Monthly Archives: July 2013

WIAW-Protein!

Date: July 16, 2013

Author: astottler

Happy Wednesday! Thanks as always to Jenn for putting on this foodie party every week!

Since today (Tuesday) was the MLB all-star game, I planned by workouts for the week around having a window open to watch. (It was a disappointing game for the NL, and only 1 Giant even got to play. Boo.) As a result, I went to morning instead of evening Crossfit.

Before 7am Crossfit, so I had a Thinkthin bar. Crossfit was a good one- 10,9,8…1 of pull ups and kettle bell swings, with 100m sprint in between.

And guess what? I may have sort have gotten myself a job for the summer. The manager of my Crossfit box was talking about how he needed someone to sweep/clean the box for free membership, so I volunteered! I don’t have unlimited class access for this month, so that would be awesome! Plus, I would love knowing everything is clean and sanitary.

After Crossfit, I drove out to the bay to get in a training run.

I had 4 miles on the schedule for today, but since I ran about a mile in Crossfit (between the warm up and the WOD), I stuck to 3.

And guess what? I somehow managed to get an appointment with the foot doctor on Thursday. Hopefully he can help me figure out a way to run pain-free, which would be amazing.

After my run, I got a quick rowing workout in. I’ve lost a lot of upper body strength, and rowing is a great way to build that up. Of course the millions of pull-ups (banded) I do at Crossfit help with that too….But yeahh my rowing shape? Not so great today. I probably spent a total of 30 minutes on the erg today.

After all that, it was shopping time! I went to Whole Foods for some Chocolate Almond milk, and picked up some coffee with almond milk to go.

I really, really didn’t like this. I’m not a big coffee fan, but this just tasted sour to me. Maybe it’s because it was a light roast? I’ve never had light roast before, and I guess I usually just have cappuccinos when I drink coffee (so sophisticated, I know). I wanted to drink as much as I could because I paid for it, but in the end I tossed about half of it.

Then, it was on to GNC for the much-coveted Quest bars. I’ve only had tried them once a long time ago, but since everyone has been raving about them, it was time to check them out again. Plus, I eat Thinkthin bars as pre-run/pre-workout fuel, and they were getting old. Quest bars seemed to have a similar nutritional profile, so I thought I’d give them a try.

*Note: Sadly, I was not compensated by Quest to review this product so I had to go out and buy them myself. 🙁 All opinions are my own.*

They were buy 2 get 1 free, so naturally I had to try ALL the flavors, right??

Soooo if I buy enough protein, will it lift the weights and build the muscles for me?

I immediately broke into the cookie dough.

It was really good! After a few bites, I heated it up. After having it hot, I don’t think I can go back to having it cold. YUM.

HOWEVER. Here’s my one big thing. I HATE the taste of stevia. This has stevia, which didn’t bother me while I was actually eating it, but left a really weird/gross taste in my mouth for a long time afterwards. I separated the bars into 2 piles-those with stevia, and those without. I’m pretty sure I’m going to like those without way more. I had a bite of the apple pie, which has no stevia and I really liked it.

Here’s my other issue with these bars-although they don’t have all that many ingredients, they do have a lot of artificial, weird things. I lot of them have quite a bit of sugar alcohols, which are known to upset stomachs. So I may have felt that a little today.

Overall, I like these bars. I’m a little scared to eat them pre-run though, and I’m almost positive I’ll like the ones without stevia way better.

Enough of that, onto other food as of late! (Not just today, just haven’t posted it yet!)

Egg scramble with spinach, garlic and herb laughing cow, and cheddar.

Cheesy garlic and herb brussels sprouts and sausage from Carrots n Cake. This was of course delicious, and perfectly satisfying. I used sun-dried tomato chicken sausage, and the flavors worked really well. I would recommend making this! I think we’re going to use the rest of the sausage over spaghetti squash and tomato sauce.

A healthy protein mug cake: chocolate protein powder, cocoa powder, half a banana, baking powder, vanilla, coconut flour, egg whites, and bittersweet chocolate chips. The chocolate chips definitely make mug cakes.

Snap peas and leftover dijon vinaigrette.

Peaches literally the size of softballs. This picture doesn’t do them justice. Gotta love Costco!

Most of the sweet potatoes we have are orange, but I got some amazing white ones at the farmer’s market the other week. I’ve been trying to find that kind ever since! These ones looked a little different in color on the outside, so I thought maybe they were the white variety. Imagine my surprise when we cut them open! I kind of love purple sweet potatoes, so this was just fine with me!

