Mayonnaise

Simple task: imagine all the foods that you eat with mayonnaise. Now, imagine those foods without mayonnaise. Still taste good huh. American food culture is weird.
If you go to a Deli in Europe and ask for Mayo on your sandwich, they'll look at you funny. They don't even carry it in their shops.

The reason I wrote this status was because I see people in the sandwich line at late night who ask for mayo as if it's the only response they can give in a culture that they were raised in to eat sandwiches with Mayo. Seriously though, at late night, there are 8 other different spreads that you can get that all have ten times the amount of taste as mayo, but people don't choose them. Why is that? It's weird because I found myself doing the same thing at the beginning of the year. Now I like to get the pesto spread, and it actually adds a new flavor to the sandwich.

I see people prepare their food as if it was some menu item on a breakfast restaurant joint. It's our culture that holds down creativity for preparing food, and instead insists on standardization and consistency for meals

Why do people get sprinkles on ice cream? Why do people put powdered sugar on their pancakes? They argue that it gives the food flavor, but they don't realize that 95% of the flavor comes from the main food anyways.

Ben Hubbard

9 HOURS OF ULTIMATE!!! Plus being semi-arrested on Foothill for public urination.

Ben Hubbard

Today was a lot of fun. After my Intro to Food Science final, I went to Lap Swim at Hickey pool with Heidi. Turns out I suck at swimming. But it was fun anyways and she tried to teach me proper strokes and egg-beaters. I'll get better at it next quarter. Swimming today was my first opportunity to wear my neon purple/green speedo since forever ago. That was fun. After swimming we went back to Thompson and spray painted Heidi's entire bike and my bike seat bright orange. It looks legit! After the spray paint job was done, I was in my room realizing I didn't want to take a shower after not being sweaty, so I just put on my running shoes and ran over to Toomey Field. At Toomey I stretched and then ran a 6:25 mile. That's good for me. Especially since the only running I've been doing recently has been on a treadmill, and I wanted to try out my new muscles in a real life situation.

Good news! I actually found the pull-up bars that everyone's been talking about at Toomey field. It's like the third time I've tried looking for them all Winter quarter. They are in the farthest corner behind a huge gray storage shed. Did my pull-ups, then ran back to Thompson. Said Hi to Heidi with sweat dripping down my face, then did an assortment of crunches and perfect push ups.

I've been hanging out with Heidi a lot recently and she's a great partner to exercise with. Lol she went to lap swim from 12-1 and then from 5-6 today.

Fuck no late night on Fridays...

In unrelated news, as we were biking back from Hickey pool, we saw some people playing Disc hoops on Russell Fields. I yelled, "Frank Huguenard!" at them. Heidi swears she heard somebody answer, but I didn't see any frank.

Today was a good day to go 4 hours shirtless. Can't wait for Spring.

Jake Ellis

Next quarter is going to be nuts!

As of now I'm taking 19 units Spring quarter because I haven't decided which classes I'd rather take. I will probably take an 8 AM Drama class which will encourage/force me to get out of bed earlier and make more of my days. I want to start swimming at least twice a week and lift two or three days out of the week. I'll probably be wearing boardshorts most of the time, maybe a sideways hat to look more like a bro. Who knows? Maybe I'll even learn how to long board to make a complete transformation. 

I hope to kick this mono bug the first weekend of break so I'll be able to put back on some weight and get back into decent shape by the time Spring Quarter starts. That way I'll be able to practice with the Dogs and play at DUI. 

For now, I've got to study for my two toughest finals, both falling on the same day. Let March Madness begin as I do work on my hardest finals. UNC is going to win, just a little tip incase you need to fill out your bracket.

Oh, and I at super healthy again today. Thanks inability to taste food! 

Ben Hubbard

My goal today is to stay active. I've found myself doing a lot of sitting recently. Just sitting. Mostly I'll reflect on things, or plan out different things. But it ends up wasting a large part of my free time. It happens a lot in the shower too, where I just stand there with the water hitting my back, and I can take 30-40 minute shower thinking about the day before, or what needs to get done that day ahead of me.

