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!

MIMM-Celebrating the Holidays

Date: December 23, 2013

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Happy Monday! Thanks to Katie for hosting this MARVELOUS link up every week!

I have a lot to tell you guys about! But first-who’s enjoying the holidays?? I know I am!

Saturday morning began with a nice long run. I did 10 miles- I can’t remember the last time I did a long run! It was nice to run back by the bay.

It was surprising to see the hill I run by that was brown all summer be green!

The first half of the run was much faster than the second-at the halfway point, my achilles tendon starting hurting quite a bit. Plus, it’s been a while since I’ve done any long distance running! I also tried salted caramel gu for the first time! It was so good! I would definitely recommend it-but it was not great for me personally-I’m not sure if it’s because my allergies have been bad lately, but I absolutely could not eat it without a coughing fit. I think I have issues with thinner goos-my normal chocolate is pretty thick and maybe not so sugary?

Another issue I had with my run was getting too hungry. I had a slightly smaller than usual pre-run breakfast, plus I didn’t get out of the house as quickly as I had hoped, so I totally ran out of gas by the end of the run.

My post run meal was a beautiful salad with avocado and whole wheat macaroni and cheese.

Later that evening, my best friends from high school came over for our annual cookie decorating tradition.

I made a basic sugar cookie recipe, but this time I substituted whole wheat pastry flour for while flour. The flavor was a tiny bit different but I didn’t mind, and I definitely felt less gross after eating them.

I think we did an especially nice job decorating this year-maybe because I spent so long on my annual #1 turkey, and my friends are much more artistic than me.

One thing I want to touch on is balance. I know I’ve talked about it so much already, but I want to go a little more in depth. First of all, despite posting pictures of tons of delicious desserts, I promise I’m still eating my veggies! They just never seem to make it to the blog this time of year! Second-if you want to eat mass quantities of cookies and still feel great, long runs are awesome-my body just burned through those cookies and I woke up feeling great the next morning!

There are so many articles constantly in your face about “avoiding the holiday weight gain” and “stay healthy over the holidays.” As someone who normally gains a ton of weight between Christmas and New Year’s, I have my own set of tips for you, because for me, this year has been different. Want to avoid the holiday fluff? The best way is to just not worry about it! Don’t deprive yourself, and eat what you want to. That’s what I’m doing this year, and I haven’t gained an ounce. Why? Because if you constantly are worried about gaining weight, food will carry so much stress. I will freely admit I had a couple of sugar induced meltdowns last year-and I could barely enjoy the season! But now that I’m not trying to restrain myself from sweets? I’m finding myself eating fewer, getting more enjoyment out of them, and feeling awesome.

And you know what? When you stop trying so hard-you put less weight on your food choices. At least for me-I’ve been able to enjoy the holidays much more. I ate a ton of cookies with my friends. But I didn’t feel bad. I enjoyed the cookies and had a great times with amazing people-I wasn’t blindly eating them out of some built up craving. I enjoyed every single bite.

And while you’re at it, try to focus on the most important things-family, cats, friends, traditions. I think many people would be surprised to find that food gets a lot less significant.

But let’s get back to friends. Check out what one of my friends gave me!

Twins!

For breakfast in the morning, my mom made blueberry scones, which I paired with scrambled eggs and tea.

We took the train up to the city, and must have all been a little tired because we missed our stop by two stops-luckily it was easy to get back on!

Either way, we all were ready for some caffeine upon arriving in San Francisco.

Visiting the shelter cats at Macy’s was a must. There were 3 that looked like Charlie!

And of course we needed a picture by the tree.

The only bad thing about running 10 miles before spending a day walking around the city and a mall? My feet hated me, and were hurting SO much. It was not good.

Lunch was a giant salad with chicken, avocado, and bleu cheese.

And a late afternoon pick me up, split between the three of us.

Since the sundae was more or less at dinner time, I only had a small serving of chili when I returned home. My mom even threw some kale in the chili-so proud of her!

In other news, the Crossfit WOD this morning was 12 days of Christmas-a different exercise for each day, and then the workout goes through as the song goes. It was brutal and much harder than I was expecting-a lot more cardio too! I didn’t end up finishing under the time cap of 32 minutes!

Then, I went straight down to my school gym to ~~torture~~ take my sister and her boyfriend through a weights workout. I may have mentioned this before, but my sister wants me to teach weight training to the school quidditch team in exchange for fresh green juice, so today I tested out the workout. I’m glad I tested it out because we had to make some modifications, but it was so much fun! It made me realize how knowledgable I’ve become about weight lifting. They are going to be sore tomorrow! And her boyfriend is crazy athletic-when they ran a marathon together, he wasn’t even sore the next day! So if 26.1 miles won’t do it but I can, that’s an accomplishment!