Complete with rotisserie chicken and mango barbecue sauce, and spinach and mushrooms sauteed with garlic and olive oil.

Some other random things:

1. I’ve spent some time lately writing blog posts “for a rainy day.” As in, when I’m back in school and life gets just a little too crazy. Don’t want to leave you guys hanging! I want to have a nice little arsenal for before school starts.

2. I ordered some workout tanks! I’m super excited; two of them have already shipped! I made some custom Fitness is Sweet tanks, plus another workout tank not designed by me. I’ll leave you all in suspense until they arrive 🙂

3. After a lot of thought and deliberation, I’ve decided not to go to Healthy Living Summit. I really wanted to go, but it doesn’t exactly make sense for me this year. It’s across the country, it’s right before I start school, I don’t know anyone going, it’s pricy, and my blog is not even a year old. I thinking that next year would make a lot more sense.

And with that, have a great week!

Do you like Quest bars? What is your favorite flavor? Thoughts on Stevia?

I could do a whole post on my personal thoughts on stevia, but that could create a big old controversy!

Running Mistakes

Date: July 15, 2013

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Happy Monday! First off, go check out my guest post today on Positive Thinking!

Since it’s Monday, let’s catch up on some weekend eats and things.

Mango Chobani, mango, granola, and sunflower seed butter.

Saturday morning I had to go to the doctor’s office to get my blood ~~stolen~~ drawn for my nut allergy test. It was one of the best experiences I’ve had getting my blood drawn-I only left with one hole in my arm. Yeah, I’m one of those people with impossible veins to find. Last time I walked out with a bandage on each arm, shaking. I’ve had enough really bad experiences with it that it really is traumatizing for me now.

I also saw Despicable Me 2 on Saturday! My biggest takeaway! I want a guacamole hat! Where can I get one? Anyone want to make one and send it to me??

Also, fellow rowers out there, please tell me you thought about rowing when Gru was in that boat rowing and the minions were ‘coxing’ him? My whole family laughed at me because that sounded just about right.

After my intense desire for a guac hat, we decided to go to Chipotle. Fun fact: I’ve never been to a Chipotle before. I got a burrito bowl with chicken.

The verdict? It was okay. I feel like I’ve had something else better somewhere else. I mean I liked it, but not sure I’d go there a ton again.

And frozen yogurt was conveniently next door, so it’s no surprise what came next…

I had a big dilemma here. See that pink blob? I REALLY didn’t want that there ruining the picture, but I REALLY wanted to try watermelon sorbet. So guess what won out? Yeahhh. So the rest there is dulce de leche and chocolate froyo with blueberries and candy. At this particular froyo place, I always get too much candy. It’s in these dispensers where it comes out WAY too fast.

Other Saturday highlight? Watching Tim Lincecum’s no hitter 🙂

Sunday was my big run day. My longest run of half training. Unfortunately, I ate WAYY too much on Saturday and woke up with a stomacheache. I ate my normal breakfast and tried to wait it out, which worked. However, that kind of came back to bite me in the butt a little later on…

I actually have been really enjoying these long runs. My 6 mile and 8 mile long runs at the beginning of training were torture, mostly because I took them too fast. I felt really good on this run-I felt better at the halfway point than I have in my other, shorter runs’ halfway points. I felt like I could push the pace a little more, but my feet were kind of an issue. I had to walk a few steps every few miles to try and shake some of the pain out of my toes. I swear I’d be way faster if my feet didn’t hate me!

Around mile 9, I started to pay for some of my mistakes. Mistake 1: I tossed my water too early. I hate having to carry it, so when I’m close enough to being done I toss whatever is left. Not only did I toss it too early, I didn’t drink that much earlier in the run. I tossed it around mile 7 or 8, and my stomach started cramping at the end of the run, and especially badly in the last .3 miles. Mistake 2: eating breakfast too early before running. Since I delayed my run due to a stomachache, I was STARVING by the end of the run, and I definitely ran out of gas in the last few miles (in comparison to my 11 miler last week where I ran my fastest mile as the 11th mile). So in the future, I need to stick to my normal time frame (and eat better the night before). I think for race day, I’m going to carry an extra goo in case some thing like this happens.

But in the end? Who cares. I ran 12 miles. Pace Shmace. All I care about now is that I’m confidant I can finish the 13.1 miles.

I put my compression socks on first thing when I got back (and I immediately felt better-how is this possible?). I also drank a TON of water. I wish I had weighed myself before I left so I could have figured out how much water I lost. Next time. My legs were actually feeling pretty ok by the end of the day.

