WIAW-DC Edition

Date: June 24, 2014

Author: astottler

So…I’m secretly excited that I get to link up to WIAW from the East Coast! I always feel so left behind when i wake up at a perfectly reasonable hour and all the East Coasters have linked up! Now that’s me!

I started my morning bright and early. Or something. At least for this jet-lagged CA girl! I have to get up at 3:30am CA time, and I haven’t had a chance to get coffee! Bad combo! Luckily, I’ve determined two nearby coffee places that should work!

Breakfast was plain Greek yogurt, mango+strawberry, and sun butter. I’m not a huge fan of the mango+strawberry for some reason. Trader Joe’s also doesn’t have the best frozen mango though-it’s never quite ripe-so it’s a bit solid.

Today was my first day going straight to Crossfit from work, so I had to commute in my Crossfit shoes because I couldn’t carry 2 pairs of shoes! Classy.

No pictures from lunch because it was a work lunch, but it was a whole wheat pita stuffed with veggies, chicken, hummus, and cheese.

Instead, here’s tomorrow’s lunch which I just packed!

After work, I finally worked out a good commute, I think. I made the Metro by 1 minute after arriving at the station by bus. Walking to Crossfit from the Metro was horrible. DC traffic and cars are the worst. So much honking, so much grid locking, so many drivers who will just run you over…and I had to walk through this horrible traffic circle with like 6 different intersections…Terrifying. I miss California drivers…

Anyway, I arrived much earlier than expected and was able to jump into an earlier class. The main strength was snatches, trying to PR. I wasn’t expecting anything crazy, but I got some good tips from the coaches and easily PRed by 5 pounds from just the hang position (which doesn’t have as much power). This was named the number 1 box in DC last year, and I can see why! And that’s saying a lot given how many there are! So far, each of the classes I’ve been to have had 2 coaches.

The conditioning portion was an 8 minute AMRAP of overhead walking lunges, burpees, and plate rows. I’m not sure what it was, but I felt like I was really able to push myself today!

I realized walking home that I pass Whole Foods everyday on the way back. And I have 2 Whole Foods gift cards. Does that mean I never have to cook? Maybe I’ll pack home cooked lunches for a while and pick up dinner. We’ll see.

I didn’t stop in today, but I had plenty of leftovers so dinner came together quickly. Chicken, leftover cumin cauliflower, roasted sweet potatoes, and some unpictured snap peas.

I picked up some dates and 85% chocolate today, so that served as dessert.

So, I’m tentatively planning on going to November Project DC tomorrow. At (gulp) 5:30am. My logic is that maybe I can shock my system into this time zone? Or drink lots of coffee? It’s a .75 mile run from my apartment, so I definitely need to try it at some point, and tomorrow may just be that point. I calculated that if I leave a bit early, I can get back in plenty of time to shower and catch the metro. But it’s early. We’ll see.

When was the last time you PRed?

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?

WIAW-Day 2

Date: June 3, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Happy Wednesday! After the short week last week, does anyone else have difficulty wrapping their head around what day it is? Well, to celebrate the middle of the week, I’m linking up with Jenn for WIAW!

I actually have some slightly different and interesting eats this time-and after this week I promise things will improve even more because SUMMER.

Also-when i say Day 2, to what am I referring? Day 2 of no sugar (with one exception but it was very low sugar and it was fancy yogurt). Has anyone heard about the movie that is out now, Fed Up? I haven’t seen it, but I’m dying to. We all know I love bashing sugar-although mostly because I think sugar metabolism is the coolest thing ever. I guess I should restate that a bit though-I think added sugars in everything and the insane amount of sugar many Americans consume is leading to major health problems, and too much processed food (especially when filled with sugar) is seriously contributing to the obesity epidemic. I’m not fundamentally opposed to sweets in moderation-whatever works for you! Anyways, in honor of that movie and a paper I recently wrote, I’m trying a week without sugar. Clearly the best time to do this is during finals, right?? So that’s where I am. I have to say, when I stop eating sweets, I start to crave meat and protein…which is kind of weird, but for me it’s usually a decent sign that I’m being healthier.

