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Our food selection in Curry, our student center, is pretty small and it’s all the worst food you can think of:
Burgers and fries joint? Check–Wendy’s
Pizza? Check–Pizza Hut
Cheap imitation Mexican food? Yup–Taco Bell
The one healthy place you have always closed? Yes–I can’t even recall the name it’s that bad
And unfortunately the newest bane of my existence has come into place; ice cream right in the little convenience store next door, made fresh right in the machine:
Moo Bella
Even the name has a gravitational effect.
Butter pecan (just that they don’t add pecans)
So basically I’m banning that and my other current habit of picking up 5 piece Wendy’s nuggets and a small fry. Honestly, once you start in the bad food, the crazy is abominable. The only solution is cut it off for me and then possible when I’m complete disinterested in it if the craving does arrive, I’ll know it’ll be a one time thing. I’ve been eating those foods so often it’s become habitual and I’m pretty sure between work and 5 classes I’m not walking around as much. My new building has an elevator and I don’t take the stairs as much. It’s on to detox 2! Gym tomorrow!
Ciao,
Lucia
I did a podcast with my friend Ryan on 11/9/09, whom is someone I discussed here in this post. For a quick refresher, these were his bad habits at the time:
- Ryan pretty much had an artificial sleeping pattern. He “woke up” with a Venti coffee from Starbucks and by the early evening he stayed awake on another Tall coffee.
- When he couldn’t fall asleep, he’d take a sleeping pill.
- He smoked
- He was always very active, running 5-7 miles in a session, but on very little sleep and empty calories.
So we pretty much just had a great conversation about his detox process, how it was going, how he was feeling lately, etc. It was a lot of fun actually.
http://jrn525.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/healthtimecrunch.wav
Enjoy!
Lucia
P.S. Please excuse the quality, as I had to re-record it onto a Mac because silly me didn’t directly load it up the first time!
So on Oct 19th, about three weeks ago, I posed the challenge to get a minimum of 8 hours each night for week. To be totally honest, I half-failed. I was able to get an average of 7 hours a night for two nights, and 8 hours for two nights and I think about 6 hours for two nights, and one night I think I had to stay up and study. However the nights I did get at least eight hours of sleep, the results were worthwhile.
- I had the energy to go to the gym the following morning
- I woke up calmer and more relaxed
- I got up early enough to have breakfast
- I got up early enough to have ample time to get dressed
These are just subjective findings. Some of the benefits are formally listed in the challenge entry of course.
In general, I’ve been making both time for ample sleep and dinner and I feel so much better for it. I remember my friend Ryan (who is actually the subject of my upcoming Podcast entry) thought I was even upset with him one day I was edgy from just being drained from school and not sleeping much. With sleep, it seems like everything is easier to make fall in place–schoolwork, exercise, eating right, etc.
Bon nuit,
Lucia
I find myself speaking with more and more of my friends about our bad habits, especially with bad weather closing in on us (snow yesterday anyone?). Some of the number one reasons a few of them have mentioned for their bad habits are things like:
“I didn’t get enough sleep so I need coffee”
My friend Ryan is famous for this. Ryan is a swimmer, the brain child behind the online magazine I’m assisting with, in classes, which includes Journalism 2 and a film class, both of which, if anyone is familiar with them, involve a lot of outside projects such as attending showings, setting up interviews, and going on location for stories (court case story, ouch).
Ryan pretty much has given himself an artificial sleeping pattern. He “wakes up” with a Venti coffee from Starbucks and gets through the middle of the day on another Venti (maybe a tall), and finally by the early evening stays awake on another Starbucks coffee. I might not even be totally aware of the actual amount.
He finds himself unable to fall asleep at night, staying up sometimes to 3AM and usually has to take something to be able to go to sleep lately. He also has a terrible roommate who is supposed to have moved out who blasts death metal through the middle of the night and is on a gamut of illegal substances.
