Category Archives: Food

Beach Vacation and Cast Off!

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Hey! Long time, no see. Sean and I took a break from real life (sort of), and headed to the beach last week with his family. We spent a week in Garden City, SC, a little beach just south of Myrtle Beach. I like it a lot there. We visited Sean’s parents for a weekend a few years ago when they were there, and it was nice to go back and stay for an extended period.

Garden City Beach, South Carolina

It was a lot less fun than it could have been since I’m still in a cast, but we tried to make the best of it. I hate the feeling of constantly being in the way, and that’s definitely how I felt crutching around. But, I did get to go out on the beach and sink my toes in the sand. The house we stayed in was right on the coast, so it made getting out there a lot easier!

Broken Leg on the Beach

Check out the bag over my broken leg.

The weather didn’t cooperate the whole time, so Sean and I ventured out to shop around, took naps, and played games with the family. We made a stop at the Tervis Tumbler store and I got myself a new water bottle, because you can never have too many water bottles. We also went through an ENORMOUS candy store. I made a point to try a little bit of everything. Sour gummies are the bomb.

The rain was a bit of a damper on beach time, but afterward it meant the sand was hard enough for me to crutch out and stick one set of toes in the ocean for approximately 5 seconds and then smile the cheesiest smile ever because Sean never gives me a warning when he’s going to take the picture. Men.

Crutching on the Beach with a Broken Leg

We decided to leave Friday afternoon since the weather had been gloomy all day. As soon as we got in the car, the clouds went away and it was sunny and nice. Classic. We made it home around 10:30pm and crashed for the night. I was too tired to head to CrossFit on Saturday. That’s generally not characteristic of me, but I could barely crutch around the house without falling all over myself. I didn’t want to injure myself even more with a tired, clumsy mistake at the gym.

We ended up taking about a 4-hour nap Saturday morning/afternoon, and then had the most delicious lunch ever–PB&J sandwiches, apple sauce, and broccoli slaw. Hello, childhood.

It’s going to be hard getting back into the groove of work this week, but I have something to look forward to…

Wednesday morning is CAST OFF! I’m so excited at the prospect of standing on two legs, walking up the stairs, and doing things for myself. It will be glorious!

Broken Leg Crutches

Happy Monday!

Vegetarianism and Broken Bones

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After breaking my leg, I got a lot of feedback from people that my diet was the culprit of my injury or that my diet was going to impede my recovery. I’ll admit, it did have me worried, so I scoured the internet for information on it. I even found a website called Ask a Nutritionist, and asked a question about the issue. I was really surprised to find my question was answered:

Question:

I have never broken a bone before in my life. Two years ago, I decided to become a vegetarian. I’m very active–in the gym, playing soccer, running–and recently broke my fibula playing soccer. Family members kept telling me that my diet is weakening my bones (lack of animno acids, regular protein, etc.). Are they right? Does a vegetarian diet put you at risk for things like osteoporosis and broken bones?

Answer:

Currently there is conflicting evidence whether vegetarian diets can lead to lower bone mineral density. Some studies have suggested vegetarians are at higher risk than meat eaters, whilst other studies say the opposite.

What has been shown is that people who consume large amounts of protein are actually at a higher risk of osteoporosis than others. Consuming large amounts of protein can result in a more acidic blood PH, and the calcium in the bone is often used as a buffering agent to normalise blood PH.

Consuming sufficient Calcium and Vitamin D is more important as vegetarians can be deficient in these two nutrients. It is worthwhile making sure you do plan your diet to include these nutrients, as the bulk of scientific research shows that these are important factors in bone development.

Other important factors for building strong bones, are engaging in weight bearing exercise, avoiding alcohol, soft drinks and not smoking, all of which you already do. Overall I think that you are following a healthier lifestyle than most, and with that the overall health of your bones is likely to be better than most. Sports injuries occur to the best of athletes, and realistically I think you can put your injury down to bad luck, rather than your diet choice.

To help my body speed the process along, I’ve been taking extra calcium and vitamin D and trying to load my diet with foods rich in those nutrients. Here’s to hopping on board the train to healing!

Weekend Recap: CrossFit, Cooking, and Cats

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So much has happened since Thursday. Let’s rewind and start there. (If you couldn’t tell from the title, this is going to be a long one, so settle in.)

My Thursday afternoon run with work friends went from 10 miles to 6.5 miles. And I’m so glad. It was messy. The last time I ran that poorly, I was sick the next day. Nothing felt right. My legs were sore, my knees started hurting 4 miles in, my stomach felt bad. I kept saying to my running buddies that I either needed to eat something or throw up (since hunger often feels like sickness to me). I stopped to walk way too many times. When I got home, Sean had made my favorite dinner, too–breakfast. But I still felt too sick to eat it, sad face. I had 1 cinnamon pancake and 2 eggs and went to get ready for bed.

