Is This Adulting?

I wasn’t actually planning on posting today because I have a big test tonight and lots and lots of school work (yay), but I happened to come across a post I wrote almost exactly 2 years ago. (For the record, I swear I don’t spend my time reading my own archives.)

Here’s the post.

My first thought upon reading it was, “Wow, look how far I’ve come.”

At that point in my life, I was quite a mess. No getting around it. My classes were crazy stressful and I was struggling in them, and I had the added pressure of uncertainty with what I wanted to do with my life. Also, around that time I had recently finished my 100% whole foods challenge, and that messed with my head quite a bit. Post-challenge, my eating habits were erratic and as a result I was pretty anxious.

Now, I feel like I have things mostly figured out. I’m enjoying my classes, studying hard, and doing pretty well. I figured out what study methods work best for me. I’m working ahead on all my assignments so everything is pretty low stress.

2 years ago Aurora. How did my hair look that good?? Also how is that dorm lighting decent?

I know what I want to do with my life now. And I’ve taken steps to get there. I have a plan. Well, for the most part.

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I work some. I teach spin. I am comfortable with who I am, and I understand who I am. I mean, as well as a 21 year old is capable of doing.

And finally, my eating habits are better and more stable than they’ve ever been. Granted, my stomach issues kind of force that. But I finally feel like I’ve figuring things out. In a few weeks, I intend to do a whole post on this, but I’ve been feeling good. I’m happy.

Multiple times lately, I’ve stopped myself and thought “life is really good right now.”

I’m trying to get excited for my next chapter, but I’m also not ready for the end of this life. I’m trying to soak up every moment of my last year. How did this happen??

I guess college really is a time for growth, and I’m so happy I’ve been able to document that on my blog. It’s little moments like this that make us realize how much we change, often for the better.

16.1

I’m knee deep (more like chest deep) in Biochem studying and my eyes are threatening to snap shut, but I wanted to pop in for a quick weekend/16.1 recap.

Friday Highlights:

Coffee with my long lost sister+lunch with my sister and mom for parent’s weekend. Tomato basil soup with cheddar plus GF bread with some butter and some cranberry spread.

Cat sitting for the cat my sister is cat sitting (it’s quite complicated). He’s a sweetie! I did an ear cleaning while I was there.

SMITTEN! AKA ice cream made with liquid Nitrogen. There’s now one attached to the local Whole Foods. My friends and I squashed into my tiny car for the drive. Sadly my stomach was not 100% so I only got through half of this, but it was amazing! Also for some reason I’ve been crazy sensitive to the caffeine in dark chocolate lately….

Saturday:

16.1!

I joined a big group for the 10am workout. I ended up actually signing up for the open at the last minute. For this workout, I did the scaled version because chest to bar pull ups are not a thing.

The scaled was all about speed, since the weight was light, but since the workout was long, pacing was key. Here’s scaled 16.1:

20 minute AMRAP:

25ft walking lunge with 35# bar

8 bar facing burpees

25ft walking lunge with 35# bar

8 jumping pull ups

One thing I really pride myself on is my ability to pace, and my decent endurance (thanks to running). People were quickly passing me, but I held steady and passed them by the end. The worst part of this was the lunges coming off the burpees. This was a quad burner for sure! Burpees have actually gotten a little bit better for me lately, so it wasn’t terrible. Plus, jumping over a bar with no plates is 1000x easier.

The surprise: the jumping pull ups were a major quad burner as well! Jumping after all those lunges? Yeesh.

I held a steady pace until my very last 1.5 rounds when I floored it. I got through 9 and a half rounds—I almost finished the last set of lunges but got no-repped on the 5 feet. I’m really proud of my score though—251!

This was SUCH a fun morning. This right here is the Crossfit community. I stayed for the next heat as a judge, and my scoree did awesome—she did Rx and crushed her goal! Unfortunately, I had to leave after that to clean up and grab a quick lunch.

New favorite thing: microwave hash with sweet potato (I got a purple one!), spinach, eggs, and fancy cheese. This is my cheese of the month!

I had to rush off because at the last minute, I got called in on to work at the vet. I was only there for about 3 hours, but they had been pretty short staffed. I really enjoy working there, and hope to find a more regular time next quarter! Luckily I spent most of Friday night finishing my take-home test so I had the hours to spare, although as I said before, now I’m knee deep in Biochem!

I spent some of the evening reading my textbook with a lonely kitty.

