Less Salad, More Bacon

Posted on July 13, 2017 by Alison @ Daily Moves and Grooves

Now, now. I still love vegetables.

But bacon has made its way into my heart (figuratively, maybe literally too, it’s all okay). It has helped fuel life lately, and life has been a blast! A busy blast and not always an easy one, but c’est la vie.

I used to eat salads every single day. If you’ve followed me for a long time, you might remember that a typical meal might be a huge bowl of spinach with leftover meat/pasta/stew just thrown on top (Rachel thinks that’s so weird, BTW).

For example:

Green, leafy (edible, non-smokable) things are obviously great for you, and I highly recommend them. However, I don’t recommend stressing over eating a salad a day. There are other ways you can reach your veggie intake each day, such as…

…rainbow colored carrots (how fun! from Trader Joe’s!)…

…arugula in an avocado, egg, BACON, sriracha sandwich…

…OR with tomatoes (actually a fruit, but for all intents and purposes a veggie) in a homemade BACON cheeseburger…

…frozen brussels sprouts heated up in a pan with some spices…

with leftover Annie’s mac and cheese, some rice, and turkey meatloaf

…OR you could eat almost-dead arugula as a side salad, just to compliment your avocado, BACON, egg toast.

If you’re wondering, I get the uncured apple smoked bacon from Trader Joe’s!

Bacon has honestly helped me recognize that adding flavorful (often fatty/dense) foods to my meals makes me 10x more satisfied, so I’m less likely to think about food in the hour or two after I’m finished eating. I do love food, but it is so nice to not think about it all the time.

All this to say: Tune into what will truly satisfy your body at the moment. Is it really a salad? Or is it really something more dense like a bacon cheeseburger? It can be either one (I do still crave salads sometimes), but try to be honest with yourself. 🙂

What else has been happening this week!? (spoiler: so much.) Here are the highlights.

A much-needed Friday night hanging out with my BFF, Rachel. Complete with Annie’s mac and cheese for me….

…and banana bread mug cakes a la mode for both of us.

Lots of studying for functional anatomy.

Studying is much better with friends like Elayne and study spaces like these.

Sunday was Colby’s birthday, so she hosted a little picnic at Boston Public Garden! This lady is 21! *glasses clink*

We drank mimosas out of Dunkin Donuts cups and ate fruit, Terra chips and scones…

although I made these scones from a box mix and 75% of the people at the party were gluten-free and dairy-free, soooo….

…handstanded…

♥︎ ♥︎ ♥︎

…and I got to meet Nancy from Approaching Paleo (@approachingpaleo)! I’ve “known” her through social media and Fit University for so long now, but I finally got to hug this wonderful woman in person on Sunday.

The internet can help us meet the most marvelous people, lemme tell ya.

Sunday evening involved the usual (yet always extraordinary) Mass and “ice cream Sunday” tradition! We went to Cold Stone.

“cheesecake fantasy” that was melting so fast I nearly drank it like a milkshake

We finished the night off with The Game of Things (NOT Game of Thrones), which never fails to make me double over in laughter.

I developed a pesky and painful blister under my second left toe that caused me to limp a lot earlier this week, so I bought some moleskin and got to work on taping that baby up.

It’s not a gigantic blister, but the location was awkward and I had to make the taping biomechanically sound.

Lastly, one of the best parts of my week was last night when Ben, Rachel and I went boxing at The Ring.

After LOVING boxing at Everybody Fights via ClassPass last week, I found a Groupon for The Ring last week and recruited friends to join me. We went to our free trial class last night!

It was a doooooozy but so. freaking. fun. I am seriously such a big fan of boxing (haven’t sparred in my life, though, so don’t let me get too far ahead of myself), and the HIIT workout these gyms do to train are right up my alley.

So now we get to box for free for a week and then get 5 extra classes with our Groupon on top of that. I’m SO STOKED. We even got our own wraps and gloves to keep!

Oh! One more thing that is long overdue. I was a guest on Emily’s podcast from Beauty in Christ a few weeks ago. We talked about intuitive exercise. Check out the podcast here if you’re interested! (p.s. Emily is a wonderful friend of mine and a beautiful light in the world, bringing both body positivity and the Love of God to everyone she meets.)

I hope you all have a great pre-Friday! Eat some bacon (or, like, full fat coconut milk if you’re vegan).