Bad Run

I was up bright and early (read: 4:45) Friday for CrossFit. We did a team WOD. Together we had to row 4000m. While the rower was doing his/her thing, the other people on the team had to hold a plank. I was matched with a younger married couple. The husband was a great rower, but he wasn’t too great at holding the plank. As a result, he did a majority of the rowing, and his wife and I held the plank. I only got to row about 800m, and I held a plank for about 15 minutes. My stomach is still sore as of Sunday night. Oh so sore.

CrossFit Rowing WOD with Plank

After work on Friday, Sean and I went to Panera to celebrate his 25th birthday. It wasn’t until Saturday, technically, but we both didn’t feel like making dinner that night. I got the tomato soup and a salad. I hadn’t had a real salad in a while, so I chowed down. We went to get some groceries afterward, and then came home to watch an episode of Game of Thrones and eat Sean’s birthday key lime pie.

We tried to sleep in Saturday, but the cats weren’t having any of it. So we made breakfast and cleaned the house. Poor Sean had to clean on his birthday. I guess that’s what happens when your birthday’s on a Saturday. I went to CrossFit at around 10 and had my butt handed to me. The warm up was a musical chair version of bear crawls. Once you got out, you had to do burpees. It was a lose-lose. Ha ha! The WOD was also ridiculous:

Buy In:

400m sandbag run (I did it with a 20# vest since all the sandbags were taken by Rx-ers)

WOD

1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1

  • Kettle bell swing (I used .5pd)
  • 20″ box step-ups

Cash Out

50 sit ups

It took me 16:50, and I was exhausted by the end. Pretty sure I would have injured myself if I tried the Rx weight. Everything felt fine until I got to 10, and then I realized it would be no walk in the park heading back down to 1.

I shared a box with a guy since there were so many people, and I’m sure he was freaked out by all my grunting and exasperated yelling. There was a 20-minute time cap, and my box partner didn’t finish the kb swings/step ups in time. The coach said, “If you’re in sit ups, keep going. If you’re still in swings/step ups, time’s up.” My box partner sat down defeated, so I asked what round he was on. He said 5, so I tried to encourage him to just pull through and do the sit ups.

The Garage--A CrossFit Gym

I’m the one in all black in the front, just left of the center. No, not the shirtless skinny one…

Afterward, I came home, showered, ate lunch, and took a nap. We went to Home Depot (for kayak stuff), Target (to get Sean a new lunch box for his birthday), and Trader Joe’s (to pick up things we forgot the day before). We’ve been searching for a kayak rack solution in the garage that’s not too expensive but won’t damage the walls or the kayaks. Sean found this awesome DIY solution online using these $6 L-brackets that support 50# each. Easy squeazy! And now Sean can park in the garage. Homemade pizza (with homemade dough even!) was the Saturday dinner of choice.

Sunday started pretty lazily. It was one of those mornings where we made breakfast, sat around, and then went back to bed. After a morning nap, Sean and I headed to Wal-Mart to check out their selection of hose carts. It was pretty slim, so we headed home. I was feeling queasy from who knows what, so I had a piece of leftover pizza for lunch and called it quits. I sauteed up some green and red peppers with some red onion for fajita lunches throughout the week, and drained, pressed, marinated, and baked some barbecue tofu for dinner. People of earth, if you’re ever worried that people won’t like some food you made–just smother it in barbecue sauce.

While the tofu was marinating, we went to Lowe’s to get a flag for our front porch. I was proud to buy one made in the USA, until I opened the box and discovered that only the flag was made in the USA. The pole, assembly, and holder were all made in China… Seriously?!

American Flag and Wind Chimes

Sean found a recipe for homemade peanut butter cups, so we made a deliciously sugary batch of those. OMG they’re good. Then he helped me put up my wind chimes and the flag. After all that we made dinner while we played Scrabble–BBQ tofu sandwiches, homemade potato salad, and sauteed garlic green beans. Also, I won.

Scrabble Cat

Dinner was huge, so we took a walk around the neighborhood to help make room for dessert. :) We ate birthday key lime pie and ice cream while watching the last remaining episode of Game of Thrones. We’ll have to wait until Monday night to watch the next one (or watch the latest episode of Mad Men)!

How was your weekend? What at-home projects or relaxing projects did you accomplish? I felt like mine was a good combination of being lazy and getting stuff done. Those are the best weekends!