“We the Upstanding Ladies of 201: A Matter of Choice”
The ladies with whom I share an apartment this semester are a lively bunch with varying backgrounds, each working toward degrees in unique areas of study. However, we all share common stress coping mechanisms that aren’t always the healthiest or most conducive to coping with the daily stress of college life. For example, I myself have taken up what we’ve begun to call “stress baking”. While baking tends to be an outlet for me, this particular practice is partially to blame for the high carb consumption rate in our apartment.
College life is stressful, and, as even positive events, like a new relationship or job, can create stress, it’s important to incorporate healthy habits into our routines. That said, eating healthily, sleeping well, and exercising can help reduce stress in that they can make the body physically healthier and more resilient to both stress and illness.
Any matter, the ladies residing in Merrill 201 should make efforts to engage in stress coping mechanisms such as exercising, eating healthily, and getting adequate sleep because, in doing so, we set ourselves up to be physically healthier. Physical health, though not the only component in the equation for reduced stress, does help to ease the burden of college demands.
In order to make the aforementioned claim, one must first have a grasp of what the word “stress”, and some accompanying terms entail. While the word “stress” has had many meanings throughout the history of the English language, the definition of stress as it pertains to this paper is “how the human body and mind respond to anything that creates some kind of danger” (Selye, 1956). Defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as “manag[ing], deal[ing] (competently) with, a situation or problem” or “any method we use to adapt to stress”, coping can be divided and classified into two categories: problem-focused or emotion-focused. “Problem-focused coping is when we attempt to change the perceived stress (Chao, 2011)”, and “emotion-focused coping is when we try to reduce the negative emotional responses associated with stress such as embarrassment, anxiety, or fear (Delongis & Holtzman, 2005)” (Weeks, 2012). The actions of eating healthily, getting enough sleep, and exercising are problem-focused coping, but the act of choosing to partake in the activities is emotion-focused coping.
Exercise is not always a priority in our little apartment, but several of our residents take part in athletic activities, such as intermural sports, or workout at facilities on campus individually.
As a general statement, exercise is beneficial, as it promotes blood flow, can help manage weight, and improves a number of other conditions. Exercising can “reduce [your] risk of cardiovascular disease”, “type 2 diabetes”, and “some cancers” as well as “[strengthen] … bones and muscles” and “improve mental health and mood” (CDC.gov, 2015).
According to chapter 5 of Susan R. Gregson’s book “Managing Stress”, the author claimed that “experts recommend some form of exercise 15 to 30 minutes each day” (Gregson, 2000).
Similarly, Dr. Jordan D. Metzl, a sports medicine physician, said the following:
“Two and half hours a week of moderate intensity exercise is what is recommended by the American College of Sports Medicine and the American Heart Association. Ideally, this means 30 minutes, five times per week” (Metzl, 2017).
Clearly, we need some form of exercise daily, even if it’s not a full-on workout session at the gym.
Eating well has always been challenging, but is an important part of reducing stress. Women at this stage in life need to be mindful of what types of foods they consume as they tend to consume less fresh produce. According to dietician, Erin Coleman,
“women ages 19 to 30 require 1,800 to 2,400 calories each day; sedentary women need 1,800 to 2,000 calories, moderately active women require 2,000 to 2,200 calories and women ages 19 to 30 who lead an active lifestyle need about 2,400 calories each day to maintain a healthy body weight” (Coleman, 2017).
This, in turn, means that we ought to be mindful of how we chose to spend those calories. Some choices while appetizing, aren’t the most filling and beneficial. The HSS or the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said this on what conditions can be exacerbated by poor dieting:
“Even for people at a healthy weight, a poor diet is associated with major health risks that can cause illness and even death. These include heart disease, hypertension (high blood pressure), type 2 diabetes, osteoporosis, and certain types of cancer” (HHS.gov, 2017).
There is an association between diet, weight, and health. Those that tend to have healthier diets tend to have fewer health issues or more manageable conditions. In college, we begin to make our own eating habits that tend to stay with us for life. This makes taking care of one’s self and making wise eating decisions all the more important.
Getting an adequate amount of sleep is another issue we tend to struggle with as college students. As of late, we tend to bounce between extremes: either we get too much sleep or not enough. Not getting enough is more often than not the problem we in 201 have faced. One particular example of too much sleep occurred several months ago prior to my roommate’s month-long excursion to Europe with the business school. On the day of the incident in question, she had returned from a study group and claimed that she was “going to nap for half an hour and then [she’d] get back to work”. That half an hour nap somehow became thirteen hours of uninterrupted sleep.
On average, the human body at this stage in life (18-25 years old) needs between seven and nine hours of sleep. I know personally, I maybe average between four and six hours of sleep a night- one to two hours less than the minimum recommended amount. Some ways I’ve found that help me wake up on time and get to bed at a reasonable hour include setting small goals. I’ve begun to realize that after a certain point at night, my work begins to become sloppy, because I’m too tired or lack the motivation to keep at a task. When this occurs, I’m often forced to call it a night altogether because it’s not worth doing poor work. As my mother often reminds me, “nothing good happens after midnight”. I can’t help but think that applies to school work as well. Your mind just doesn’t function the same as it would in the daytime hours when you’re wide awake that it does at night when your body and mind should be resting.
While working out is beneficial, there are times when we’re too busy, or too tired to make time to exercise. One particular excuse in 201 is being too busy to workout. Most of the girls are in the latter end of their college careers and are bogged down by more difficult courses, an often find it more difficult to find time to exercise.