So tell me:

What is a food that is flavorful and satisfying that you like to add to your meals?

Have you ever tried boxing?

Two things that you’ve done this past week!

Weekly Moves and Grooves XXVII + Recent Eats

Posted on April 26, 2015 by Alison @ Daily Moves and Grooves

Two more weeks until I’m not a college freshman anymore!

It’s humorous to think about how fast the year went, but I won’t go on about how sentimental it is to see time pass so quickly. Instead, I’ll keep this intro short and sweet and get to this week’s moves and grooves!

I’m also sharing some of my delicious recent eats that haven’t made it to the blog yet. I don’t know about you, but I just like looking at food pictures. My Pinterest, my Instagram, my Facebook, my blog— 95.78% food photos. It creeps me out when people say “food porn,” but I guess that’s accurate…? Pleasure in looking at food photos?

Guatever, I’ll just drop the issue. Enjoy!

Sunday

Rest

Monday

outdoor leg workout

I forget the exact exercises I did, but it was a total of 30 rounds of 30 seconds work: 10 seconds rest, so it took exactly 20 minutes. All I remember is that there were a lot of jumps and plyometrics that left me sore the next day!

Tuesday

100 burpee challenge

In 7:40. It was tough this week!

Wednesday

outdoor circuit workout

My goodness, I am digging the outdoors these days. It’s still pretty chilly here in Boston despite it almost being May, but that makes for the perfect temperature when you’re working up a sweat!

I did 7 rounds of:

10 alternating pistol squats
10 pushups
10 bench jumps
10 mountain climbers (each leg)
10 squat jumps
10 bench toe taps (each foot)
10 reverse crunch leg lifts
10 burpees
10 spiderman planks (each side)
10 tuck jumps

This took about 35 minutes, and I was pooped at the end.

Thursday

Rest

Friday

dynamic warmup + leg workout

It had been a while since I had gone to the gym since the nice weather just calls for moving and grooving outdoors. But I was feelin’ the gym on Friday!

To warmup, I did 3 rounds of:

5 burpees
5 pushups to side plank right
5 pushups to side plank left
15 KB swings
20 air squats

Then the leg workout:

5×8 Bulgarian split squats (35#) // 16 jump lunges between each set
1×8, 2×6, 2×5 hamstring curls (100#) // 20 squat jumps between each set
1×8, 4×5 trap bar deadlifts (135#) // 8 box jumps between each set
3×20 hamstring ball curls // 30 side jump lunges between each set

I walked much more slowly than normal on Saturday.

Saturday

Active rest

______________________________________________

And now onto the recent eats! Disclaimer: the epic amount of salads I’ve been eating is due to the fact that I discovered $185 of dining points left on my account that I must use before the end of the semester. Thus, I have been buying salads at my favorite salad bar ever, which are pricey, so they’ll use up the cash quickly. I’ve also been inviting my brother to eat with me very often 🙂

scrambled eggs + English muffin with peanut butter and banana + glass o’ milk

two eggs with veggies + English muffin with butter and jam + apple

two eggs with veggies + French toast with peanut butter and banana + glass o’ milk

scrambled eggs + plain yogurt with fruit + whole wheat blueberry pancake with butter, cinnamon and banana

baby kale salad with cranberries, pepitas, and some kind of dressing + half a sandwich (roast beef, roasted veggies, dijon mustard, cheese on whole grain ciabatta) + apple

salad with chicken, goat cheese, spiced pecans, roasted apples, roasted butternut squash, and some kind of dressing (it was good!)

salad with tomatoes, cucumbers, beets, peas, carrots, chicken, and sundried tomato blue cheese dressing (it was made out of yogurt or something…interesting!)

salad with beets, carrots, tomatoes, corn, steak, and corn bread!!!

salad with balsamic + turkey, tomato, lettuce, cheddar, honey mustard sandwich on wheat

salad with tuna, feta, and honey dijon dressing + mushroom barley

salad with beets, tomatoes, peas, artichokes, chickpeas, carrots, pasta salad, chicken, and garlic bread (as in, roasted garlic baked inside the bread!)

pizza + teddy grahams at Women’s Group

mashed potatoes with turkey chili and broccoli // the weirdest combo ever served in the dining hall, but it was good!

a Torta de Aceite that my roommate brought home for me // it’s a tender, flaky, sweet and slightly savory flatbread with anise— so good!

biscuit with honey and butter

Insomnia chocolate chip cookie that my next door neighbor so kindly gave me

vanilla and cookies ‘n’ cream ice cream at a Women’s Group sleepover on Friday!

