Monthly Archives: January 2014

College Food (again)

Date: January 16, 2014

Author: astottler

Hey guys! Who’s excited for the weekend? I know I am! I feel like my weekend started a little early-I only have 1 class Friday, and my homework is already finished. Who am I? Ohh week 2…

Yesterday morning I started the day with a 5 mile SUPER hilly run. For some reason I was really dragging all day, despite sleeping in (relatively-I woke up at 7:40). But here are some of my delicious meals!

Fancy shmancy yogurt. In a ceramic pot. You better believe I’m keeping that! One of the reasons I’m most excited to do the Project is because it’s an excuse to eat really high quality yogurt. No complaints here!

A packed lunch-egg salad with the mayo and mustard from the tea party, plus dining hall eggs, as well as Brussels Sprouts with Garlic and Herb Laughing cow. Not going to lie, the Brussels could have been cooked a little bit more!

I had a doctor’s appointment for my feet/tendonitis. I got some exercises to try to help, so I guess we’ll see. I was doing them in chem lab today while I was waiting around. Eh. We’ll see. He also adjusted my custom inserts that I never wear because they cause extreme pain when I wear them, but I’m not terribly optimistic about that!

Snack of an orange and chocolate chip banana bread. I’m kind of getting to the end of my freezer supply of this, which makes me very sad.

I went to weightlifting class again. Everyone there is super nice. Apparently they’ve been watching me in Crossfit and trying to get me to come for a while now! I only (ONLY, right??) had an hour because I had class, so I just worked on clean and jerks the whole time. For some reason, the weight lifting class goes by kilograms, instead of pounds. Which means without making calculations, I have no idea how much I’m lifting. I think this is good for me-I sometimes tend to overthink things and psych myself out. I ended up doing a ton of sets only 2.5 lbs away from my 1 rep max, and only missing the last couple at that weight-although I missed some jerks, I made all the cleans but the last 2.

The downside? I haven’t done a ton of Olympic lifting lately, like I had in the past, and my knee isn’t liking catching heavy weights in a super deep squat, so I’m kind of out of commission for a little bit. I skipped Crossfit because I can’t row (the workout for the day), because compressing my knee that much is a little iffy. I’ve been icing and taking care of it-I went to a spin class this morning (it was nice to not just be doing my own thing!), and did a 3.7 mile run this afternoon, both of which felt fine and loosened it up a bit. I think I need to just wait this one out and hope it’s just pain from getting back into it.

ANYWAYS, here was dinner: they actually had meat, which was nice.

(Wow, I didn’t realize how blurry this is-that’s kind of embarrassing…)

My hall also had a late night guac party, which I of course participated in.

After spin this morning, I decided it was going to be a long day, and I didn’t go to bed as early as I would have liked, so I got coffee.

I’m on a first name basis with the barista, and my order was finished almost before I was done ordering.

Overnight oats made with Siggi’s and a minimal amount of milk. These were sticky and thick-note the spoon sticking straight up. I topped them with a little sunflower seed butter and wondered if they would hold me over until next week. Talk about stick to your ribs! My meals have definitely filled me up quite a bit lately-like lunch.

This packed lunch was almost entirely dining hall food-a couple of hard boiled eggs made into egg salad, leftover yams from last night with a drizzle of honey, and store-bought brussels sprouts with white cheddar. So good. So filling!

I had Ochem lab all afternoon. I find labs stressful, but my result ended up being good, and the TA took a picture of my spectra.

Ignore my reflection in the background-the printers weren’t working so we had to take pictures of the machines with out phones.

Organic chemistry friends out there-any guesses as to what this is? 🙂

After lab, I realized my Garmin was dead, and I wanted to do a tempo run, so I charged it super fast while eating a snack.

One thing I recently realized is that when I run first thing in the morning, I don’t do well on an empty stomach-I almost always get stomach cramps. Kinda counterintuitive, isn’t it? I’ve found these Thinkthin Divine bars are perfect-I can eat one and go straight out. I haven’t really worked out yet what I could eat before morning runs in the next month-maybe oatmeal? I’m not sure.

