Back in Action

Date: January 8, 2013

Author: astottler

Today was my first day back! Overall, it was a good day, but I’m starting to realize how tired I am now. I was feeling tired early last night, and a power outage in my dorm gave me the perfect excuse to go to bed early. As a result, I woke up a little before my alarm, yay! Before morning workouts, I usually have some type of quick bread and a cup of milk, but I forgot to get milk from the dining hall last night. Whenever I’m home, I make some type of quick bread and freeze it. I actually got my own freezer for my room so I can have a ton of different options for breakfast, because I have a ton of early workouts. Last quarter I had practice at 5:45 am most mornings, on the water. What was my preworkout fuel today? Banana bread!

I’ve been waiting for an excuse to post the recipe for my favorite banana bread! Here is the recipe, it’s super healthy and low to no sugar, depending on your preferences. I got it from Nancy Clark’s Nutrition book (there’s also an app with all the recipes). So here’s the recipe, which I’ve modified slightly:

Ingredients:

4 well ripened bananas

1 large egg or 2 egg whites

2 tablespoons canola oil

1/3 c milk

1/8 c honey (or more to taste, recipe actually calls for 1/3 to 1/2 c sugar)

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1.5 c whole wheat pastry flour

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350

Mash bananas.

Add all ingredients except flour and mix well

Blend in flour, stir until moistened

Pour into 4×8 loaf pan, I recommend lining it in tinfoil

Bake for 45 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center is clean

Let cool for 5 minutes (in theory, i NEVER do)

135 cal, serves 12

For this particular batch that I ate from this morning, I added no sweetener, and added blueberries. Yum!

After enjoying my banana bread, I biked over to weights. In shorts and a sweatshirt. Bad idea. It was probably in the 30s, and I couldn’t feel my hands AT ALL by the time I got there. This is the first time I’ve done weights as part of rowing, and it was interesting. I’m really glad I’ve done a ton of weights already and know how to do all the exercises, because the trainer basically demonstrated what we were doing once, and expected us to do it. He didn’t teach the new people how to do snatches, or anything like that, and I cringed watching them. I just hope no one hurts themselves! The type of weights we did were endurance weights, which was different and kind of strange. Most of the exercises were with an empty bar, but we did a ton of reps of each exercise, without much of a break between sets. For example, we did sets of 40 squats with just the bar. I’m used to ding like 3-5 squats, with a heavy weight on. But it was a good workout. Immediately after weights, we had to do a timed run (it doesn’t have to be right after, but most people do it then because it was convenient). I finished the run in 34:08. The run is a loop of campus, and I think it’s probably around 4 miles, maybe less. It was a comfortable pace to me, and I think it compared decently to other people’s times. The funny thing was that I apparently do the run in the opposite direction as most people, so I passed post of the team at some point going the opposite way, and it was fun to give high fives. Great motivation!

After the run, I rushed to breakfast so I would have time to shower before class. Breakfast was a letdown. I was banking on a smoothie, and all the smoothie ingredients were out, but there were no blenders. And I wanted to grab bread for lunch because I didn’t think I’d have time to go to lunch, but all I could grab was a whole wheat english muffin.

Ok I totally forgot to take a picture of breakfast, but it wasn’t that exciting. I had a bowl of yogurt with frozen fruit (wanna-be smoothie), which was soooo cold, plus half a whole wheat english muffin with regular and strawberry cream cheese, plus some scrambled eggs.

After showering, I was getting my things together, and decided to make a peanut butter sandwich with the english muffin for lunch, when I realized I couldn’t find the english muffin. I searched everywhere! I mean, who the heck loses an english muffin?? My theory is that I left it at the dining hall, which would be preferable to finding it in 2 months.

I didn’t think I’d be able to return to my room before practice, so I tried to subtly dress for practice. Scarves hide all!

Like the new scarf?

I had 2 morning classes. I thought I was going to be booked through until practice, but I ended up not having a chem section so I was able to get a real lunch. I’m optimistic about my classes this quarter. I wasn’t a big fan of my classes last quarter. My math class (linear algebra) was the hardest class I’ve ever taken in my life, by far. It was also pretty painful. I’m actually looking forward to my math class this quarter. It is Multivariable Calculus, which I actually took in high school, and the topic just makes so much more sense to me.

