Hello, old friends. It it clear that I need to adjust expectations (my own and everyone else’s) about how often I’ll be posting while I’m in school? It’s not like I don’t have lots of things I want to write about…it’s the time factor that’s throwing a wrench in the works.
My Lost Week began the day I last posted (Halloween). That day marked the start of a week-long writing extravaganza for my Nutrition & Metabolism take-home midterm. I spent every spare second of my time answering five questions. It took me 27 pages to be satisfied (with 1.5 spacing and citations, but still). Let’s just say I am well versed in the biochemical intricacies of how glucose gets out of whack in people with type 2 diabetes, why it’s so hard to maintain a significant weight loss, and why metabolism slows down with age.
The day I came up for air coincided with the day I succumbed to a nasty cold, and I lost another week as a human mucus factory (it was my first cold in THREE YEARS so I was quite offended by how my immune system bailed on me). Then I was playing catch-up with all the class reading that got shoved on the back burner during my Lost Week and my Sick Week.
And now here I am, almost three weeks later. My, how time flies.
I would like to make the point that no matter how busy I was, no matter how cruddy I felt, I stuck to healthy eating. Since I started school in September, I have brought my breakfast to school every day. Ditto for lunch, except for one day during Sick Week when I bought soup, and one day (which I posted about) when I went out to lunch with some of my classmates. I’m not going to lie, though…it has been hard to not cave some days and say, “Oh, heck with it. I’m just going to pick up a sandwich.” There have been days when lunch was leftover coleslaw and black beans shoved in a pint-size Mason jar, or an apple, a string cheese stick, some carrot sticks and a single-serving hummus.
My lunch foods are always healthy, but I don’t always feel they are optimal (read: not always enough veggies). I always go heavy on veggies at dinner, though, especially when I skimped on them at lunch, so I feel good about my day-to-day balance, and my weekly balance looks even better.
When it comes to breakfast, what has totally saved my bacon is not bacon, but the supply of muffins I made before term started and stashed in the freezer. All whole grain, of course. I yank one out to defrost over night, then shove it in my bag in the morning with a hard-cooked egg and a piece of fruit, and I’m good to go. I hard cook eggs six at a time in my veggie/rice steamer (this makes it EXTRA easy, since I don’t have to worry about pots boiling over or leaving the eggs in too long, or whatnot).
So that’s it for now. I’m still alive, barely (kidding!). I have a few posts I want to write this weekend (including the super tasty pork recipe I promised ages ago). I will very likely be on an irregular posting schedule for the rest of the term, but I have higher hopes for next term, when I’m taking fewer credits.