When he is stressed out, he likes to run–a lot. But imagine running let’s say 7 miles on a few hours of sleep and energy that is 50% coffee or more–empty calories. He’s tired and he finds himself reaching for a cigarette as he’s trying to quit. He’s mentioned it certainly doesn’t help in the pool (as you can imagine).
“My job’s stressing me out and there’s all this food at work. I know people eat more and workout less once it gets cold”
My friend Yaewon is dealing with this right now. Her job is very stressful, but she loves her work. She works at a homeless shelter for women and they have a lot of food sent in. Lately, she was given a bucket-load of pastries from Starbucks to take home. I recently fell victim to eating one the giant rice crispies from the pile.
One thing I’ve noticed, at least for me, is a lot of times why you end up eating something is simply because it is there, even if you so called don’t like it. I generally don’t like doughnuts, cookies, or chips. However, like I mentioned, I ate the over-sized rice crispy, snacked on an apple muffin at Yaewon’s place that night as well, and at several of my meetings on Monday nights, I end up eating cookies or occasionally chips (though they were super healthy and yummy, a lot of our e-board are/ were Trader Joe’s/ Wholefood shoppers). I end up eating doughnuts if someone brings them in for some kind of function because everyone around me is enjoying one.
And like Yae mentioned, as the weather slowly grows cooler, a lot of Bostonians are going to find themselves moving into hibernation mode and watching more Mad Men, Grey’s Anatomy, or House. As Yae and I talked about this I told her the most important tip I can give her–and myself–is to literally fix your eating habits before the weather turns south. It’s so much easier because you can still march around the city without snow on the ground (she walks to work) and for every bad thing you end up eating, the 70 degree weather will be a huge incentive to go out and run it off. By then, you’re so used to running that when winter hits you imply put on the layers or stomp your way off to the gym because you’re restless.
Now I wrote part of this some time back, however, this rest of this week will be in the 60s. It’s shortly after 10 PM as I write this and I got back from my meeting at 9. I’m thinking if I can get to bed in the next 20 minutes I can get up at 6 AM and go to the gym. My MP3 is broken (no idea why), but I have to listen to my own advice. The snow on Monday was almost a warning. If I do run outside, I like to run in the evenings and obviously daylight is short.
I still see students running, which isn’t very surprising as Massachusetts, as according to a report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has three cities in the first 20 of the 184 healthiest cities in the nation, with Cambridge being #10.
I give my friends tips on whatever I know and I know especially Ryan is hopefully to get off the coffee (he tried tea, he went back to coffee). My friends are fit people in general, it’s just the little things that can cause someone to crash or skip class because they’re too tired or stressed out and low on energy because they haven’t taken care of themselves. I’ll be posting some updates on his progress.
Which brings me to my next big tip: Get Some Sleep.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
Photo by: Eugene0126jp
I kind of already spoke about ways to eat better, so in regards to rest, personally I know I need to get more sleep which usually leads me to eat late. The longer you stay up, eventually you’re going to grow hungry again. This article from CNN has these tips on falling asleep:
- No drinking alcohol or coffee before bedtime.
- No TV in the bedroom.
- Have a regular waking time.
- Do early morning exercise.
Now without sleep, you’re not going to get up to work out and you’re going to end up eating late. I personally have fallen into that rut. My eating is alright–I haven’t really be eating much candy or cakes–but I’ve gotten Wendy’s nuggets and fries a couple times in the last two weeks. I had a major cold the week up to and through Columbus Day weekend. Basically all I could do was rest and I did my homework all on Monday. I flooded my system with orange juice, etc. but it was really simply sleeping that did the trick.
Top Ten Reasons to Sleep:
10. Sleep Helps the Body Make Repairs
Main Article: http://longevity.about.com/od/lifelongenergy/tp/healthy_sleep.htm
Each of those declarations links to an article for further information and all of them were written by doctors, but I offer you, the everyday person, this challenge that I’m going to start this week: Get a minimum of 8 hours every night this week. I’m going to do this and post my findings. Even this weekend I stayed in and recovered from the final flailings of my cold and was rewarded with the energy to finally organize my room. I’m looking forward to a week of productivity I hope to go to the gym by Wednesday morning (“gyming it” with an 8 AM and work tomorrow is going to cause me to be way too tired, as I’m closing this post up at 11PM and am getting up at 7AM).
