Monday, August 13, 2007

Diet

Last year, I fell in love with Papa John. Well, not Papa John himself, but rather his online pizza, chicken tender and chicken wing delivery service. How could I not fall in love with Papa John's? The food was good, ordering online was a snap and the food arrived hot in about 30 minutes. And what did I like best about PJ's? Well, two things: 1) I didn't have to make the trek to the grocery store and 2) no clean-up!

One evening over the summer, I got home from work and went to the fridge to see what I could make for dinner. Nada! My fridge was empty. My options were to either (a) make the 20-minute trek by foot to the grocery store and get stuff to restock my fridge, (b) run across to the street to the sketchy corner store and get some 5-year-old canned soup or instant ramen, or (c) go to papajohns.com, click on "Repeat last order" and relax in the comfort of my apartment until food arrived. This wasn't neuroanatomy; I chose (c).

I logged onto the site and received a message that I had not seen before: "Store closed." What do they mean "Store closed," it's 6:30 on a weeknight? I tried logging in again. "Stored closed." How could they do this to me without any notice? It felt like the end of my first relationship.

While I was on vacation, I made a pledge to myself to be healthier this school year. I would start eating right and exercising more. So far, so good. My new love is the Giant, a relatively new grocery store about 20 minutes away. I count the trek as exercise -- no, really, the bags can be quite heavy sometimes! -- and I'm eating more fruits and vegetables. Yes, I'm doing the things that doctors are always telling their patients to do. I've also started doing some resistance training, and I can already see my body changing for the better. Best of all, I feel better.

Hopefully, I can keep up with this new healthy lifestyle. I know how easy it can be to slip back to my old habits, especially under the stressful condition of medical school. But, I think I can do it this time. Otherwise, how am I ever going to fulfill my dream of becoming a hot, sexy M.D.? ;o)

4 comments:

The Lone Coyote said...

It is really easy to blow off exercise for the sake of "studying more." If you can stick with it and get a good routine down, it will really help you. It is harder to find the time 3rd year and even 4th year on busy rotations. But I honestly did my best when I studied a bit less and took that couple hours off to go to the gym and clear my head. As for the healthy diet, the Crock-Pot and George Forman Grill have worked wonders for me. You can cook up a lot of easy stuff really quick and have it for the whole week.

DC Med Student said...

Thanks for the advice, TLC. It's reassuring to know that the time spent exercising is only going to help. Funny you mentioned the Crock-Pot. I was given one last year for Christmas, but I've never used it! haha - I'm embarrassed to admit this but I'm afraid I'll burn the house down or something. Is this an irrational fear?

The Lone Coyote said...

Yeah, I think most of them have a feature that will shut it off if it gets too hot. Honestly, I have had that thing on all day long (12+) hours and nothing bad has ever happened except the food got overcooked.

DC Med Student said...

I'll give it a try next week and write a post about it.