Jack and Jill Found a Beach Body of Water

Fitness centers, no matter how decrepit, leave me with nostalgia. Even the creepily empty Salus Center facility at Saint Louis U filled with cardio machines circa 1999, depressing lighting, and poor ventiliation-actually it’s more like working out in a sauna or steam room when I’m done with it-is still filled with fond memories of 6:00am workouts. 

I suppose it’s the association between endorphins/self confidence that creates that link between nostaligia and the facility. It’s the escape on that stationary bike before my hectic day. It’s the memory of a side by side elliptical conversation about pursing dietetics after high school. It’s the hilarious weight lifting routines with a friend who has since moved away. It’s feeling energized, happy, & healthy. 

It’s also a good thing. 
Considering the time of year. This kind of craving is much healthier.

I crave my home gym. My first gym membership. During my “winter vacations” (this may be my last…) I can’t wait to get at my father’s guest passes…at least after the holiday food bonanza and before the crazy New Year resolution crowd. During this break I stepped on the machine and the movie Knocked Up was staring back at me. 

Machines these days with their personal TVs. God, what I really need is a personal fan. And not like the cheerleaders-although that wouldn’t hurt either at this time of year. 

Of course the iPod was dead. It was feeling as holiday sluggish as the rest of us. So I had to plug my new Christmas present headphones into that personal machine TV. 

The Scene Went Like This:

Jack: ...there's gonna be some things that you are going to be able to get, that other people in the office don't get... one of them: Gym membership.
Alison Scott: You want me to lose weight?
Jack: [laughing] No, I don't want you to lose weight!
Jill: No, uh, we can't legally ask you to do that.
Jack: We didn't say lose weight... I might say tighten.
Alison Scott: Tight?
Jack: Tighter.
Jill: Just liked toned and smaller.
Jack: Don't make everything smaller, I don't wanna generalize that way... tighter.
Jill: We don't want you to lose weight, we just want you to be healthy. Y'know, by eating less.
Alison Scott: OK.
Jill: We would just like it if you go home and step on the scale, and write down how much you weigh, and subtract it by like, 20.
Alison Scott: 20.
Jill: And then weigh that much. 

 

It made me laugh aloud. Like one of those crazy “I can’t tell how hard I’m laughing because I’m wearing headphones in my own world” kind of laughs. The “Jill” character was spot on, hilarious.

A someone decided to book a trip to the Bahamas in January. It was between January 5^th and January 20^th. The thought of “baring all” by January 5th gave me a Jill in my head[phones]. Ok, more like a Jack. Tighter. And “tighter” wasn’t going to be possible by the 5^th…who am I kidding. Did you read my leggings blog? They finally got washed after like 14 days of wearing.

Game plan?  More protein and less starch to shed some of that water before I hit the water. I’m thinking more yogurt, cottage cheese, beans, turkey, veggies & hummus and less foods like I’ve been eating. And more of those nostalgic gym moments.  Which don’t always seem AS nostalgic at the moment. But I think I’ll reflect fondly on them while lying on a beach in January with a drink in my hand and a someone’s hand in my other hand and a song in my headphones. And hopefully no Jacks or Jills in my head[phones] because of meeting all of my healthy behavior goals. 

And maybe I can make the running in the sand and swimming in the water my new nostalgia.

Rule #1: Tis the Season to Enjoy

Throughout undergrad people often thought I looked well put together for classes.

Figure 1:The Put Togetherness Scale

Not put together ----Fairly put together---Somewhat put together----Well put together

Wearing jeans earned you a “well put together” even if you had greasy hair and toothpicks holding up your 2-day-old, mascara-ed eyelids. I liked wearing jeans. I felt more productive, awake and anti-button busted controlled. I didn’t realize that washing my sole pair of jeans like once every week and a half didn’t account for the anti-fabric stretch to accommodate food babies, control.

Before returning home for the holidays I bought a fabulous pair of corduroy leggings inspired by my incredibly fashionable friend.  I soon realized that these tight legged pants were really just faux restricting tights. I have been wearing (sans washing) them all break. (Break constitutes as 4 days-ew, I know).

