Monthly Archives: August 2013

Crossfit Crazy

Date: August 17, 2013

Author: astottler

Hey everyone! Long time no post, right? Thank you so much for your comments on the last post. I loved hearing your thoughts!

Let’s go back a few days, shall we? Wednesday was my last day of Health Psych, and I had a final. I had to do some last minute studying after spin, which meant no nap. So therefore, a cappuccino was a necessity. One bonus to making your own-you can add as much milk foam as you want 🙂

Every time I drive in to school, I’m amazed by how beautiful my campus is. Always perfectly sunny.

My final went well, and I finished early enough to come home and relax before Crossfit. Given the title of the post, I thought I’d share this week’s WODs with you.

Wednesday’s strength portion was back squats. At my box, we have quarters of the year-every quarter we work on different strength lifts. I think last quarter it was cleans and deadlifts-too bad because I would have loved that! This quarter it is snatches, back squats, and presses. Presses are hard for me-I’m bad at anything overhead, and I’m so used to push presses! I do love back squatting though. Anyways, here’s the WOD:

4 rounds:

5 Deadlifts

10 Toes to Bar

100 double unders

This workout doesn’t look bad, right? The deadlifts were on the heavy side but definitely doable (155 for me). The killer? Apparently if you can’t do double unders, the sub is 3-to-1 single unders. Which meant I did 1200 single unders….Ouch. The good news? My calf held up great! So hey, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right?

Dinner was a good one. We made sloppy joes with turkey meat, and chopped in celery for some extra veggies. Served with a sweet potato with cheddar and coleslaw.

The highlight really though was “dessert.” My neighbor brought us a ton of fruit from his fruit trees the other day!

That’s a ton of apples! But I had an idea for them-never fear!

I saw a recipe for apple custard on Sugar Free Mom a while back and have been wanting to make it ever since. The recipe is super simple-and no sweetener- just apples!

I made a quick whipped cream-just heavy whipping cream whipped up, no sugar. Sadly, I had a slight mishap that ended with cream shooting all over the kitchen, so I never really got to the point of stiff peaks. But still good enough for me!

(Sidenote- don’t try whipping cream in too small a bowl so that little flecks spray out, and then try covering the bowl with saran wrap while you whip….)

I REALLY liked this. The touch of nutmeg reminded me of the holidays. I think this would be better if it was blended a little more, and maybe even with different apples. I’m thinking I can easily make a lazy college student version with apple sauce in the microwave! And the best part? It was a great snack the next day too! I highly recommend this recipe!

Thursday morning was a little crazy-kitten nursery and then straight to a meeting with my professor. The good news is my little black kitten is doing infinitely better! He’s gained weight and is incredibly playful. Naturally I kind of hoarded him….and took tons of pictures. Black cats who are super energetic do not photograph well though.

The only issue with my shift-we have a really small shift to start with, and somehow I ended up having to syringe feed an entire litter of kittens by myself. Kittens are surprisingly not receptive to having food shoved in their mouths…It was bad because I had to leave by a certain time, but all worked out in the end.

I’m starting to rethink my career choice. The current plan is to do nutritional research. Which still sounds really appealing. But at the same time, I love animals, and I love working with these kittens. So maybe a vet? I’m doing animal behavior research this summer which does connect. I would never want to do surgery though! I couldn’t handle that.

Thursday I was planning to do a mile run and then Crossfit. I don’t want to shock my calf when I start training again next week. However, the calf soreness starting coming in in force (yayy 1200 jump ropes…). My whole body just was not feeling anything at all, so I took a rest day. I don’t plan rest days into my schedule, and this is why. It’s easier for me to just judge when my body needs a break, and give it a day then.

Dinner was turkey burgers, with an idea stolen from Audrey. Stuffing a burger with laughing cow! We had turkey burgers filled with a triangle of garlic and herb laughing cow. This was good, but would have been better if our grill hadn’t died. We have to make the burgers in the oven, and that combined with unseasoned meat led to really bland burgers. On the side was green beans and sweet potato wedges.

On Friday, I had lunch plans with my best friends from high school. I decided to at least try to look somewhat cute, so I wore a dress. And since I was proud of myself for making an effort, I look a selfie with horrible lighting.

I need a haircut really badly! I didn’t even realize how long my hair has gotten!

We went to lunch at a formerly Malaysian-turned-Chinese restaurant. We’ve been there a few times before before it was a Chinese place, and they still have many of the same menu items. We ordered Pad Thai, Curry Chicken, and Mango Chicken.

Everything was delicious, although I hope my face doesn’t rebel from the peanuts in the Pad Thai!

