June | 2014 | Fitness is Sweet

Happy Wednesday! After the short week last week, does anyone else have difficulty wrapping their head around what day it is? Well, to celebrate the middle of the week, I’m linking up with Jenn for WIAW!

I actually have some slightly different and interesting eats this time-and after this week I promise things will improve even more because SUMMER.

Also-when i say Day 2, to what am I referring? Day 2 of no sugar (with one exception but it was very low sugar and it was fancy yogurt). Has anyone heard about the movie that is out now, Fed Up? I haven’t seen it, but I’m dying to. We all know I love bashing sugar-although mostly because I think sugar metabolism is the coolest thing ever. I guess I should restate that a bit though-I think added sugars in everything and the insane amount of sugar many Americans consume is leading to major health problems, and too much processed food (especially when filled with sugar) is seriously contributing to the obesity epidemic. I’m not fundamentally opposed to sweets in moderation-whatever works for you! Anyways, in honor of that movie and a paper I recently wrote, I’m trying a week without sugar. Clearly the best time to do this is during finals, right?? So that’s where I am. I have to say, when I stop eating sweets, I start to crave meat and protein…which is kind of weird, but for me it’s usually a decent sign that I’m being healthier.

I’m going to go over some food items from the last two days, for fun.

While I’m still going strong with my usual breakfast-yogurt+berries+sunbutter, this week I mixed it up. Instead of making the berries with mixed berries, this time I used frozen strawberries and peaches-and it came out SO well! I was pleasantly surprised!

This morning, I woke up bright and early for spin. I wasn’t sure if the class would happen since this is the last week-as in, I wasn’t sure when the last week was. Well, it didn’t happen, but not because the class didn’t exist, but because there was a huge power outage and the whole gym was closed because it was without power. I still wanted to do something since I was already up, and I hadn’t really taken good enough care of my Achilles the past day for a run (plus I think I need to be more in running mode) so I did a Nike Training Club workout from my app. I’ve done the same one about 3 times and it still kicks my butt. I think I might already be getting sore from it. I followed that up with several short sprints, and then COFFEE.

What is so sad is that with where I am living next year, I won’t be anywhere near my favorite coffee shop-or any coffee shop for that matter. I better stock up now, right? Where else do you find such a perfect cappuccino?

Yesterday, I did my big presentation for the quarter. It went super well! But afterwards, I was craving meat and protein. So meatsicle it was.

I also dug into my fancy yogurt. Since I’ve been on a lemon kick lately, when I was at the store and saw fancy local lemon yogurt (you know it’s fancy if it’s in a jar) and had to try it. This was my one “sugary” item-it only had 12g of sugars but probably about 8g of those where lactose-it definitely wasn’t very sweet! But definitely tasty!

Today, I actually had lunch with my mom. We went to a nice cafe sort of on campus. We split several dishes-a chop salad, a gouda arepa, and fried plantains. They were so nice and split everything on separate plates for us!

So good! Later, for “dessert” I had a plum and “pb&j.”

The “pb&j” technically had no pb or j. On European bread (which I oh so classily broke into small pieces) I spread some sunflower seed butter and some blueberry compote (which is just blueberries on the stove). It was good!

Sometime in the late afternoon I had a snack of bread with cheese and snap peas.

Crossfit tonight was rough. For strength we did power snatches but the WOD was a 20 minute AMRAP (as many rounds as possible) of “Helen.” Helen is bad enough as it is-but 20 min??

“Helen”

400m run

21 kb swings

12 pull ups

For this, I decided it’s time to stop slacking off on my pull ups and ditch the band I had been using in favor of a thinner one. So the pull ups were definitely a bit of work, and required all of my strength effort-I actually broke them into sets of 3. For half of each set I used the thinnest band (which was HARD) and then for the rest of the set, I used the next thicker band. I’m really glad I am pushing forward on the pull ups. It was time to graduate from that band! I was sort of dead afterwards, and super thirsty.

At dinner, I chugged lots of water, and wasn’t feeling super hungry. I picked out a salad with chicken and roasted potatoes.

Since I wasn’t super hungry, the I just wasn’t feeling the salad at all, and I got what little meat there actually was off the chicken bones! I ended up having a couple of small whole wheat dinner rolls, because that sounded way more appealing, and I had already eaten plenty of veggies today!

In terms of the whole no sugar thing, I’m actually feeling much different-in a good way! I had kind of slipping into the “snacking on lots of chocolate” habit, so I feel much better! Hopefully I can finish the week!

And back to the pull ups thing-my goal is to be busting out some pull ups during WODs by the time I return from the summer. Maybe not the whole WOD, but at least some of it!

What your next fitness goal?

This title sort of sounds like a “No, duh” right? Well, it’s amazing how true that actually is!

But let me back up to food pictures!

Saturday night, I brought a couple of friends home to have dinner with my parents. We had one of my favorite meals ever, Grilled Peach, Chicken, and Goat Cheese salads. Yummm.