Since I was planning on a peanut butter sandwich for lunch, I decided to do that at the dining hall.

Pb on whole wheat bread. I was planning on just having a garden salad with it, but I couldn’t pass up some type of brussels sprout salad either. Plus, I had to have one of the stuffed tomatoes, stuffed with breadcrumbs and cheesy goodness. And of course, I came prepared.

I brought my own peanut butter! I’ve probably consumed a ton of trans fat in the form of peanut butter at the dining halls here and at training camp, so I really want to prevent that.

Are you ever influenced by watching people eat? I have a bad habit of seeing someone eat something, and then deciding I have to have it, like it was somehow justified because someone else was eating it too. I never realized that would happen when I saw a stranger eating something. That led to this

It’s some type of raspberry crumble bar. It’s oaty with raspberry filling, and is pretty good, but nothing special, it’s at the dining halls all the time.

After lunch I stopped by my dorm to grab a jacket for practice; BEST DECISION EVER, practice was cold! I had one more class of the day before practice. I was a bit concerned about getting to the pick up location by 3:15 if class ended at 3:05, but there was another girl from my team in my class, and we made it no problem. Before practice, I snacked on this:

It’s by far my favorite NuGo bar. It has way more flavor than the other NuGo Slim bars, and the regular NuGo bars are too sweet for me.

Practice mostly consisted of re-reigging the boats. We had the world’s shortest row afterward. However, something did happen. We got stuck in the sand. I never realized that a) that was possible and b) I should be concerned about it. The tide was super low today, so I guess that was the problem. It was bizarre, we were rowing along, and then all the sudden it got heavy and we weren’t moving. Since I was in the back of the boat (but the front in terms of what hits the sand first), I was about ready to climb out and start pushing. We ended up getting out of it by backing, but in the process we came dangerously close to hitting a channel marker. It definitely didn’t help that it had already gotten dark. There’s something really cool about rowing in the dark, it’s so peaceful, but it can also be difficult when I can’t see the water. I’ve never rowed at night before, but I think I prefer rowing in the early morning.

We made it back in time for dinner (yay), although dinner wasn’t spectacular.

Spinach salad with raspberries, which was good, but eating spinach is difficult to do neatly. I had some steamed cabbage and brown rice, and some random roasted veggies with mushroom gravy, plus a few potatoes. I topped it with a piece of grilled chicken for protein. It was an ok meal, nothing to write home about. Dessert?

It’s definitely a dangerous thing to have unlimited access to frozen yogurt. I had half vanilla half chocolate, with cocoa puffs and peanut butter (yes, the trans fatty kind. ugh.). Some habits die hard, and apparently having chocolate peanut butter and cereal was a habit I developed at camp. I was feeling pretty decent about my day of eating, not too bad for a first day back.

However. Back in my dorm….I chatted with some of my friends, who happened to share my love of food, which naturally ended in snacks. They were reasonably healthy, dried fruit and nuts, plus naturally I had to finally crack open my favorite peanut butter! I also opened my new 99% cocoa dark chocolate. I love super dark chocolate. I will eat straight baker’s chocolate, but 99% is so much better because it was way smoother. But my roommate also brought back a Costco sized pack of Hazelnut chocolates….

I have the tendency to want to eat whenever anyone else eats. Sympathy eating, if you will. If I want to survive college, it’s probably not the best thing. Especially if I’m eating meals with my crew teammates who are a foot taller than me and outweigh me by like 50 lbs. At least if I want them to still outweigh me by 50 lbs! Tomorrow I’m having a Guacamole party with the avocados I brought from home, so I want to try to plan that into my day in terms of meals. What concerns me most is if my food gets in the way of my workout. And as my workout intensity increases, nutrition is key. As I said before, old habits die hard. So basically I just need to get back into better habits. As I think I’ve talked about before in another post, I’m a huge underdog in terms of rowing. I need to take every advantage I can get, and my knowledge of nutrition could be that edge I need. Interestingly enough, I find that when I’m better at resisting sweets, I’m also better at pushing myself through physical pain on while rowing. Go figure. Here’s to a healthy week! The good news? Tomorrow’s workout is on my own, and no class until 12:30 so I get to sleep in !

