Forays Into The Dark Side: Gluten Free Morning Glory Muffins

For my (FINAL!!!) presentation at school I wanted to make something for my group members to snack on while they listened to me talk for 45 minutes. I also wanted to make something that I could actually eat, which meant it needed to be gluten and dairy-free and reasonably healthy so I could fit it into my nutrition plan somewhere.

As a baker, I have always believed that 1) "butter makes it better" and 2) gluten-free baking is a pain and pretty much never worth it. That being said, as the realization that for the foreseeable future I'll be eating entirely gluten-free and mostly dairy-free, I figured this was a good opportunity to buy the weird ingredients and take a crack at real GF-baking. (I have done a fair amount of incidental GF-baking in the past when the substitution of non-wheat flours doesn't affect the final product too much, but I'd classify all of that under the healthy-baking-for-post-workout-snack category more than "real" baking that I share with other people.)

I have always loved the Morning Glory muffins from Whole Foods and when I stumbled across a GF recipe, I figured it was a good place to start. With a solid base of carrots, zucchini, apple, raisins, toasted coconut and toasted walnuts, there are so many delicious things going on with these muffins. The "weird" ingredients in this recipe are quinoa flour, tapioca starch, potato starch and xantham gum. Whole Foods had xantham gum but none of the other ingredients, but Harvest Co-op came through with quinoa flour (available in bulk so I only had to buy 1 cup), arrowroot starch (in place of tapioca starch), and potato starch. I had to buy whole containers of both starches and the xantham gum, so I guess there's more GF-baking in my future (any Cambridge or Boston friends who want to try any of these ingredients out but don't want to buy whole bags of them - hit me up!)

The batter came together fine, though was definitely STICKY, and a bit strange in texture. However, through the magic of baking (it really does feel like sorcery sometimes), the muffins themselves came out delicious! Light and fluffy and moist. Everyone in my group (even the other student who is a regular baker) were surprised to hear they were GF, so I'll take that as a good sign.

Link to recipe on Whole Foods' website.

Whole Foods' lovely picture of these muffins, though I have to say (and will credit the quality of the recipe for this, not my mad skillz, that my muffins looked pretty much the same):

Bench day success

This week has felt absurdly empty of training. I keep wondering if I have accidentally skipped a session or forgotten to schedule a training day, but really it's just because I started my week on Saturday with Ross instead of Monday, so the 4 training days I get in each week are spread over 7-8 days this week instead of 5-6. This is probably for the best since I am still struggling to figure out how exactly to get my left knee to stop being a bastard and start healing and let me get back to squatting already! (So far consensus is that I should probably not squat for at least a week or two and lay off anything else that hurts. So I am going to try this even though I hate, hate, hate skipping training days. Maybe I'll just double deadlift next week or something . . .)

But back to this morning, which was bench day. I started a new 5-3-1 cycle this week and rather than upping my max bench weight I kept it at 135# since I struggled pretty much every workout last cycle. During my 5 week last time around I got 115#x2, 2 and that was with a spotter. Today I got 115#x4,2 without a spotter and with each lift except for one with a clean, competition-length pause at the bottom. Definitely an improvement and very encouraging since my competition max is currently at 105#. I think as with all the lifts, as I dial in my form and get consistent with applying it each and every lift, I am beginning to see the positive benefits in my bench. Consistency truly is the mother of progress.

Training today:
Warmup: landmine presses and band pull-aparts
Bench: 7 sets working up to 115#x4,2 and two rep-out sets at 95# (9, 8 reps) all supersetted with cable rows
Accessory: band pull-ups and triceps work (I switched to the small band this week and was only able to get one actual neutral grip chin-up, but did the rest of my sets as looooooong eccentrics, so still got good work in.)

Supplements

The first time a box looking like the one below showed up on my doorstep, probably in January 2012 or so, I was almost embarrassed. At the time it seemed so totally crazy that I was now purchasing things from a website called bodybuilding.com. And the box was just so BOLD and ASSERTIVE about where it had come from. Suffice to say these days I have no shame, only excitement when these boxes arrive. They are filled with delicious protein powders and BCAAs and creatine and other fun things, all the powdery accessories to training that are not necessary, but can certainly be helpful. Sadly, they are no longer filled with pre-workout supplements, as my nutrition coach told me to cut those out as part of our effort to assess whether my cortisol levels were a bit high (caffeine/stimulants spike your cortisol levels, so if mine were elevated already, adding more stims to the mix probably wasn't helping.)

