Life Lately, Healthy Living, and My Thoughts on Whole30

Date: January 16, 2016

Author: astottler

It’s a 3 day weekend! Yay! I’m currently enjoying a lazy day. Thus far it has consisted of Netflix, studying, and a 4 mile tempo run (maybe not so lazy on that one). I’m officially in 5k training mode. I feel both unprepared and optimistic for this racing season. I’m getting faster overall on my runs, but I’m not necessarily where I’d want to be on my max effort pushes. Almost all of the speed work I’ve done is speeding up my casual runs and some track workouts consisting of much shorter distances. At one point I did a more regimented track workout training program, but 1000m repeats are disgusting. This week I eased back into it with 5x400m repeats and then 2×200. I neglected speed somewhat over the holidays so this left me sore!

Back to my tempo run. I did 4 miles, with the inner 2 miles at roughly a 8:00 pace. My 5k time clocked in at just over 26:00, which is a good sign because it included my non-tempo portion! But I do the tempo part on a slight downhill. Overall, I felt good though! My next 5k is February 7 and while I may not be gunning for a PR, I’m hoping to place! I won my age group 2 years ago and I missed placing by a few seconds last year (it’s a quite small race).

I have some fun food to share, so I’ll scatter that throughout my thoughts on the aforementioned topic of today’s post—the Whole30.

I actually have fairly strong feelings about the Whole30. This year, it feels like everyone is embarking on the new year with the Whole30. As a disclaimer, I’ve never done the Whole30. I vaguely tried at one point, but lasted 3 days. So if you want to take my contemplations with a grain of salt, feel free to.

One of my favorite ways to eat Mexican food is in salad form. I love the fresh veggies+guacamole!

Disclaimer #2: I could never actually do the Whole30 or Paleo in general with my eating restrictions. I don’t eat red meat, and I’m allergic to nuts and coconut. That severely limits my options, especially for healthy fats!

If I’ve learned anything about health over the past years, it is that health is a journey. Different knowledge and experiences have drastically shaped my view of what is healthy. I think longtime readers will probably see this shift. I think my views have been to the moon and back since I started this blog.

If you read my early posts, it’s clear I was passionate and knowledgable about nutrition, but maybe not in a practical sense. I viewed sugar as the devil and always felt like I was poisoning my body by eating it. I did several no sugar challenges. A year into my blog, I did a real food challenge.

Pizza made on GF bread.

Then last winter I got sick. I no longer viewed food in terms of what was healthy, but rather in terms of what wouldn’t make me ill.

And now, I finally have a diagnosis, which brought even more changes. And guess what? My view of healthy changed again.

Here are my thoughts now. I still think sugar is the devil. I think overconsumption of sugar and processed foods leads to many of the health problems were are dealing with today. I think that eating 100% unprocessed food is probably pretty healthy. But here’s the thing. It’s not necessarily sustainable. When I cut out all processed foods, I felt fantastic. I looked fantastic. I was glowing. But I was also CRAZY. I felt so restricted. I couldn’t eat anything, and therefore I craved everything. I would eat large quantities of healthy food to try and stave off the cravings. And when it was over? OF COURSE I went back to the sweet stuff. So much.

I actually slept in until 8:30 this morning which I considered a victory. I rewarded myself with chocolate chip cranberry orange bread—the last piece. Plus some amazing turkey. I ended up not eating the broccoli—too early for spicy!

While my project wasn’t nearly as restrictive as the Whole30, it still made me crazy. And honestly? I like sweets. I don’t want to deny myself of them forever. And in the society we live in today? Honestly it’s not practical.

I got a 6 month fruit and cheese club for Christmas and this was part of shipment #1! Yay!

In the past couple of years, I started getting a better idea of what moderation is. And overall I was probably at least a little bit healthier. And now with my new style of eating, I really am understanding and practicing it. I honestly feel like I’m a different person now, and I can almost sense myself transforming. Maybe it’s because I was ill for so long and now feel so much healthier. Part of me wonders if gastroparesis is something I’ve always had a little bit before it flared up really badly and now I’m finally dealing with it. This is sort of unrelated to the subject of healthy living in general, but one of the symptoms of gastroparesis is blood sugar issues and I’m wondering if now that I’m eating in a way that seems to keep flare ups at bay, this is going away too. When I’m respecting my stomach, I’m not craving things like I did before, and I WANT to eat more healthy foods.

Flourless chocolate cake. Amazing.

