Quinn Chrest

My first Wild game was amazing! Got some new found respect for the sport of hockey. Would love to go again. Thank you to my cousin Jamie for inviting me along!

Been on the weight loss journey for a couple years now and the worst thing is fighting off the hunger. I will say if you plan on going the route of caloric deficit being hungry is just something that you are going to have to be ok with. I wouldn’t say you are starving but it is good to get in tune with your body and try to differentiate between hunger wants and needs. The difference between I am bored and I want to eat something versus I need to eat lunch.

The idea that I had in the beginning was to eat low-calorie options so I could eat more. This tactic is flawed in that just because you get to eat more doesn’t mean you will stay full. So I have pivoted into eating food that has a high amount of satiation. Usually upping the amount of protein and fiber in your diet will help you feel fuller longer, but I have found the secret that I don’t hear often. POTATOES!! I have never had anything I meal prepped keep me fuller longer than the potato-based meals I started making. This is not hidden knowledge though. If you google the most satiating foods you will find that potatoes are at the top of the list, and they beat out protein by a pretty decent margin. This is due to a lot of factors but I won’t go into too much detail. The basics are it’s a complex carbohydrate, a good amount of fiber, and it’s high in volume and low in calories. All factors make potatoes more filling and take your body longer to break down.

Meals I have prepped to be more potato-focused are a taco-baked potato bowl and a sweet and spicy sweet potato bowl. For the taco baked potato bowl, I prepared taco meat using ground turkey and added bell peppers, garlic, onion, and black beans served over a bed of cut-up baked potato, and topping with salsa. The sweet and spicy sweet potato bowl is made with ground beef, bell pepper, onion, and garlic simmered in a sauce mixture of Bachan’s Original Japanese BBQ Sauce, hoisin, siracha, and apple cider vinegar, served over a bed of cut up baked sweet potato. These recipes have allowed me to meal prep lunches that fit into the 500-550 calorie range which is great for my 2000 daily goal.

I’ll update you all if I come up with some new ideas, but I’ll finish this by saying SCREW CHICKEN AND RICE GIVE ME POTATOES!

Went out to Broken Clock brewery with Heidi. They opened up a kitchen and had fresh tamales and some pablano potato soup. Great food and beer!

I made some homemade beef stir fry for dinner tonight and Rosalin says “This is so pretty you should take a picture”! Turned out pretty good 👍

Having some fun learning Kotlin in Android Studio. Spent a bit of time working on a step tracker app the last couple of days. Got navigation between a few different fragments working and a SQLite database working. The plan is to have a view for looking at all records logged, a screen to add steps, and a graph view to look at progress over time. Also might add achievements and maybe goal tracking. Pretty excited about my progress so far!

The Vikings did not play well last night… We are in a weird situation with not really having a quarterback but still had a fun time with Brandon and Cody! Would go again!

SKOL Vikings!!!

Out for a walk and tried to snap a pic of the Lignite railroad sign. Might be a bit hard to read…

I like the Black and White as recommended by @jthingelstad

Made it through security! Minot bound in an hour for Christmas. Now to find a cocktail bar and read a book.

Some app ideas that I’ve shied away from in the past involve some simple database tables but I didn’t want to pay to deploy one or worry about hosting one locally that is open on the network. For some reason, I didn’t know SQLite existed. For those of you who also have been under a rock like me, SQLite is a database engine that is self-contained within an application stored as a data file. Found out it’s popular in mobile development with IOS and Android applications. Giving the SQLite3 node package a go on a step tracking/logging application I want to build.

I wanted to give myself the challenge of recreating a game in Javascript! Took it easy for the first go around with Snake. Used the PixiJS library for rendering and handling the game loop. Wrote up a basic overview with some code documentation over on GitHub. Also deployed it on GitHub pages if you wanna give it a try!

Repo: https://github.com/QuinnChrest/Snake

Deployed at: https://quinnchrest.github.io/Snake/

Hey it’s been a while… Life’s been busy, but here’s some cookies! I made some cake box cookies like I used to make with my mother. Easy peasy recipe! You just need a stick of butter, one egg, and a box of cake mix at 350 for 10 or so min. Strawberry and lemon are the ones shown below 👇

Making homemade scones with Rosalin and Tim! I made blackberry lime and Rosalin has white chocolate and strawberry in the oven.