I came across this article from JTS Strength today that outlines the "big 3" supplements for athletes (creatine monohydrate, fish oil and protein powder) and I think the author makes some good points. There probably isn't anyone strength training with decent intensity who wouldn't benefit from these three supplements (and frankly everyone would probably benefit from fish oil, regardless of whether you're training or not.) It was another good reminder that as much as I liked my pre-workout stimulants, they really were more flash-bang than substance and are entirely not necessary for continued progress in the gym.

Walnut Toffee Banana Bread

I baked this up the other day because I have been in a baking mood, and on my re-feed day (once a week) I get to eat lots and lots of carbs from pretty much whatever source I want, as long as the fat content is low. I worked from this recipe, which I found searching for gluten-free banana bread, but I swapped out egg whites for most of the eggs and applesauce for the butter to make the bread low-fat. I also used 1/4 honey and 1/4 cup maple syrup, because I like my sweet things SWEET and I upped the cinnamon and vanilla, because generally in quick breads I find I like more of both. I also put in an extra 1/2 cup mashed banana, because more banana = more better in my opinion.

One of the reasons I was originally drawn to this particular recipe is that it used cacao nibs, which seem to be everywhere these days online. Unfortunately they are not everywhere in real life, and Whole Foods didn't have them (or I couldn't find them, it was post-training shopping so I was trying to get in and out ASAP before fatigue-food-buying set in.) I substituted 1/4 cup toffee bits that I had sitting around and 1/4 cup chopped walnuts because I figured they would go well with the toffee bits. I was correct. I am sure you could also make this without any add-ins, or use chocolate chips and either way would be lovely.

Dry Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup coconut flour
• 1/2 cup almond flour
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 3/4 tsp baking soda
• pinch of salt
• 1/4 cup toffee bits
• 1/4 cup chopped walnuts

Wet Ingredients:

• 1 egg
• 6 egg whites (1/2 cup + 1 TB if you're pouring them from a carton)
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/4 cup honey
• 1/4 cup maple syrup
• 1/2 cup applesauce
• 1.5 cup mashed banana

Instructions:

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare a 9x5 inch loaf pan by lining with parchment paper, coconut oil spray or a little bit of melted butter. Just something to keep the bread from sticking.
• Combine all dry ingredients together in a bowl, whisk or mix with a fork until most of the (big) clumps are gone.
• Combine all wet ingredients in a separate bowl, stir thoroughly to combine.
• Stir dry ingredients into wet or vice versa. Stir thoroughly until combined.
• Pour batter into loaf pan and bake for 45-65 minutes. Bread is done when a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out with just a few crumbs/when it looks done/when it stops looking "wet" in the middle.
• Cool in pan on rack for 10-20 minutes until the bread has "set" a bit more, then remove from pan and finish cooling on rack. 

Notes:

• Because of all the substitutions I made, most of which increased the liquid content of the batter, my batter was very, very wet (see picture below), and so it took 65 minutes to bake. If you stick closer to the original recipe, your bake time will likely be closer to 45 minutes. Base it on your personal preference and go with your gut on when it's finished baking. I like my sweet quick breads on the very moist, under-done side.

• As demonstrated, this recipe is quite forgiving in terms of substitutions, so similar to the chocolate zucchini bread recipe I posted awhile ago, I am sure you can tweak this extensively to meet your nutritional or palate needs and it will turn out just fine.
• The bread will slice much better if you leave it alone until it is all the way cooled. If, like me, you find this completely impossible, it is also really delicious warm out of the oven, and because mine was so moist and a bit under-done it was almost like a bread pudding - YUM.

Training partners

My last two training sessions have been pretty excellent, mostly thanks to my superlative training partners. Ross and Alexis were in town from New York over the weekend and Ross got up early to train with me on Saturday morning. It was overhead press day, and I was starting my next week's training a couple days early, mostly to take advantage of the opportunity to train with Ross, which is always a good time. My deload week went well so I was feeling good and ready to get back to some heavier weights.