It was really great to talk with these friends. I haven’t seen them in so long! We still keep in constant contact though, so it was as if nothing had changed.

Later that evening, I was back at Crossfit for a brutal WOD. It was:

3 rounds:

20 burpees

20 front squats

20 box jumps

The worst part? They made us go really heavy on the front squats. I had to break mine up into 5s, and it was still a strain. This workout was weird for me-it’s not like my legs were burning, I just couldn’t physically lift more than 5 in a row. I guess that’s the point…Plus I think I was suffering from my lack of naps in the last week- I depend on those!

Dinner was really ugly-not a whole lot of color. I made a kale and chocolate smoothie. Since I have a Vitamix now, kale can be blended much smoother, so I’m fine adding it to a smoothie now. Since I was worried about the bitterness of the kale, I added some frozen mango as well. Although, thanks to Jessie for her recommendation on how much xantham gum to use-it turned out great!

After complaining about how small our glasses are, I decided I should probably just use a bowl. On the side were carrots and laughing cow, plus some lentil crisps. It was a very dirt toned meal.

The lentil snaps are the same brand as snap pea crisps. When I bought them, I didn’t even realize they were lentils-I thought they were just a different flavor of snap peas! I loved the flavor though-it was definitely something different.

Aaaand that brings us all the way back to today’s WOD. AKA the reason why I’m having trouble typing. And why raising my arms is a joke right now.

For the strength, I worked on cleans. I didn’t miss any of the strength days, and Saturday is usually a make-up day. I really haven’t’ worked on them from the ground in a long time, just from the hang. My stupid gym at school doesn’t have bumpers, so it’s not really an option. I was a little off balance today, but still felt good.

The WOD:

5 rounds:

10 thrusters

10 push ups

This was arm suicide. My legs? They felt fine. My arms were DYING. At least this was a quick workout. My wrists are destroyed though, between all the front squats yesterday, and then the thrusters today. And since we “finished too quickly,” we had to do 100 sit ups afterwards.

Sorry for the crazy long post- I’m finally catching up on Fringe with my family and it’s super addictive! And now I’m off to lunch!

What are your plans for the weekend? How do you plan rest days?

The Dark Side of Social Media

Date: August 14, 2013

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hey guys! This post is on a topic I’ve been thinking about a bit lately; I was unsure if I should post on it, but I’m curious to hear your thoughts on the matter. Also, please note-I am not trying to criticize anyone or anything! I’m just throwing some thoughts out there-and I’d love to hear your feedback.

I’m sure you guys have all come across fitspo twitter accounts. Many of them are anonymous, and the profile picture is a person’s abs or legs. People talk about their workouts and super clean food. I’m honestly not sure what I think of these. I’m curious to hear your thoughts-while it sounds similar to a healthy living blog, it just doesn’t give me the same impression. I’m not criticizing these-just observing. I guess maybe the difference is that healthy living blogs include living. Maybe they seem more balanced? Once again, I’m not sure what I think about them.

I feel like these types of accounts really open people up to comparison. I mean, sure, they’re anonymous, but the person with the account still has the opportunity to compare herself to all the other accounts. And maybe other people’s abs just are not gong to happen on every body. I guess this is my criticism with fitspo-it’s not necessarily realistic for everyone. But ok, I get it. It is motivation, and it does help people get off the couch. What concerns me a bit is thinspo. There is a whole twitter community more or less dedicated to this; many are anonymous accounts of people with eating disorders. I think it’s great that people struggling through the same thing have somewhere for support, but what else is there? If you have an eating disorder, is it the best to constantly compared? Many of the accounts post their weights, and goal weights. I guess what bothers me more is that many of these girls are young. My first response is just to want to give them a hug. But twitter is public-what about the vulnerable high school girl trying to be healthier who comes across an extreme diet plan (only hundreds of calories a day) thinking it is a healthy way to lose weight? As healthy living bloggers, we can tend to take our knowledge of health for granted. How is someone supposed to know that that isn’t healthy?

I am in no place to judge. I’m not trying to judge. I’m just wondering if constantly being up for comparison is the best thing for health.

In some anonymous twitter accounts, I feel like maybe constantly publicizing themselves is not the best in the long term.

Once again, I’m trying to be a neutral party-but I am curious about your thoughts on these types of accounts.

And while we’re at it-what would you consider healthy?

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?

MIMM-Hills, Sweets, and Pigeons

Date: August 12, 2013

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hey guys! Happy Monday! Today is going to be a big studying day-I have my health Psych final on Wednesday and I have a ton of reading to do! Since I have so much fun to share with you all, let’s make it a MARVELOUS Monday!

