When You Feel Like a Potato

Date: November 11, 2016

Author: astottler

This morning I woke up and was having one of those days. I felt sluggish, lazy, sort of sad, and overall like a blob. The best way to describe it? I felt like a potato. My diet has strayed more on the side of sweets lately and I felt kind of off as a result. Lack of sleep from the election. And after spending the previous night talking politics to my mom and ranting on the blog, I woke up feeling dirty. I didn’t want to do anything. I wanted to just stay in bed with a massive bowl of cereal and hide from the world, and slide into more potato-ness.

But then I decided that that just wouldn’t do. I needed to figure out how to turn myself around, because I had scary visions of my entire rest of my gap year in potato-land. As I mindfully made this decision, I wanted to do a post on it, because we all have potato days. Here are some things I did to bring myself out, or that made me smile.

-I started referring to myself as a potato which I definitely found amusing. It lightened the situation.

-I decided to make a blog post about coming out of bad days, therefore forcing me to focus on the small positives throughout my day.

-I started my morning with a workout. Exercise first thing ALWAYS helps. We did 4 sets of 10 back squats today (yuck) at a relatively light weight. Then the WOD was 5 rounds of 150m run, 15 box jumps, and 10 hand stand push ups (which I did off a box). At the start of the WOD, I just didn’t feel like moving. But one round in, I felt much better.

-I made myself presentable. Looking good on the outside always makes me feel better on the inside. I didn’t have the option to wear cozy clothes (zoo uniform), but I considered not wearing any makeup, and decided I would feel better if I actually put the extra 2 minutes in.

-I hugged a Yoyo on the way out the door. A selfie occurred. He was not amused, and both kitties were a little suspicious about why I was chasing around trying to hug them, but it lifted my spirits! Especially because then they got riled up and started wrestling and it was kind of adorable.

-I took a second to appreciate the pretty leaves outside on my way to the car. I love fall.

-I played my current jam on the way to work.

-I got an awesome parking spot at work (also I love my Spanish music. Enrique <3)

-The zoo is starting to put out holiday decorations and I love it!

-Polar bear eating lettuce. Enough said.

-Watching and listening to little kids can be endlessly amusing. They all LOVE our polar bear Kali. This comment this morning that a kid was repeating over and over cracked me up: “He’s a beautiful specimen with a giant butt!” True.

-Vegetables. The best way to feel better and to start eating better again. Nothing crazy, just veggies. I had a salad with champagne vinaigrette, humus, goat cheese, and an egg for lunch.

-Productivity. Sometimes I feel guilty about not getting things done and it can be a little bit paralyzing. I took some time on my lunch break to get ahead on Microbiology reading.

-Timehop. I love it. I wish it would somehow be able to look at pictures on my computer since I’ve deleted most from my phone, but I saw this gem. I was a minute early on 11/11/11 at 11:11 I guess!

-The Sun Bears were pretty active today, which made them fun to watch!

-My zoo buddy hung out with my for the very end of my observation while I was a little bit overwhelmed, and it was helpful to have an extra set of eyes! Plus she brought me a cookie <3

-I made plans with myself to do something more interesting for dinner than eggs and lettuce, so I stopped at Whole Foods so I could get dinner and spend some time afterwards studying.

The food wasn’t that great since I was early and it was probably still from lunch. But I was enough out of my potato-ness that this didn’t bother me.

-Kombucha. Always helps.

-A delicious and healthy dessert to eat while curled up on the couch. I had half a piece of healthy pumpkin bread with semisweet chocolate chips, vanilla Halo Top, and whipped cream.

-Spending the rest of the night snuggled up with Scooby, watching a Rom-Com set at Christmastime, while eating said bowl of deliciousness.

And now I don’t feel like a potato.

The Aftermath

Date: November 10, 2016

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

I never ever get political here on the blog but today I feel like I have to say something. I do have an important message so I would appreciate your attention, but if you’re just here for the food and fitness feel free to skip down to the bottom of this post.

I’m deeply saddened by this election. By what it represents. I’m white and therefore privileged, but I am also a woman, and I have experienced Trump-like mistreatment and misogyny. I grew up in my happy California bubble so all the hatred was hard for me to imagine, but living in St. Louis has opened my eyes. I’m sad to live in a country where I’m afraid to be a women, where my friends get called unspeakable things, where classmates worry about being deported. While I generally am an optimistic person, this is one realm where I just can’t be. I can’t say that despite this all we need to come together and it’s all going to be okay in 4 years, because what amount of damage can be done, ideals can become ingrained in 4 years?

But that’s not actually what I want to talk about today. Regardless of your political views, I encourage you to consider the following message.