Ross does a lot of Crossfit so is vastly more experienced with all the Olympic lifts than I am. It was great to be able to have him coach me through my split jerk sets, both to get some confirmation that my form looks decent, and to have someone there to encourage me to be more aggressive and explosive. I miss having a coach, and I think my training numbers/recent frustrations reflect that somewhat, as I respond really well to being told what to do in the weight room, and miss having the affirmation and corrections that Chris provided. (I know I wrote recently that I am trying to be better about being my own coach, and that is an ongoing and important process, but I still miss Chris and his coaching a lot.)

Another reason I love training with Ross is that his boundless enthusiasm for what I can do pretty much erases any doubts in my head. Rather than worry about my heaviest set of the day (99# split jerk), and whether I would be able to get the prescribed 5 reps, I asked Ross to push me as much as possible and pretty easily worked up to 99#x8, a 3-rep improvement over the last time I split-jerked 99#.

Saturday training:
Warmup: Is, Ts, Ys
Split Jerk: 6 sets working up to 99#x8, supersetted with inverted rows
Accessory: Speed bench and single-arm rows
Finisher: Every minute on the minute: 6 burpees and 6 medicine ball slams (I threw this in instead of rowing because I love doing hard finishers with other people as it always pushes me to work harder and push to the end. Also, Ross sweats even more than I do with burpees, and that is always amazing to see.)

_________________

This morning Eric met me at the Y for squat day. Eric is my most frequent training partner and I am going to miss him like crazy when he leaves Cambridge later this month. It was great to have him there this morning as he has been trying to help me figure out what I did to my left knee and how best to treat it, as it continues to bother me with squats and at random times throughout the day. The treatment plan we came up with last week was to avoid painful activities and take ibuprofen for a few days to try to calm down any inflammation and let my body heal (working hypothesis: I irritated the articular cartilage in my knee with my shitty squat form a few weeks back and it hasn't really had the opportunity to heal since then because I just keep pushing it.)

I already had plans to drop my squat weights significantly because I have been struggling so much with depth and missing reps. It's definitely a blow to the ego to go from a working 1-rep-max of 245# to 225# and then to 205#, but I think it's the right call and will pay off in the long run. My heaviest lift today was supposed to be 175#x5+, but by the time I got to 126#x5, my L knee had already started to ache (and I had taken ibuprofen before heading to the gym) and had also cracked pretty loudly in the middle of my 111#x5 pause squat set, so with some consultation and encouragement from Eric that it was the right decision I completed a set of 155#x5 partial squats and stopped there.

It's really difficult for me to not complete a prescribed training session because I feel like I am cheating myself of potential progress, and I hate that feeling. In this case, having some external confirmation that it's the right call to take it easy for now allowed me to do so without beating myself up about it. I still have my eye on the October competition, but am also trying to be smart about staying healthy overall and also recognizing that pushing through pain now will get me nowhere if I still can't squat clean and heavy in October. I am hoping that if I take it easy on my knee for a couple more weeks I can get it to heal up so I can start squatting to depth again without pain. Only time will tell . . .


Training today:
Pause squats: 3 sets working up to 126#x5, partial squats: 155#x5, walk-out w/ mini-squats: 221#x5.
Accessory work: good mornings and a kettlebell complex (with the 16kg bell for the first time!)

Less exercise for better results (and also why that exercise probably shouldn't be steady-state cardio.)

One of my nutrition coach's major suggested changes for me was cutting down on the amount of exercise I was doing in order to make it easier to meet my goals of fat loss while maintaining/increasing strength for powerlifting. I cut out all my running (1 3+ mile run each week and treadmill sprints 1-2x/week) and about half of my metabolic conditioning work that ends my lifting each day.

This article from The Metabolic Effect website does a nice job explaining why too much exercise or exercise that lasts for too long can be detrimental to losing weight and/or re-comping your body (i.e. losing body fat while maintaining muscle mass.)

I also really like this piece from Rachel Cosgrove on how her body responded to training for an Ironman. She does a nice job going into the whole "fat-burning zone" myth perpetuated by women's magazines and elliptical machines with heart rate monitors the world over.