My mom also made a really delicious mushroom and artichoke dip to start off with, but I failed to document it!

For dessert, we had another favorite: blueberry crisp! It’s so close to summer!

We all had a great time chatting! I need to bring my friends back more often!

Sunday morning I was up bright and early…again…to run with my home Crossfit. I didn’t really have any preconceived ideas about how much I was planning on running-although I wasn’t planning on doing a ton! There were only 3 of us, and one guy wanted to do 8 miles. He claimed we would do a 10 minute pace, but we quickly picked it up! I actually totally forgot to bring my Garmin, so I wasn’t checking the pace the whole time. This was probably better because I didn’t get a chance to psych myself out! I knew I couldn’t maintain that pace for 8 miles, and ended up turning around at the 3 mile point-2/3 of us ended up turning back here. I’m not sure of our pace on the way back, but it was still a decent clip. My legs finally locked in and it felt almost effortless. Plus, chatting with new people is fun! We discussed Crossfit quite a bit, which seems to be a hot topic with that one Crossfit bashing article going around.

And, I finally broke out the new shoes! (I’ve worn them once.)

I’ve definitely gotten faster since I’ve started running with the group a few weeks ago. I’m excited to have a solid base for when I start my half training, but sad I won’t have running partners in DC this summer! I have some big goals with my halfs coming up, so I guess I might as well blurt them out here and finalize them. I want to PR on my race in September. I should be able to do this-I was just a minute off my PR in my last half when I wasn’t trying to PR, and that had hills on hills on hills. I’m standing true to my vow to avoid super hilly races for a while! I’m doing the Giant’s Race in September, which is not flat, but as flat as it gets in SF! I previously just wanted to PR, but now I’m going to go ahead and put a number on it. 2:05. That’s the goal. I think that’s pretty reasonable, granted I train hard this summer. However, half #2 is a much loftier goal. I want to break 2:00. A lot of people in this running group are doing RnR San Jose in October, which I am now planning to do as well. It’s flat, and I’ll have over a month of running with the group and working on speed to prepare. A lofty goal, but with more runs like today, it’s starting to seem reasonable. Plus, SJ is flat! Yay!

After the run, I came back and waited forever at Jamba Juice for an Apple n Greens smoothie and a spinach and cheese wrap.

Aaand blogger fail of the day: that was my only food picture!

I have one other exciting thing to recap: I went to Soul Cycle today! My dorm went, which meant I got into a class for only $10! I’ve been wanting to try it forever, but I never got around to it. Here was my experience: the bikes all have clips-they give everyone spin shoes, although I had my own and I appreciated that they were able to fit the clips. I got on my bike-the handle bars were a little different, and I wasn’t sure what to expect, so I had a friendly employee help me adjust everything. Here’s the thing-the handle bars are SUPER low, although maybe I’m just used to the really high ones at school. I think if you have back problems or are really inflexible, this would be a major problem. The bikes were really nice though-they had a great riding feel, and the clips were much tighter than other bikes which was really nice-on the junky bikes at school my shoes swivel around in the clips.

The class was a definite style. It was very fast paced. I would say it was more cardio than strength based, and involved a lot of very fast paces out of the saddle and a lot of bouncing. Soul Cycle is all about the rhythm so don’t sit in the front if you’re new! I think this si the type of thing you’d get more out of the more you go. I was sometimes able to catch the rhythm but not always! Overall, the class was fun and I might go back (although it’s really pricy). However, as a certified spin instructor (yes, I sometimes forget that I am too), I can’t really recommend this class. The things we do in class basically go against everything we’re taught to not do as Spin teachers, for safety reasons, so I wouldn’t feel comfortable recommending it. There was a lot of bouncing around, and a lot of really high leg speeds, especially out of the saddle, which can be dangerous. To be honest, the only reason they can get away with such high speeds is that the bikes are very high quality. Also, we were taught that push ups and such on the bikes can be dangerous-which is true; you sweat a lot so the handlebars get slippery! There was also a small weight lifting portion on the bike-also kind of a no-no. The thing was, I felt like we might as well just have done that part off the bikes-we weren’t gaining much by being on the bikes!

Overall, I enjoyed my experience and worked up quite a sweat. But to be perfectly honest, I feel like this is one of those fitness trends that people are really, really into but are not necessarily the most smart thing. I think the classes are perfectly fine for experienced spinners, but people new to spin I think are a bit at risk for injury. But that’s just my two cents! It was really fun to be at a spin class not just in the corner of the school gym though!

That’s all I have for today-I have to give a big presentation tomorrow and I’m still without a voice from my cold earlier in the week so I need to rest my voice!

Have you ever tried Soul Cycle, or any spin studio? What did you think?

Monthly Archives: June 2014

WIAW-Day 2

To Get Faster, You Need to Run Faster