Our Magical Backyard

Our backyard at the moment is a pretty magical place.

I have no idea how absolutely anything that goes on back there happens.

A few months ago, I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of screaming, and red and blue lights flashing through my windows. It turns out that a drunk driver somehow careened into the tree in our backyard, just missing the house.

How this driver even got into our yard is the mystery, as we're a house over from the main road, and the only way the car could have gotten to us was at an extremely awkward angle. Add that to the fact that there were no tire tracks towards the tree, and that the car must have literally bounced/flown into the tree as where it would have left the main road was essentially a cliff, and you have for an interesting night.

This same tree that saved a good bit of our house was later the source of a great amount of suffering on my part.

My attempt to save the ivy-choked, drunk-driver-stopping tree's life only resulted in a late night trip to the emergency clinic (where my insurance was denied, despite the fact that it's ALWAYS worked there. Did the fact that I came in 10 minutes prior to closing mean the secretary probably screwed things up on purpose? Yep, most likely.), 3 weeks of no sleep/being miserable and irritable, and about $200 in medical costs.

Thanks for the poison ivy, ya stupid tree. My entire body was covered in the stuff. ENTIRE BODY.

Anyways, today I woke up to another mystery. 

As I walk toward the bathroom's window first thing in the morning (no, I have no idea why that's a habit either), I noticed this in the back yard.

A tire.

Was it there before? Nope. And no, it did not come from the drunk driver (you're hilarious).

It's just there.

Sigh. Whatever.

I'm a Gardener!

I'm pumped like a basketball. Why? Because I after about a week of staring at a bunch of empty pots, I finally got something to grow!

It's a baby zucchini!

5 Pounds Down

When you can take a client who's not been losing any weight the past 3 months, and then help her lose 5 pounds in 2 weeks, it's an awesome feeling.

To see the look on her face was priceless. She was happy.

I love what I do.

As the Semester Winds Down

The semester is almost over! After spending the past few months studying epidemiology, administration, and environmental health, I could use a little break.

Highlight of the school year? Studying disaster relief, bioterrorism, and the upcoming pandemic. What the heck does that mean?

Have you ever seen "Contagion" with Matt Damon? The movie chronicles the spread of  influenza throughout the modern world, and how the virus pretty much kills everybody, similar to what happened back in 1918, when the Spanish flu went throughout the world killing 50-100 million people.

That's what I've been studying. How to combat pandemics as well as how to prevent things like an anthrax attack.

This has been another subject we've been poring over a lot. The flu is constantly changing, morphing into more difficult to treat and deadly variants of itself. Would we be prepared as a nation to fight off another 1918? I don't know, but it sure makes for some heated class discussion boards.

In the meantime, I'll attempt to finish writing a paper on eating disorders.

Go, grad school!

I Can't Win

Yellow Head goes to punch me in my stomach, misses, and ends up hitting my elbow.

"Ouch! You're mean!"

Sorry?

Why Grad School?

"Oh, so you're in grad school? Why'd you decide to go back? What do you intend to do with that?"

I face this question on just about a daily basis.

I never thought I'd really mind answering it, until I realized that I'm just not good at answering it. Why? I don't know.

I'd guess though that it has to do with my not having the one thing that I want to do with grad school nailed down like a lot of other people in my classes might. Ask one of them, and you'll receive an answer like, "Oh, I want to manage a hospital," or "I really, really want to open my own nursing home chain."

And then you get to me.

"Well, uhhhh...I like to write. I really love personal training too."

This is what throws people off. It doesn't take much to become a personal trainer. I was slightly miffed in high school when I realized that you didn't even have to go to college to become one. Literally, ANYONE can take a weekend course/test and then go around marketing themselves as a personal trainer. The best don't do this, but it gives you an idea as to how easy it is to start (and why so much fitness science crap is out there).

And so the conversation shifts to why in the world would I continue to study, and spend all of that money when "all you want to do is train people". But I don't just want to be a personal trainer. I want to truly know my stuff. I want to give people advice that works. That's what they're paying me for.

Would it even be ethical to do otherwise? I've seen it before. A client who's easily 70 pounds overweight, and therefore already at an increased risk of heart disease, gets nutrition advice from some trainer telling him to eat a diet that's 60% fat (seriously)! He's not losing any weight, and his arteries aren't going to get any better!

When people come to me, they often realize that unless they change something soon, it's only a matter of time before something happens. And so, my goal is to help them to lose the weight as safely and efficiently as possible. Prolonging the process only puts them in danger.

After my undergrad, I realized that my understanding of nutrition wasn't near as good as it needed to be in order to help people to the best of my abilities. I not only wanted, but needed to know more about a subject that I love if I wanted to have the greatest possible impact I could on these peoples' lives.

I want to help these people. I want to help them to live better, happier, and healthier. I want to help people lose weight. I want to be qualified to give sound advice to people with eating disorders. I want to raise goats, write books, work with bariatric surgery patients, open a gym, and write blogs.

And so, I guess the best way to answer that question is, "I've got a couple of ideas."

Client Quote of the Day

Me: "Yeah, I actually used to work at a nursing home a while ago. I keep telling myself that I'm going to go back and visit my patients, but I never get around to it."

Client: "Well, ya better hurry."

 Yep. I guess they're right.