Lightweight Eats

For some reason, this combination sounded really tasty as I was writing up our grocery list; I was right. I imagine it would also be great with some walnuts on top.

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Spinach, Fennel, Apple Salad

2-4 cups raw baby spinach
0.5 fennel bulb, thinly sliced
1 small apple, cubed or thinly sliced
2 cloves garlic, minced

Dressing:
0.5T olive oil
1T Bragg unfiltered apple cider vinegar
1t dijon mustard
1t ketchup (to sweeten)

1. Layer all of the salad ingredients in a big bowl.
2. Whisk together the dressing ingredients.
3. Dress and toss. Add salt and pepper to taste.
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I'm usually pretty awful at eating healthy lunches. I get home from practice hungry, grab a spoon and hit the peanut butter jar. Not a great start to the day.

Every week, I plan out our dinner menu. In light of my terrible snacking habits, I decided to also throw some lunch ideas onto the list--nothing complicated, but healthier ideas.

I've done this before and it's been mildly successful; this time, I decided to put in some extra effort in the hopes of improving the success rate. Over the weekend, instead of shoving all the veggies in the fridge, I pre-chopped them. I know this isn't the best practice for the longevity of vegetables, but that wasn't the point--I wanted to eat them, not keep them.

We also bought a few convenience foods: pitas, hummus and pre-made salad dressing.

I'm not a huge fan of pre-made salad dressing, and prefer to make large batches of my own, but my schedule is busy enough that that's not always possible. I carefully read the ingredient lists, and hope for the best.

The recent cold weather has also called for lots of soup. We bought a large slow cooker a few months ago, and I've been using it to make huge batches of soup. They're usually part of the dinner menu, but a crock full of soup is enough for 3-4 lunches and 2 dinners, at least.

On my lunch/snack menu this week:
- pita pockets with hummus and chopped veggies
- split pea soup
- salads with chopped veggies, avocado and bottled dressing
- celery sticks with peanut butter (yea, that's right, replaced the spoon)

Success rate? High. I think this is the first time we've finished an entire bunch of celery in a week. (Please don't think about that one too hard.) Our soup is super tasty. (Haha!) And we managed to finish off two pounds of romaine, two beets, a large turnip, a bunch of radishes, four pounds of carrots, and two cucumbers in three days.

I'm also a big fan of changing up the routine PB&J for lunches. I use almond butter or sunflower seed butter, and for a while I was using cranberry sauce instead of jam. Dan makes an awesome sandwich with peanut butter and pomegranate seeds. Not the most veggie-ful option, but a very comforting lunch. It's great with a hot mug of tea and the FoodGawker app.

In summary, I'm planning to make a habit out of pre-chopping veggies and planning healthy lunches into my week. I also think celery sticks are here to stay--more calories than a spoon, but also a lot more filling.

I love the way my life has turned out. In the past few years, I've made a lot of positive changes that have put me in a great place. And I've developed a lot of great habits that have gotten me here:

- Exercising: even on my days off from formal exercise, I usually make it outside for a walk, or spend time gardening. Trips to the grocery store certainly count; it's only a mile away, but a mile with 25 pounds of groceries is pretty significant.
- Eating breakfast: in high school, I couldn't even wait long enough to get dressed before I ate breakfast. For me, being a little bit hungry in the mornings means I'm eating the right amount of food.
- Sleeping 8 hours a night: in college, this was a big part of my success. Sleeping enough at night gave me the energy to get thru my day. Now, I often supplement my 8 hours with a nap.
- Getting enough vegetables: a few years ago, I read a blog post about vegetable consumption that made me think twice. I wasn't actually eating enough of them. Well, I've turned over a new leaf: every day I eat at least five servings of vegetables. It's not easy, though, even as a vegetarian. If you're not trying, you're probably not getting enough.
- Acknowledging the things I've done well: every day, I try to list a few things that I'm proud I did. For example, when I finish a particularly hard workout right on target, or the time I walked in to buy a slice of cake and walked out with plain granola. I try to do the same for Dan--he's really a pretty impressive guy.

I also have a few habits that I'd like to break:
- Eating instead of sleeping: despite getting eight hours a night, sometimes I'm still wiped after a particularly hard training session (or week). The worst times are 10 am and 8:30pm, and I really should learn to just crawl in bed and sleep.
- Skipping workouts: I've gotten into a bad habit of skipping afternoon workouts and lifts, usually because I'm either tired (and should have napped) or because I want to spend time with my husband. I need to let him cook dinner more often so I can get these done. Those 1-2 sessions a week really do add up over time.
- Always wearing my hair up: I've gotten remarkably attached to my long hair, but I always wear it up, and usually in a ponytail. That's not good for my hair, and it's kind of a waste. At least twice a week, I'd like to wear it down.