Post run lunch!

Smoothie with pineapple coconut water, pineapple, and mango.

Turkey burger and chips and guac.

I spent the afternoon basically not moving. I did write out my training plan for my next half though! How exciting is that?? Most of my training is actually before school starts, which is a little easier.

I wrote out the same training plan as this time, but I’m not exactly going to follow it. I’m only planning on running 3x per week, instead of 4. I figured I’d have the 4 down though so I could pick and choose if I wanted to run more times. We shall see. Another major difference in my training will be the types of runs I’ll be doing. Most of my training runs for this race have been slow and flat. I’m going to work on running harder a little more the next time around, especially since I’m only doing 2 short runs (plus a long one). I also need to run more hills because I’m doing the Nike Women’s in SF, and let’s just say that it’s not flat.

Dinner was BBQ chicken salad. We had mango BBQ sauce so we added mangoes to the salad as well.

Also in the mix-corn, tomato, red pepper, and avocado. Tossed in an olive oil/lime juice mixture. Yum!

I also had a huge blueberry bread craving. While this stuff isn’t at all healthy, it is the best thing ever.

Can adding extra blueberries count as healthifying it?

And it’s in bread (not muffin) form because everything is better in bread form.

And who actually waits for it to cool anyways?

I’m pretty sure I negated my entire run given how much of this stuff I ate 🙂

So good.

I have a ton of random things that need to be done this week-figure out self hosting, maybe order a Fitness is Sweet shirt, do some long-overdue Nutritional research for a professor, study for a midterm, and decide/book Healthy Living Summit…I better get to work!

Bread or muffin form? Muffins or cupcakes?

Bodyweight Benchmark

Date: July 12, 2013

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hey guys! First I’ve been meaning to say this-I’ve been really awful about commenting on other people’s posts lately. I’m still reading blogs but I’ve gotten a little lazy!

This morning I had an early doctor’s appointment, so I just had a quick breakfast. I tried my new caramel pineapple Chobani!

It was pretty good. I liked it but it’s not my first choice.

My friend Jessica tweeted me the other day saying that she didn’t like this flavor, and Chobani tweeted her back! Whoops!

After my appointment, I finished up some work in the lab, since it’s right next to the doctor. Afterwards, my mom and I stopped by Fleet Feet, the place I got my running shoes, to pick up some more Cliff goo, since that’s the only place I’ve seen it. I like Cliff because it has all normal ingredients, and therefore tastes fine. We walked through the downtown area, and suddenly felt tea-deprived. Since we were South-ish, I remembered a place about 20 minutes away that I’ve been wanting to try ever since I saw it on Gina‘s blog: Bumble.

It’s a super cute place. It has “tea for two” as well as a lot of other healthy and delicious sounding things. My mom and I chose the tea for two. This would be a great place to take kids as well; they even had a sandbox in the front.

We ordered a pot of Earl Grey-it seemed like the perfect tea for a ‘tea party.’

The “tea for two” included 2 scones, 2 tea sandwiches of choice, and 2 cookies. We decided on the egg salad, and the Brie, honey, and pecan.

One scone was chocolate chip with cinnamon, and the other was savory with cheddar cheese and bacon. We split them, but I picked out the bacon. They were both delicious. I know, I said I would avoid gluten this week. To kind of make up for it, I ate my sandwiches open faced. That kind of helps, right? The cookies were chocolate chip and chocolate with peanut butter chips.

Everything was delicious and thoroughly enjoyed. It was about the right amount of food-I was worried it would be too much, but I left full but not overly stuffed. However,given all the bread products, a nap was in order, with my favorite nap buddy.

I ended up skipping today’s run. I was sore and tired, and with the running I’ve done in Crossfit, I only really am a mile short of the weekly plan so I have no problem with that. Crossfit tonight was surprisingly deadly. It was all the things I’m the worst at. In general, I’m not a fast person. Anything with bodyweight will be bad more me just because I’m slow. I do way better at anything with weights-I can Rx most lifts, but I can’t even do a pull up! This was the workout:

5 rounds of:

200m run

10 push ups

15 burpees

20 lunges (each leg)

This is a workout any of you guys can do-no special equipment or experience necessary! While this killed me (I barely made it under the cutoff time…), I think it’s something I can drastically improve on. I want to try it in a month or so to see how much I can improve. Now that I’m not doing softball, I don’t do a ton involving speed. And half marathon training doesn’t exactly make you quick. So we’ll see. Also, my Crossfit coach wanted me to enter a rookie Crossfit competition in August, but I’m leaving for Hawaii that day! Darn! That would have been so fun! (Not that Hawaii won’t be fun…) I really want to do a competition at some point though. It might help if I can do a pull up first…

Anyways, here’s dinner. Teriyaki chicken, tomatoes and basil, steamed veggies, an artichoke, and some sourdough. Hit the spot!