I think that was a convoluted way of saying that unprocessed food is fantastic, and should make up most of a healthy diet, but we should also include some fun foods because life without flour less chocolate cake is just not a life I would want to lead. When we allow ourselves to eat “unhealthy” foods, we regain some of our sanity, in my opinion. When no food is off limits, it’s easier to build a healthy relationship. For me, this permission has allowed me to see my diet as a whole, and not just one food in isolation. This has made it easier for me to balance my diet. Am I always perfect with moderation? Definitely not. I’ve never been consistent with it but I honestly feel that with the way my stomach is forcing me to eat, I’m going to be much more successful.

Eating in moderation is one of the most cliche saying out there right now, and it’s more complicated than it sounds. It’s not just a practice. It’s a mindset. On the other hand, eating in moderation doesn’t mean eating lots of junk food in moderation. It means stacking your diet with the good stuff and allowing room for more decadent cuisine. And as I stated early, health is a journey. You will have lots of successes and lots of failures, and it’s messy, and there’s no “perfect diet.”

But right now I’m happy, so I’ll go ahead and call it good enough.

Have you tried the Whole30? What are your thoughts?

Let’s Talk About Food (WIAW)

Date: June 17, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

I have a bit to catch up on but today, since it is conveniently WIAW, let’s talk about food.

And I’m not just going to blast everyone with pictures today-I actually have some things to talk about.

But first, since this is WIAW, I need to share a picture of the Boston Cream Pie I made for my sister’s graduation, although I’ll share details in a separate grad post.

I guess before I get too deep into my discussion for the day, let’s go through some other food from the week.

This has been my breakfast nearly all week. I started the break having toast with sunbutter+fruit, but since I was eating breakfast later than usual and had a regimented lunch time since I’m eating meals with my family, I wanted something that stuck with me less.

Plus, these are basically my two favorite foods so it’s working for me! Roasted carrots+mango.

Monday morning, I met up with my high school friend for a workout, followed my sandwiches. I got a turkey sandwich with avocado, on a whole wheat roll.

If you’re are trying to healthify a sell sandwich, I have a couple of tips-one which I followed, the other which I wish I had.

1. A lot of sandwiches these days are pretty saucy, and I don’t want to miss out! One way to cut back on fat/calories is to skip the mayo and mustard, and just stick with the sauces. I wish I had done this-it was pretty saucy!

2. Thin the bread. If you’re anything like me, the inside of the sandwich is where all the good stuff is (read: the avocado). Eat the sandwich open faced, or hollow out the bread. I probably picked off about half of the roll, and I didn’t miss it!

Today, my family and I went to the Ferry building in San Francisco because my grandma is in town and I wanted to see a movie that was only really showing up in the city.

My first stop was coffee! I got a delicious cappuccino, of course.

Then, after browsing around the little stands in the Ferry building, we stopped for lunch at Cowgirl Creamery, a fancy cheese store. I had a salad that came with a cheese crisp, and then my mom split a fancy macaroni and cheese.

And since there were so many interesting little stands, we stopped at a fancy doughnut place. My mom and I once again shared, and split a chocolate and a salted caramel. The salted caramel was especially delicious-something I’ve never had in a doughnut before! The doughnuts surprisingly seemed on the healthier side, as we didn’t feel too bad afterwards.

Ok. Now, onto the food talk and more pictures (I promise). The reason I went to the city in the first place was to see the movie Fed Up. It’s basically about how messed up our food system is, and how it is affecting the obesity epidemic. I agree so much with a lot of what was said in this film, and I highly, highly recommend watching it. It reignited my passion for change. I’m not sure exactly what I can do at this point to make a change (in the obesity epidemic overall), but I think I’m setting myself up to be in a position where I can actually do something. I’m at a university that has and will give me opportunities, and I like to think that maybe one day this little blog of mine might be a forum for change.

So what change? I think our food system is messed up, but I also think our food culture has problems as well. Food (mostly junk foods) is everywhere we turn. Everything is celebrated with food, food takes away our boredom, food commercials and advertisements are found everywhere. I also think one factor many people overlook is the addiction to processed food our country has in general. I’ve done quite a bit of research on the neural circuitry of addiction recently, and I think many people underestimate how strong of a hold this addiction has on people. The documentary interviewed one boy and his family. The boy was obese and wanted to get healthy, but it was a struggle. One scene shows his mother crying as she talks about how she knows to save her son she needs to get rid of the chocolate in the house, but she can’t exactly bring herself to do it. On the surface, she may seem like a terrible parent for choosing chocolate over her son’s life. But compare her behavior to that of an alcoholic with a child-is it really so different?

That all being said, I don’t think I talk enough about health in general and the obesity epidemic on this blog. To be honest, I’m not going to rant about how no one should ever eat processed food, while I post photos of a doughnut. I have no credibility. I want to make an effort to get more into this kind of thing in the future, starting with what is coming next-dinner+dessert.

