming out with virtual rounds on all kinds of topics. Because I’m spending so much time at home, I’m preparing to be totally ready to crush my ER rotation by prepping and bringing all my energy (aka the energy of the last 3 months I’ve been home) to the hospital. I’m going to make the most of every day I get to be there.

I realize that my school situation is sort of unique right now, and I didn’t intend this to be the main focus of today’s post. Today’s post is all about changing your mindset.

So to address the title of the post: yes, I got stronger during quarantine. I realize that I ended up in a lucky situation to have more access to weights, but stay with me here.

We were sheltered in place with gyms closed for 3 months. Prior to quarantine, I was doing a squat program and getting stronger, and I was teaching regular spin classes and in great cardiovascular shape. Of course, when quarantine hit, I worried about how I would lose all that fitness. But it’s all about working with what you’ve got.

I know mentally, quarantine has been challenging for a lot of people, myself included. 90% of the time I’ve managed to stay positive and find joy in the small things.

Lifting weights has been one of the best things for keeping me sane. I’m super lucky that I ended up with a pretty great garage gym setup thanks to my gym renting out barbells and weights, as well as some other equipment acquisitions, but it doesn’t have to be that fancy. I started out with a single dumbbell and learned you can do quite a lot with just that.

As things got challenging at times during this period, I got to feel strong. This is why I love weight lifting for myself but for everyone. You get to feel strong, and it goes beyond just the “weight room” (aka my garage right now). When it feels like the world is falling apart around you, it helps so much to have something constant, something that makes you feel powerful and like you’re still able to control your life. Because ultimately, even though it may not feel like it, we still have control. We control our situations. We control our mindset. You can choose to look at the positives. I have so many great memories that came from staying at home in quarantine. I’m not writing the past 3 months off as a complete wash. I may not be in the hospital as much as I was hoping but I’m still learning a ton.

As things start opening up, life still won’t be “normal” for a while, and we need to remember to still find beauty in the little things, joy in the simple things, and lightness in an era of heaviness. We cannot just let the entire year pass without getting something from it. Perhaps the lesson we can learn is how to make the most of the situation we’re in. We get to narrate our own stories; we set the tone. The story is not over.