College, Food, and Weight Loss

If you werent aware, I am in grad school. Almost finished though (28 days until graduation), and then I have no idea what will go on after that. Anyway, back to my point. I'm in grad school, and sometimes maintaining healthy eating habits can be tough. Especially when I live on campus and have a free meal plan. Campus food is good, but it's not always healthy and it's hard to figure out the nutritional value of the foods.

I am actively working towards getting back into shape and maintaining a healthy lifestyle. I've been going to the gym most days of the week, usually taking one or two days off each week. That's a benefit of being a college student - free gym access. The hours are great at the gym too; I can go early in the morning to get energized for the day, late at night to burn off stress from the day, or somewhere in between if my schedule allows it. I'm on Week 3 of Couch to 5k which is going really well for me. It's getting easier and easier to run for longer. I've even signed up for my first 5k as motivation - the Pensacola Sunset Run on May 11. I won't quite be finished with the Couch to 5k program, but I'm okay with that. My goal is basically to finish, preferably in under an hour and with as much running as possible. I may be leaving Pensacola sometime not too long after that, so I figured it would be a nice farewell to Pensacola run.

More info on the Sunset Run HERE 

To help with the eating habits I started doing Weight Watchers. In two weeks I've lost four pounds so it's obviously helping. It's tough though, and I think being in college makes it tougher. I can't get nutritional information for the food served on campus (except for Papa John's and Quiznos) so that makes it especially tough. I have to guess a lot (or I just stick to salad so I only have to guess at the dressing). Then there are other times that make it difficult as well.

Take for example yesterday: Festival on the Green during the day and a Blue Wahoos game at night. For lunch yesterday some coworkers and I got some Festival food: I had delicious fried fish, fried pickles, and corn on the cob. Well there went the majority of the days points.

Knowing I'd be at a baseball game that night I opted to eat a quick dinner before heading out. It was a very quick dinner as I had about 20 minutes in between work and leaving for the game. That was a great plan as all I got at the stadium was a diet soda. It's okay to splurge every now and then, and that's one thing I like about weight watchers.

Sadly the Wahoos lost, but we had a great time at the game. Today has been a nice, relaxing day of babysitting. I will hit the gym later and then chill with some friends tonight.

My goal is to keep up with this blog; talking about college and weight watchers and probably some job search stuff. I'll include some recipes from time to time of the delicious things I cook up.

Halloween, Snow, & the World Series.

With Halloween less than a couple days away it is looking like it's going to be a White Halloween back home. That's right. It's been a snowy day back in CT. Now, I'm enjoying the weather here in Pensacola (the high today was 69 degrees F). It's not all the crazy for there to be snow in CT in October. When I was a kid we had to buy or make my costume so that it could fit over the layers of clothes you had to wear to keep warm. So snow in October in CT is not crazy, but it doesn't happen every year, and it's usually not as big of a storm as this was. Apparently a good portion of the state is out of power (including my parent's house and most of our hometown). So as much as I am loving the gorgeous weather down here, it would be nice to be home for some snow.

30-Day Challenge #1: TED Talks
Day 15 (Halfway there!)

So in honor of the snow back home, I tried to find a TED talk about snow. I found very few options. So what I did find was this talk by Ray Zahab about his journey to the South Pole, on foot. It was a record breaking trek that took 33 days. He's very enthusiastic to share his story and it's very amazing that he and a few others did that journey together. I don't think I could ever do it.



So that's the snowy tale of the day. Who watched Game 7 of the World Series last night? I sure did. I headed out to Buffalo Wild Wings, and grabbed a seat at the bar to enjoy the game. It was a pretty good game, although not as good as Game 6 was. I was super excited that the Cardinals won. I was disappointed in the way baseball is not a big deal down here in the south. The place wasn't even packed and most of the people there weren't even watching the game. I know football is the big thing down here (don't get me wrong, I love football too) but there could be a little more love for football. While I was there I noticed there were 3 guys wearing Texas Rangers shirts, 2 with Cardinals shirts, 1 with a Nationals shirt, 1 with a Braves shirt, and 1 with an Orioles shirt. Even if you're going to watch the game, why bother wearing a shirt of a team who's not playing? Only in the south. It just would've been a better energy if there had been more people there to watch the game. Oh well, I still had a great time.

So in honor of the St. Louis Cardinals winning the World Series, their 11th WS win (#11 in '11) here's a picture of Busch Stadium from my most recent trip to St. Louis (and by most recent that means February).

Sleep, statistics, and baseball.

30-Day Challenge #1: TED Talks
Day 14

So yet another day of tired me. I wanted to go to sleep earlier last night, but the World Series game kept me up. I'm of course rooting for the Cardinals (although I'm not sure why that was an 'of course' statement but I'll go with it) so I was very nervous towards the end. I continued to believe in the Cards and they made me super happy with their comebacks. They were completely determined to push the series to Game 7, and they certainly did that. It was some stressful, but incredible extra innings and I'm really excited to watch the game tonight. I'm hoping for a St. Louis win, but whoever wins it will certainly be a well-deserved title.

Anyway. On to today's TED talk, which is ironically about TED talks. Sebastian Wernicke talks about the statistics of TED talks and what constitutes the ultimate best and worst TED talks. It's interesting to see the things that people like (and don't like) to hear about in talks. It's also quite funny as well. I rather enjoyed it.Hope you do as well.




You liked it, right? Okay good. I may need a quick nap before Game 7, so I'm going to go do that. Happy Friday! Happy Halloweekend! Let's go Cards!!