Have a great weekend!

Do you like to compete?

Kitten Updates

Date: July 11, 2013

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hey guys! I haven’t posted in a couple of nights so let’s go through a 2-day recap! Wednesday morning started with a kefir/granola/sunflower seed butter cup, with a side of a plum.

Note to self-this is not the best pre-run fuel. I was getting a little tired of my pre-run breakfast, so I went with something different and it was not a great idea. I had a stomachache before the run even started but it ended up not being too much of an issue.

I pushed the pace a little bit more than I have lately, but here are some scenes WHILE running, since I ran with my phone for music.

This was my attempt to catch a picture of the bunnies I saw. You can sort of see them in the distance!

After my run, I had to go down to school to work in the lab, and then go to class. I drove half an hour down there, only to realize I forgot both my key card to get in the building and my key to get in the door. Awesome. I had to go all the way back home, losing an hour. That was a pain.

After class, I had a slowpitch softball game. The difference? I was pitching. Yikes. For those of you that don’t know, I was a fastpitch pitcher for…well basically forever. Our normal pitcher was gone, so that left me to give it a try. Let’s just say it wasn’t pretty. Fastpitch and slowpitch are slightly similar, but very different, which basically made it a mess. Let’s just say that pitching fastpitch does NOT translate to slowpitch. Plus, in slowpitch there are these weird rules that females bat with an eleven inch ball, while males bat with a twelve inch ball. As a pitcher in the past, I was super sensitive about different BRANDS of balls (I could name the brand and model of the balls with my eyes closed). So you can imagine what different SIZES of balls did to me. Needless to say I drowned my sorrows in froyo.

YUM. This is my favorite froyo place. I got salted caramel pretzel and chocolate with heath bar on one side, and tart mango and tart with fruit on the other side. Since my goal this week was no gluten, I had to make the sacrifice of choosing heath instead of brownie. I know, I have a hard life. I was going to blog last night but then I made the smart decision to actually go to bed at a reasonable time!

This morning, I was up early for the kitten nursery. There aren’t a ton of litters right now, so that all was fairly quick. A lot of the kittens are sick-nothing serious, just eye injections and colds, but it was spreading at an alarming rate. When we deal with kittens and clean their cages, we bleach EVERYTHING. Everything is bleached between litters, including the scale we weigh them on. Well, it turns out someone replaced all the bleach bottles with water, which is why things were spreading. Anyways, I did get some pictures of the youngest litter. They were even smaller last week!

The kittens are very vocal, especially when they’re hungry!

We actually had a little issue with this litter. As in, one kitten went to the bathroom right on top of ALL the kittens paperwork, which included where we record their weights and eating habits 3x a day, for al long as they’ve been here. So that was an issue.

This is from the litter that we bottle fed a few weeks ago. How on earth did they get so BIG? It’s crazy!

Here’s the steps going up from the kitten nursery to the cat shelter. I love this.

After finishing up at the shelter, I had to hurry down to school to meet with my research professor, only to get there and find out the meeting was cancelled. That wasn’t a huge deal because I had to be down there anyways to do research.
After lunch, I headed out to the bay to run. I wanted to see how far north the trail I’ve been running on goes-I had previously thought I was at the end but then I discovered another path. Before my run, I made the decision to take it at a super easy pace. I pushed the pace yesterday, and this is my heaviest week of my training plan, so I want to just get through it. It turned into a no music run because it was too windy to hear anything. I actually enjoyed the run, although it seemed to take forever. And as it turns out, a slower pace is way harder on my calves. Which have been sore ever since I didn’t wear compression socks after my long run. Smart.
For some pre-Crossfit fuel, I whipped up a smoothie with the dark chocolate almond milk in danger of expiring, a handful of spinach, half a frozen banana, a pinch of xantham gum, and a handful of ice.

This came out a lot better than I was expecting-I could only taste a hint of spinach, which just made it all the more refreshing. Oh how I love my Vitamix.
My afternoon was spent hanging out with my cat, wearing compression socks, and catching up on blogs.

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I love that guy.
While doing the WOD at Crossfit today, it occurred to me that I should probably consider the running I do in Crossfit. I mean, I ran a mile in Crossfit today, which pushes my mileage to 5 for the day. I might stick to 3 tomorrow instead of 4 because it’s likely I’ll run more at Crossfit tomorrow. Thoughts?
Dinner tonight was a good one.
Guacamole for the vegetables: the before and after.