I think it's important to keep your goals and what you want out of exercise in mind when you're trying to figure out what to do. If you love to run every day, and can do so comfortably, then you should run every day! But if you're forcing yourself to work out every day or to do long sessions of steady-state cardio because it seems like if some exercise is good then more-more-more must be better, I think it is helpful to keep this stuff in mind. And then of course it all comes back to the fact that you can't out-train a bad diet, meaning that if you want to lose weight/fat, the major changes have to come in what you eat, not in how you work out. Sadness all around on that one, as if it were possible to eat cheesecake every night and work it all off the next day at the gym I. Would. Totally. Do. That.

_______________

Training:
Warmup: Kettlebells - one arm swings and rack squats
Deloaded Dead: 8 sets working up to 177#x3, felt clean and easy. Supersetted with core work.
Accessory: Smith machine single-leg squats. These deserve a post of their own at some point.
Finisher: 1 1/10 mile uphill treadmill sprint. My L knee still feels wonky and felt pretty unsteady with the sprinting so decided to cut it (potentially sandbagging here, but also erring on the side of caution vis a vis my knee.)

I'm talking about body image again. (Over-sharing alert? Up to you.)

I read this article, "Why Love Your Body Campaigns Aren't Working" by Isabel Foxen Duke earlier this week and everything in it rang true to me. (I really encourage you to check it out, it's not long and the rest of what I'm saying here will make a lot more sense if you read it first.) In trying to come up with something more to say about it, something to add to the conversation or a new perspective or piece of wisdom, I'm struggling to do so. I think because I am still so very much in thrall to the idea that my life will "begin" when my body looks the way I think it should. I get a tremendous amount of pleasure as well as physical and psychological gratification from heavy weight training and it has been incredibly empowering to become strong and achieve things in the gym I never thought possible. I respect myself and my body more than I ever have, and I feel incredibly grateful for getting as far as I have in my journey.  I don't want what I'm going to say next to take away from any of that, but I also think it's probably important to say it.

The truth is, that the end of the day I have yet to root out and rid myself of the sad shame-ball at the center of my self worth that compels me ever forward in pursuit of a fitter, leaner body. On some days I think that I want this body because it exemplifies my (relatively newly embraced) ideals of fitness and health and I want to be able to show evidence of my hard work at the gym in more than just my competition numbers. But on a lot of days, the truth is that my desire for leanness is motivated by a fear that I am not worthy of "the guy, the job, or the cute clothes in the window" until I have shaped my body to meet my standards of leanness and fitness and hotness. (I say "my standards" here, and while I recognize they are cultural standards and not actually mine at all, they have been so deeply ingrained in me that they really are mine now, whether I like it or not.)

I don't think I am alone in this feeling. Whether women pursue the body they think they "should" have through diet or exercise or simply through self-flagellation while staring at magazine photos and enviously sizing up other women on the street, I think a lot of us are caught in the idea that something is waiting for us if we can just . . . get . . . more . . . perfect.

Molly Gailbraith pointed out in a recent series of blog posts on getting extremely lean (and while she's talking about fitness competition lean, which is extremely, extremely lean, I think the concept applies to any form of dieting/exercise with the goal to re-shape your body), that while so many people think that getting lean is the road to many things (self-fulfillment, happiness, respect, self-esteem), it is actually just the road to getting lean. That's it. All that happens when you get lean/lose 10#/drop a clothing size is that you are now more lean/weigh 10# less/need to buy new pants. A very simple statement but also profoundly necessary to be stated.

I don't have a neat way to wrap this up. I suppose I should strive to "focus on performance more and the scale less!" or "What my body can do and not what it can look like!" Etc, etc. But sometimes the striving to change my thinking is as exhausting as the striving to get leaner/hotter/better/more perfect, etc. I don't have any answers for that one either.

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Addendum: I want to recognize that a lot of this probably applies to men as well, but not being one, I can't speak to that experience. And I do think that historically this pressure to equate the shape of one's body with one's self-worth/worth in society has been applied much more to women, though in the last 10-15 years by all accounts, men are feeling it too and it's effing up their self-worth just as much.

________________

Training today:
Warmup: rotator cuff work - landmine presses and band pull-aparts (with all the direct and indirect rotator cuff strengthening I have been doing for almost two years, starting in physical therapy in August 2011, it amazes me how jacked up my rotator cuff continues to be.)
Bench deload: six sets working up to 95#x5, superset with cable rows
Accessory: triceps work and band pull-ups
Finisher: heavy rope slams