Thank you Katie, as always 🙂

As promised, Saturday night held delicious cake. My sister and her boyfriend came over for dinner to celebrate his birthday. They came straight from their run-they got lost and ended up running 17.5 miles. Craziness! We went to our favorite local fancy restaurant. I even wore a dress-who am I?

The happy couple, and the delicious food. For my main course, I ordered salmon on a bed of couscous. It was superb.

For the birthday cake, we made German Chocolate cake. It’s delicious, but so, so rich.

More marvelousness-my first attempt at coconut yogurt.

I’m thinking this collage would look better if I waited enough to take a picture before digging in…

I mixed together unsweetened coconut, chia seeds, and vanilla kefir, plus a drizzle of maple syrup. Since I didn’t have any vanilla yogurt, just kefir, I added the chia seeds for thickness. Overall, this was pretty good. I think it’ll work better with regular yogurt though.

Sunday marvelousness?

We family and I drove up to San Francisco to scout out the route for the Nike Women’s marathon. On the way up, we stopped for sandwiches.

The first half of the course is almost identical to the first half of the Giant’s Race, but instead of starting at the ballpark, it starts at Union square and heads downhill. The difference comes around mile 6 when, instead of turning back like in the Giant’s Race, we climb. A freaking. Huge. Hill. The worst hill is Mile 6, with the peak at Mile 7. Imagine the hills of SF, and how high they are. Now start from sea level and climb to that height in a mile until you’re at the top of everything. That’s a brutal hill. To be fair, it is a really great view. But somehow I don’t think I’m going to be thinking about that at the time…

After the peak, there’s a significant downhill. As in, you have to slow down to go down unless you want to go head over heels. I personally thought that was by far the worst hill, but according to the elevation chart the next one was equally significant.

The verdict? I have a lot of hill training in my future. And this is really not a good race to try and PR. Apart from the hills, apparently the first few miles are super crowded with walkers, so I can’t really get ahead on my pace. But I’ll train for a 9:30 pace in my tempo runs and see what happens.

More good news-we’re going to stay at a hotel the night before the race. It’s literally at the finish line, so my parents can drive me to the start and then wait at the finish line. AND, we got the last 2 rooms (for my sis and her bf too). Score! Transportation was going to be a big issue!

Marvelous-amazing ice cream. Since we were in the city, we stopped at Smitten, a place that makes nitrogen ice cream from scratch in front of you.

There was a pretty sizable line when we got there-and it wasn’t exactly in a building. The store was kind of out of an old shipping crate. Very hipster, if you ask me. But let’s just say there was a reason for the line.

I spent the entire time in line debating about whether I should get salted caramel ice cream with TCHO chocolate sauce, or TCHO chocolate ice cream with caramel sauce. My dad solved that problem by ordering an extra chocolate in a cone for the family to share (pictured above).

OMG.

That was BY FAR the best ice cream I’ve ever had, ever. Without a doubt. I was IN LOVE with the chocolate ice cream-I would order that instead of the caramel next time. It was the smoothest ice cream I’ve ver had-apparently flash freezing with the liquid nitrogen prevents any ice crystals. It also had a hint of salty flavor. I could eat that every day. And, the cone tasted like a crunchy, light sugar cookie. If you’re ever in SF, you need to try this place! Order the chocolate 🙂 Plus, TCHO is the SF chocolate.

The salted caramel was excellent as well. Just not quite as good as the chocolate. But just look at that!

Yummmm.

We sat on a bench inside (ish) the store to eat. The pigeons were awfully…’friendly.’ They would just walk over you feet to get to crumbs. So glad I wasn’t wearing flip flops-one decided to take a bite out of my shoe!

Marvelous is…grilled peach and chicken salad.

Marvelous is….cats. I petsat for one of my neighbor’s two cats for almost two weeks last summer. One time, when they were supposed to be taken care of by someone else who didn’t do it, they came and waited at my house. Well, yesterday, an entire year later, they came and waited at my house again. I’m not sure who was supposed to be feeding them, but they remembered me from a year ago! Crazy!

Marvelous is…rowing workouts. I’ve been trying to work them in again. I did a really short one before spin yesterday, and I did 12×2:30 today at differing speeds. It feels good to get back on the erg again! Maybe this is why I had a rowing dream last night. But last night I also dreamed about softball and Crossfit-those three things pretty much sum up the last year of my life, from beginning to end. Wow.

Marvelous is…a new challenge! I’m taking a 7 day no sweets challenge! I kind of love doing these. I was thinking about doing one earlier, but….I didn’t really want to. I guess when I don’t have a problem overeating sweets I have no desire to do a reset, but lately, it’s been feeling like it’s time, and I’m ready. I’ve started eating desserts out of habit, not because I want to. This will give me a good opportunity to really rethink what I’m putting in my mouth. And as you can see, I wanted to wait until after that ice cream!

