Thursday, July 10, 2014

Treat yo' self right

I'm going to go ahead and admit that I haven't been treating myself all that well lately. I don't think it's that I've been doing anything horrible, it's just that I haven't been doing anything great.

I've let my workouts slip a bit, and that always affects multiple aspects of my life. There's the direct effect of just feeling lazy and out of shape. Working out usually makes me feel strong and healthy, and I'm always proud of myself once I finish. I think that I've also been feeling more stressed lately. That's part of the reason I haven't been working out as much - I've just been really busy in lab, and haven't had as much extra time. I do think though that working out generally helps to lower my stress levels, which means it should be even more of a priority during high stress times. The last thing is eating. In the last few weeks, I've been bouncing back and forth between days when I barely remember to eat (busy busy in lab) and days when I don't eat anything real (potato chips and snacks all day long). When I have a workout routine, I am pretty strict with what I eat and when I eat it. I make sure I get enough fuel for my workout, which means I don't let it get to 4:00 by the time I remember to eat lunch. That just won't work if I'm trying to go on a run or do a kettle bell workout an hour later.

All of this has been going on for a while, but I think this past week has been the worst. I was away this past weekend, and ate crap the whole time. Saturday night, I woke up in the middle of the night and was physically sick. I don't know if it was what I ate, or something else, but I was miserable. The worst part was that once I stopped being sick, I completely broke out in hives. You would think that this would give me the kick in the butt to take care of myself a bit better, but I've already had two days this week when I didn't eat lunch until 4pm or later. Yesterday, I was so hungry when I came home at 4, that I ate my lunch, followed by cheese and crackers, followed by a muffin (that probably had almost no redeeming qualities), and then wasn't hungry at all for dinner. I developed a bad headache between the cheese/crackers and the muffin, that came back right before bed.

By now I know that this sounds ridiculous. I'm whining because I forget to eat my lunch sometimes. I'm just realizing that I need to make some changes. Stress from lab/work isn't going to go away, and is probably going to get worse now that I'm getting closer to graduation. I need to make sure I have a proper outlet for it, and that I'm doing everything I can to make sure I'm healthy.

What do you do when you're stressed out? Better yet, what do you do to relieve that stress?

On a different note, the blueberry muffin I had yesterday was kind of disappointing. I've had some delicious bakery-style blueberry muffins lately, and this was just not one of those. It put me in the mood to bake some muffins, and I realized that I've never made blueberry muffins before. What is your favorite blueberry muffin recipe??

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