This is Kali, St. Louis Zoo’s heart and soul. He’s been in St. Louis for a year now. He was rescued from Alaska as a cub in the wild after his mother was killed (legally) by a hunter. The hunter hadn’t realized the polar bear was female until it was too late, and then tracked her prints back to the den to find Kali.

Today while doing my observations on Kali, the zookeeper was doing a video call with a class of elementary school children in Point Lay, Alaska, the place where Kali came from. His name is the native name for that area. Many of the children in the class had seen Kali in Alaska when he was still a tiny cub (he’s 1200 pounds now!) and were so excited to see how big he’s gotten!

Kali is by far the most awe-inspiring animal we have. Everyone who comes to see him is amazed by his incredible size, and charmed by his boyish playfulness. He’s the biggest ham.

I don’t want to come back to St. Louis a few years down the line and see that Kali is the last wild-born polar bear alive.

It is finally well accepted that climate change is real. Climate change is the biggest threat to polar bears in the wild today. The warming temperatures reduce the amount of sea ice, which reduces polar bears’ ability to catch prey. (source)

Polar bears are dying out.

I think polar bears have sort of become the poster child for preventing global warming because they’re “cute.” After spending hours and hours a week with one for 3 months now, I can attest that they are truly amazing creatures, and we really do need to protect them.

Out of our new president-elects first 100 days plan, I am incredibly disturbed by “cancel billions in payments to U.N. climate change programs and use the money to fix America’s water and environmental infrastructure.”

The utter disrespect for climate change, and the lack of drive to prevent it from advancing is extremely discouraging. We simply cannot afford to not address it. (Insert comment about Florida voting itself underwater….)

Among many of the reasons to feel a little hopeless, this the future of climate change is weighing especially heavily on my heart, after spending the past few months with Kali.

I promise I won’t fill this space with too much political commentary, so I’m going to move on to a more normal post.

Guys, I finally found fall in Missouri. A week before I retreat back to California….I had an awesome and chilly 3 mile run this morning. I love daylights savings time for these mornings; there is far less risk of death by tripping over a crack. The run went surprisingly well despite the concern that I was going to get frostbite on my hands…gloves. Gloves would have been a good idea…

For breakfast, I was both trying to clean out the pantry and craving something warm, so I made some maple oatmeal. I actually really liked this one; it only had like 7g of sugar? Until I topped it with pumpkin butter! I also cooked in about half a serving of egg whites for a little protein.

I bought a winter coat earlier in the season expecting to get a lot more use out of it. I finally decided to break it out today (even though I definitely didn’t need it) and it feels like a giant hug.

Me: “I got this awesome new coat. It even has this removable lining that you can wear alone or with the coat and—”

Coworker: “Aurora, most of us have seen a winter coat before….”

#CAproblems

Seriously though, my new coat is the coziest thing ever.

(from trying it on in the store)

My little t-devils were absolutely adorable today. I could not get a good picture to save my life, but Yindi was running around like a madwoman with newspaper in her mouth.

For lunch, I had some canned vegetable soup with fat free cheddar (decent for putting in soup because it doesn’t dissolve) and glutton crackers.

For snack, I had a bar. These things are growing on me.

After work, I ended up going to an event that I didn’t know about until my roommate texted me. She worked at the Endangered Wolf Center, and they were screening “Red Wolf Revival” followed by a panel discussion. I didn’t have time to go home before, but I did have time to grab a quick dinner at Subway. Chopped salad with carved turkey, provolone, tomato, olives, spinach, oil and vinegar, and salt and pepper. Plus some baked Lays on the side because I feel like they scream Subway.

Plus a piece of chocolate.

At the event, they served popcorn so I served myself to some buttered popcorn and some white cheddar. Plus a beer on the side.

The event was very thought provoking and felt very timely given my thoughts on the election and conservation. I’m not going to go into a ton of details because it’s not my area of expertise, but the takeaway is that there are less than 50 red wolves left in the wild. They are native to America, and conservationists are working to rebuild their population. They are not very harmful to people (they’re about 50 pounds and scared of humans), but despite lack of education about them a lot are being killed.

On the way home, I (hands-free!) talked to my mom on the phone about everything I’ve been thinking about this past week. What it means for the country. For me.

I needed a snack when I got home. I made some microwave egg whites with American cheese, and started to have some pumpkin cereal when I realized I had lemon blueberry bread in the freezer (a baby piece!)

Plus a piece of chocolate.

I wish you all the best this week!

