Living my life rather than letting it pass on by

One of the things I stopped doing in medical school was living my life. When I wasn't tied to my books, I felt as though I should have been and punished myself by not letting myself do things I really enjoyed, by not being healthy, and by not treating myself with respect. I'm going to try really hard not to do the same thing in residency. Yes, my job is important. Yes, the health of all my patients really matters to me. And yes, I want to do my absolute best all the time. But I don't want to lose myself again. I don't want to stop living life. I don't want to skip the gym because I feel I haven't earned it. I don't want to say no to social times with friends because I should be studying. In all honesty, an hour is not going to make or break me. And that's something I kinda reminded myself in fourth year (when we had a lot more free time). And that's also why I'm hoping I can sustain my blog this year.

Anywho, one of the reasons I didn't blog last night is because some co-workers went out to grab dinner and drinks later in the evening and of course, I had to go. But, I went after I worked out with my new personal trainer. I'm kinda skeptical about this trainer. Having worked out with a personal trainer before, I felt like the intensity was much lower than what I was expecting. That being said, Troy explained that yesterday was kind of a baseline check  for him to see what I can do. He seems like a good guy and I was very honest with him. I told him I would be using him as an additional source of accountability because I will lose weight and work hard if someone's keeping track with me, but I have a harder time/won't do it if I'm just doing it on my own. We're going to do weigh-ins and measurements and all that jazz, but he says he only likes to do that once a month. I personally think that once a week weigh-ins are better because it keeps me better motivated if the scale doesn't change in a week. He says that if I have a bad weigh-in he wouldn't want it to affect me. But we'll see. I might be able to wear him down. When I worked out with Mark, I used to have a 3 pound a week goal. I think that's pretty reasonable, but I think Troy is intending me to go a bit slower. We'll see. I have no problem telling him he needs to push me harder.

Other than that, things are pretty okay. Today was my second fasting day. It was a lot harder than it was on Monday because I sat idle during a lot of the day given that I was on triage when we had our PA (physician's assistant) who handles a majority of triage. I worked on my knot tying and chatted with the med students and other residents. I also did some circumcisions and made some calls I'd been meaning to make that I hadn't had the time to make up until this point. I did as much as possible to stay busy because you definitely feel the hunger more when you're not doing anything. I know it'll get easier because I used to fast in Uganda all the time - going home for lunch was too much of a pain in the ass. So, it was breakfast around 8 a.m. and dinner around 9:30 a.m. with some mango juice for lunch (which doesn't exactly count). Today, however, I had my typical breakfast and then had a buttload of shrimp for dinner since I was really hungry. I also opted out of the gym since we didn't get out until a little after 6 and I wanted to eat ASAP. I also wanted a chill night at home since I haven't had one of those in a while. I watched America's Got Talent and I'm going to head to bed soon, I think.

Two photos for you:

Breakfast (not pictured: yogurt protein smoothie)

Dinner

Thanks for the yummy dessert recipes! I'm thinking I'll try baking something this weekend after I hit up Eastern Market (a massive farmer's market in Detroit). Now, does anyone have a low cal dinner recipe they'd recommend? It would majorly help with my fasting dinners that should be about 300 calories max.