Somewhere in my jean wearing rule (#22), leggings became acceptable. It’s a slippery slope from leggings to consuming 2 snicker doodles, 2 chocolate chip cookies, 1 chocolate drenched pistachio biscotti, 1 peppermint bark, 2 peanut butter kiss cookies, and 2 glasses of red wine. Oh! and 3 like almond-y cake square things. So good. The food, not the baby.

I don’t actually have rules. I have general checks and balances that keep me in line, or buttoned-in, and feeling good. My general rule right now is enjoy, stay active, enjoy, wear leggings…temporarily.

Others have food rules that put my “togetherness” scale to shame.

Figure 2: Standard Holiday Food Rules List

1. If the pan of brownies wasn’t cut evenly, evening it out for Gram [by eating] is the right thing to do.

2. If peppermint is good for digestion than 20 candy canes must be great after our deep fried turkey Christmas dinner!

3. If it’s green it must be healthy! That goes for those Mint Melt-Aways. Well, only like 50% of the chocolate box, duh.

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8. If it doesn’t all fit in this Tupperware, well, there wouldn’t be enough room in the fridge or the ice-box cold garage to store more food. I guess I’ll just have to store some in my stomach..?

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14. I have to eat Santa’s cookies! What if, what if…he can’t fit down the other chimneys because he had so many cookies to eat! I’d be doing him a favor.

15. A Yule Log must have lots of fiber.

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182. Eggnog helps build muscles. That’s what they say.

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My holiday party rule is actually more along the lines of: buy a super swanky, new clutch that requires a hand (not an armpit) and occupy the other hand with some fantastic red wine allowing nil a hand for a Christmas cookie let alone 2 snicker doodles, 2 chocolate chip cookies, 1 chocolate drenched pistachio biscotti, 1 peppermint bark, 2 peanut butter kiss cookies, dot, dot, dot.

But apparently I’m a little guilty of breaking my rules. And rightfully so. Some rules are meant to be [legging] stretched around the holidays. My real rule is after all the baked-goods-gift-giving and holiday parties subside, start wearing clean jeans, again. AND be grateful that so many people love me enough to share their treats and parties with me. 

After the season, my “well put togetherness” will look just like it did in undergrad, [holiday] haggard and stuffed into jeans. 

The Icing at the Top

Vs.

Prospective Career Choices

Meg Murphy, NCHS Student

1. Occupational therapy

2. Nutrition

3. Art therapy

4. Interior design

 ...I guess ‘art therapy’ was the icy, or iced, bridge between nutrition and HGTV. 

These occupation selections used to seem so random to me. Looking at the list now, it makes a bit more sense: service, home, & creativity. They go together more than I thought.  

Cooking and food art is like Home and [vegetable] Garden meets the Food Network meets the RD. As a kid, the idea of putting together a gingerbread house was like a sugar high without even eating any of it. Possibly the best distraction for my parents, ever. Same goes for dying Easter eggs and carving pumpkins without the supervision necessary to avoid staining the kitchen or cutting off my finger.

All I needed was the blank gingerbread canvases and I was completely focused for hours. Maybe it was my "art therapy." 

I didn't completely write off the igloo either. I spent all day with my brother and neighbor creating the most elaborate icy fortress complete with nicely crafted "snow chairs" perfect for sitting and enjoying some hot chocolate.

I got a “taste” of the igloo again today. It confirmed that gingerbread house trumps igloo. And ice trumps active, sober 24 year old in gym shoes. 

When I walked out of my apartment at 4:45am to do data collection on one of my thesis participants equipped with backpack, exercise bag, lunch bag, and box full of chocolates and wine for friends and professors I realized that the Igloo was, in fact, St. Louis.

ICE! Everywhere.