Gastroparesis Update

Date: November 9, 2016

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

I’ve been promising this time and time again. Finally, I’m here to deliver! While this post is an update on my own health, I’ve learned a lot through the process of everything and I know there isn’t necessarily a ton of information out there about gastroparesis, so I want this post to also serve as a resource for others dealing with it.

I’ll give a quick summary, but here are some posts where I talk about it. It’s honestly had to imagine now how bad it was then. I don’t think my posts exactly convey it either. I’ll give a full summary but here are some posts where I discuss what was going on:

WIAW-The Magic Number

My Gastroparesis

What is gastroparesis? It’s essentially stomach paralysis. Delayed gastric emptying. It means food leaves the stomach much slower than normal This causes nausea, acid reflux, bloating, and heartburn.

Summary of my illness: Once upon a time I had plantar fasciitis and took daily Advil to try to attack the inflammation. Everything was dandy until one morning I had 2/3 of a cup of instant coffee and got really sick from the caffeine. I thought it was just a coffee overdose (that was DEFINITELY a factor) until it started happening again. And again. And again. And then daily. I had these horrible flare ups where I would feel really nauseous, like there was a bubble in my throat, it was hard to swallow, I was really tired and/or light headed, my resting heart rate was elevated, and my stomach expanded like a balloon.

This started happening in February 2015. I remember that first quarter I had to give a presentation, and I was sitting outside beforehand prepping for it. I felt really sick and was SO lightheaded, I wasn’t sure how I was going to get through. My heart rate was around 100 bpm just sitting there, whereas normally it would be around 70 or below.

I saw lots of doctors. First I was diagnosed as having sort of a “pre-ulcer” where I didn’t quite have a hole straight through my stomach lining, so I started proton pump inhibitors (PPIs). I did an elimination diet. I started avoiding gluten spring of 2015 as part of my elimination diet, but that summer I didn’t really adhere to it. At the time, i thought winter was the worst of my flare ups. Summer was ok. A little bit better. Then, at the end of summer, I had what was one of the worst, if not the worst, flare ups. After a trip to Hawaii, I came back feeling sufficiently terrible that I went in for an endoscopy just days after my appointment with a gastroenterologist. I had been mostly avoiding gluten beforehand, so before the test I had some normal crackers to try to get something to come up on the Celiac biopsy if there was something there. I was SO sick that night. I felt like I was dying. I spent most of the night lying on the floor.

The endoscopy showed nothing abnormal.

However, I continued to avidly avoid gluten.

Fast forward to December 2015. I was feeling a little bit better, but a bad flare-up prompted to to schedule the final rule-out test: a gastric emptying test. (See my experience here.)

As I sat in the waiting room and googled the condition, I figured it sounded about right.

I was not surprised when, nearly a year after I first got sick, I was diagnosed with gastroparesis.

At this point, I was still taking PPIs and had been off and on for a while.

Gastroparesis is a chronic condition with no great cure. Sometimes it goes away, sometimes it’s a lifelong thing. There are heavy meds to treat it but they can have pro kinetic side effects. (GP is often due to damage of the vagal nerve so some medications try to stimulate this.)

With answers came a drastic overhaul of my diet. That changed everything. A lot of the things I had intuitively started to do because I knew some things made me sick. My sentence: low fat and eat half meals (not less food per se, but small meals more often so my stomach doesn’t have to handle so much at a time.)

Oh, and lots of soup. Far easier to digest. Thanks to my illness, I became the soup queen. We even made Christmas dinner in soup form for me!

(It was super delicious, so no one was complaining!)

Slowly over the course of winter and spring, my flare ups became less severe, and often had an obvious cause (high fat or too big meal). At the same time, I still didn’t feel 100%. I don’t think I ever went a full hour without worrying about my stomach and if a flare up was eminent (not an hour for over a year…). Certain situations gave me a lot of anxiety because of this. It was also exhausting teaching cycling because for that year, it was a battle to feel well for my classes (although I never missed any.)

But I was getting better. I was healing. Finally in the spring, I slowly tapered off my PPIs. When I first was off them, I had terrible acid reflux and had to take Tums really regularly to help manage it (this is common when going off PPIs).

But this summer, things improved a ton. I think this is for several reasons.

My body finally adapted to not having PPIs (and my stomach acid production normalized essentially).
I had full control over my meals and was cooking for myself (vs. the chef in my house/dorm) so I could make the best, lowest fat options (fat is still a major issue for me.)
Time. Whatever was going on needed time to heal. Flare ups can be caused my inflammation, so maybe that finally went down.

Now, things are much better. I’m not perfect, but if I ever feel bad there’s a clear cause and I have a good understanding of what’s going on. And besides my horrible coffee-induced flare up, I don’t tend to have those major flare ups, just generally feeling gross. I’m still not eating gluten. I have no idea what kind of issues it may or may not cause. I need to do a trial but haven’t found the right time.

