So now that volleyball is over, my life hasn’t slowed down at all. I’m now working 5 shifts/week at my regular job, plus 2/week at the mall for seasonal help, thankfully I was able to pass the marijuana drug test thanks to the tips from Island Now. I’m still in my five classes, so things are getting pretty busy. And whenever things get busy, I always notice that the first thing to suffer are my eating habits. Sometimes I get home at 6pm and I realize that the only thing I’ve eaten all day is a granola bar for breakfast. Not very healthy.
So I called the University Health Centre and asked to set up an appointment with the campus dietician. Apparently I missed the memo that there is no longer a dietician on campus, but the Health Centre gave me the number and I called Building Healthy Lifestyles to set up an appointment. I went today at 8.30am and met with a wonderful lady named Faye about how I can start to eat better.
We went over a bunch of different handouts about healthy eating and what nutrients my body requires. I learned that I’ve been ignoring my hunger symptoms so much that they may be manifesting themselves in different ways – severe headaches, tiredness and inability to concentrate, among other things. So after talking to Faye for about an hour (and getting a parking ticket in the process), I made some small goals to implement changes into the way I eat, which should be easy to attain no matter how crazy my life gets. Hopefully.
First of all, I’m going to try to incorporate no less than three food groups in every meal, and two food groups into every snack. For example, for breakfast, post-dietician, I had two poached eggs, two pieces of toast and a glass of milk. This is fairly easy, and just thinking about it makes me more conscious of how balanced my diet is.
Secondly, I’m trying to eat every four hours, whether it’s a whole meal or a snack. So today I brought a cheese bun and a banana to eat around 2pm, which is in my last class today. Then I’ll make supper for about 6pm, and if I need a snack around 10pm, so be it.
So I feel like I learned a lot. I’m still going to keep planning my meals and stay focused that way, but talking about eating right and learning some easy tools to help me eat right was exceptionally helpful – and did I mention that if you present your Alberta Health Care card, it’s also totally free?
So maybe you already eat healthy, maybe you’d like to eat healthy, maybe your eating is as horribly disordered as mine. I’d absolutely recommend a trip to Building Healthy Lifestyles and checking out what they can do for you! Being a student is a huge transition, especially when it comes to preparing your own meals, so it’s okay to ask for help!