How was your day?

Cold and Wet…Again

Date: December 31, 2012

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Today was day 2 of our 3 workouts a day. We left the hotel at 6 am, and on the way out I grabbed a piece of whole wheat bread with peanut butter and an apple (same as yesterday). It was soo cold, just like yesterday, and although it wasn’t raining when we first got out there, it started pouring while we were in the boat. I had my rain jacket on so I didn’t get too wet, but my shoes sitting on the dock did. Once we were off the water, I changed out of my wet pants, but there was nothing I could do about my wet shoes.

Breakfast was at the training center. This time however, I had a plan. One of my favorite ways to make oatmeal is by cooking a banana into the oatmeal in the microwave, with vanilla unsweetened almond milk, and then topping it with peanut butter. At the cafeteria, the oatmeal is already made, so I couldn’t exactly cook a banana into it. My solution was to microwave a banana in a bowl for 1 minute, mash it up, and then mix it into the already prepared oatmeal. It was pretty good, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as the real thing. Partly, I think my peanut butter from home works better with it. The peanut butter here is sugary and doesn’t have as much peanut-y flavor.

Also pictured is vanilla yogurt with berries mixed in and a hard boiled egg white for protein. Just a note, I don’t avoid egg yolks because I am afraid they are going to negatively impact my health, I simply don’t like them. Whenever I ate hardboiled eggs when I was younger, I always gave the yolks to my dog, Billy.

For breakfast, I also had a mystery muffin. Some of my teammates claimed they were corn muffins, but they tasted more citrusy to me, though not that sweet. I enjoyed it with a dab of butter.

After breakfast we were back on the water for another row, and the weather was much nicer, thankfully. We wrapped up around 11:30 and were back to the cafeteria for lunch. Literally all I am doing is eating, sleeping, and rowing.

For lunch I had a bowl of salad with olives, tomatoes, and baby corn (which I LOVE), topped with Greek dressing and a piece of BBQ chicken.

I hate how some of the time the chicken here has bones. It is so much more difficult to deal with. On the side, I ate a buttered whole wheat English muffin with fresh and dried fruit.

After lunch, I had just enough time for a quick nap before our afternoon workout. Naps have seriously saved me on this trip! I never truly appreciated naps until I began morning workouts. They are possibly the best thing ever!

I woke up hungry again, and finished my granola bar from yesterday, as well as a small chocolate cookie my teammate was passing around.

For our workout, we drove to the beach. It was pretty cold, and didn’t rain on us until the very end, so we didn’t get too wet. We removed our shoes for the workout, and the sand was cold! Our workout consisted of 15 reps of different exercises on the TRX. After each set, we sprinted across the beach to some kettle bells were we completed 15 lower body exercises, and then sprinted back. We did this 6 times. The TRX cable was attached to a lifeguard building, and we were a little worried that we would pull down the whole thing!

After our circuits, we played a game of leap frog, which is actually a pretty decent workout! By the time we finished our workout, I was damp and sandy.

The highlight of my day came after our workout.

Nike outlet store! The outlet mall were went to was basically on the Mexican border. As in, we could see the border from the mall, and were one exit away from a trip to Mexico.

I absolutely love Nike, and loved the sale items even more! Here’s what I walked away with:

I got a new pair of running shoes, similar to the running shoes I have now which I really like. They were half off! And the striped shorts I got for only $3. How crazy is that?

After our little Nike expedition, we returned to the cafeteria (again…3 meals a day for the whole trip…) for dinner. I helped myself to a chicken breast, black beans, steamed veggies, a coupled of roasted potatoes, and some mac and cheese. Basically a little bit of everything! I had originally planned on a salad, but the veggies looked good, and I was still a little cold so I went with it.