And they did deliver on their promise:

Have a great holiday everyone!

What is most important to you this time of year?

Trying Too Hard

Date: July 20, 2013

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hey guys! I’ve been meaning to post this since Wednesday, but I never got around to it/didn’t want to make a different post super long.

First, I want to start out by saying I’m kind of uncomfortable talking about my dietary guidelines. I can’t exactly explain it. Maybe I feel really vulnerable. Mostly I feel kind of silly. I feel like I have a lot of “WOW I just figured out this amazing style of eating and it’s going to be awesome and I’m going to do it and it’s going to solve all my problems, abolish world hunger, and bring world peace…” Also, I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but I can’t stick to anything. At least in terms of my eating habits. I’ve had a few no-sugar challenges that were successful, but I never completed them. I only really stick to my weekly goals for a few days. Remember Operation: Get Healthy? Yeah, that fizzled out. What I’m saying is, I feel stupid for having all these failed a-ha moments, only to restart on something new. I’m a food and fitness blogger, aren’t I supposed to have everything together?

Well, now I’m done. I’m done trying to fit other’s eating habits into my own life. I seem to love giving myself food restrictions-Paleo, no sugar, gluten free. I guess in some ways it just makes things easier. And maybe it’s an excuse to eat as much as I want- I’m Paleo, so if I eat 3 tons of wild buffalo I’ll be healthy, right?

I never had these types of restrictions in the past, and I was a lot healthier. I guess when you’re looking for a quick fix, it’s easier to say “Ok, I just won’t eat this and everything will work out.” I’ll be 100% honest. College destroyed my eating habits. Rowing didn’t exactly help, because I was burning so much I could literally eat anything and not gain weight (never mind the fact that I felt awful).

I finally got my blood work back. It seems unlikely that I have a gluten sensitivity, so it’s likely I’m suffering more from portion control than anything else. (Also-my allergy test came up negative for nut allergies, but I was expecting that. Given nuts just give me SUPER bad acne, it didn’t exactly seem like an allergy thing. Maybe it’s something hormonal-I’m still going to avoid them.)

It’s likely that I just crash my blood sugar my eating too many carbs. I’ll do another post on this soon-I just want to refresh myself on the science of it and look over my old nutrition notes first. In short, everyone has a different point at which a certain amount of carbs will crash their blood sugar, mine might be low.

So instead trying some food group restrictive eating pattern that leaves me desperately craving pancakes (I swear my love for pancakes only came about in the past year), I’m just going to eat food. I’m not going to avoid gluten, I’m not going to be Paleo. I’m still going to try a Whole30 for a week when school starts (just because I’m curious and I won’t immediately get in the habit of eating pancakes every day). Lately, I’ve just been working on incorporating lower amounts of carbohydrates into my diet.

When I try a particular, restrictive style of eating, I end up either going crazy with the foods I can eat, or completely giving up and gorging on what I’ve missed. The problem with this is somehow that style of eating and kind of fizzled out my passion for nutrition. Now, I’m trying to eat more like I did in high school, and already this past week my passion for nutrition is returning. I haven’t cut out food groups. But I’m eating more moderately in terms of portions as well. And I feel awesome. I find myself craving healthier foods. I feel like I’m eating more like I have in the past, and that makes me happy. The only food I might ever consider cutting out is sugar, in the form of a no-sugar challenge. However, I see no need to do that now. I’m not struggling with my sugar intake. I find myself wanting a square of super dark chocolate as my sweet, and I’m ok with that.

I love nutrition-it’s something I want to spend my life working on. It’s part of why I started this blog. Yet I haven’t talked nearly enough about it as I would like. I intend on doing some more research-I love the metabolism aspect of everything, and how our bodies process food. Plus, I really should have found some papers for one of my professors on sugar….I want to spend some time doing some research on my own. Maybe I’ll come up with a new style of eating-who knows. But it won’t prevent me from eating my pancakes.

My first topic to figure out is how many carbs I should eat (i.e. how many pancakes I should eat) to fuel my workouts but not crash. I don’t want to talk too much about my fitness goals right now, but I’ll give you a hint-I need to be able to do an actual pull-up.

Just to summarize, I feel silly trying out all these new styles of eating, only to ultimately fail. I feel like as a health and fitness blogger, I should have my life more together, but in reality I really don’t, and for now that’s ok with me. Saying no to pancakes is not an eating style that is going to work for me in the long run, but maybe I can succeed by eating one pancake instead of five. To be, healthy eating is all about balance. So, no more broad proclamations of my new greatest thing. The new theme here is moderation, and eating to fuel my athletic performance. After all, sports are how I got interested in nutrition. I don’t need to try so hard. I just need to put my passion into use.

How do you feel about “diets”? Do you avoid any foods? What works for you?