The Post I Never Thought I’d Write

Date: November 6, 2014

Author: astottler

Well, this is a post I never thought I’d write, just because it makes me uncomfortable. But after thinking it over, I’m happy with my decision.

I’m going to get serious about losing the college weight, and I’m going to document it all on the blog.

I hate to use the blog as accountability, but aside from the fact content has been lacking lately, I think this is something a lot of people can relate to. Pretty much everyone gains weight in college.

So what does that mean for the blog? Honestly, it won’t change that much, and it won’t be something I’m always discussing. But it’ll be there.

(Please note that these pictures don’t really match the content. I just have pictures without words, and words without pictures.)

(Greek salad)

So what am I going to do?

Well, for starters, nothing crazy. No specific diet-no paleo, no Whole-30, no vegan (not that there is anything wrong with those, but I’ve found they don’t work for me).

Just portion control. Moderation. And yes, I’m going to do the dreaded “calorie counting.” Or at least “estimating.” Here are a few areas I think I can improve and focus on:

-portion control (it’s easy to just glop stuff on a plate)

-fewer sweets (this does not mean NO sweets though!)

(-increased activity) <-I’m pretty active so we’ll see about this.

Given I am pretty active, I don’t trust generic calorie calculators that tell me how much I should eat. Instead, I’m going to track calories in and calories burned in exercise for a little while to calculate where I should be for moderate weight loss. <-But also because I’m a nerd and like and trust math. So it will be a learning process that will take some adjustment.

(Pumpkin bread pudding from TJ’s with homemade rum sauce)

While I have a specific weight goal in mind, I will not be posting it for several reasons. Besides that fact that I don’t want that on the Internet, I don’t want comparison. I also don’t know if that goal will change-it may not be reasonable if I’ve put on a lot of muscle weight, so it is not a hard and fast goal at all.

(Why are dining hall sweet potato fries so good?)

And I’m not in any hurry. If it takes 3 months, great. If it takes a year, great. It is what it is.

I know this may not be the post anyone was expecting after my last one, but this feels right. And exciting. I’m ready, and I hope you all will follow me on this journey!

Authenticity

Date: November 5, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

First of all, fair warning that today’s post may be sort of word vomit (ugh I hate that word).

So, I feel like I haven’t been very real on the old blog lately. At this point I probably have a pretty different set of readers as I did 2 years ago, but if you read any of my old posts, the tone is pretty different. I don’t know exactly what it is. Maybe I’m burned out on blogging. I think a lot of it is I don’t really want to psychoanalyze my eating habits on the internet anymore, because when I go back and read those posts, I feel ridiculous. Maybe I’ve read too many blogs and feel like I’m just adding white noise to the world of blogs. I think healthy living blogs in general have changed a lot in the past 2 years.

(Baby HLBer Aurora)

I also think that somewhere along the way, I lost my passion. I became apathetic. And honestly, I feel sort of lost. I’m having a hard time finding inspiration for something I used to be so passionate about.

(Totally should not have been eating this, totally allergic to it. But baby HLBer Aurora didn’t exactly know this.)

College is a pretty big transition in life. I think I’ve become apathetic about a lot of things. To be honest, I also feel lost without a sport. Softball was my life in middle and high school, and rowing was my life freshman year of college. I honestly feel like food is my only extracurricular and source of fun.

I feel like another reason I’m losing my passion for fitness and nutrition is I feel like I don’t live up to it anymore, if that makes any sense. The more I lose it, the more unhealthy I get, which makes me lose the passion even more. When I read my old posts, it makes me happy yet sad because I feel like I’ve lost a lot of that.

(I don’t miss the freezing cold days on the water though.)

And since we’re being honest here, I guess I’ll talk about the one thing I never talk about but occasionally mention and complain about and then never change anything.

(One of the first food-y things I posted. That smoothie had WAYYY too much mint extract.)

Yeah, gaining weight in college is real. I feel like my eating habits have become apathetic (yeah, totally overusing that word in this post). I’ve gained weight, and I’m not comfortable with myself. To be honest, ever since that happened, I haven’t really felt like myself. And to be even more honest, I feel like living unhealthily is sort of wasting my college years. I feel like this has leaked into other areas of my life. And I really, really want to change, but it seems so impossible and far away.

And I feel emotional even writing this post because it saddens me how much I’ve changed since coming to college. I feel like I just care less about things in general, and that’s no way to live your life. I was going to do a whole post about how I feel like I lost my Type-A-ness and how that’s a bad thing but I guess that will come up here too. So I don’t know what this means for me. I’m not sure what to do. Maybe if I start being more authentic on here that will help reignite that spark, but I also don’t want to be ashamed or embarrassed by anything that the whole world can see. So that’s where I am right now.