I’m going to go over some food items from the last two days, for fun.

While I’m still going strong with my usual breakfast-yogurt+berries+sunbutter, this week I mixed it up. Instead of making the berries with mixed berries, this time I used frozen strawberries and peaches-and it came out SO well! I was pleasantly surprised!

This morning, I woke up bright and early for spin. I wasn’t sure if the class would happen since this is the last week-as in, I wasn’t sure when the last week was. Well, it didn’t happen, but not because the class didn’t exist, but because there was a huge power outage and the whole gym was closed because it was without power. I still wanted to do something since I was already up, and I hadn’t really taken good enough care of my Achilles the past day for a run (plus I think I need to be more in running mode) so I did a Nike Training Club workout from my app. I’ve done the same one about 3 times and it still kicks my butt. I think I might already be getting sore from it. I followed that up with several short sprints, and then COFFEE.

What is so sad is that with where I am living next year, I won’t be anywhere near my favorite coffee shop-or any coffee shop for that matter. I better stock up now, right? Where else do you find such a perfect cappuccino?

Yesterday, I did my big presentation for the quarter. It went super well! But afterwards, I was craving meat and protein. So meatsicle it was.

I also dug into my fancy yogurt. Since I’ve been on a lemon kick lately, when I was at the store and saw fancy local lemon yogurt (you know it’s fancy if it’s in a jar) and had to try it. This was my one “sugary” item-it only had 12g of sugars but probably about 8g of those where lactose-it definitely wasn’t very sweet! But definitely tasty!

Today, I actually had lunch with my mom. We went to a nice cafe sort of on campus. We split several dishes-a chop salad, a gouda arepa, and fried plantains. They were so nice and split everything on separate plates for us!

So good! Later, for “dessert” I had a plum and “pb&j.”

The “pb&j” technically had no pb or j. On European bread (which I oh so classily broke into small pieces) I spread some sunflower seed butter and some blueberry compote (which is just blueberries on the stove). It was good!

Sometime in the late afternoon I had a snack of bread with cheese and snap peas.

Crossfit tonight was rough. For strength we did power snatches but the WOD was a 20 minute AMRAP (as many rounds as possible) of “Helen.” Helen is bad enough as it is-but 20 min??

“Helen”

400m run

21 kb swings

12 pull ups

For this, I decided it’s time to stop slacking off on my pull ups and ditch the band I had been using in favor of a thinner one. So the pull ups were definitely a bit of work, and required all of my strength effort-I actually broke them into sets of 3. For half of each set I used the thinnest band (which was HARD) and then for the rest of the set, I used the next thicker band. I’m really glad I am pushing forward on the pull ups. It was time to graduate from that band! I was sort of dead afterwards, and super thirsty.

At dinner, I chugged lots of water, and wasn’t feeling super hungry. I picked out a salad with chicken and roasted potatoes.

Since I wasn’t super hungry, the I just wasn’t feeling the salad at all, and I got what little meat there actually was off the chicken bones! I ended up having a couple of small whole wheat dinner rolls, because that sounded way more appealing, and I had already eaten plenty of veggies today!

In terms of the whole no sugar thing, I’m actually feeling much different-in a good way! I had kind of slipping into the “snacking on lots of chocolate” habit, so I feel much better! Hopefully I can finish the week!

And back to the pull ups thing-my goal is to be busting out some pull ups during WODs by the time I return from the summer. Maybe not the whole WOD, but at least some of it!

What your next fitness goal?

WIAW-Nothing Crazy

Date: May 20, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Happy Wednesday! Here we are, in the middle of the week. Who’s ready to celebrate WIAW? Thanks as always to Jenn for hosting the weekly party!