Dessert was chocolate and vanilla fro-yo (who am I kidding, it was mostly chocolate) with a dollop of peanut butter. I also snacked on a few bites of granola, and dried fruit and pretzels with peanut butter. And then my arm was twisted into trying some vanilla pudding, because we weren’t sure what it was.

I’m sorry that my posts are fairly boring and cut and dry. I really don’t have a lot going on right now besides rowing, and all my meals are coming from the same place, which seems to have mostly the same stuff. So I guess this means I have 10 days to optimize my meals based on the options available to me. Hopefully I can create something interesting tomorrow.

This seems like as good a time as any to discuss how to make it through multiple workouts a day. Food and sleep are key. Anytime I have multiple workouts, it is infinitely better to get a full meal between workouts. If this is not possible, it is important to at least eat a snack of protein and carbohydrate, and at minimum carbohydrate, because that will provide energy for the second workout. Some great options are milk and banana bread, or an egg sandwich. Milk is a great option, simply because liquids digest more rapidly.

If you have an opportunity for a nap between the workouts, take it! As I said before, naps are saving me this week! My body feels so refreshed after my naps, and I don’t feel very tired from the morning workouts at all. Another tip: if you have the option, put as much time between your workouts as possible. The more time your body has to rest, the better. You may notice that in your evening workout, you won’t feel an early morning workout from the same day at all.

Despite what you can manage to do between your workouts, always be sure to replenish your body at the end of the day, and get plenty of rest that night.

Do you ever have multiple workouts a day?

Goals

Date: December 30, 2012

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Today was my first day of 3-a-days. The morning started out early. We left our hotel at 6 after a quick breakfast/snack of a piece of whole wheat toast with peanut butter and an apple. It was so cold this morning! I couldn’t feel my hands for probably the first hour. After our row at about 9, I went for breakfast number 2 at the training center.

I had a slice of banana bread, 2 whole grain pancakes, 1 with syrup and one with smart balance (not pictured), a veggie egg scramble, fruit, and a hardboiled egg white. And a small mug of hot cocoa on the side.

After breakfast and a short break for a team meeting, we were back on the water for our second row of the morning. I hadn’t rowed in a month before yesterday so after 4 hours of rowing this morning, I was feeling pretty tight. Tomorrow morning should be interesting…

Just a side note, I promise this won’t turn into a rowing blog, it’s just all that I am doing right now at training camp. I just eat, row, and sleep, and considering I’m already documenting my eating, and my unconscious self is not too interesting, that leaves rowing.

After our row was lunch at the training center. I started with a salad with Greek dressing and a bit of chicken salad. I also had a chicken breast, which I put on the salad, steamed veggies, and a taste of scalloped potatoes.

For dessert, I had chocolate fro-yo with chocolate chips and peanut butter.

After lunch we returned to the hotel for a much needed nap. When I woke up, I was sooo hungry, but I didn’t really want to eat anything because I had to leave for a run in an hour, but the thought that dinner would be several hours away convinced me I needed something. I ate half a granola bar, which managed to hold me over.

Our run was 40 minutes in the rain and dark. It felt good but I finished completely drenched. By the time we arrived at dinner, I was ready for something hot. I grabbed a big mug of hot cocoa, and then filled my plate with chicken, steamed veggies, and tortellini (plus ketchup).

I ended up going back for seconds on the chicken because I had difficulty getting the meat off the bone, and added a little brown rice to my plate as well. For dessert I had a cinnamon raisin english muffin with butter, a few pieces of dried fruit, and a little bit of chocolate fro-yo with coconut and marshmallows. I also had a Kashi dipped cinnamon raisin granola bar. I was underwhelmed. The bar was very dry and a little too sweet for my taste.

I wish I hadn’t eaten quite so much at dinner. I returned to the hotel very full and also very thirsty. I was too full to drink as much as I probably should have.

Today, I was talking to some of my teammates. We’ve been asked to set goals for ourselves, and one of my teammates said that she wanted to give up dessert. This made me uncomfortable. I have dabbled with giving up sugar with some success. I always feel way better, but eventually go back to eating sugar. This is truly a personal topic for me, as I have struggled with sugar for a long time. I realized that I felt uncomfortable because I felt someone was going to be eating better than me, and my competitive instinct kicked in. Obviously this is not healthy. I want to have a better attitude so that I can help myself and others improve our health.