And habits that I'd like to form:
- Brushing twice a day: the key habit forming years for this coincided with 5:15AM practice, when time was at a premium in the morning. I know it's gross, and now that I drink coffee regularly, I should get into this habit to prevent yellow teeth. I do floss every day now!!
- Stretching: I used to be the last one at the boathouse every day because I spent 10 minutes stretching. I need to rebuild that habit; it helps me recover and sleep better.
- Drinking more water/tea: I got out of the habit of drinking water senior year because I was worried about making weight for afternoon practice. Not good. Now, I avoid it before AM practice because there's no bathroom in my boat. That's no excuse for 10AM-10PM, though. It prevents me from snacking when I shouldn't be and helps me recover better.

Any other habits I should be making or breaking in 2013?

I've read about athletes that only train to race. I don't think they'd make it very far in rowing. We spend countless hours training, probably over 1000 hours a year, for maybe ten 8-minute races. 12.5 hours of training for every minute of racing? You'd better really, really, really love to race.

But personally, I don't think I could do this if I didn't love to train as well. There is something glorious about my time in a boat, on a boat, running and lifting; the clear correlation between input and output is what motivates me to continue.

And that is why I love racing.

I've won silver medals and cried with joy and elation. I've won silver medals and cried with disappointment and frustration. The result is simply what you make of it, and not really the point.

There was a quote in the Princeton locker room:

"It's not the will to win that matters—everyone has that. It's the will to prepare to win that matters." — Paul "Bear" Bryant

That's why I love racing. First, it gives me the will to prepare. It gives the training cycle and end point and therefore must give it a starting point as well.

Second, there is nothing more satisfying than showing up on race day having prepared beyond a doubt to win and then winning beyond a doubt. Racing, by nature, evens the playing field on the will to win front--everybody wants to win equally as badly. What racing really displays is who prepared.

If at any point you doubt that, and think that born talent is enough to win, rethink your commitment to your training. Take a step back and be critical of yourself; in the end, that's what being a great athlete is all about. Finding your weaknesses and systematically eliminating them through power of will.


In the past seven months, I've learned an all important lesson: weighted importance of races. Yes, all races are important, just as all practices, all meals and all good nights of sleep are important. And some are no more important than that: they are practice races, and places to learn lessons about your race day performance.

I have learned that sleeping enough is more important than a training taper, and that I need to be responsible for race information like course maps, race times and entry numbers. I have yet to learn how to manage a weigh-in the day of a race, and how to plan a successful race strategy; I'm looking forward to the opportunity to practice. It would be disappointed to prepare to win the 8 minutes down the course only to lose the race on the way to the starting line.

Do you love to race? What's your favorite part?

After a brief winter break, training resumed in earnest this week. I did a really good job of getting in all of the workouts over break--something I have historically been less than stellar about.

Having new toys to play with helped.

Ever wonder how much (or little) you could/should spend on food per week? I've heard of a lot of people chasing the elusive $50/week marker, but I knew that eating organic and fueling my training wasn't going to allow for that.

Every time I came up with a meal plan that seemed to have enough calories, I was ending up with $60/week for just my food.

So I decided to do some math.

I opened up a spreadsheet and got to work. Follow along and you can do the same. In the first column, list the foods you eat on a regular basis.

In the second column, list the serving unit you'd like to use. I recommend weight units where possible (i.e. pounds, ounces). In the third column, list the price per serving. This information can be found on your receipts or approximate values online. In the fourth column, the calories per serving (this info can be found online or on food packaging).

You will also need to know how many calories you consume in a week. Dan and I consume between 35000 and 40000 calories per week, or around 5500 calories a day, between the two of us.

[Some useful info: there are 16 ounces in a pound, and 28 grams in an ounce.]

Ok, so that's the hard part--the input. Next comes the cool part.

I re-organized by $/calorie; this is definitely not a complete list of everything we eat.

In your spreadsheet, divide column three ($/serving) by column four (calories/serving) to get cost per calorie ($/calorie) in column five. In column six, multiply column five by your calories per week to get the cost per week if you were to eat only that food ($/week) to achieve your calorie intake.

Obviously, it's not a good idea to eat only one food, but this measure is what you're looking for--how much food should cost you per week.

For example, the cheapest food (per calorie) on our list was peanut butter. If we tried to meet our calorie intake using only peanut butter, we could spend around $38/week on groceries. On the other hand, if we only ate radishes, we'd be spending more like $4300/week on groceries.

I don't have a great system for determining total grocery expenditure--it's ultimately a weighted average of the values in the right. But it did give me a good sense of the minimum. Based on this information, I'm guessing that we'll be closer to 85 or 90 dollars per week.

This makes a lot of sense. We're eating about 3 people's worth of food, mostly organic. And we're not trying to spend any less than we are--we are choosing quality food for a reason.

However, if money got tight, we could easily switch to non-organics outside of the dirty dozen, and rely on more grains, beans and fruits for calories, supplementing with primarily sale, frozen vegetables. Not surprisingly, carrots and potatoes also do well on the price per calorie scale.

Try playing around with this! Let me know what you find out.

People often ask my how I fuel my training without eating meat and animal products. Strangely enough, I often find myself wondering how I managed to fuel my training before.