[Gabby Shell]: “What do you think guys, new quarter… new me?”
[NatSnd by Pixabay]: *background conversation*
Like many people, my New Year’s resolutions included the usual laundry list of healthy habits: eight hours of sleep, three meals a day, regular exercise—you know the drill. But, between friends, I have not exactly put in the work to make my resolutions reality.
Maybe it was the rigorous Northwestern course load, maybe it was the winter quarter seasonal depression, or maybe it was just pure laziness. Whatever the reason, up until now, I have been a healthy habit failure.
[Music: A Waiting Game by Blue Dot Sessions]
New Year, New Me might not have panned out, but spring quarter set a new challenge: I turn 18 this spring, and I want to enter adulthood as a changed woman. To do this, I needed to start out spring quarter strong. I present to you guys: “How to Turn Your Life Around in Seven Days… sort of.”
[Shell]: Alright, it’s the Friday before spring quarter starts and I’ve started planning out my healthy habits.
After a quick WebMD search on how healthy people behave, I chose the most attainable, regular habits to work into my day.
[Shell]: My goals are: 10,000 steps, 30 minutes of exercise, 64 oz of water, eight hours of sleep, and three balanced meals (clocking in at around 2000 calories total) per day.
With that criteria in mind, I’d like to tell you guys that come Monday, I hit the ground running on my new healthy habits. Unfortunately, I failed every single goal and forgot to record any of my progress. Oops.
Luckily, and this might be the first time in history anyone has ever said this, we do Northwestern Mondays, where we collectively pretend that a Tuesday is actually a Monday, so I downloaded a fitness app, set some reminders on my phone, and woke up bright and early Tuesday morning, ready to right my wrongs.
[Shell]: It’s seven on Tuesday morning, I’m running on a little under seven hours of sleep, and today, I turn my life around!
For the most part, my first day of healthy, adult habits went off without a hitch.
[Shell]: I just went to a yoga class with my friends, and now we’re off to dinner.
But at the end of the day, I wasn’t feeling refreshed — I was feeling tired and hungry. When I checked my fitness tracker, I realized that I was around 800 calories short. The next day, I fell short again—and with my increased exercise, this calorie deficit posed real health problems:
[Shell]: I just went for a short pre-dinner run and I almost passed out. Like I was literally seeing the world bend out of shape.
The next morning, I reached out to Petra Rack, Northwestern Athletics’ leading sports dietitian, who reminded me of a key “meal” I was missing:
[Petra Rack]: If you’re only eating three meals, you should be eating snacks in between. That’s where you can get those couple more, like, couple hundred calories left in between because, you know, if you think about it, your body is, you’re not eating for three hours in between your meals. Your body is going to start to run on very, run on very low.
The specific type of food is important too: when designing the athlete’s meal plans, Rack focuses on variety within food type.
[Rack]: We want to make sure that there is adequate amounts of different types of carbohydrates. That’s our main source of energy and we want to make sure that, you know, there’s a, there’s one meal that has a whole grain, but then there’s also, you know, a more like, either white rice or white pasta or potato that’s a quicker carb.
Vegetables are another place where variety on the plate is key.
[Rack]: We always, like, promote, you know, having a colorful plate because more variety in that plate, in that color makes sure that you’re hitting all of the nutrients you need.
Before we ended our interview, I wanted some general advice on how to balance these healthy habits with the stressful Northwestern schedule.
[Rack]: It’s just about, like, balancing… If you’re not fueled for a sport you’re definitely not going to be fueled for your brain. What your brain capacity is for working, and your time management, because, like, you can’t be staying up until midnight finishing a paper.
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After our chat, I went on a Target run to stock up on some healthy snacks to finish out my week strong. But, Friday morning, disaster struck.
[Shell]: It’s Friday morning and I’m definitely sick.
[Music out]
After a WebMD deep dive and multiple naps, I sat down to modify my goals. Exercising was out of the question, but three meals, lots of water and sleep, and a few leisurely walks seemed like just what the doctor ordered. But what I didn’t account for was the power of a strict schedule in keeping these healthy habits: those innocent naps ended up disrupting both my sleep habits and my meal times. I only ate two meals a day the entire weekend, and my sleep varied from 13 hours one night to just two the next.
At first I was really frustrated with myself, not only for getting sick but for being derailed by something as small as a sore throat. But, as I sat down to write this piece, I remembered something Rack told me at the end of our conversation.
[Rack]: You don’t have to be perfect at everything in your life. The thing is, like, just accepting that not everything’s going to be perfect, and the fact that you’re doing your best in these other aspects. You know, as long as you are eating the majority of the time with whole foods and things that make you feel good, you’re spending time with friends, being social, drinking your fluids, exercising every once in a while.
I guess what I learned is that turning your life around is more than a one week process. Sometimes uncontrollable things come up, and that’s okay. I learned to give myself grace and take the time to choose the habits that are most helpful to me: I didn’t like counting my calories, but eating three meals a day definitely improved my energy levels and I had a lot of fun exploring the SPAC group classes for this piece.
[Music in]
Luckily, I have a month and a half of my youth left to pick and choose what to keep and what to leave.
For WNUR News, I’m Gabby Shell
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