So what I plan to do today is whenever I find myself just sitting, I'll get up and do something. If there is nothing for me to do, I guess I'll just make something up. This is going to work wonders for my creativity/spontaneity skills.

Already today I ate a 20 minutes breakfast while studying math, then took a 15 minute shower. Hey...that's good for me :)

Ben Hubbard

I've been waking up a lot earlier than usual this week. The reason I woke up around 7 today was because I had my "Feeding the Planet" final at 8:00am. Dam those morning finals are bitches. This one wasn't too bad though; it took my 20 minutes to finish the entire test (40 true/false, 40 multiple choice) and then about 10 minutes to bubble in all my answers. Funny thing about this class is that I probably only went to about 5 lectures, but aced all the tests because it was so dam easy.

After biking back from Wellmen, I saw Sean going to breakfast and I went with him. I don't remember what foods I got, but I would like to make a point that I maintained my goal today to drink only water. This was a convo from breakfast with sean this morning.

Ben: "What do you think is better for you: Water (points to my cup) or Juice (points to Sean's cup)"
Sean: "Well that's pretty obvious, there's something (points to his cup), and there's nothing (points to my cup of water)"
Ben: "Well I guess it's funny then how our bodies are made up of 75% nothing"

I don't know which is a better drink in the morning, but I do know that most people usually only get juice whenever they go to the DC, and all those sweet carbs/calories add up.

After the DC, Sean and I went to the ARC to workout. This consisted of my running 1.65 miles in 14 flat minutes. It's not much, but like I said last time, I'm still warming up to bigger things since it's been awhile since I've been to the gym. Then I bench pressed, free weights, did the leg workout, and fiddled around with my abs. Good trip today.

Once I got back to Thompson I was so tired that I ended up taking a 5 hour nap in bed. I was pooped. Didn't even take a shower beforehand, but that's ok. After the nap I went to dinner with Brooke. Dinner consisted of pasta shells, two plates of turkey and delicious peas, and a simple salad. The water was also delicious. Now I'm kinda just hanging out trying to study some Calculus for my final tomorrow at 10:30. Fun stuff. I'll catch all of you cool cats later!

Jake Ellis

Finals really puts a damper on my life. Having mono during finals doesn't help much either. Seeing as I still can't work out because of my exhausted state, I've been spending a considerable amount of time studying for my finals this week. The stuffed up nose has allowed me to eat much healthier than I normally would, and coming on Ben and my healthy week, it's given me a little boost. My appetite has been really strange lately, there are times where even the thought of food makes me full, and other times where I can't eat enough. It's really disconcerting when the food you eat has no flavor to you. I had a corn bread muffin at dinner, usually one of my favorites, but all I could feel was the texture and the melt in your mouth goodness. Today I ate more salads with cucumber and broccoli, had the peas with my turkey, and 3 bananas. 

I tried to break the first banana in half like Ben showed me, but I ended up crushing the banana instead. 

Better luck next time. 

I plan on going to bed early tonight because I have an 8:00 AM final tomorrow morning.

How'd you do Ben?

Ben Hubbard

As a consequence for staying up late playing around with this blog, I had to wake up at 7 to start and finish my math homework due at 10. Whoops...what a bad way to start health week. Breakfast consisted of a coffee and two omelets. Meh, at least I've decided to stop eating donuts in the morning. After math class I went back to the dorms and watched the last episode of the collegehumor show, then decided to take a trip to the ARC. At the arc I was able to run a bit, not as much as I would have liked, but I figured that since I hadn't truly exercised in the past 2 weeks I shouldn't take it hard the first time going back. Then I did the leg workout that Taylor showed us. I threw in some free weights for upper body, but nothing worthy enough to mention. What really impressed me was when I sat down on the mats and started doing crunches. I started and felt like I could have gone on forever. I'm not sure why I was able to do so many, but the burn afterwords felt incredible. I also did some push-ups in between crunch exercise sets. That was a good experience. Not much happened the rest of the day.