(My gosh I love cats though.)

Halloween Party

Date: November 4, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

This post is definitely a bit late. Also, I’m entering Day 4 without a voice. I think that’s impressive! Anyways, the party! I’m obsessed with holidays, so I was really excited to be hosting a party this year!

In all honesty, I had no idea how many people would show up. We ended up having a great turnout! I mostly want to blog about the party because of the awesome refreshments.

In terms of snacks, the only think I made from scratch was popcorn balls. This was SUCH a struggle. The balls are made of popcorn, vanilla, marshmallow, and butter, plus some candy corn, just for fun!

The first batch of popcorn I burned. Fail. No fire alarms were set off at least! Then, the only microwave safe bowl we had was a cereal bowl…to melt an entire bag of marshmallows. I also had the worst time forming the balls-you have to grease your bands before forming them, and while I did do this, I guess I didn’t do it enough and I COULD NOT get the marshmallow off my hands!

And then I made the mistake of using said hands to pick up candy corn…and then the candy corn completely stuck to my hands too! Despite the difficulty, the end result was delicious!

And now the rest of the food. We had ghost shaped chips!

And of course plenty of candy.

Here are some pics of the decorations. Excuse the blur, but you get the idea!

I think the most exciting part though was the punch. Of course, I had to go all out!

I wish I had gotten a better picture, but we had dry ice for the punch bowl! FYI for anyone doing something similar-the dry ice freezes over quickly. And then the entire punch freezes over. The punch ended up being a slushie which was cool, and I had to intermittently put in and take out the dry ice. So fun though!

So what was I?

I know, shocking, right? I was in full Giants-spirit mode on Friday!

Here’s my sis and her bf in their pirate costumes.

So adorable.

The party was so, so much fun. My best friend from high school visited me too, so I ended up seeing almost all of my favorite people! Another fun tidbit-I made a playlist for the party that included a random Halloween themed CD to which the track names didn’t appear on iTunes so I had no idea what was really on it. The Scooby Doo theme song is great party music, right? Haha, totally was not expecting that!

Overall, I could not have asked for our little Halloween party to have gone any better!

What did you dress up as for Halloween?

Giants Parade 2014

Date: November 3, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Wow, long time no blog, huh? These past few days have been absolutely crazy for me! Lots of fun packed into the weekend, and then lots of homework!

I currently am on Day 3 of having no voice. I’m starting to wonder if it will ever come back…Strangely enough I probably appear to be sort of dying, but I’m 80% sure I’m not even sick. I think I had a tiny baby cough from allergies, and then I went home for a few hours yesterday and hung out with my cat (who I’m allergic to) and have been sniffling like crazy ever since. And oh, my voice. I have never so completely lost my voice before. It’s weird because my throat is totally fine. My voice is just gone. I think it was well earned though. Between screaming like crazy during the Giants parade and then Halloween, I think I’m all screamed out!

Friday was just an amazing day. I can’t remember the last time I had as great of a day. I saw almost all of my favorite people! The Halloween recap of Friday will be a separate post. Let’s talk about the parade!

I didn’t go to either of the last 2 victory parades, so I decided I had to make it work for this one.

I woke up at 6am to leave at 7am for a 12pm parade.

My beautiful outfit:

Transportation was complicated. Bike to bus to train then walk a mile to meet up with a friend from Berkeley on the parade route.

I met up with her around 9am. She had been there since 8, and scored us some prime spots. Seriously-we could not have had better spots. For one thing, we were SITTING! We sat on top of a newspaper dispenser, so not only did we have seats, but we were right at the front and higher than most people! It was amazing!

It was also wet. 3 hours of just sitting there, getting rained on. I had a rain jacket, but that did nothing for my legs or feet!

By the time the parade started, we were FREEZING and SO, SO wet. But I could not have cared less. It was AMAZING.

To give you a sense of how close we were.

Commentators^

The first float of players^Crawford+Belt

And of course, the World Series MVP:

And the trophy!

It was so, so amazing. It was also less rowdy than I was expecting, although we were also above the crowds. The area I was watching from seemed to be mostly families!

Getting down from our perch was interesting. It was about a 4 foot drop, and our legs had been immobile and freezing for 5 hours. We couldn’t walk at first because our legs were rubber!

Ignore the crazy hair.

Instead of braving the subway traffic, we stopped in the mall nearby for some lunch. AKA warm soup. AKA the best, most amazing thing ever. I didn’t even care that I spilled it all over myself and then smelled like chicken for the rest of the afternoon!

It was such a great experience. I’m so glad I finally put other things aside to go!

Halloween recap coming soon. 🙂