Now I’m hungry.

Hope you all have a superb Sunday!

So tell me:

Did you do fun things outside this week?

What is the best carb you ate this week? Mine is a tie between the roasted garlic bread and the biscuit with honey butter.

Currently…

Posted on March 2, 2015 by Alison @ Daily Moves and Grooves

To think that I used to be bored at some points in my life cracks me up. At times now, I WISH I had time to be bored! But not really, because that’s no fun. 🙂

I hope you all have been doing well, since I know you’re all busy bees too. Since I haven’t checked in with life lately, I am sharing some current happenings with you all, inspired by Amanda’s “currently” posts!

Current book: Better by Atule Gawande for my intro to health professions writing class.

Current music: My own voice (I gave up music for Lent). I’m basically like Tori Kelly…with undertones like those of a pre-pubescent teenage boy.

Current guilty pleasure: Watching Jamie Oliver’s FoodTube channel and listening to those melodic British and Italian voices.

Current beverage: Wahhhhter. All the day. I can’t wait for smoothies at home during spring break!!!

It calls to me.

Current food: Apple chips with peanut butter. I mean, I have a lot of things with peanut butter, but this is my go-to right now.

And just because I haven’t shared my recent eats lately, here are a couple collages. Lots of sandwiches, eggs, and peanut butter per usual.

That bottom right picture is peach cobbler from the dining hall (WOW so good)….with cottage cheese. Sorry if that made you gag, but here’s what happened: I got the cottage cheese first, expecting to just put some usual fruit and granola on it, but then I found the peach cobbler, which of course I could not pass up. So I reasoned, “Well, the fruit is still there, the carbs are still there… I’ll go for it.” So I put the peach cobbler on my cottage cheese.

I must admit that the combo was a little funky fresh at first, but it was still pretty good! I probably wouldn’t do it again though.

Current obsession: Wearing fuzzy tights underneath jeans. Why did I not do this earlier?! My mom bought me a couple pairs of super comfy, fleece-lined tights a while back, and I only recently decided to start wearing them underneath my jeans. My legs are so much happier when I walk out in the frigid Boston wind now. I’m sorry for previously judging people who wear long underwear.

[source]

Current wish: That I could read more blogs and not have 300 unread blogs in my reader ahhhh.

Current need: To form more synapses in my brain more quickly so that I can remember everything for my linguistics exam tomorrow and anatomy lab exam on Wednesday.

Current triumph: Not yet tripping on the uneven sidewalks of Boston University (despite almost faceplanting multiple times).

Current bane of my existence: Winter. It’s been long enough.

Current indulgence: This dinner that my roommate treated me to as a late Christmas present. She took me to an on-campus, sit-down restaurant called Late Night Kitchen, which is in the basement of one of our student centers. I was very impressed! Maybe it’s because I was starving, but my pesto grilled chicken sandwich with crispy french fries were ON POINT. (In the words of my roommate, they were “A1.”)

Current procrastination: Right now— I’m blogging to procrastinate my studying 🙂

Current blessing: School. Sometimes I feel like I’m drowning in work, but when I take a step back from the stress, I realize that a) it’s a blessing to be at such an amazing college, b) I’m learning some awesome things, c) there are so many resources and people to help me. What’s there to complain about!?

Current excitement: My next door dorm neighbor/bff Rachel is coming to New York with me for spring break! I’m in charge of taking her around NYC, which means I’m in charge of taking her to eateries and restaurants, which means I’m overwhelmed but so super excited!

Current mood:

Current link: I WANT THIS OMELETTE. It’s mesmerizingly fluffy.

And there you have it, friends! I may or may not be coming back tomorrow with a recap of my NEDA week talk from last Monday. I’m definitely bummed that I wasn’t able to get a post up regarding NEDA week when it was, well, actually NEDA week, but better late than never, right?

I hope you have a fantastic Monday!

So tell me your current…

…guilty pleasure

…wish

…bane of existence

…procrastination

…food!

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Daily Moves and Grooves

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Tag Archives: salads

Less Salad, More Bacon