Before I get into some eats, I want to talk about my nutrition and exercise as of late. I recently posted about some weight gain that I wasn’t happy with. As a result, I’ve been taking a closer look at my eating habits and I’ve been working on my nutrition. I read a few chapters from one of my favorite sports nutrition books-Nancy Clark’s Guide for Athletes-and formulated a plan that is reasonable and long term. I’m not looking for a quick fix because I have habits I developed in college that need to change. One thing I did decide to do was to build in a small amount of sweets each day. While I usually feel best when I completely eliminate sugar, I tend to also feel deprived. And this way, I’m not tempted by every sweet that comes my way because I know I’ll have a little something later.

Now let’s talk about today’s workouts! My Achilles was understandably inflamed after Bay to Breakers. It was feeling surprisingly good on Monday evening until I ran the bases during softball. Now, it’s flared up pretty badly. As in, I couldn’t really walk this morning. It’s always worse in the morning before I loosen it up, so I hobbled to the gym in hopes of loosening it up gently. I took a spin class, which helps because it’s not directly using the part that hurts, but it moves it enough to break through some of the stiffness. Then, I went to yoga because I think tightness throughout my legs is a big part of the problem. Just to clarify-neither of these activities were a major problem for it, and I was walking a bit better afterwards. In yoga, we sat with our feet up against the wall to begin class. Given my Achilles is inflamed, elevation definitely helps! After class, I was still in quite a bit of pain so I triple multi tasked by icing, elevating with my legs up the wall, and practicing my oral presentation (and I looked ridiculous).

It felt SO much better after that-though definitely still painful. I’m hoping I can reduce the inflammation through lots of ice and Advil in the next few days! I wanted to run this afternoon, but I decided that would be stupid. I went to Crossfit, which had no running, and nothing that would bother it.

The workout started out with 10 minutes of 3 reps of push press on the minute, with strict pull ups for the rest of the minute.

Then, we did 3 sets of 500m rows, with negative splits on each. I actually felt like the rows were getting easier-I felt stronger on the later sets! However, my legs were majorly jello. We followed this with abs, so I was pretty much just jello.

OKAY. Now, I promise we’ll get on to the food! One thing to note-I only have 3 weeks left of school, and I seem to have build up quite the supply of frozen meat (what? right??). So that will be featured quite a bit in lunches for a while!

Monday morning I had a strange but energizing breakfast of a much needed cappuccino (yayy 2:30am bedtimes!) and roasted carrots with an orange.

Lunch was courtesy of the freezer-frozen turkey/chicken meatballs from a Blogilates recipe, topped with Garlic and Herb Laughing Cow. Served alongside more roasted carrots. Notice all the roasted carrots? I finally decided to stop being lazy, and I made some in the dorm oven. The verdict? Definitely not the best I’ve made-they needed to be cooked longer!

Monday was spent frantically cramming for a midterm, so dinner was eaten with a side of Photosynthesis. I had a turkey burger with cheese (no bun), a salad, and originally rice, but I wasn’t a fan so I went back and got sweet potatoes. Also, there was a warm, buttered roll. It’s amazing how good warm bread with butter is!

Tuesday morning after my workout, I refueled with some oatmeal I had made in the microwave the previous day-Lemon Poppyseed Oatmeal! I loved the freshness of the lemon, although I did add some honey because the oatmeal was pretty sour-but this could be partly because my banana wasn’t super ripe! I topped it with sunflower seed butter, because everything is better with nut/seed butter of some kind, right?

I really want to try this recipe, but with key lime instead of lemon! (And omitting poppy seeds-maybe some graham crackers crumbs though?) This is so perfect for summer! (I actually ate this cold because I made it the day before.)

Lunch was more frozen meat-but clearly not in the frozen form! Plus more roasted carrots, and an avocado I picked up the other day.

Since my lunch was packed and I brought my avocado unopened, I wanted to salt my avocado, but I knew my salt shaker would spill salt everywhere if I brought it. Instead, I decided to try a new salt seasoning from Trader Joe’s, which has a grind dispenser. I really, really liked it! It tasted very summery as well-this summer may just be the year of the lemon for me!

Snacks through out the day included half a banana with sun butter, snap peas (such a good impulse buy the previous night), and a much, much needed cappuccino that tasted like milk of the gods. Let’s just say that I haven’t slept anywhere near enough lately and didn’t have time for one before my first class, so it was actually the best thing ever.