Plus turkey burgers (my current favorite thing) and zucchini fries.

My dad also grilled up some pineapple, which I ended up adding to a little vanilla frozen yogurt.

Overall, it was a good day! And, now I have brand spanking new tires so I can nail those hairpin turns going 60. I kid. Have a great week everyone!
Do you have any funny pet stories?
Hmm maybe mine is the time my GIANT black cat chased the pet sitter around the house? The pet sitter refused to come back!

WIAW-Procrastination

Date: July 9, 2013

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Do you guys know how much I like Tuesday nights? Why do I love Tuesday nights? I get to write up my WIAW post! Thanks a ton Jenn!

I’m actually going to do this post sort of backwards, starting at dinner because I have a recipe for you all!

As you’ve seen on my blog before, at least once a week during school I would head over to one of the bazillion Coupa Cafe’s on campus and order the Beverly Hills chopped salad.

Well, tonight, my mom and I decided to try and recreate it. And I must say, it turned out pretty darn good! However, since this is Northern CA, I’m renaming it the California Chop Salad, because we need some love up north here too.

California Chop Salad

Serves About 3

For the dressing:

3/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
3 tablespoons Dijon mustard
2 shallots, quartered
1 garlic clove, halved
Pinch of sugar

Blend in food processor until smooth. We actually had leftover dressing, so add as much or as little as you choose.

For the salad (roughly):

1/2 large heirloom tomato
2/3 c grated gouda
8 asparagus spears
3 c mixed greens
2 shredded chicken breasts
10 chopped kalamata olives
1 chopped avocado

Feel free to chop everything up as fine as you like. Toss everything together except for the cheese, and then serve with the cheese on top. Enjoy! I know I did!

And now that that’s out of the way, let’s back up. First, let me start by saying I have to write a paper tonight, but I figured blogging would get my writing juices flowing. The paper was on a sleep intervention I gave myself. Let’s just say it didn’t go as planned, but it’s fine if the intervention sort of failed. Let’s jump back to this morning, shall we?

No pictures of my breakfast, but it looked about like this.

The plan was to get my 4 miles in before yoga, but I quickly realized I scheduled myself way to tightly and that was just not going to work out. After yoga, I was feeling a little too zen-ed out to run, so I went to Whole Foods for lunch. I got the salad bar-and I’m not one to pass up the opportunity to try avocado vinaigrette!

The dressing wasn’t bad but I just didn’t enjoy this salad. I’m terrible and putting together my own salads from the salad bar-I just can’t get the correct mix of things. Oh well.

After shopping around a little, I decided on a blueberry muffin. I guess this was my one last test to see if gluten affected me-or whatever. I’m not really sure what I was thinking.

It was delicious and totally what I was wanting, but I pretty much immediately got a stomachache. Boo. Also, have I mentioned that carbs tend to make me crave more food? Here are some snacks from the day. At least they were delicious and somewhat healthy!

I saw these on a giveaway yesterday and was intrigued. Nut and gluten free! I tried a bit of one, because I can’t buy something new and not try it right away.

I also got this Chobani to try. OMG was it good! I can’t wait until just the coconut is available in stores! I mean, I can’t describe how good this actually was. So do yourselves a favor and go out and buy it.

I also enjoyed the company of this guy.

Aaand one more snack-Smoked Gouda popcorn. And yes, it is as good as it sounds.

This evening, I went to Crossfit. It was hard, but good. For the strength, we worked on snatches, which felt really good. I haven’t been able to do anything like hang cleans or snatches in a loooong time because my gym at school didn’t have bumpers, so this was a lot of fun for me. Plus, not gonna lie, I like showing off my weight lifting. I didn’t go super heavy for me since it had been a little while and I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it was fun.

The WOD was HARD. I think it was because the push presses were pretty heavy for me-75 lbs, but I Rxed it. Here it is:

3 rounds with 1 min rest in between of:

5 minutes: 400m run and then AMRAP of push press and Sumo Deadlift High Pull.

I got in 3 rounds plus 15. I don’t think I’ve ever done a sumo deadlift high pull before, but I’ve done a sumo deadlift and a high pull, so basically the same, right??

And here are some last eats from dinner. My mom had a stressful day so she got us eclairs 🙂 I can’t complain-I’ll start the whole no gluten thing tomorrow.

Are you a procrastinator, or is it just me?