My run went pretty well-at the 1.83 mile point, where the road changes, I picked up the pace, although I don’t think I held it the whole time, but it was still faster (it was getting dark and hard to read my Garmin). It definitely felt easier than the last time though-I felt like I could have kept going, and I wasn’t dying.

I ended up turning back a little sooner than the full loop-I didn’t need the extra .6 miles and my feet were starting to feel a tad brick like so I just picked up the pace a little and cut across campus. Plus, there were no cars so that was a plus!

I kind of planned on going to yoga tonight but I saw it was subbed as pilates, so I sat back with a couple of ice packs and Glee. I ended up making dinner while rolling around in my desk chair. There are advantages to living in a dorm-pretty much everything is within arms reach, plus a little bit of rolling!

Thai tomato coconut soup, topped with cheddar. Black cherry quick bread from the freezer topped with sunflower seed butter. Plus some carrots on the side, as well as a couple of cuties.

Not going to lie, I’m having the biggest chocolate cravings right now. But guess what I don’t have in my room? Chocolate! For some reason by the end of the week I crave more sweets and carbs.

Speaking of carbs-as it turned out, I should not have had that coffee this morning! We were discussing carbohydrate metabolism in my first class of the day, which is basically my favorite thing ever, and I was insanely excited anyway. Let’s just say I was wired. I’m pretty sure I don’t ever need coffee on the days when I have Nutrition first, despite the fact that it’s an earlier class time because I have my own excitement to carry me through!

Despite today’s excitement though, I was pretty disappointed at the depth at which we looked at carbohydrate metabolism. We just talked about digestion and absorption, no biochem. Boo. I <3 biochem.

Ok, I need to do laundry/pack for ski trip/watch lecture videos/do dishes/clean my room. Oops.

Also-I may or may not have internet or cell service in the mountains, so I will get back about anything once I get back!

What excites you?

WIAW-Where’s My Protein??

Date: January 14, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Happy Wednesday! As per usual, I will be linking up with the fabulous Jenn for What I Ate Wednesday!

My morning started bright and early. I quickly gobbled up my raspberry goat yogurt overnight oats, before heading to the gym to train quidditch.

The weight lifting went well-some people had to come early because they had to leave early, and the barbells were full when we started lifting, so I had to improvise a bit-everything worked out in the end! I also taught them correct rowing form, as they requested a rowing component for this workout. For those curious, here’s the workout I took them through.

Warm Up: Dynamic Stretching and Leg Swings

4 sets of 6 push presses

3 rounds:

6 bent over row

6 kneeling press

12 lunge jumps

20 calf raises 3 ways (toes forward, toes in , toes out)

1 min plank

Then-conditioning:

1 partner rows 500m while the other does oblique crunches-2 times through so everyone rows 500m two times

They shouldn’t be as sore as last week’s leg focused workout, but everyone was feeling by the end!
The best part? We finished just in time for me to grab a cappuccino before running to class. Which is probably why I felt so good all day!

Lunch was a mish-mash of things. I’m well stocked on veggies right now…and that’s about it. I didn’t make it to the dining hall the night before to steal things for lunch, so I was caught without any protein. In the end, I decided to try out my new blender bottle, and a packet of vanilla chai protein drink mixed with almond milk.

Also on the menu were blueberries, asparagus with Italian herbs, and butternut squash with cinnamon and a touch of honey. I have to say-this meal was a little lack luster because the butternut squash wasn’t quite seasoned enough, and asparagus is hard to eat out of a bag. Without a knife. With tough ends. And…i really didn’t like the protein drink. At all. When will I learn? It was kind of bland and the predominant taste that came across for me was fake sugar. I only made it through about a third of it! But I was SO full from all the veggies, so I guess it evened out!

I had class until 5 today, which meant I had to go to Crossfit later-at 6:30. For a pre-workout snack I enjoyed a Square bar, as well as a small tangerine from our CSA box and a handful of garlic roasted pumpkin seeds.

Crossfit was deceptively difficult. For strength, we worked on heavy snatches. The WOD was a 16 minute timed workout-3 rounds of 10 overhead squats and 150 jump ropes, followed by a ladder of 25m shuttle run and 1,2,3,4… burpees. It was a leg burner!