After Crossfit, dinner was at the dining hall.They had barbecue chicken today, which was a change, so I centered my meal around that. I put my chicken atop a salad with lemon vinaigrette-and I just realized that lemon really does seem to be the theme today! I also grabbed a mystery tamale which turned out to be chicken and cheese, and a few bites of polenta.

And for my daily dose of dessert?

Yummm.

That’s all I have for today. I’ve dead tired and my room currently looks like sorority exploded on it, as if it wasn’t messy enough already! It’s Big-Little week for my sorority so I’m breaking out the arts and crafts.

What’s one of your favorite summer flavors?

WIAW-Yoga FINALLY

Date: May 13, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

Happy Wednesday! I finally actually have time for a WIAW post, AND I actually took pictures! Thanks Jenn for hosting!

I am proud to announce, I’m FINALLY out of my food rut. Which equals being out of my blogging rut-phew! Do you ever read blogs that inspire you to eat better? I recently discovered The Oatmeal Artist-the oatmeal is so creative, all I want to do is eat oatmeal, and eat make oatmeal creations of my favorite desserts! I really want to try the banana-mango. I love that idea! To be perfectly honest-I’ve never made baked oatmeal, and I’ve never made stove top oatmeal…I’ve always had instant either with instant hot water, or the microwave! Or overnight oats, of course. So I think that may need to happen!

Ok, on to the ACTUAL food (and exercise).

So…I haven’t been to yoga in FOREVER. Last week, it occurred to me that there is a yoga class after spin in the morning…and I always have an extra hour after spin in the morning before class…so it really made no sense NOT to go! Plus, after softball last night after not so much as picking up a ball since last summer, I was a bit sore!

After spin, I headed over to yoga. As I brought myself into the first down dog of the day, I had that feeling. You know-the revelation of “I’ve been SO stupid.” The entire back of my legs was SO tight, from my hamstring all the way down to my achilles. Then I remembered how I have the tendency to get sort of injured whenever I’m running and I neglect yoga, which is why I think my Achilles tendonitis has flared up so badly lately. I left the class feeling fantastic (and apparently all my yoga muscles have withered away…whoops). When I woke up this morning, my Achilles was so painful I could barely walk and I was expecting it to be “one of those days.” After yoga, it was pretty fine. You better believe I’m going back on Thursday!

And since this is, after all, What I ATE Wednesday, let’s get on with the food!

Breakfast was a current favorite-Whole milk Greek yogurt with berry compote and sunflower seed butter, plus a mango on the side. I have to say, I may be a sort of convert to Whole Milk yogurt. It’s just SO creamy!

Lunch was packed, thanks to my freezer! I thawed out the grilled chicken with mashed butter-sage sweet potatoes last night, and then added some of my precious roasted carrots this morning. It always amazes me how well chicken freezes!

For dessert, I had some dates with unsweetened chocolate (more than just this picture). I credit dates for helping get me out of my food rut. Why have I waited so long to restock them?

Today, it was quite hot out.

I actually didn’t feel the heat TOO much, which I’m taking as a good sign given I’ll be battling the heat and humidity of Washington DC all summer! Anyways, to cool off, I had a raspberry chia kombucha.

And the last of my roasted carrots. It’s always a sad, sad day when I finish them off!

Crossfit today was a bit rough. We worked on cleans as the strength, and then the WOD was the following:

3 rounds:

30 overhead walking lunges

30 wall balls

30 push ups

So, yeah-my shoulders are done.

For dinner, I made a giant salad with all kinds of fun things-carrot/raisin salad, zucchini, chicken, sunflower seeds. I also has a veggie soufflé on the side-I couldn’t find any smaller plates or bowls so I just threw it on top. Classy, as always.

Not necessarily the prettiest, but it got the job done! For dessert, I had some cereal on top of plain Greek yogurt. I ate the top of the yogurt and brought the rest back to my dorm for tomorrow’s breakfast.

Food rut=obliterated! Happy Wednesday!

What’s the best thing you’ve eaten this week?