One Day.

Guys it's BIRTHDAY WEEK! Haha can you tell I'm excited?? I'm actually way more excited to see my parents and my kitties (I can't wait to bury my face in their fluffiness and call them weird pet names and snuggle with them basically 24/7) and to bake for Thanksgiving than I am about leaving lucky number 17 and turning 18, but my excitement levels about going home in general are pretty ridiculous.

I'm finally done with my math and chem midterms and barely survived them.. I don't want to see another integral or wave function or probability distribution for at least a week a year. Finals are going to be just dandy..

I've been running on lotsa coffee as usual:

Then last night after my chem midterm I went for froyo with my bible study (and they sang me happy birthday and sufficiently embarassed me. Love them so much!) and let's just say I went a *little* bananas. Almost $6 even with a student discount but it was ohsoworthit. Minus the tummyache after. Oh wait.. that was kinda worth it too.

I've also had One Direction's new album on repeat ever since I discovered it was all on Spotify a few days ago. I just love how upbeat all the songs are! I am obsessed with crazy dancing with this album and T-Swift with my awesome roomies. Just FYI, dance parties are the best way to procrastinate studying. They happen a lot when I get stressed. I also am pretty sure that all my floor mates have no doubt about my craziness after that night before my chem midterm.. we were blasting music and going all out and a lot of them paused on their way down the hall to see what shenanigans were going on in our room.

Oh and I can't leave before mentioning that UCLA BEAT SC last weekend! We got drenched at the game and it was a long day of being cold and wet and hungry (long story short I didn't have snacks and had to go 8+ hours without food. When I finally got my hands on food I'm pretty sure I demolished it all in less than 4 minutes. Serious.) but in the end it was so worth going! The energy of the student section was so insane and I'm surprised I didn't lose my voice. So proud to be a Bruin :)

Anyway, this post was basically my way of procrastinating that paper I need to be working on. It's the only thing standing in the way between me and going home tomorrow!! T-minus 24 hours and I will be en route to the airport. CAN'T WAIT.

how are you celebrating thanksgiving?

Weekly Workout Recap

Since I've started taking IFT barbell classes, I've started making notes of the workouts we do on my phone, so I thought it would be fun to share them in weekly recaps! This week has been an awesome week for me personally - I love this mix of running, IFT, and rest days.

Sunday: 4-mile run with one of my girls in my bible study!

Monday: Rest day

Tuesday: IFT Barbell Class

• Strength: 5 x 3 push press
• I maxed at 75lbs - I'm still trying to master the form on a lot of the lifts we do.
• WOD was 5 rounds of:
• 5 clapping push-ups (I did regular push-ups since I can't do them properly and clap)
• 10 slam balls (I used a 16lb ball)
• 20 second bar hold overhead (I used 65lbs)

Wednesday: 3.5 mile run - killed it! :)

(^^see that bruise on my left collarbone in the photo? that's from doing cleans!!)

Thursday: IFT Barbell

• Strength: 5 x 2 power cleans (I got up to 80#)
• WOD was 8 rounds of:
• 1-5 pull ups or 1 negative
• I did negatives instead of pull-ups since I can't do a pull-up without a resistance band yet. Negatives are where you start at the top of a pull-up position and lower yourself as slowly as you can, which builds strength in the muscles that you need to do a pull-up. 
• 10 box jumps 
• I *think* my box was 20" but I could be wrong on that one
• After the WOD I did two planks (2 min & 1 min) and some stretching. I'm trying to do planks and stretching a lot more because I know both are really good for me and will help me to get stronger.

Friday: Rest day - my upper body and abs are so sore!! I never have focused much on ab work because it's just not my favorite, and I really want to build up my upper body strength so that I can do a pull-up. 

Which leads me to two new goals I set for the end of the quarter:

1. 3 minute plank
2. 1 pull-up

Random overall thoughts:

• I am LOVING my IFT classes. Although I'm not lifting really heavy weight yet in comparison to most people and I still need to work on form, I look forward to the classes every week because they're so challenging. 
• I'm getting calluses on my hands!! Proof of hard work ;-)

• I realized that my arm muscles are finally looking more defined because I am doing less reps with heavy (for me) weight. I did BodyPump for an entire year and never was able to get my biceps to show and now they finally are a little bit! I can't wait to see how much progress I make this year. 

what was your favorite workout you did this week?