By the time I finally made it back to the dining hall, a lot of the food was gone. Since I was running kind of low on protein, I wanted to make that a main part of my meal. Guess what they didn’t have? Literally the only protein source was a couple of leftover hard boiled eggs, so I added one to my salad.

Salad, cabbage, polenta with mushrooms, and roasted potatoes with ketchup.

And I guess this counts as protein?

I’m feeling pretty good about this quarter. I have a couple of classes that I need to work my butt off for, but I also have Human Nutrition, which is basically the best thing ever. You know a huge difference from last quarter? I actually have friends in all my classes now. In the past I felt like I was always doing my own thing, but now I pretty much have someone to sit with and chat with in all my classes-yay for new friends!

It’s difficult to explain, but I feel like I’m finally coming into myself this quarter. (Of course that’s easy to say in week 2…) I’ve tried new things that I thought I’d love, without giving it a second thought that they were new or I wouldn’t know people (Mariachi and weight lifting.) I also finally feel like a leader. Teaching weight lifting to quidditch has made it apparent how knowledgable I really am. And practicing for spin like crazy makes me feel like I really can lead a class. I’m at the point in my life where I feel like I can inspire people, I can make changes is people’s lives, and I can make a difference in the world. I feel like I can do anything! One thing I signed up for on a whim that I’m SUPER excited about is the Bay Area Childhood Obesity Conference. It’s really cool-there are speakers, as well as break out groups where the participants get to discuss things.

In addition, I’m starting to think about what to eat during the project. For breakfast, I’m thinking high quality yogurt with homemade sunflower seed butter, and homemade mixed berry compote? (No added sugar of course-just berries!) Or maybe overnight oats with a higher quality grain than instant oatmeal? Like quinoa? Or is that weird?

One of the biggest question marks right now is dinners-should I try to cook them myself? Make do with dining hall fare, but being very careful? Lots of planning to do!

Do you have any good whole food recipes that are quick and easy? Please link them up!

Salsa-ing Around All Day

Date: January 13, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hey guys! WHEW. I swear this is the first free minute I’ve had all day-I’ve been running around like crazy since 7am!

The morning began by teaching weight lifting to quidditch. The only bad thing was that right now we have 2 days they can come, and only 3 people showed up today, which means tomorrow may be kinda crazy. The focus today was upper body and core-the main lift was push presses. I doubt they’ll be as sore as last week! I also taught them forrest rowing form for the conditioning portion of the workout.

After that, I rushed out to squeeze in a run. Fun fact-I’ve never actually done a tempo run before! It’s been on the schedule but it just never happened. I was planning on a 4 mile loop, with 2 miles at 8:00 in the middle. However, things don’t always go as planned. My legs felt heavy at the start, and when I tried to speed it up after the first mile, it just wasn’t happening. I ended up up waiting about .8 miles more when it was completely flat/slightly downhill (instead of slightly uphill) and just do a mile of tempo, since it is my first tempo run, after all. I was able to hold pace and felt pretty good! Things don’t always go as planned, but we have to adjust! My pace was so much better on the part after the tempo run though-interesting. While my heels felt pretty good, the ball of my foot went numb and hurt and it kind of felt like I had bricks attached to my feet….

By the time I got back, I had zero time. Breakfast was prepared the night before-yay for overnight oats!

I made them with raspberry goat milk yogurt-it’s interesting, I could really taste the goat-y-ness. (In a good way-it had that creamy tang of goat cheese.)

And then rushed to class. With zero time-nothing like being late to class to motivate you to bike insanely fast!

Straight after class, I ate my packed lunch and got some studying in.

Yay for leftovers! Leftover egg salad, leftover cucumbers and whipped cream cheese. Our mayonnaise that we made the egg salad with is actually super fancy-it’s “spooning” mayonnaise. I’m pretty sure someone would have to pay me a whole lot of money to convince me to eat mayonnaise with a spoon-but we had to get it because my roommate is allergic to canola oil, and the non-canola oil options were limited.

I also thawed out some more mashed sweet potatoes, and added them at lunchtime.

