Want to Change Your Life? The Key to Adding Healthy Habits to your Daily Routine.

 Do you have a gym membership? Do you regularly attend? Do you dedicate time every week to exercise? As someone who used to be an avid gym-rat, I know that I felt much better when I was regularly exercising. I no longer have the free time that I did as a high schooler; I am a college student (Bio major) who also has a part time job and tries to attend all 3 of my club meetings. Seasons of our lives can bring about priority changes. Personally, I chose an income over having time to go to the gym... or did I? As a person who values my 8 hours of sleep along with regularly going to bed between 11 and 12 PM due to my work schedule, you would NOT catch me getting up before the sun. In fact, research shows that you do actually need 7-8 consecutive hours of sleep for your brain to properly dispose of its' cellular waste. My class schedule also does not give me time to go to the gym in the mornings. Also, I spend most of my afternoons and evenings studying when I am not working. Are you so...

 Procrastination? Guilty! I've been a professional procrastinator since day 1 of middle school up until college. I have gone through countless seasons of "productivity" where I stop, but ultimately the cycle seems inevitable for me. It can also be hard to find motivation to be productive. I think it all circles back to one thing: gratitude.  I was assigned a lab report over a month ago, and even past the due date I haven't completed it. My class offers "Tokens" to make up for late work, and I chose to utilize that the night of the deadline for the assignment. I now have 1 week until the deadline to use my token for the Lab Report. Yesterday, I was working on an advocacy assignment for another class and was researching the discrimination and genocide of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar. In scanning an article  on the topic, I read the following quote from a 16 year old girl being forced to live in a "modern ghetto":  "I want to study more. I want to...

 Dear fellow college students,  How's the procrastination going? Even if your'e crazy organized and OCD, it's hard to keep up with college. I think everyone has procrastinated an assignment at least once in their life. Time management is key when your'e in college- especially for my fellow bio majors! I wanted to share a few things I like to get into the habit of to stay on track of my assignments: 1. Start from easy to Hard. You know that feeling when your big project deadline is approaching, AND you have homework for 3 other classes? How about adjusting your order of assignments; start with the easy things and work your way to the harder things. "Easy" also refers to things that take up less time. This can be compared to financial debt advice; financial professionals recommend paying your debt off starting with the lowest amount, and working your way up to the larger amounts. Personally, this helps me to be less stressed when completing a big project, or a l...

 Let's face it, most of us have turned to food for comfort at least once. Unfortunately stress catches up with a lot of people, and many can fall into a cycle of binge eating. Personally, I have gone through seasons like this- more than once. I want to share my experience of breaking these cycles, and pushing myself toward better eating habits. For me, it looked like replacing breakfast with coffee, having a big lunch if I could find the time, and skipping dinner because of work. I would return home, and eat everything in sight! Mostly the easier things to grab, like processed snacks and junk food. Then, I would wonder why I was so tired all of the time, and why my body felt cruddy. I began to recognize that my eating habits were not helping me achieve my other goals, and definitely were not helping my body. The start for me was a good breakfast. Once I started eating a breakfast with some kind of protein in it, I would wake up and be so hungry every day. Lunch was the same, but di...

Do you know that sugar isn't bad for you? Well, in the sense that your body actually needs sugar to function properly. Yes, sugar is addicting and we can fall into unhealthy eating habits when we use sugar as comfort instead of fuel. However, in a balanced diet of protein, carbs, fats, and nutrients from fruits and vegetables, sugar isn't going to make you obese if you are fueling your body properly. Of course, don't take this as going to eat the rest of your kid's Halloween candy; but there is a reason why people say sugar isn't bad for you if you have it every once in a while. If you are someone who is trying to lose weight, did you know that cutting back carbs and increasing the amount of calories you burn is not exactly healthy? Is keto really going to help, or intermittent fasting? Well, let me break this down. The main macromolecules your body needs to function are proteins, carbohydrates, and fats. Your cells use fats for their membranes, carbohydrates are fo...

Do you want to spend less time on your phone every day? Do you wish to divert your scrolling habits into something more productive? Here are a few tips to help you get started.  1. Turn off the notifications. Notifications can be distracting; many students might choose to enable DND when writing an  essay,  or completing homework.  Now,  those activities are productive  ones , so why not mute your notifications all day?  This does not have to be your whole phone, as some people work on their phones or require communication on their phones for something important. So, how about turning off your social media notifications? Try it out, and   see how it works for you! 2. Track your screen  time,  and   set a goal. Set a goal to reach on your screen time. Start by noticing your screen time  patterns,  and see how much time you're roughly spending per day on entertainment apps or social media.  Set a goal , and it  doe...