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.

Quick run...knee exploding...these things are related

Today was a rough day, mostly because it consisted of lectures all day long. I don't know who set up the schedule, but that was rude.

Anywho, the really talkative doctor lectured us in the morning and the more-to-the-point doctor lectured us in the afternoon and thus we were able to get out an hour early. That meant that I had about two hours between lectures and getting back to the hospital for my night shift. So, I decided to hit the gym for a half hour and just do some running. I didn't have a whole lot of time, so I decided a half hour was better than nothing. I was pretty slow. I started out at 4.7 mph, went all the way down to 4.2 mph for a bit and then went up and down as I felt necessary. I sprinted the last 30 seconds at 7.0 mph. I really like sprinting - it's nice to feel as though you can go fast.

And I just want to take a moment to congratulate myself for going to the gym rather than sitting on my ass.

But, now my knee is super painful and has exploded. It's swollen and I really should be icing it, but I just got home from the hospital and am going to head straight to bed since I have to be back at 7:00 a.m. tomorrow.

Here are some food pics since I was able to eat two meals at home today!

Grapes + toast, egg, and a slice of cheese 

Homemade flatbread pizza - so worth the calories

See you guys tomorrow. Hopefully this inflammation will go down with some liberal use of ibuprofen. Silly knees.

Reality is a dish best served realistically

HAPPY EASTER.

Okay, now we can move on.

So, I've been trying to think about what kind of things I want to do for the month of April. The month of March was mostly dedicated to figuring out what's wrong with me, but I think I'm healthy enough to set some goals and get my butt back into the gym. Now, my therapist would probably poo poo my idea of going to the gym everyday for the month of April. She'd say it's not realistic and that I'm setting myself up for failure. You see, I'm a pretty all-or-nothing type of girl. I'm either going balls to the wall or I'm not going at all. I'm either in it 110% percent or I'm contributing nothing. I'm either going to do it perfectly or I'm not going to do it at all. Sooo, I'm working on settling for "good enough," so that I can make changes in my life that are actually sustainable long-term. That, and so that I stop punishing myself for failing at things that are damn near impossible. Thus, I'm going to set my goals that I think are actually realistic.

So, for April, I want to hit the gym about 4 times a week. That gives me 2 strength training days and 2 cardio days. Any other day I go is a bonus and shall be applauded by...Bailey... I also want to stop eating out/ordering in. I've had pizza delivered 2 or 3 times and I've been studying all day at places that have food. I'm making decent decisions when it comes to making the healthy choice, but whoa, have I spent a lot of money. Sooo, I think for the month of April, I'm just going to call that quits. Now, if it's like a family dinner or something, yeah, I'll go for it. But I've got to stop this "just because" spending.

I think that's all I'm going to focus on for April. I just want to get myself back to the gym 4 times per week and stop eating out/ordering in. That seems reasonable enough, right?

Also, I haven't accomplished much today. These lecturers are so damn boring. My goal is to get in two more lectures tonight and that's a pretty tall order because I really, really, really don't want to watch them. Tomorrow I've gotta get my butt in gear and get down to business because we're one week into the domain and I've done almost nothing. Yay, medical school...