Then it was off to class-and immediately after class I had to rush to my home gym to do one last spin workout on their bikes-the bikes at school are a little weird and I wanted to practice my playlist at least once on them before I cancel my gym membership. If you’re keeping count, that’s 4 times I’ve practiced this same playlist in the last week. 4 hours of spin, plus biking a ton (an especially large amount thanks to a broken car), after not biking around for a few weeks means my rear end is pretty much shot.

And I have to say, while I didn’t hate it the last time, I definitely liked the playlist more the first time!

After Spin, my car’s engine sounded weird and the check engine light came back on-so it looks like I’m going to be without a car for the second time in as many weeks!

Back in my room, I threw together a super fast dinner from the fridge-more leftover egg salad, plus tomato soup with tons of cheddar.

Plus a Cocoa Coconut bar for dessert(/protein?).

Everything was consumed super fast-then I had to tune my violin. It was remarkably not terrible after sitting in a closet for 3 years! But I wanted the embarrassment of how out of tune it was to be in the safety of my dorm room, not in front of a whole bunch of musicians.

Mariachi was super fun! I’m definitely rusty on the violin, but it wasn’t terrible. It was kind of frustrating because the difficulty of the songs I used to play was much higher than this music, yet my fingers/brain connection is just not there yet! The whole class is conducted in Spanish-another thing it’s been a couple of years since I’ve done! While I didn’t understand everything, I understood enough, and I’m really excited to be speaking it again.

And that brings us to now-the few minutes I have before going to my sorority meeting. While it was a packed day, it was also a good one. And while I could definitely use more sleep, I’m managing.

One thing there was a question about, which I totally forgot to mention-my project will begin next Monday. I want to to plan/prepare/shop. And I need to look into buying blood glucose tests, and if that’s reasonable, or how much I can actually tell from that.

Have a great week everybody!

Crazy days-love them or hate them?

Questions on the Project and a Tea Party

Date: January 12, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hey guys! I’m sorry I haven’t checked in in a while-and I got really behind on responding to comments-but I love reading all of them, and I will get to that! In addition, I want to address a few questions that came up in the comments. And since I’m super excited for this project and this was quite a marvelous weekend, I’m linking up with Katie!

First of all, thank you to those supporting me in this! The goal is to show that it really is possible to eat whole foods, and make changes in health. I wanted something that was doable for anyone, which is partly why I’m not doing a Whole 30-I’m not saying it’s not doable, but it’s extremely hard, and most people (probably myself included) don’t have the discipline to stick with it.

Since a lot of you are college students, I’ll be posting everything I eat, including recipes. I’m most likely going to stick to simpler meals, but I’ll definitely post everything so you get a really good sense of what I’m doing and how to do it!

Also, a very good question was brought up-will I still be consuming cappuccinos?

This was something I actually had thought about, and in the end, I decided that the local coffeeshop uses very high quality ingredients, and given that this will be during midterms and I’m not totally suicidal, yes I will be.

The thing about this challenge is that I kind of have to draw a line somewhere, and it’s going to be a little arbitrary. For example-how processed is too processed dairy? Raw milk would be the most unprocessed, but that may not necessarily be safe. How processed is nonfat versus full fat dairy? It’s hard to say, and that’s one I haven’t decided on yet (besides the fact that I will not be consuming raw dairy.)

Here’s another question-what’s really in the dining hall food? Some things I will clearly avoid, but how can I tell if that completely plain grilled chicken touched something or not? At that point, I wouldn’t worry about it. I’m just trying to get as close to unprocessed as possible.

If you have any more questions/comments/suggestions, keep them coming!

And since I haven’t shared much about my life lately…

Friday morning started with a 10×400 track workout. It’s been a while since I’ve done one of those not on the treadmill, and I may have gone out a bit fast-my legs were dragging so much by the end!

I refueled with Christmas oranges and overnight oats.

After class was another packed lunch. This one I didn’t exactly think through, and the only protein I and was laughing cow. But it was excellent with the roasted carrots!

I had every intention of going for a nice, long bike ride on a beautiful day, but I never ended up making it out the door before I had to go to Crossfit.