Ok, that’s that for what’s marvelous! Have a great day!

Have you ever had nitrogen ice cream? Any sports you miss? Bird fears? Has anyone run the Nike Women’s Marathon in SF? I would love advice!

Overnight Oats

Date: August 10, 2013

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

It’s the weekend! This morning I did a killer workout at Crossfit-my arms were JELLO. It was a partner workout:

800m run

300 double unders (or 400 regular jump ropes)

200 hand release push ups

100 pull ups

Between you and your partner, you have to do that. Even with banded pull ups and knee push ups this was killer! I stayed an hour after class to steam clean the mats. Confession: my hands were getting blistered from this. #wimpyhands

Let’s back up a bit though, shall we?

Thursday night I played in an All-Star game for my slow pitch softball league. I was a little nervous going in-I hadn’t played in over 2 weeks because of my calf injury (which thankfully feels fine-I’m going to give it another week probably before I really start training again). Well, it turns out I had nothing to worry about! I played first base, which as it turns out, I like way better than outfield. In slow pitch everyone kills the ball, so outfield usually means chasing down home runs. I hit well too-and landed the title of female MVP!

I’m ready for playoffs next week!

We went out to dinner afterwards to celebrate. Since we were in Palo Alto already (my games are at Stanford), of course I chose to go to Lyfe Kitchen, which is basically my favorite place ever.

We started with guacamole and house made tortilla chips, plus garlic roasted artichokes.

The food came sooo quickly! For my main course, I wanted something with veggies (I had eaten a lot of carbs earlier in the day), so I ordered the quinoa crunch wrap, which comes with a side of hot sauce.

It was delicious and fresh-and of course totally up my alley since it was loaded with avocado.

For a little after-dinner treat, we went to a local pastry shop and found this:Have you guys heard of the Cronut? It’s a cross between a croissant and a donut. My spin teacher was talking about them last week-apparently there’s a donut place in New York that sells them, and they’re super popular! What are the odds that less than a week alter, I’d find them right here in Palo Alto?

I didn’t get one-they were out. To be honest, I’m not sure I like the idea of a Cronut…But I’d probably try it once. We ended up with some other assorted pastries to share.

My favorite was the twist-it had sweet potato filling!

Friday morning at spin class I got to tell my teacher about my findings-and of course enjoy a great workout. After spin, I took an awesome nap (5:45am spin…) and awoke with the biggest craving for overnight oats. This was really strange. Why? I’ve only made them once. And I didn’t really like them. But my mom bought me a few flavors of Chobani to try (pomegranate and banana), and I haven’t really been feeling my yogurt bowls lately. So, I whipped up a batch according to Julie’s recipe. I used the pomegranate yogurt for these. I then popped it in the fridge, and let it sit for…all of 10 minutes. Good enough for me! It still thickened up quite a bit! Topped with fruit and sunflower seed butter, and I was good to go.

The rest of the batch was enjoyed as a snack before Crossfit, topped with cacao coconut butter.

Not quite as photogenic, but still delicious.

Crossfit included wall balls which really stunk. On the plus side, nothing required chalk in the workout, so that made my job cleaning up a lot easier.

Also, the owner of my box gave me this Crossfit shirt-apparently when you finish the intro program you get it, but I never did that.

And finally, that brings us to today. For lunch, I tried my hand at avocado egg salad. The result resembled a cross between egg salad and guacamole. I have absolutely no problems with that. I mashed up avocado, hard boiled eggs, yellow mustard, garlic powder, lemon juice, nutritional yeast, and salt and pepper. I served it on a slice of whole wheat toast, alongside yellow watermelon (!) and carrots with hummus.

What a colorful lunch! I have never in my memory had yellow watermelon, and I really like it! It tastes similar to watermelon, but has a slightly different flavor. I found it at Whole Foods and just had to try it.

After lunch, I decided to whip up more overnight oats with the banana Chobani for when the craving struck later on. I split the batch in half, and added cocoa powder to one half. The rest of the afternoon was spent watching baseball and helping my mom bake a cake for my sister’s boyfriend’s birthday. And by helping, I mean licking the spoons. I’ll post a picture of the cake tomorrow!

Have a great night everyone! I’ll leave you with this-apples from my neighbor’s yard. I swear, his soil can grow anything! In our hard, we’ve had zero success. Do you grow any fruits or vegetables? What is your favorite type of cake? Thoughts on overnight oats?