I have determined a few things that cause my issues. I have a magic number (calories) for how much food to eat at a time and throughout the day. While going over this number usually doesn’t cause a flare up, it may cause me to feel less than amazing. I can’t eat a lot of fat. A tablespoon of sunbutter is pushing my limit for fat at a time. Lots of meat can cause issues (especially fish because of the fat.) I have to be super careful with ice cream and will only buy low/reduced fat. Caffeine is the devil and my caffeine tolerance is lower than ever. Strangely enough I think lots of rice causes issues, which becomes a problem if I eat a lot of rice based GF baked goods. Spicy things are usually not the best, and neither are tortilla chips/popcorn.

It’s always a balance for me about not being too hungry or too full as well.

So if anyone is reading this who had GP, here are some of my tips and tricks:

Listen to your body and be intuitive. Sometimes I have an aversion to something without consciously being able to explain it. When I don’t listen to my intuition I usually regret it. The body is pretty smart about what makes it nauseous.
Small meals and low fat/low fiber are key. And while I’ve never been a big fried food person, those are probably best avoided.
Tums and pepto are a godsend and any issues I have these days are managed with those.
Ginger is surprisingly amazing. I knew it was supposed to help quell issues but I didn’t realize how much until this spring. A hot mug of fresh ginger+honey is great, and crystallized ginger works well too. I also love making ginger-heavy soups.
Check your hydration. Sometimes I feel bad when I don’t get enough water.
Aloe water is another good natural remedy.
Regularly probiotics may help.
Try to reduce stress levels in general.
Get sufficient sleep.
Soup is amazing and easy to digest. It’s a great way to get those veggies in as well!

WIAW: Election Day

Date: November 8, 2016

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Happy Post-Election Day! I voted absentee so my ballot was in the mail days ago. As I type this up, the results are just starting to trickle in. I think everyone will be happy for this to be over for a while though. Let’s go on to some Election Day eats, shall we? WIAW style.

*edited to add: I know I never get political on here but I am truly sad and scared to be a woman in America right now.

wiawphotobutton-1

As per usual, today was my day off work.

Thanks to daylight savings time, I was up a little before 6am so I got an early start to the day! For some reason I always have a flapjacked muffin for breakfast on Tuesdays, so I had it with some raspberries.

It was a rainy yucky day, absolutely perfect for oversized sweaters, scarves, and huddling up in a coffeeshop. The heater hasn’t been on in my house yet, so fuzzy socks under my foots were necessary.

I returned to Comet Coffee, one of my top-ranked in St. Louis. I have plans for this weekend to close out the my list! I went with a decaf cappuccino.

I spent a few hours watching microbiology lectures before heading to WF for lunch and some grocery staples.

I had roasted sweet potato, roasted veggies, corn that I wasn’t a fan of so I didn’t really touch, a piece of chicken tikka masala, and some type of lentil Indian dish. The Indian food was some of the best I’ve had in a while!

For an afternoon snack, I had a Vega chocolate mint bar.

I was up a little late the previous night because I was cuddled up on the couch with 2 kitties and didn’t want to leave them, so I took an afternoon nap before heading out to Crossfit.

We worked on double unders and narrow grip bench press before doing a bit of a lung/quad burner WOD: 21-15-9 deadlifts (135 lbs), wall balls, and burpees. I finished in a little over 10 minutes.

I made a basic dinner of a fried egg, cheesy polenta with parmesan, and a salad with Balsamic Vinaigrette, dried cranberries, and goat cheese.

Dessert was more exciting.

I picked up this ice cream at Whole Foods. It’s allergy free! Most non-dairy ice creams are nut or coconut based, which I’m allergic too. This one is banana based! It has some other ingredients too, and to be honest the nutrition facts are pretty terrible (slightly better than Ben and Jerry’s), but I had to give it a shot!

It’s very banana-y, and the chunks of cookie dough are delicious! I just wanted to try this though. The main dessert event was the last bit of my vanilla Halo Top with crumbled up pumpkin bread.

Such a good combo.

I may close my night up with some aloe water or a little more pumpkin bread, we shall see! Meanwhile, I’m hoping this election goes well and I don’t have to flee the country.

Also, in more fun news, I’m going to be doing Blogmas! Every day in December leading up to Christmas, I’ll have a new post up, with some fresh things. Sort of in the direction of my 12 Days of Christmas in years past. Look out for interesting nutrition topics, workouts, and healthy recipes! (Word on the street is there might also be an Italian Cooking demonstration.) This will encompass my 4th Blogiversary! Plus, this is the first (and probably only) year I won’t have finals during this time, so I’m excited to devote a little more effort to this old blog. Stay tuned!

