My Healthy Journey: Me Time

This piece was originally written for Health Alliance’s Blog and features information about Health Alliance’s products and services. Visit that site for more on my healthy journey and many more health and insurance subjects.

I feel like I have spent the last month drastically overhauling my physical life. And I have.

While I’m giving you advice on how to succeed at Rally challenges, I’m kind of doing them all at the same time. For the first time since high school, I’m exercising every day. And for the first time ever, I have radically overhauled my diet. Like I’ve said the past few weeks, I’ve been cooking at home every day and am eating more whole grains, fruits, and veggies, and I’ve cut out caffeine, processed foods and sugars.

So although there are still plenty of food mission posts to come, so you can use my new experiences to help you succeed, in my head, these are a little bit like old news. Been there, conquered that.

But as you can probably guess, now that I’ve settled into a rhythm, this isn’t actually what I spend all day thinking about. As a matter of fact, not focusing on this stuff is exactly how I got so unhealthy.

Now that healthy eating is more of a habit for me, though, I’d like to talk about something that feels more like real life to me. You know, the stuff that occupies my mind all day.

My Healthy Journey: Another Year, Another Move

This piece was originally written for Health Alliance’s Blog and features information about Health Alliance’s products and services. Visit that site for more on my healthy journey and many more health and insurance subjects.

My roommate just got a big job promotion and skipped town on me, which means that while I am thrilled for her, I am once again moving.

I have moved 13 times since I started college in 2008. I went to school in Chicago, and so each year, I moved all my belongings up in the fall and then back down in the summer. Then my senior year, I moved to Manhattan… and then back to Chicago. And since I’ve been back in Central Illinois, it hasn’t been much better.

So you would think I would be a pro at the nomadic life, right? Wrong.

My Healthy Journey: Fighting the Holiday Season

This piece was originally written for Health Alliance’s Blog and features information about Health Alliance’s products and services. Visit that site for more on my healthy journey and many more health and insurance subjects.

While I think most people find the Christmas season the hardest to stick to their healthy plans, I’m actually feeling really ready to kick of the new year the right way.

I haven’t exactly decided on my resolutions yet, I’m sure that is coming in the next few weeks, but I have found it much easier to stick to my guns now that the Halloween candy and Thanksgiving leftovers are out of my house.

I have also started using the MyPlate app. It asks you a series of questions, and then it calculates what is probably a healthy number of calories for you to be eating each day for your weight and your goals.

Zeitoun

I am drawing to the end of my college career. I graduate in June, and closer to then there will probably be a nostalgic what-it-means-to-me in general sort of post. I had every faith in the college system coming to Northwestern, and since then that has largely disintegrated, but that is a bigger story than the one I aim for today.

I am a journalist who is graduating with a journalism degree who hates journalism. I don’t hate what it stands for, and good pieces of it still move me more than most other forms of writing ever could, but I don’t like the politics of journalism. I don’t like the pitching, the angles, the pre-destined and plotted plan for something being delivered under the label of unaltered “truth.” And writing within this system of forces not only makes me feel as though myself and my work is fake, I also feel like I am alternately begging or harassing people to “puleeaase be my source!” to write a mediocre story that I already decided the plot of. It’s bad truth and it’s bad fiction.

Malice in Wonderland

Recently I watched the movie Malice in Wonderland on Netflix streaming. I put it in my queue a very long time ago because I will watch pretty much anything Alice in Wonderland themed.

I have loved Alice in Wonderland since I was a little girl. I remember the movie, but we never owned it. Just the idea though enchanted me, particularly since I was convinced for a long time that it was Allison Wonderland, because my name was Allison I automatically assumed it wasn’t Alice in, and I thought Allison Wonderland was a pretty sweet name. Of course, I eventually realized that wasn’t true, but it was too late, I was already enchanted.

A Bird Cage

So, this past fall I moved from Chicago to New York City to be an intern at Sports Illustrated magazine, part of my journalism degree program. It was the best experience of my life, but that first week at SI was pretty slow. During that time I read at least 10 magazines a day. This included every back SI issue in my cubicle, and a lot of other issues of Time products because they’re distributed throughout the building for free (awesome perk.) So this band I actually heard about from People magazine.  Which is frankly absurd.  I believe he’s from New York (frankly it is hard to find real information on him,) and they’re based there, so perhaps that’s why? But anyway this is Penguin Prison (and every time I read it I think, ohh a bird cage..) or Chris Glover.  His first real album came out sometime in October I believe, and the issue of People in September recommended I listen to his track “Fair Warning.” I youtubed it, watched it, THEN realized I couldn’t buy it for a month. It was a month that had me watching that video a lot. This is that video.