I'm Baaack! {Sugar Overload}

AHH I am so happy to be posting this right now - you guys have no idea how much I've missed you all!! I haven't read (or commented on) any blog posts, nor did I write any of my own, for an entire WEEK. Why? For a paper for my communications class, I had to give up a mass medium that I use and rely on the most, and write about how my life was changed (and so on). I picked blogging because in all honesty it is the mass medium I use the most - way more than I watch TV, listen to the radio, or read the news - so it was the perfect choice for me to write my paper on.

But can I just say how hard it was to give it up for a week?? I missed it so much in so many ways and all I can say is I'm glad to be back :) And that my google reader is literally exploding!

Anyway, I wanted to share some highlights of the past week with you guys!

We finally are getting more fall-ish weather here - it's been pretty chilly the past couple of days and even rained one day last week. Made me feel like I was back at home:) 

I got my hands on a red cup<3

I had a Diddy Riese date with one of my floormates last night (yayyy for no school today!) - I got espresso chip and peanut butter cup ice creams and was in heaven. 

I treated myself to Jamba Juice after my first real IFT barbell class (similar to the IFT class I took on Monday, except this one used barbells) on Thursday. The workout was so tough!! We did 4 rounds of burpees and Romanian deadlifts and I was so sore on Friday that walking hurt. I spent some quality time with my foam roller and then went on a shake-out run with a girlfriend on Saturday night that made my legs feel a lot better! 

Someone on my floor randomly gave me a pomegranate and I spent like 20 minutes at the laundry room sink getting all the arils out but it was so worth it. You do what you gotta do, right? 

I also discovered that there is a trolley (well, a bus disguised as a trolley) that goes from campus to Target, Ralph's, and Trader Joe's every Saturday. Needless to say I was stoked to not have to carry all my groceries all the way back up the hill! One of the things I bought was this dark chocolate coconut caramel bar - the perfect study fuel when it comes to quantum mechanics. 

Getting cupcakes at 1 in the morning after having a paper-writing date on Saturday night with one of my girlies. We burnt popcorn and spent far too much time playing around on photo booth pretending like we had mustaches but it was so much fun. Not to mention I actually wrote 4 pages of my paper that night too! 

Coffee and an amazing vegan chocolate chip walnut cookie while doing my readings and writing more of my paper. 

Looking back on this post made me come face to face with a reality that I've been denying - I'm eating a LOT more sugar and junk than usual. And what you see isn't even all of it. Candy corn, scones, brownies, all of it -  I've been indulging a little too much lately and the more I think about it the more I realize that it is affecting me negatively. I feel more weighed down, in general I have less energy, and I just haven't been feeling too good about myself. 

I know part of the cause is that I am an emotional eater and that I've been pretty stressed about midterms lately. Part of it is that there are just SO many more sweets and goodies available to me than I'm used to having access to. I have a huge sweet tooth and it's tough to pass up the dessert case every single night, especially when people I'm eating with are eating multiple desserts. And I also think that not having access to blogs for the entire past week didn't help - because reading other blogs is so helpful and encouraging when you're trying to live a healthy lifestyle. 

To be honest, when I was looking back through my photos for this post I almost didn't include some of them because there are so many treats that have been happening lately. But then I realized that not posting about it would mean not being real with you guys, and that's the last thing I want to do. 

So I'm being honest. I'm being real. I'm saying that living a healthy life in college is HARD. Being thrown into an entirely new life, in a new place with new stresses, being without your family and your home and your comfort zone, all of it is so utterly overwhelming.  And suddenly it makes perfect sense to me why people gain the freshman 15 so easily. 

But I'm so glad that I'm realizing this now and not at the end of the year. Because I can do something about this, I can make a change. I don't exactly have a game plan yet, but I know that I need to do something differently. And that's a start. 

So you tell me: what are your suggestions for cutting down on sugar and getting my energy back?