In Fargo for the last Bison home game of the season with my old man! ROLL HERD

Super proud of my friend Blair for completing his Warrant Officer training! I attended his graduation ceremony at Camp Ripley this morning to congratulate him on his efforts. Thank you for going above and beyond the normal call of duty.

We are 8.5 hours into When We Were Young 2023 and I’m hitting the wall! Gotta rally for Blink-182 and Green Day.

Went to Anoka Vintage Fest with Aunt Heidi today. Had a great time and found some cool stuff! Wanted to share some of the haul. I got a Naruto shirt to match my Naruto sweatpants and a Tokyo-themed shirt. Loved the Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past Nintendo Power poster. It is unfortunate that it originally came folded so there are creases, but it is cool nonetheless. Got a great deal on the medieval chess set which is made in Italy. A couple of the pieces are a little broken but I can fix that with some super glue and modeling paint. Finally, rest his soul, I found a Jimmy Buffett greatest hits CD. I grew up listening to Jimmy Buffett with my father so his music holds a special place in my heart.

Had my Bison sweatshirt on for game day! Caught bits and pieces of Missouri State game while I was out. Dad was a bit concerned after their recent performance but it looks like we stomped them out 38 - 10!

Happy Birthday to Rosalin! Had a wonderful dinner at Jax to celebrate. Also Jax was so awesome. I had a grin across my face the whole evening.

Hey, it’s been a while. I have been super busy with career advancements, working on health goals, and juggling a social life. I don’t think it’s going to get any easier, but this sort of busy chaos has been a blast.

Currently out walking on Victory Memorial Parkway and I thought why not walk and talk. This means the whole blog post is being dictated while my phone listens. 🤷 I don’t know. Seems pretty self-explanatory.

The first thing that pops into my head is how busy I’m going to be in the coming months. I’ve booked out most of my weekends but the thing I’m most excited for is going to Vegas again over the weekend of the 21st. I was able to snag some tickets to When We Were Young Fest 2 and my best friend Brandon is meeting me there. It’s a music festival with a bunch of alternative rock and teen angst bands. Looking forward to seeing blink-182 and Games We Play. Also, while I’m there, I’d like to go to Zack Bagans Haunted Museum and try to get a tour of that new giant sphere venue. The clips from the U2 concert looked phenomenal.

On the health goals front, I have been counting my calories for the last month or so and keeping a fitness diary. This has been a huge help and since starting I’ve dropped some more weight along with two and a half inches off my stomach. Woohoo! For weightlifting, I’ve been doing the strong lifts 5x5 and really enjoying that as well. I’m stronger than I’ve ever been and my working sets have increased by 30 lb in the last few weeks. Thanks to everyone for the recent compliments. It helps me realize that I’m still making progress even though I myself don’t see it sometimes.

With the return of federal student debt, I’ve kind of given up on owning a home for a few more years. I think it was a bit ambitious of me to try and buy a home at 26 anyway 😆. I love living with Rosalin and Kurt and I’m sure they’re not in any hurry to get rid of me, but I would like to move into my own space sooner rather than later. So I started looking at apartments in the area and I’m happy to see the prices are coming down a bit.

This last weekend I got to go to the Minnesota Renaissance Festival with my good friends Blair and Connor. Kind of routine for me at this point to go once a year. This time wasn’t that great due to the high humidity and heat. It was difficult to find shade with no clouds in the sky. But I indulged on the cheat day and had pork chop on a stick, mini pancakes, and fudge filled banana bread along with plenty of mead. We ended with a viewing of the medieval jousting. To escape the heat we scurried off to Mall of America where I finally bought myself a pair of HOKA’s. They are these very comfortable shoes that have been recommended to me by Heidi and Lance. They’re a bit more expensive than what I would spend on shoes normally, but they’ve been worth it.

I think I’ll wrap it up here with a thank you if you’ve made it this far. I have family members that have mentioned they would like to get emailed when I post on my blog so maybe I should look into setting something like that up. After getting home from this walk I’ll look over the post and add links to anything I’ve mentioned that I feel is linkworthy. I hope you all have a wonderful rest of your week!

OMG I didn’t realize how much counting your calories mattered. I was just kind of guesstimating through my day before and was getting annoyed with how inconsistent my results were. Turns out I was underestimating how much I was actually eating. I started counting my calories last week and eating at a higher deficit and it is working out pretty well for me. Starting up a new lifting regiment this week as well with the Strong lifts 5x5. Including a cool picture of the Victory Memorial Monument I took over the weekend.