As a snack, instead of the sugar I was craving, I had some plain Greek yogurt with sunflower seed butter, and half a slice of cherry bread.

One thing I’ve learned since starting to track my food in My Fitness Pal in the last week is that I’m getting WAY too little protein, and after having a protein rich, instead of sweet, carb rich, snack, I felt so much better and more satisfied!

After a Crossfit workout that included way too many heavy push presses, I chatted with friends and didn’t end up eating until late, and soup sounded perfect-chunky tomato bisque with cheddar.

Saturday morning I ended up waking up early enough to make it to Crossfit-it was a partner workout that consisted of 3 10 minute AMRAPS (as many rounds as possible). It was hard! One of the rounds was flipping a giant tire-I was proud because I was one of the only girls who could actually flip it!

(Source)

I ended up getting tire marks/bruises on my shoulders though!

After Crossfit, I went to brunch and had a Mexican salad with plenty of guac.

And I FINALLY got my first waffle of the school year-the line has always been so crazy long whenever I’ve gone! However, a lot of dorms are on ski trips this weekend. I’m going on a ski trip next weekend. East Coasters, feel free to laugh at this: 1. I’m going on a ski trip, but not even skiing. 2. We have to make a huge weekend trip out of even seeing snow. 3. There’s no snow right now…Oops?

For the record, this wasn’t a full waffle when it went in the waffle maker! I topped it with butter and warm apples. This was good-the only thing is that I think the apples were sweetened quite a bit!

The rest of the day was spent preparing for my hall’s tea party! Check out this amazing tart my friend’s made from scratch!

My task for the tea party was making tea sandwiches. I had to go to Whole Foods for gluten free bread for a couple of my friends, so naturally it made sense to go to the newly opened in Whole Foods nitrogen ice cream shop, Smitten.

The only Smitten there was before was in San Francisco, and it was mind blowing. This did not disappoint- Tcho chocolate with Tcho chocolate sauce.

And then it was tea party time!

Cucumber and cream cheese.

Egg salad.

And we all dressed up and watched Breakfast at Tiffany’s. The best part of that movie? Undoubtably the cat. More movies these days need to have cats.

Source

I also went for a little late night walk around my dorm and ran into these beautiful creatures.

Saturday night was really great-it was one of those nights where you stay up until 4am just talking to friends. Needless to say I’m a little less than well rested to start the week…

Brunch-eggs with cheddar and black beans, as well as a side salad.

Dinner: Falafel on a pita, with lots and lots of hummus, plus a little chicken. And apple pie.

The big highlight of the day was teaching a spin class to actual, living and breathing human beings. It was just practice-I taught it to some of the Quidditch team (because I kind of control them now…) and while it wasn’t exactly like a real class, it was good to practice shouting/breathing/spinning. It wasn’t like a normal class because my speakers were my laptop, plus none of them had done spin before, plus they spent a lot more time talking to each other in class, but it was still fun!

And now, I need to run off and program their workout for tomorrow morning!

What was Marvelous in your weekend?

The Project

Date: January 9, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hey guys! Thanks for your comments on yesterday’s post! Today I’m going to talk a little more about the project-it’s still a little rough and I haven’t figured out all the details.

But here’s the plan.

It seems the common denominator with obesity is highly processed food. A majority of the country has a damaged metabolism. So I’m going to go out and test this.

For 4 weeks, my roommate and I are committing to eat only whole, unprocessed food.

This IS NOT a diet.

This IS NOT about weight loss.

This IS NOT a quick fix.

This IS NOT about calories.

This IS about real food.

This IS about health. Long term health.

And you know what? This IS possible. One of the main reasons I want to do this? To show that if two college students can do this, in the middle of midterms, with limited kitchen access can do it, then anyone can.

But I’m a scientist, and I want cold, hard evidence. This is about transforming overall health. I’m going to take some data before and after the 4 weeks-but not just weight or body fat. I’m still working on what these will be-I would love to do a test of blood insulin levels, because that would be such a great indicator of metabolic health, and whether eating unprocessed WHOLE foods are a possible cure. However, I’m not sure how plausible it would be for us to get lab tests done twice in a month.