Currently I am studying for my Feeding the Planet midterm tomorrow. Although I'm staying up late, I'm studying with Heidi which I believe is great for my circulation. I mean, she really gets my heart pumping which is a great workout. I definitely suggest hanging out with a hot girl as a healthy alternative to just studying alone in your room.

Jake Ellis

I'm not sure how Ben did today with our first day of a healthy week, but I made a few steps toward a healthier lifestyle. I'm still getting over mono, so my symptoms today consisted of congestion, fatigue, and random coughing fits. With the congestion, I am unable to taste food because I am so stuffed up. Because of this, I decided to eat as healthily as possible. I started the day with a glass of OJ. I asked for grapes instead of chips at the CoHo, substituted juice in the DC for water, ate tofu instead of meat, added broccoli and cucumber to my salad (no dressing), and ate egg plant. 

This was a good start to the week and hopefully I'll be able to keep it up (maybe make a habit out of it). Next quarter I'm planning on getting to bed earlier, waking up early and swimming before class, and cutting down on my procrastination.

How'd you do Ben?

Healthy Dog Blog Mission Statement

Hi guys, Ben here. I made this blog because Jake Ellis inspired me to hold a "health week" for 7 days with him. The purpose of the health week was to keep each other in check with our diet, sleep schedule, and exercise. I started thinking about ways to prove to each other that we were in fact being healthy. A blogspot sounded like a really good idea through posting our daily routines online to each other. Then I thought why don't I just try and stay healthy for longer than a week. This led to me think that I should share this idea of staying healthy, for as long as possible, to my entire team.

The idea behind this blog is to try and improve our health by being aware of how healthy the rest of your teammates are. By setting examples of positive healthy habits, this will be an way for the rest of our dogs to become inspired to be healthier. By making an outlet for bragging in a competitive way available, I hypothesize that people will be more aware of their daily habits in a way that they make changes and see positive improvement. I wrote this at 11 at night so I might change this up a little if it ends up sounding weird.

What will the contents of this blog be? Write your name in the Title, then post anything you want that tells of something positive and healthy you did that day. It could range from the things you chose to eat that day to a link to an awesome recipe online that you cooked the night before for a nutritious dinner. Post your workout routines here and if people like it, then they could try the workout later. You could post what time you went to bed if you wanted. I suppose this blog could also be a way to keep check of training whether it be how fast you can run a 1.5 mile or how much wieght you plan on losing. What I'm trying to say is that I want you to post anything to this site that lets you brag about your healthy habits.

It's similar to how at the beginning of weight watcher meetings they ask the question, "Does anybody have any stories about how much wieght you lost?" Then a woman in her mid-40's stands up from the crowd and says something like, "After Christmas I decided to stop eating butter every morning...and I've lost 8 pounds!". Then everybody claps and it makes the speaker feel good as well as the rest of the members.

Now I know that some of the people on the team don't like the internet, but I want this blog to work. I want this blog to become a "Favorite" so-to-speak on peoples Mozilla Firefoxes so that when they want something to stay motivated about being the best physical condition they can be in, they can read about Taylor inventing a new leg workout or how Sky's been keeping track of the amount of calories he consumes. Or maybe you see that somebody posted a link to a website that has a sweet article about static vs. non-static stretching. The potential is limitless if this takes off, and I'm willing to keep this going for the next 4 years and then afterward if its a positive blog.

If we can get like 15 people to post things at least 3+ times a week, this could make for a good blogspot. Out of the 40 so odd Dogs on the A and B team, 15 sounds pretty reasonable to me. That's 45 posts a week, which translates into at least 6 posts a day. Imagine if more than 15 people start posting...

I'll tell you now, if I had to think about what I ate because I planned on writing my diet for the entire dogs, I'd probably eat a lot less pizza and cups filled with ice cream from the DC.