For the lack of posting and what not.. I had a craaaazy semester last semester and now I’m taking a full 12 hours this summer to finish up my nursing degree in August! Update: I weighed in last Monday or something and I weigh 134.2. I was surprised because I haven’t even worked out in the past month and only worked out sporadically during the semester before that. But this week, I’m hitting cardio HARD and I might do that next week too, before picking back up with the weights. We’ll see! I’ll definitely still run most days, but I’ll take out the added walking I do, OR only walk half of that. I’ve burnt many calories this week at the gym, but have drank a lot of them back, so I think I’m gonna start cutting out alcohol to see how great of results I can achieve! Anyways, I’m heading home today, but first… gotta get dat cardio! 

It’s 1 pm, I got up at 9, ate breakfast, lounged for a bit, then 10:45 hit the gym. Ran 3 miles then did 45 min of walking on a high incline. I’m eating some soup now for lunch, later I plan to eat 2 chicken breasts with rice for dinner. I really need to get more protein in my diet. I’d like to try some protein powders, but usually when I do, I don’t like them.. haven’t found the right one yet I guess.. 

Anyways.. Soup, then shower, then kicking myself into beast study mode for the rest of the day. Gotta do well on my Peds/OB exam Monday.. Eek! I feel bad though, my dad really wanted me to come home tonight to help with his work party at our house, but I need all the time I can get to study for this exam, so I had to turn him down :( He’ll be fine, my whole family will be helping out, but I know he really wanted me to be there. Oh well. Gotta get through Thursday, then home for a bit at last!

As much as I like clinicals, I’m glad they’re over after Weds. Means I’ll actually get a good amount of sleep for at least 2 days next week. :)

I absolutely LOVED spending so much time with my family. I never see them enough. My life is SO busy lately.. I just wanna get my RN and be done, then I’ll have 4 days off and I’ll be able to see them more, hopefully! 

Over break, I worked 2x, which isn’t the BEST, but one was a killer cardio workout. The only day I really overdid it with eating was Thanksgiving, which I’m ok with! You can’t deprive yourself of too much, one day is okay. Even a few days, as long as you get back on track! 

Heading back to school tonight after dinner. I have to be at class tomorrow at 8 for a computerized nursing Kaplan test for Peds and OB. I’ve been glancing over my notes all break, so I hope I’m ready! I just completed all my Peds notes today, there were SO many! But now I’m working on OB. I just hope I can get through them all.. there are so many it’s difficult to really study in depth with them for lack of time. So I’ll be more ready for finals week now that I know this! 

Anyways, I hope everyone’s doing fantastic! Please don’t beat yourselves up too much over the holiday, Christmas and New Years, too. Live a little, you work hard, you deserve it. :)

I’m sorry to put everyone through this, but I just need to rant. With my insulin pump, I’ve been able to  live a fairly normal life.. I usually almost forget I even have diabetes until I have to push a button for insulin or check my blood sugar. Lately, I’ve been battling crazy blood sugars. I don’t know how much this means to any of you, but I upload my insulin pump into the computer weekly so my doctor can see my blood sugars and how much insulin (the hormone that LOWERS blood sugars) I’m giving myself with meals and to correct blood sugars. I guess that’s a good backround..

I’m a nursing student, taking 3-4 hour long classes at a time, doing 8-12 hour clinical shifts, and working 8-12 hour shifts on my hospital unit. I’m also trying my hardest to work out and lose weight. Lately, my blood sugars have been dropping a ton with class, during work, and when I work out. I’ve lowered my insulin levels during my workouts so I can get through them, but after I workout, for hours, the exercise has a lowering effect on my blood sugar, causing me to consume more sugar to raise it to a normal level, then eat a snack to keep it from dropping again. Basically when I work out, I eat back all the calories I burnt off because my blood sugars are lower for a day after I run or exercise. It’s frustrating because I feel like, why even work out if I’m just going to have to eat back everything and more that I burnt off at the gym? With class, I can deal with it, because it’s only a few hours, and I am not too bummed about having to eat a granola bar through it to get me through the day, although I’d rather only eat when I want to, not when my diabetes wants me to. Thirdly, with work. Ok, I did a 12 hour shift on Friday. My blood sugar was low at 10, so I ate glucose tabs (sugar to raise my blood sugar up), then a Kashi granola bar.. healthy enough.. Then at lunch, my blood sugar was low again, so I ate lunch and grabbed a candy bar (it was a bad day at work, and my sugar was low again, so I treated myself to M & Ms). 3-4ish, AGAIN my blood sugar was low.. ate more glucose tabs, another granola bar. 6pm, again (and by this point, I had a splitting headache from it being so low all day). I ate PB crackers. At this point, I’m not even counting calories, because I’m sure I ate all my day’s worth and I hadn’t even eaten dinner yet. I was starving. Basically my point with work is.. I always overeat because I have to. 