We may try blood glucose tests-it should give a decent indicator of how our insulin is working (and if we are insulin resistant). We will probably do blood pressure tests as well. Another convenient test is that I have a 5k around the beginning of the 4 weeks, and another one around the end of the 4 weeks, so I’ll have somewhat of an athletic comparison as well.

So how are we defining WHOLE, UNPROCESSED food?

(Some of this is a little arbitrary, but I need somewhere to draw the line.)

(Most of this is straight from “The Fat Chance Cookbook,” By Robert Lustig)

-no refined sugar

-no highly processed oils

-no weird ingredients

-whole foods

-foods must resemble what they originally came from

-the fiber must not have been destroyed

-whole, non pulverized grains

-no restrictions on fruit, but less than 28 g (the daily recommend amount) of other added sugars, such as juices or dried fruit

-one special whole food dessert experience a week, with natural sweeteners, high quality ingredients, and still fitting into the daily sugar allowance

Why not Whole30? Doesn’t that cut our unprocessed foods as well?

The Whole30 seems like a great way to reset your body from junk, but the reality is, it’s just not doable for many people, especially those who are new to their health journey. If a person is just starting a healthier lifestyle change, cutting out all grains may backfire. By instead focusing on the least processed foods possible, we can get the nutrients and fiber necessary to restore health.

*Note: I do consider myself an overall healthy person, yet I still eat a fairly processed diet, like almost everyone is our country. If cutting out processed food improves my health, it will almost certainly help the people who struggle even more with their health.

The goal of this 4 weeks is to prove that it is possible to improve health, without sacrificing life. We aren’t exactly cutting out foods or even drastically changing the way we eat-we are simply changing the quality of foods we will be putting in our body.

For example, take this morning’s overnight oats:

Blackberry chobani, chia seeds, almond milk, and instant plain oatmeal. How would I change this?

Quinoa stirred into chia seeds and plain yogurt, topped with some type of fruit mixture (we’re thinking frozen berries in a slow cooker-how amazing does that sound?)

Real food doesn’t have to be bland or taste bad. I intend on enjoying everything I will eat during the 4 weeks.

This is also about the lost art of cooking-by making our own foods, we maintain a lot more fiber and nutrients (than processed), and can control exactly what we put into things. Plus, it is an experience.

We are already brainstorming recipes, meal plans, and cooking schedules. I’m excited for this!

During this time, I will also be discussing the biochemistry of food-what happens in our body as we break down food. If I’ve never heard of it, I probably shouldn’t be eating it. And it doesn’t count if the only place I’ve heard of it is in Chem lab!

I also realize that this won’t be easy. No more of this.

Or this.

(Yes, I did return to an amazing ice cream place.)

But back in the old days, people didn’t eat sweets every day, they were something for a special occasion-an experience. Hence why I’ve built in a weekly treat. We’re planning on making plenty and sharing with our friends. (Some ideas are homemade raw chocolate and a dense, nutrient and fiber packed banana chocolate chip bread.)

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this-if you guys know of any other tests of general health, I would be interested in those as well (as long as the tests are within reason to do!)

And before I leave you, I want to share a few more snapshots from today.

This morning I ran 4 miles. I haven’t done much running lately that a)wasn’t intervals and b)wasn’t on the treadmill. Plus, I’ve been taking it very easy on the running front thanks to foot/heel pain. The good news is that my feet are starting to feel better, and my foot loosened up and felt ok pretty quickly. Another bonus-I swear I’ve gotten faster! I didn’t run with my watch so I can’t really say though.

I also had my first Coupa cappuccino of the quarter.

It. Was. Perfect.

I am still not sick of this lunch. The balsamic brussels are amazing. It’s amazing how much better flavored foods are!

In other news, I’m pretty sure I should not be eating Quest bars because they have nuts and my face is breaking out so much! I don’t know why I keep saying I should not eat them and don’t just stop. But to be fair, I’ve only had 2.

This was dinner. After Crossfit, I had to run to the store, so I decided to pick up dinner. I briefly considered just having ice cream, but then decided that that was a bad idea, so I grabbed this veggie and hummus wrap, before consuming the above ice cream.

Delicious.