A slide turned slip turned spill left me half way down the steps. It was the fall seen in Home Alone when Kevin McAlister prepped the concrete steps with the garden hose for the “Wet Bandits”-more like ice bandits.
Too late to do anything, hands full of stuff, I went down. Good thing a bottle of red broke my fall!!! ...That was the icing on top of the 5-step, I mean -tiered cake.

Tired, sore, and smelling of booze can really give people the wrong impression of how you’re handling the holiday season. Smelling of wine at 4:50am is only acceptable if one is at a holiday party, decorating gingerbread houses, intensely, until 2am like my dear friend Melissa.  

(Correction it wasn’t gingerbread houses…it was gingerbread villages. That would have given my parents freedom for years).

Walking into my now, chosen profession’s department reeking of wine, I realized what I should have put on my list of “prospective career choices” ... massage therapy.

Do you "C" the Difference?

“I eat well. What are you asking? About my diet? Ohh, well I’m not on a diet. I mean, I’m not trying to lose weight. I know I should be walking more. I used to do diets. I eat vegetables. I don’t have much of an appetite so I don’t overeat, ya know?” states the 80 year old patient without any major past medical history.

There’s this funny misconception that a “diet” is what people know of as a “fad diet” or a “diet that results in weight loss.” There is also the misconception that “diet” is something that has a definite time limit and that is strictly based on nutrition. I believe that “one year older and one year wiser” claim, partly because that’s the direction I’m headed and I need for it to be true, but really because my 80 year old patients typically know more about what a dietitian is and does than do my peers. Well, my 80 year olds with significant past medical histories, that is. Precisely the reason why I immediately knew my patient hadn’t spent much time in a gown with a call button. 

I’m not exactly sure when the word “diet” became the connotation it is today. There are indeed weight loss diets but there are also consistent carbohydrate diets, low sodium diets, high protein/high calorie diets, pureed diets, celiac diets, renal diets, post-gastrointestinal-surgery liquid diets-not to be confused with the water-lemon-syrup-cayenne-concoction-“detox”-disaster diet that causes slight euphoria due to drops in blood sugar with the extra bonus of lean body mass loss…

This doesn’t even touch on calorie needs, food preferences, access to food, cooking ability, hand–to-mouth coordination, chewing and swallowing issues, etcetera. So where “diet” became “A diet” is unbeknown to me.

And to be honest, makes it very difficult for me to explain what a “dietitian” actually does to a person without past medical history or understanding of healthcare. I mean the first three letters spell “die”…a major turn off. And the first four letters are sometimes heard as a “you think you’re better than me?” Let alone the fact that every other allied health field uses the word “therapy” after their profession: respiratory therapy, physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy…dietitian?

Maybe if it were “nutrition therapy” people wouldn’t assume “diet” as “A diet” and we could skip over the whole, “I know my hospital badge says “dietician” but it’s actually, officially spelled “dietitian” by the dietetics professionals” situation. I mean, hospitals, which are required by law to staff dietitans, can’t even get the spelling of my profession [w]right, how can I expect the public to understand what it is I am?

• It's correctly spelled dietiTian because it is the practice of dieteTics, likewise, a physiCian is the practice of physiC, or the art of healing.

One major problem is that the word “nutritionist” isn’t even a credible title, however; it is far more recognized by the public than “dietitian.” A dietitian must complete a 4 year undergraduate degree in nutrition, be matched to an American Dietetic Association accredited internship (comparable to a residency), and sit for the Registered Dietitian Board Examination while a “nutritionist” can be Joe Shmo who took one nutrition class online from Jane Doe “the Nutritionist”. 

My food science class’ final project was to develop a new or alternative food product to meet consumers’ needs and acceptance. Usually students create products for the heart healthy and diabetic population by finding ways to reduce calories and sugar. Every project done this year was exceptional but the one that tickled me most was the quick bread product. The type of fat used in the bread was altered to enhance fat absorption meeting the needs of cystic fibrosis patients. I can’t say the general public, who came to taste-test and evaluate the acceptability of the products, were as happy with this particular development as I was considering some may have been under the impression that they were taste testing food from “A diet”itian student.