I’m just so upset and frustrated. I am sitting at a solid 140 pounds. I eat SO healthy. I RARELY eat out.. last Thursday was the first time in probably a month. I work out, and hard. Yet I can’t seem to lose, and lately it’s because of my diabetes. My doc is trying to set my insulin settings on my pump, but with my crazy lifestyle lately, it’s difficult, because when I’m doing all these things, my blood sugars run low, but if I happen to not work out or go to work, they go high. I’m sorry, if I’m gonna weigh 140 pounds, I at least want to enjoy it. I wanna eat out or eat more or not work out as hard, because in my mind.. I should weigh 130 at least. One of my friends never works out, eats out every other day and weighs 10 pounds more than me… that’s it! I should be losing weight.. I count calories and don’t even have junk food in my apartment. I eat nothing but healthy foods, yet with my diabetes, I can’t lose anything. I only gain. It’s so.. defeating.

If you’ve actually read through all of this, I apologize for putting you through it.. I just needed to rant, to talk about it, because lately I’ve been really upset/sad about it. I’ve worked hard and have gotten nowhere because of my diabetes.. I just needed to talk. 

Welp, I’m up, just ate breakfast and getting ready to head to campus for class. The plan is to go to school, get done at around noon, hit the gym for at least running, come back and shower, then meet my roomies at Starbucks for some quality study time. I’ve worked out my day and I’m fitting in a caramel macchiato (you can’t NOT get something yummy while you’re there for 3 hours. Amirite?!). I’m packing a sandwich and taking it with me to class so that I can just leave straight from class to go to the gym. Plus, it’s back tracking to go back to the apartment and I’m just cutting down time by bringing everything. I’m doing really good with working out and eating this week, I just feel better when I do. I love getting a good run in and it really helped my mood last night! Anyways, I hope you all have a healthy Thursday!!

Ok, so last night I went to bed and probably fell asleep somewhere around 11:30. I had OB clinicals today and had to get up at 5 am. For all my nursing student followers, you guys KNOW that is not enough sleep to function all day for clinicals. Luckily, we got out early and I ate lunch, then decided against making coffee and took a nap. I ended up getting up at 4:30 after sleeping 2.5 hours and I was still disoriented and tired. I sat around and did absolutely nothing until 6. I thought about pulling out my med/surg notes and looking them over, since we learnt about COPD and asthma a week ago and I hadn’t even cracked them open yet and class is tomorrow. BUT I started to feel like I was having a “fat day.” I really wanted to be lazy and not go to the gym, but those negative thoughts about myself kicked my butt into gear and I got dressed and left. I didn’t lift, but you better believe I ran 3 miles and walked 30 min. I know if I’m feeling huge one day, that a good workout is all I need to build self esteem and feel better about myself. I dunno.. could be the endorphines but I’m glad I did it. 

I got my workout in already and it’s only 1:30! I guess I really had no choice, my gym closes at 1 haha. But I did 3 miles at a 9:15 min pace (sweeet), did an ab workout, and walked 35 min on the treadmill at the highest incline. I burnt 800 cals today (IF the treadmill was accurate on my walk.. and I think it’s pretty close). Pretty proud of myself! I just gotta keep this up!! Soup and salad for lunch and I’m ready to start studying OB/Peds nursing the rest of the day! I’m excited to see where I’ll be at in a month. I’m formulating new guidelines for myself, which I’ll post as soon as I have time to sit down and actually think them all through. Have a healthy/fit day everyone! :)

Went for a run today and did 2 miles, not anything crazy, but not too shabby! I had a huge lunch at our local Mexican restaurant, so I wasn’t too hungry for dinner. I had a bowl of chili and crackers, so not too bad I guess. I’ll get back, I hate falling out of the workout habit, but with school and work it’s so easy to! 

In other news, I’m spending my weekend and part of next week in my hometown for my fall break. It’s getting me away from my school area, and giving me plenty of time to relax! I’ve been studying bits and pieces for my Thursday’s med/surg exam, but tomorrow I’m gonna start taking notes off of my notes about things I’m not 100% sure on. Basically condensing my notes to a page or so. I’m PLANNING on at least going for a run tomorrow, but we’ll see.. I might even go to the gym. Other than that, I’ll be studying for my exams and relaxing, I need the break.

Also… I’m considering changing my blog from having a set WEIGHT goal, to just a blog about being fit, healthy and bettering myself in general. If I make it to my goal, great! But this way, I would be able to focus on just having a healthy lifestyle, not so much losing weight.. food for thought. :)

The past month, I haven’t been eating EXACTLY perfectly… I’ll have days where I do awesomely, and others where I just suck. I’m also slacking on working out. I haven’t been to the gym in probably 4 weeks and haven’t run in 2 (and that was just a quick run..). I’m so stressed and busy with everything! I’m terrified to weigh myself..I just KNOW I’ve gained. I’m gonna suck it up and either do it Monday, or just wait until weds and kick myself into gear. I have so much going on with school right now, then there’s work.. I realized I’m working 16 hours a week and I’m starting to think that’s too much. I might cut back.. But at the same time, it’s fall break starting Friday.. I am going home, not really gonna monitor so much what I eat, like, I’ll try to do good, but we’ll see. I’m gonna be studying most of the time, but I wanna try and get to the gym at least 3 times. I wanna get back into the swing of working out and eating right and I think after this weekend I’ll be ok. But does anyone else have these issues? Nursing school is WAY too much this semester. I’m doing ok, but have no time for anything else!