At the same time, I realized that this means that I am not happy with my eating. If I was satisfied with my eating, that discomfort would go away. I’m most concerned with the sources of sugar in my meals, rather than dessert. Most of the sugar I have been eating I have not been in the mood for, or even necessarily enjoyed. For example, I am very picky with maple syrup, and I didn’t like the kind at the cafeteria, so my pancake (which I think was whole grain) wasn’t as enjoyable as it could have been. Part of this is a learning process. I need to seek out less sugary sources in the cafeteria, but now I know what to expect. Tomorrow I want to avoid added sugar and optimize my nutrition.

How do you feel when others talk about nutrition?

Training Center!

Date: December 29, 2012

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Today was my first day of training camp for rowing and it was awesome! The facilities are so amazing!

Just look at that water!

How cool is this? I’m meeting tons of new people on my team as well. Ok, I’m going to blow through dinner last night. We ate at Souplantation. I had a plate of salad to start.

Chinese Chicken, Casear, and Spinach with apples and dried cranberries.

On the side I had a bit of turkey soup, and half a slice of wheat bread with butter. For dessert I had a couple of muffins and a bowl of chocolate lava cake with frozen yogurt on top. My large dessert probably wasn’t the healthiest decision, especially since back at the hotel one of my teammates had homemade cookies and sweet chex mix, which I naturally had to take part in (team bonding, right?).

This morning we ate a quick breakfast at the hotel, which I didn’t get a chance to photograph. I had raisin bran, and I started to eat it with blueberry yogurt but the yogurt was too sweet for my taste so I gave up on it, and a banana.

We headed over to the training center at 7:30 to rig the boats and unload the trailer. For those of you unfamiliar with crew, rigging the boats basically means putting on the part of the boat that holds the oar in place. Since the boats can’t travel with the riggers on, anytime we take them anywhere we have to rerig them. This ended up taking a very long time, and we didn’t hit the water until probably 11. It was so nice to be in the water again! I was worried that after a month off I would be rusty, but it felt completely natural.

We ate lunch at the training center cafeteria, which is fairly small but seems to have healthy options.

I had an open faced turkey and swiss sandwich with a salad, both topped with Italian dressing. It was pretty good but nothing to write home about. That was ok though, because I wanted something fairly normal given my afternoon workout. I also had some dried fruit and fresh fruit, and half a slice of cinnamon bread with a little peanut butter. For dessert I had some type of carrot bread/cake (pictured farther below), which was delicious.

Dessert for lunch probably wasn’t the smartest idea considering I had my 6k in the evening. It ended up being ok, but it might have been a problem.

Ok, now for the 6k test. A 6k test is pretty much the worst thing ever for a rower. It is 6000m on a rowing machine at all out effort. I’ve been dreading this ever since I found out about it, because it is super painful.

Well, I made it through it! I wasn’t really happy with my time, I was slower than my last one. I feel like I could have done better and pushed myself more. 6ks are definitely a mental game, and I definitely wasn’t there mentally. I kept losing focus, and my pace would slow way down for a few strokes. However, I felt strong. This is exactly what I needed to get my butt in gear, and to get excited for my next 6k test. And to take better care of my body. I’ve eaten really badly over the holidays, and I think if I clean up my eating my performance should improve significantly. Ok, enough about rowing, onto food!

Dinner was baked salmon, assorted veggies, and a salad with olive oil and vinegar.

And roasted potatoes with ketchup!

The food here is healthy if a bit boring. But that is fine with me, I am here to improve my fitness, body, and rowing, not to enjoy gourmet dining. And considering we’re eating here 3 meals a day…

Dessert was another slice of the carrot thing.

I was tempted to go back for another dessert, but the thought that I’d have to report it here stopped me! Yay for blogging!

Now, I’m back at the hotel to just hang out for the night and watch “trash TV” with my teammates. Honey Boo Boo anyone?

How do you spice up boring food?