Sunday:

Doing my long run is not ideal the day after the Open workouts, but it is what it is. I thought I would be sore from the lunges, but I basically wasn’t. What was sore though were my jumping muscles in my calves; probably a combo of the burpees and jumping pull ups. I spent the time to drive to my favorite place ever to run. It is SO pretty there.

I mentioned this last week, but I’ve gotten spontaneously faster, even with an easy (in terms of effort) pace. I had my watch set to only show distance, so I wasn’t focused on pace. I’ll take it! My legs were a bit tired at the end, but everything felt good!

The rest of the day has been spent studying, plus a short break to go to a sorority alumni event.

And back to Biochem.

Anyone out there do 16.1?

Toes to Bar

Guys. Any other Crossfitters out there excited for the open? I’m doing it first thing tomorrow (Saturday) morning. I wasn’t planning on actually signing up, but I did, mostly because I want guaranteed space in a crowded workout! I will definitely be doing the scaled 16.1 though because pull ups are not really a thing. At least not chest to bar, and not more than 1!

I had a super exciting moment Thursday though.

Less than 2 months ago, I couldn’t hang from the bar with my shoulder injury. Even before hurting my shoulder, I only did a few toes to bar ever (during the open last year!). The last few weeks I’ve been doing more core work, and last week I started working on some toes to bar before or after the Crossfit class. I got a few, but never more than 2 without having to rest.

When I saw toes to bar in Thursday’s workout, I thought I’d try them and do what I could.

Well, something clicked. The toes to bar felt awesome, and I ended up doing 48 in the workout! WHAT?? I was so excited, and was just having the best time with it.

Toes to bar coming in right before the Open? I’ll take it!

Thursday night I watched the open announcement. To be honest, I’m really not a fan. I think walking lunges are really impractical for smaller boxes. I’m not sure how my box is going to do it, but it’s definitely not ideal. I think we might have to do the lunges/burpees outside, and burpees on cement? Yuck.

In non-Crossfit news, I’ve had some fun food lately.

Mexican food in salad form. Look how beautiful the avocado is! Honestly I feel like taco shells dilute the flavor of the good stuff!

Giant chip. Love.

Yogurt. Blueberries+cherries. Sunbutter. This blueberry blend reminds me of waffles. Probably because I used to put something similar on waffles in the dining hall freshman year.

Lunch with my mom and sister. It’s Parent’s weekend at school. Tomato soup with cheddar, GF bread with butter and cranberry spread. My mom also sat in on my Sleep and Dreams lecture.

Eggplant lasagna, cod, veggies. The eggplant lasagna is awesome—eggplant in place of noodles!

The real highlight—ice cream date with my friends! We piled into my tiny car (it was not pretty) and drove to Smitten, home of the nitrogen ice cream. This ice cream is ridiculous. Unfortunately I’ve become crazy sensitive to chocolate lately (caffeine+maybe the other stimulant—theobromine), so I only got through about half of this, and still felt the effects. Seriously, this past week has been so bad on the chocolate front. I had a single ghiradelli dark chocolate raspberry square last night and felt like I was dying. Cool, body.

Well, it’s off to bed for me! I’m sure dreams of burpees, lunges, and pull ups will be running through my head!

My Gastroparesis

Hello! I hope everyone’s weeks are going well. I’m in a good place right now—I’m excited about a lot of things in life, but unfortunately this excitement seems to be cutting into my sleep time so I’m beat!

My morning began with a track workout—a simple 6x400m. The good news is that it felt good and I was fast this morning!

Breakfast was a a throwback, after reading my yogurt evolution post.

Plain greek yogurt topped with pumpkin bread and sunbutter.

Lunch after class was leftovers—a tofu reuben with sauerkraut and a some Borscht (which is a beet soup).

I got to do a mouse blood draw today which was really cool!

Snack: (Note how sunny it is!)

Dinner #1: Salmon quinoa cakes with caesar salad and slaw. Plus a GF brownie.

Also I apologize for the choppiness of this post—week 8 brain is real.

Dinner 2:

Leftover tortilla pizza.

One thing I’ve been meaning to do is a post on my stomach condition. The best thing about getting a diagnosis is I’ve been able to do a lot of research on it. I had some theories and thoughts I wanted to throw out there. I also decided to write my final sex and gender in physiology paper on this condition, which means I’ve been doing a ton more research and learning lots more. I wanted to get out some of my initial theories about what happened before I even get into all the research I’ve done for my paper.

