Hey guys! I’m taking a much needed study break to blog. Before I go into anything else, I have 2 pieces of exciting news.
1. My friends and I got a CSA box! This week features the world’s largest pomegranate, pears, and a mystery fruit. (Excuse the lazy photo-taken from my bed while blogging.)
2. Yay! After looking around at races and considering timing/etc. I decided on this one! It should be a ton of fun-the race goes across the Golden Gate bridge. Since I’m taking time off halfs for the winter, I figure this will be a good warm up for a summer race that I might try to PR.
Ok, back to my day and the topic of the day (since my day to day posts are getting a little repetitive, I’m trying to mix it up a little bit).
My day started off really awesome-ly. I woke up early for a gym workout-20 minutes working on hang cleans, 3×8 minute row, ab circuit. After a less than stellar lifting day, I stripped it down to the basics on my cleans and practiced just being in the correct position and getting the bar up. By the end, it was definitely smoother, and the bar was coming up faster.
To make the morning even sweeter, I went for coffee, and the barista now officially knows my order! Ohhh midterms week. 
And on top of that, this was the world’s best cappuccino. I swear it was half milk foam. My first 3 sips? All milk foam. It wasn’t that it had MORE milk, it was that the ALL the milk was frothy so the espresso at the bottom was less milky. YUM.
I only managed one more food photo, and then let’s get down to business. I got mystery bread again. I was thinking of getting something else, but it looked so moist and delicious, and I was definitely right!
Stress Eating
I’m definitely a stress eater. Example A: having zero time before midterms started and then being unable to wait in a super long line for my race packet resulted in this purchase: oat bars.
One thing I have gotten a lot better about this year is not letting myself get stressed-a far cry from last year’s disaster (helloooo mono). I’m pretty good at not letting things get to be (like forgetting my sweatshirt at Crossfit), much more so than I have been in the past. However, with midterms in season, I’m starting to feel the pressure. I was really stressed on Monday-something I realized I haven’t really felt in a long time.
However, today the stress bug hit me. After getting some assignments back, I started worrying how I would possibly be smart enough to compete with the other students here in my classes (since everything is on a curve). It was silly because I didn’t necessarily do badly on the assignments, but I started questioning myself. After staring at my OChem homework with no idea what was going on, I stress ate. But here’s the thing. Stress eating doesn’t always have to be so bad. Here are some tips to avoid a stress-binge:
1. Before eating, take a walk, or meditate for 5 minutes. Try to bring down your stress levels before getting anywhere near food.
2. Choose healthy foods. If you eat crap, you will most likely feel like crap as well-that will only make your stress worse! On the same note-sugary junk foods will most likely make you crave more sugary junk foods, so you will tend to eat more of them.
3. Choose low calorie, high fiber foods. They fill you up and you can spend a lot of time chewing without killing your waistline.
4. Eat slowly. While stressed, many people have the tendency to shove foods down their throats. Try to fight this and give your stomach time to catch up.
5. Move on. Stress eating happens. If it does, let it go-it’s not worth stressing over!
So what did I eat?
Carrots with hummus and goat cheese.
(Old pic)
Dried fruit
Chocolate granola bar.
Was stress eating the best thing to do? No. But I chose foods that would fuel my body and not make me feel bad-and guess what? After my snack, I headed back to the library and cranked out my chem homework. Life goes on!
Now I’m not stressed at all.
Do you ever stress eat?
I love CSAs and although I don’t participate in one now I think it is such a great way to support local farms. If I ever run a half I would love to do one in the Ron N Roll series because they just look so fun! I am constantly working on decreasing my stress, but my problem when stressed is often forgetting to eat altogether, which is just as bad. These are great tips though. And dried mango = heaven.
I’m totally obsessed with dried mango. It’s a good problem to have.
I lovvvvve the RNR races! I did the one in Seattle and it was executed so well! I knew exactly where to go and all the staff was super friendly. My timing chip didn’t work though so that flat out sucked. I definitely stress eat! That’s why I had to take all the snacky “bad” foods out of my dorm room cause I was stressed this weekend!
I try not to bring “bad” foods into my dorm because I know when the going gets tough, I’ll chow down! At least now when I stress eat, it has to be at least sort of healthy.
Thanks Aurora, I really needed this. I’m quite the stress eater and have been feeling a bit lost in college, questioning whether I’m good enough. And congrats on signing up for the race, it sounds like great fun!
I’m so glad this post helped. I think everyone has feelings on inadequacy and self doubt, but I believe in you! I’m sure we all belong where we are in college, although at difficult times it may seem otherwise.
I’m not really a stress eater! It actually zaps my appetite.
That’s a problem too though! Stress is just not a good thing for our bodies!
Unfortunately I’m a stress eater. This week has been a prime example since I’ve been super busy with school. The way I stress eat is when I have to stay up late studying so I eat to stay focused. My choices aren’t like horribly unhealthy, but for example I had a torilla with pb and jelly and another night a piece of wheat bread with pb and honey.