Intermittent fasting, weight training and pumpkin cheesecake muffins!

Hello all! Its a lovely Seattle day. By lovely, I mean its a genuinely nice day outside, the sun is out, I am alive, yay!

By Seattle day, I mean its been raining on and off all day. The rain stops the second you walk indoors. Once you leave though, its back!

Went to a yard sale in University District this morning and got a juicer for $5! Super excited to turn everything in my kitchen into a liquid beverage!

Also got a cutting board, a super cute retro apron and a pair of jogging pants for $3. Sweet!

Stopped off at a local coffee shop. Not any typical coffee shop. A Chai Tea room! That just happens to serve coffee. I got their original chai with soymilk, only because in my mind, chai tea is blasphemy without soymilk! Its just so delicious, even if you dont particularly like soymilk.

Anyway, got home and have been almost hermitting ever since about 1030 am.  Ive been on my computer, mostly studying my usual topics of sports nutrition, exercise, kinesiology, etc etc...Ive been studying intermittent fasting lately, and I think I will give it a go. With my current schedule it mostly makes sense to give it a try, and if it works, it sounds more appealing than eating 5-6 small meals everyday, being slightly hungry all the time, and being prone to bingeing on unhealthy foods due to the slight hunger.

It also sounds more appealing because of the fact that you fit all of your daily calories into an 8 hour window, which is so much easier than trying to make 5-6 mini meals stretch into your daily calorie alottment. This kind of mindset, in my experience, gives you a very unhealthy relationship with food. You start to demonize certain foods. You leave out carbs, see bread as evil, see chocolate as the devil. Whole eggs are satan, cheese is lucifer, etc...etc...You get the point. I think anyone who has ever embarked on a quest to get healthier has fallen victim to these kinds of thoughts, myself not excluded! I might have been the biggest advocate for demonizing certain foods at one point, mainly resulting from my decision to rigidly follow the tenents behind the Clean Eating strategies.

Its part of my quest to enjoy food more, rather than see it as something to scarf down to meet my macronutrient ratios for that particular meal, and enjoy it. Rather than downing 1 c of oatmeal cooked in water sprinkled with cinnamon and 1/2 oz of almonds for breakfast, I will start on my journey to enjoy food.  Enjoy the taste, savor the flavor, eat slower, get used to mealtime being a time to relax and take time for myself, rather than using my usual strategy of wolfing down what I can and running back to work. ( Waiting tables for many years and being a line cook gets you in this habit! Its hard to break!)

Anyone interested in learning more about intermittent fasting can go to http://www.leangains.com/

As soon as I get more into this I will post more information about it.

Along with the intermittent fasting, I am really focusing on my weight training right now. My old regimen used to be focusing on running, stretching, and a little bit of upper body.  My new goal is to be able to do pullups, and deadlift my bodyweight, whatever it may be when that times rolls around that im strong enough to do so. I am focusing on heaving weights and lower reps, but higher sets.  Its exciting, challenging myself, seeing how far I can push myself, and knowing that one day im going to be lifting a weight that the guy next to me is struggling to handle! That just seems exciting to me! Its always motivating to see a female lifter in the gym, especially powerlifters! I saw a girl who looked, in her baggy shirt and leggings, to be just another cardio bunny, there to lift a few 8 lb weights for 25 reps, then go back to doing abs. She walked to a barbell setup on the floor and proceeded to bust out about 5 reps of 240 lbs! She was tinier than my sister! She looked as if she weighed maybe 130 lbs! I was so impressed, and it left me feeling so empowered that I did extra sets of my workouts, and even added some extra HIIT afterwards.

Last but not least...what you all came for...Pumpkin. Cheesecake. Muffins.

Holy freaking crap. You heard me.

This recipe is courtesy of Sugar Cookings blog!

For the filling:

• 8 oz. cream cheese, softened
• 1 large egg
• 1 tbls flour
• 1 cup confectioners’ sugar

For the muffins:

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp. ground nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp. ground cloves
• 1/2 tbsp. plus 1/2 tsp. pumpkin pie spice
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. baking soda
• 2 large eggs
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup pumpkin puree
• 1/2 cup + 2 tbls vegetable oil

For the topping:

• 1/4 cup sugar
• 2 1/2 tbsp. flour
• 3/4 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 2tbsp. cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces

Directions:

1. To prepare the filling, combine the cream cheese, egg, flour and confectioners’ sugar in a medium bowl and mix well until blended and smooth. Set aside.
2. To make the muffins, preheat the oven to 350˚ F. Line muffin pans with paper liners. In a medium bowl, combine the flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, pumpkin pie spice, salt and baking soda; whisk to blend. In the bowl of an electric mixer combine the eggs, sugar, pumpkin puree and oil. Mix on medium-low speed until blended. With the mixer on low speed, add in the dry ingredients, mixing just until incorporated.
3. To make the topping, combine the sugar, flour and cinnamon in a small bowl; whisk to blend. Add in the butter pieces and cut into the dry ingredients with a pastry blender or two forks until the mixture is coarse and crumbly. Transfer to the refrigerator until ready to use.
4. To assemble the muffins, fill each muffin about 2/3 full with batter. Add a dollop of filling on top. (I would say I used about a tablespoon of batter and a heaping teaspoon of filling. They were pretty full going into the oven.) Sprinkle with topping. Bake about 12-14 minutes. Let cool in pan, then cool completely outside of pan. Cover with plastic wrap. Keeps for 3-5 days approximately.

These were so amazingly good.  I took half to work, and they were gone within minutes. The rest were at home for my boyfriend and I to eat. I had one about 15 minutes after they came out of the oven, but honestly the time they tasted the best was 3 days later!

Alrighty, im off to run errands downtown then head to the gym!