Here’s my theory. Maybe I always had this condition minorly. I don’t know. I think that most likely what happened was that last winter I did damage my stomach lining with Advil, which increased the acid in my stomach, making the symptoms of whatever underlying condition there was really severe. The meds treating my stomach lining helped some because they got rid of that aspect. So now I’m just dealing with the gastroparesis. My theory of why cutting out gluten has helped me is that perhaps I had a minor intolerance to it, that under normal conditions might not be super noticeable. This intolerance caused inflammation in my body, and inflammation can lead to gastroparesis flares. Hence why gluten seemed to cause flares.

I apologize again for the thrown together post, I think my brain has officially shut off.

On another note, super excited for the Crossfit Open announcement tomorrow night!

WIAW-The Best Ice Cream

Happy WIAW Friends! (As usual, huge thanks to Jenn for starting this link up way back when!).

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This week has been surprisingly low-key. Which is some ways is actually unfortunate because I know I have a lot of craziness coming up that I can’t get ahead on!

Anyways, WIAW. One thing that wasn’t from my full day of eating that I still want to share because it was definitely the best thing I’ve eaten all week was this ice cream.

Tin Pot’s TCHO chocolate. Yes, here in the Bay Area, we have designer chocolate. This is hands down my favorite ice cream in the world. The texture is perfectly smooth, and the (local, SF) TCHO chocolate flavor is dark and rich. Tin Pot also has a lot of other awesome flavors but I can never bring myself to get anything but my favorite! My friends and I decided that gourmet ice cream needs to be a more regular thing, given we’re also extremely close to Smitten (Nitrogen ice cream).

Back to a full day of food, the regularly scheduled programing!

Pre-workout:

I went home for dinner on Monday, which meant that I returned with a delicious set of snacks. This lemon poppyseed bread was a GF version of this recipe. The flavor was on point, but the texture was a little weird. A little dry? Maybe from using GF flour, or maybe because I cut down on the sugar. I think I’m going to try combining the flavor of the lemon poppyseed with the texture of the cranberry orange bread I’ve been making lately.

Workout:

Crossfit was a doozy. Apparently we’ve been killing arms lately. I’m still recovering from pull-ups on Thursday. Strength was sets of 3 hang power snatches. My shoulder is finally feeling strong stabilizing overhead, and I worked up to 75# which I think is the most since my injury!

WOD: 3 5 minute AMRAPS, 1 minute rest of the following:

60 calorie row

50 pull ups

40 burpees

30 push press

20 push ups

I barely made it to the push ups and my arms were done!

Breakfast:

Plain nonfat Greek yogurt, cherry+blueberry fruit blend, sunbutter. Plus an assortment of crackers.

Lunch:

I had leftovers from dinner at home. I’ll share that picture first because it’s much prettier, and then show the reality of tupperware lunches.

This was a fennel and spinach soup with roasted red pepper yogurt sauce that I found on Cooking Light’s top soup recipes. Last night, served with corn tortillas broiled with parmesan and herbs. At lunch, served with GF everything crackers.

Mid-class survival:

Since I have to eat lunch on the early side, I packed a few crackers to eat in my last class so I wouldn’t be crazy hungry when I got home.

Snack:

A bite of quesadilla:

And a honeybell (grapefruit crossed with tangerine)+ one of my custom raaw macaw bars. This one has a date, sunbutter, and oat base, and contains chocolate chips and dried cranberries.

Workout #2: Teach spin. The air system was broken so it was a completes sauna in there. Everyone was sweating buckets—the spin studio was at least 15 degrees warmer than the rest of the gym! I made sure to drink lots of water.

Dinner #1:

Grilled chicken breast (not bone in, which was exciting), salad with caesar dressing, grilled veggies. Plus an AMAZING gluten free brownie. The chef recently started making more desserts gluten free! The brownie had a slight tinge of cinnamon, and it was salty, gooey, and delicious. I would have loved a second one but my caffeine tolerance couldn’t handle it sadly!

Close up:

Dinner #2:

The other part of the quesadilla from earlier, plus half of my other flavor of raaw macaw bar (double workout days=more food!). This one has a cinnamon sunbutter base, and has sea salt, chocolate chips, and tart cherries,

And that’s my day of eating! It’s only 9pm but my bed is looking awfully enticing already…

What is your favorite baked good?

Mine might be muffins (like real muffins, not the healthy kind)—love the blueberry muffins from the box, with fresh blueberries thrown in, and then topped with sugar. Even better in bread form.

Fitness is Sweet

A college student explores the world through health and fitness

Monthly Archives: February 2016

Is This Adulting?

16.1

Toes to Bar

My Gastroparesis

WIAW-The Best Ice Cream