What is your favorite packed ice cream?

I really like the Stoneyfield frozen yogurt, especiallyteh caramel swirl!

Fitness Changed Me

Date: November 7, 2016

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hi friends! I wasn’t actually planning on blogging today so I didn’t take too many pictures but I had some thoughts during a yoga class that I wanted to talk about a littler bit.

Fitness-wise, today was jam-packed. Mostly because I’m trying to make the most out of my last couple of weeks here! I went to 6am Crossfit. We did 3×15 (yuck) snatch grip deadlifts which where super painful on my hands, as well as inverted rows.

The WOD was a 20 minute AMRAP of 5 clean and jerks and 10 toes to bar, with 30 seconds of rest between rounds.

I used 75# and finished 6 rounds.

Then, after work, I taught my usual spin class. And after THAT, I went to a yoga class at Crossfit. I hadn’t been before since it’s a late night after spin. And food. The class ends at 8:30 and I’m not much of a late dinner person.

I can’t believe I actually cooked that late. I made pizza eggs (patent pending) with marinara sauce from the freezer, spinach, and 4 cheese blend. Apparently my mozzarella was no longer good. Plus pumpkin bread.

And ice cream. Very necessary. Edy’s slow churned pumpkin patch ice cream is far and away the best pumpkin ice cream I’ve had. The slow churn gives it a great silky, light texture.

Anyways, back to the thoughts. The yoga class was awesome. It was heavily focused on stretching, and apparently I was already getting sore from that morning’s workout!

It’s no secret I’ve neglected yoga lately. Well, pretty much since college to be perfectly honest, but especially this past year thanks to various injuries. It just wasn’t a priority.

But in high school, I used to go every single week. That got me thinking about fitness and myself in high school. It seriously changed my life and shaped who I am today. I feel like I really came into myself at my local Crunch gym. Honestly, I don’t go back to that particular location much but it makes me emotional when I do. I spent so much time there win high school. Learning how to weight lift. Yoga. Spin classes. Ab classes. I don’t know how many high schoolers were out of bed for 6am pre-school workouts.

Just to clarify, I discovered all these things as a by-product of competitive softball. I wanted to gain an edge through fitness, and take my play to the next level. Softball ABSOLUTELY shaped who I am as well, but that’s a tale for another day.

I remember the very first day I met with my trainer. I remember sitting by the cubbies, nervous, thinking, “how will I ever be comfortable here?”

(I’m sure my parents are reading this right now and laughing at that statement.)

I learned how to do olympic lifts, power lifts, plyo. I learned how to move. How to control my body. I learned strength, and how much I loved having it and building it.

Weight lifting changed my life. It became a life-long passion. Here I am, 6+ years later, still spending hours a week doing it. High school is sort of a tumultuous time in terms of finding yourself and building an identity. Fitness helped shape this. Weight lifting taught me to be confident. There is no feeling more amazing than lifting something heavy and putting it back down. PRs. Doing things you never thought you were capable of. Working towards something an achieving a goal.

Weight lifting also kept me healthy. It reinforced the importance of fueling my body. Even though I had 6am workouts, I always ate beforehand because I’ve never liked the idea of lifting heavy things over my head without some fuel in my system. I’m not a fan of dropping things on my head. This weight lifting gave my eating more of a direction which I think I needed. And if I didn’t fuel myself well enough, I could always feel it. If I didn’t eat enough after a tough workout, I would be crazy sore the next day. If I didn’t eat enough before, I wouldn’t be very strong.

But the most important takeaway was that I loved feeling strong. I loved making those difficult lifts. I would and still get nervous over PR attempts, but that’s part of the fun of it. I always say, in weightlifting, the second the thought of failing a lift enters your mind, you are going to fail. Every time. I think this really carries over to life as well. You become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In that gym, I came into myself. I watched the Giants win their first World Series. I got accepted to Stanford (I’m superstitious, ok? I went there to check my acceptance in the spot I stood when I saw the Giants win the World Series because there was some type of good mojo there!). It holds a lot of memories. It was one of the things I missed most going to college, and I always loved going back to the same teachers and same classes over breaks.

While I’m sad to leave St. Louis, I’m excited to go home and go back. My first couple of months are most likely going to consist of fitness, traveling for vet school interviews, prepping for vet school interviews, and grinding through my online class. Lots to look forward to, lots to stress about. But nothing like some time on a yoga mat to work through that, right??

How did fitness affect you?