Bon nuit,
Lucia
Let’s go through Lucia’s eating schedule last week–which was supposed to be my detox week:
Monday:
Au Bon Pain Bread Bowl (Cheese and Broccoli soup)
Calories: Unknown
Pad Thai from Pho & i
Calories: Unknown
Whole Food’s Mini Triple Chocolate Mousse Cake
Calories: Unknown
Tuesday:
Homemade Chicken Caesar Salad, 3 Mini White Fudge Chewy Cookies from Chips Ahoy, 1 Pack of Toy Story Fruit Snacks
Calories of Cookies and Fruit Snacks: 240
1 Slice of Whole Food’s Feta White Pizza
Calories: Unknown
50 cent Bag of Candy Corn
Calories: Unknown
Wednesday:
Chicken Quesadilla, Slice of Flat Bread Cheese Pizza, Cream tea at International Village Dining Hall
Calories: Unknown
Homemade Kielbasa Mashed Potatoes dish
Calories: Unknown
JP Licks Sundae
Calories: Unknown
Thursday:
Homemade Chicken Caesar Salad
Calories: Unknown
Snickers Bar
Calories: About 271
Cream Tea at function and piece of cake
Calories: Unknown
Soul Food at AAI Open House
Calories: Unknown
As you can see, I snowballed a bit this week. My most shameful day was Thursday, and I 9PM I wasn’t done eating yet; I had the following:
A Burger King Small Fries, Hamburger, and Small Vanilla Milk Shake (But I had about 6 sips of that)
Calories: About 770 Calories
Basically, I have no idea about how much of what is going into my body and I totally dropped the ball this week. I haven’t run in let’s say…2 weeks, going on 3? So basically I am taking in way more calories than I am burning.
Not to forget Friday:
Carnation Drinkable Breakfast (Vanilla)
Calories: 250
Homemade chicken caesar salad
Calories: Unknown
Indian food (Chapati, Lamb Korma, Mango Laisse)
Calories: Unknown
The funny things is, I’ve been trying to find a sensible source on the internet, such as WebMD or the Women’s Health magazine website, for what the average woman in her 20s or person in general should be taking in calorie-wise and it’s proven nearly impossible. So where can the average person find out this information? Are we resigned to our once a year doctor’s visits? I’ll have more on this later.
Moving back on topic, have you ever noticed that when you fall off the wagon in the slightest, it suddenly feels like you’ve tumbled down a cliff? It’s so hard to go back into healthy eating once you’ve started throwing back those cafe lattes and hamburgers. Now when you even pass those places or smell those aromas, you suddenly find yourself wandering over to the nearest Starbucks or McDonald’s without a second thought.
From past experience, it’s going to take me a week minimum to detox myself off of this stuff. I’m so happy that I’ve been absolutely itching to run. The worse wagon to fall off of is a habitual exercising schedule. Food is more of a mental battle and obviously exercise is the physical battle to staying healthy. Maybe for some of us it is easy enough to pass on a bag of chips, but to get up at 7AM and run the Fens can seem like a nightmare.
What’s probably surprising to some that have seen me lately is the fact that I have apparently lost weight and seem pretty fit. I did. I was running probably 5-8 miles a week preparing for soccer. I was addicted to chicken caesar salads I made myself (and I’ll explain how I got into cooking for myself). I lost about 10 pounds. One thing I will say is that if you have done some kind of physical activity in your life before, it is much easier to get back into shape. And if you were a competitive athlete, it’s much easier to find that discipline to get up and go run on your own. I really need to find mine.
Chow,
-Lucia
HealthTimeCrunch 