Too much or too little exercise can lead to injury. Not stretching well enough can cause muscles to pull or strain, and overworking a can cause similar and often more damaging results. A delicate balance of activity and rest is needed to avoid inconvenient injuries.
On the subject of inconvenience, one would be hard-pressed to find a reason not to exercise.
As USU students, we have free access to the Aggie Recreation Center (ARC), the Health, Physical Education, and Recreation building (HPER), the George Nelson Fieldhouse, and the Aggie Legacy Fields because the cost of use is included in tuition. These facilities all provide students with varying equipment and are open for rather accommodating hours of operation, most ranging from 6:00 am to around 11:00 pm.
For those who worry about exercising in front of others, the ARC and HPER are spacious and offer plenty of opportunities to exercise alone or with others. My personal favorite place to workout alone is on the third floor of the ARC, tucked away in the corner. I can be around people and get out of my apartment without worrying about the real or imagined judgment of other people; it’s a win-win situation for me.
We in 201 put in effort to eat healthy, but some days it’s just easier to make freezer meals or eat more carb-heavy foods. Processed foods tend to be cheaper and more convenient, and, for many of us, carbs are comfort food. This brings me back to my habit of “stress baking”.
Baking helps me feel as though I’ve actually accomplished something, even if it isn’t the task I was supposed to have been focusing on. However, when I bake too often, what once was meant to be stress-relieving becomes a source of stress as I struggle to keep the kitchen tidy. Then, to rid myself of some of the guilt of baking so often, I pawn the majority of the finished product off on my roommates and friends. My grandmother had a similar tendency. “She made what she liked”, my mother recalled of her mother-in-law, “and she hated to see good food go to waste”. Now, I’m not blaming my grandmother, nor can I personally argue with her logic, but there comes a point when excessive baking and eating becomes an issue.
A personally horrifying example of eating as a means of comfort was the day in November that I decided it was perfectly acceptable to consume a venti Starbucks drink, leftover french-fries, an entire frozen pizza, a chocolate orange, and a cupcake in a mug- and then had the nerve to call it a balanced diet. I don’t often treat myself to such decadent and high-calorie foods, but when I do indulge and have a “cheat day”, I tend to overdo it- often to my own detriment.
Several reasons we give ourselves to eat poorly is lack of time to cook and clean up, the cost of healthier alternatives, and being too tired to prepare nutritious meals. Melissa Wdowik, the director of the Kendall Anderson Nutrition Center, said the following of college diets: “the main thing a college diet lacks are fruit and veggies” and that “students [should] try to eat fruits and vegetables every day, if not with every meal” (Buxton, 2014). Wdowik’s not wrong given that often times it’s more convenient timewise to eat more processed foods like grains and carbs. As the semester begins to wind to a close, the healthier eating habits tend to wind down as well and, at least in the fall semester, we indulge in baked goods and quick snacks to keep up going when we should be more conscious of what we’re eating.
Brittney Stuard, a Nutrition and Resources for Disables Students employment manager at CSU, associated this eating trend with “a lack of time, as well as cost”. “It is harder because [college students] don’t have as much time and culinary knowledge,” Stuard said” (Buxton, 2014). Stuard’s claim really resonated with two of my roommates in that they have announced on several occasions that they just don’t have enough time to cook with their course loads and often lament that they wish they were more adept in the kitchen.
However, there really isn’t an excuse to eat poorly all semester long. There are plenty of cheap and easy, healthy food options. Salads, for example, can be made with just about any ingredient and are cheap and easy to construct. Other options include eating on campus at the Aggie Marketplace or the Junction- both of which alleviate the task of cooking and boast a number of healthy options like soups, salads, and a number of protein-rich entrees at the cost of about seven dollars per meal- a closer and cheaper option than eating out.
Once again, getting the right amount of sleep feels like an eternal struggle between too much and too little sleep. Some of the excuses we claim for not getting enough sleep are because we’re “busy” studying, or, conversely, we stayed up too late studying (or hanging out with friends) and we need to sleep-in. Both scenarios do occur, but the long-term impacts can be devastating.
According to a Harvard study on sleep, “people who are sleep deprived will begin to show deficits in many tasks that require logical reasoning or complex thought” (Healthysleep.med.harvard.edu, 2007). This isn’t exactly a revelation, but all too often we allow ourselves to believe that we can run on less sleep than what we actually need to work optimally.
When we continually deny our bodies the sleep that they need, “concentration, working memory, mathematical capacity, and logical reasoning… [become] compromised”. All that said, are nights spent binge-watching your favorite show or pulling all-nighters to study really beneficial? Given that lack of sleep causes the aforementioned issues even in the short-term, probably not.
It is my strong belief that young women, my college roommates and I in particular, should try to be more engaged in healthy stress coping mechanisms such as eating healthily, exercising, and getting enough sleep so that they can be more physically capable to keep up with classwork and reduce stress. It isn’t always easy to live a healthier life, but the benefits do tend to outweigh the inconveniences. It is a personal decision to eat well and be more physically healthy, just as it is to make time to exercise, and get enough sleep. It is through making the, at times, more inconvenient choice that we are rewarded. Sometimes it requires small sacrifices- passing on a decadent dessert, missing a movie marathon with friends to get some much-needed sleep, or taking time to head to the gym- to reap the benefits we would otherwise be denied. In the end, it is a personal choice to live healthier.