The movie ended with a challenge to cut out processed food for 10 days-completely. I’m not sure what my next 10 days will hold (yayy moving across the country!) but I want to do my best, because I feel inspired and like I need to do something.

For dinner, we made a taco salad. I decided to whip up some fresh guacamole, but this time with a secret ingredient. A month or so ago I had the best guacamole ever, and it gave me some ideas for my future guac-ing.

The secret ingredient? Queso. I mashed it in and it made it creamier and so much more flavorful! Also into the mix went scallions, onions, tomato, cilantro, lime juice, salt, and pepper. Fresh guac is the best!

Since there were extra veggies already chopped, I added them to the taco mix of taco seasoning, ground turkey, and black beans.

For the salad, I topped lettuce with a mix of lime juice, olive oil, salt, pepper, and tomato, then the meat mixture, then cheese and guacamole.

This came together in no time at all! Real food doesn’t have to take forever to make.

The crowning achievement however was dessert. It got rave reviews from my whole family, and they basically ordered me to share. A no sugar, completely unprocessed hot fudge sundae. Yes, it can be done. I wish I had more pictures of the process, as opposed to just the finished product, but I’ll do my best with descriptions!

The “ice cream” was simply frozen bananas blended together very well to make banana ice cream-they get insanely creamy-it’s amazing!

The whipped cream was heavy whipping cream whipped up with a mixer, nothing else added. The fat adds plenty of sweetness.

The fudge was a bit more complicated, and I promise to have a better recipe soon. I threw a few ripe bananas into a saucepan and mashed them up while cooking them. I also threw in coconut oil and heavy whipping cream-probably could have done without the cream but I happened to have it on hand, and it came out a bit too creamy-and also a few squares of unsweetened chocolate as well as cocoa powder. No sugar, all real foods. Still delicious.

Another interesting thing-we all were SO full from this. If this had been a regular ice cream sundae, I guarantee I could have downed it without issues. It’s amazing how real food ACTUALLY fills you up, and ignites the fullness cues!

What do you think about the obesity epidemic?

Uncertainty

Date: February 9, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Hey guys! I’m just going to pop in briefly to say at this point, I’m not really sure where I’m going to go with the project moving forward. I’ve gotten to the point where the restrictions are causing me to actually eat more unhealthily because I can’t have what I really want! And I’ve been living in the loopholes so much lately that I’m not sure how much of the integrity of the project is holding up. Plus living outside the loopholes this weekend…I’m also not sure I like having to put THIS much thought into food-it’s starting to mess with my head a little bit! So not sure what’s going to happen in the future, but I’m going to play it by ear and how I feel-which right now is not so hot thanks to some most definitely processed food…so here’s a bit of a photo dump of this weekend, and I’ll do a more detailed project post a little bit later in the week!

Sushi bowl-again. But sadly without avocado.

My attempt at coconut truffles. Which didn’t really work out-the inside was just mashed banana and coconut, and it just tasted like not that ripe banana…but the chocolate was amazing!

Sloppy yogurt bowl with applesauce that still needed a few hours in the slow cooker.

Saturday I was going to go to the gym, but then brunch sounded really good so this happened.

Also in place of gym-we may or may not have swiped a carton of heavy whipping cream from the dining hall. Homemade chocolate with this? AMAZING. It tasted like the center of a lava cake.

Cinnamon tea made by a girl in my sorority-she boiled cinnamon sticks!

Highlight of the weekend-sorority retreat and getting to see a real, live cat.

Retreat food.

And the actual nail in the project’s coffin (for now-will definitely be discussed): fresh ice cream sandwich.

What am I wearing? On a side note, now I really want a tutu of my own.

Applesauce 2.0-much better! Plus sun butter.

My innovative wrapping skills-tomorrow is my sister’s birthday so we went out to dinner! And wrapping paper was nowhere to be found…

And cake.

As for this week? I’m going to eat as well as possible with as little effort as possible. I went to Trader Joe’s and stock dup today. I have to say though, since doing this project, reading all the nutrition labels/ingredients was really frustrating because EVERYTHING had extra little ingredients, even at a place like Trader Joe’s!

Another observation-as my eating habits deteriorated, so did the positive effects. My foot issues are starting to come back a little bit for one thing-so when I’m not so full of delicious food I’ll figure out a plan going forward. I will say this about the project now though-the biggest problem was being underprepared in the second and third week, and eating in a dining hall made things harder because the food was definitely lower quality. If I wan’t living at college and if I was cooking completely for myself, this would have been much easier. So expect a follow up post soon!