So. Define "X."

Let's start with the basics. I'm about to go to college. Obviously, every new college student wants to avoid the freshman 10…or 15. I am no exception. I’m Sam. A senior at Hawken School in Gates Mills, Ohio. I’ve always been an athlete—you know, the little kid in the overalls and pigtails on the playground who, between digging for worms and chugging chocolate milk, was out on the field tearing after which ever runny nosed little boy had the ball at the moment, playing full-on tackle football. Mind you, most of this was while the rest of my female compadres jumped rope or practiced cheerleading, raising a fifth-grade disapproving eyebrow at the one of their own covered in mud and smelling kind of funny. Eventually, I would go on to discover make-up, and boys, and earrings, and other such “girly” essentials. But that hard-core, gritty competitor was one part of me that never left. I never could have imagined my life without the Sunday drives to soccer tournaments and the post-game rehash with my super-fan, insanely athletic dad. That is, until the first day of my senior year.

In soccer, I play goalie. How's this for a freak accident: in my borderline psychotic, “anything to prevent a goal, no matter how irrational it might seem” mentality, I came flying off the goal line to avoid what would clearly have been a goal, and slide tackled a six-foot behemoth, sending the ball ricocheting out of bounds. Oh, what a beautiful play it was! Until the agonizing pain of my broken fibula sank in after about three seconds. That little lapse in judgment kick started a senior year filled with doctors appointments, full-leg casts, bones that refused to heal, an excruciatingly painful basketball season, and landed me in not one, but two casts over the course of 12th grade—I opted for tie-dye the second time, which proved to be a nice change of pace from the glow in the dark I had the first go-around. I mean, if I’m going to have a cast, it might as well be ridiculous.

I got that second lovely hunk of plaster (or fiber glass if we’re going to be completely correct) after getting surgery on March 22, where I’ve been told Dr. Goodwin at the Cleveland Clinic inserted some form of metal do-hickey in my right leg to hold the two floppy sections of fibula together in hopes that the compression might stimulate some bone growth. For good measure they snagged some bone marrow from my hip and shot it in there, in case the bone didn’t get the message to get busy healing from the metal plate alone.

Bottom line is, this year I got to experience life where sports were not the main focus. While my teammates took recruiting trips and talked about their options, I planned Homecoming and built up my portfolio. I decided that it was art, not soccer, that would be taking me to college.

Now, that was all fine and dandy (except for with my dad who took a little while to let this emotional blow sink in) until I realized one night as I scarfed down a bacon cheeseburger and munched on my brother’s French fries (just like always--i mean during my athletic career, food and I had always been pals. I needed all the fuel I could get in order to compete.) “Hey wait a minute…this was ok while I had sports every day…But before I go to college, I’m pretty sure some things are gonna have to change.” And BAM. Just like that, the idea for my senior project was hatched: Figure out a way for a kid going to college to stay healthy and active without the daily practices of high school sports to keep them in check. Everything from finding different forms of activity to fit individual styles, to what food choices to make. It's all here. So follow me on this quest to find a balanced, healthy life style for all those X-Athletes out there.


Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Day 3 (I can feel the athlete in me starting to wake up!)

Daily Activities

6:30 am- Breakfast. We have no food in our house, so this is when it gets hard. I managed to make good choices though. I was pleased with myself. The protein bar was a nice change of pace from cereal. I often find myself getting hungry at 9:30 or so, because the cereal really has no protein to keep me satisfied. The bar however, packs twelve grams, keeping me feeling fuller longer. I will need to have some of these little babies on hand at college for a healthy alternative to junk food.
Protein bar
8 oz. 2%milk
Small Pink Lady apple

9:15 am- Trying the 2 mile run again. First, it’s later than I ran on Monday, meaning it’s significantly hotter. An hour can make a lot of difference. Especially because it was in the 80s today. I started out at a good pace, and surprisingly less sore that Monday..definitely less sore than yesterday. I ran the same route as Monday, and was noticeably faster and more fluid. Monday was choppy due to the leg and not being used to the jogging motion, but apparently my body was quick to adjust. When I got to a certain point, probably a bit further than the other day, I realized that once again, there was no way in the world I would be able to finish the two miles so at 1.6 I stopped and took some time to catch my breath. I always set goals for myself that I force myself to meet. In this case, it was making it past a certain sign on the Hawken driveway. Once I touched the sign, I was done, but I couldn’t stop before that no matter how tired I was. This is also a method I plan to employ in college. If I set clear goals for myself that I don’t stop until I meet, I will be much more successful than if I just kind of let myself do whatever without a set plan.

12:30 pm- Lunch. I was super hungry, and again, we have NO food. This, I guess, will mimic my college situation. Don’t college kids always talk about having no good food? I looked around and got creative. Whole grain bun, cheddar cheese, pickles. We have apples. Ok good…But I’m very hungry and that is insufficient…AHA! We have protein bars!

Small Pink Lady apple
Whole grain bun with cheddar cheese, dill pickle relish, and Two Brother’s Seasoning from Heinen’s. Which is delish by the way.
Protein bar, with small smear of chunky peanut butter for good measure

**By the way, by now you may be wondering if I’m a camel and just never drink anything. Actually I drink a ton but haven’t been consistently writing them down. Right now, my favorite things are CVS Brand Diet Raspberry White Teas and flavored waters. We also have cans of diet gingerale, but I’ve been trying to stick to more non-carbonated things.

1:00 pm- Stroll. It was sunny and 85 today. I’m a sun baby—it improves my mood times about a million.
So I walked down my street and a bit of the next street over then turned around and came home. The only unique thing was in order to catch some rays (which can be harmful, but I was wearing sunscreen and was outside for only about 30 minutes) I took my shirt off and walked in a sports bra. To some that might sound weird or inappropriate, and for others that may be no big thing. But for me, it was forcing myself out of a state of self consciousness. I wear bikinis when I go swimming. I walk around in a sports bra after soccer games. But never without constantly obsessing about how other people are seeing me. I am extremely hyper-critical of myself. I blow things out of proportion in my own mind, and I psych myself out. This exercise today was to make myself walk around feeling comfortable and beautiful and take my mind off of the fact that other people might judge how I look. At the beginning I was very uncomfortable. My back got sore from how I was holding myself. But after about a half mile I decided to forget it because it hurt and no one was coming anyway. So I stood straight up, put my shoulders back like normal, and walked on. But then, people started coming. I couldn’t duck into the bushes, or check myself in the mirror before I let them see me; there was no escaping judgment. And to my surprise, everyone was nice and acted super normal about it. They waved, smiled, and one landscaper even beeped at me. Which I hate more than anything, by the way. I wanted to run down his truck and pop the tires. Cat calls are too disrespectful for my liking. When I got back up to my bedroom, I looked in the mirror and felt happy and confident, and the feeling hasn’t left me all day. I think I will be making myself do this drill a lot more over the course of the project.

4:45 pm- Meeting number 2 with Ann Marie. I really love this woman. She chats like an old pal while I work out. And there is something EXTREMELY calming and soothing about everything she does and makes me do, even the lifting weights. Everything down to her voice is airy and just flows. We worked my back today mostly. At first it was difficult because I wasn’t really feeling anything. Then she decided it was because I’m extremely flexible, which I am, so she had me shorten my motions to isolate the area. It worked like a charm and I began to immediately feel it. She also forced me to whip out some hammer curls for my biceps, an exercise I’d been avoiding like the plague, because it was just too reminiscent of basketball. I had trouble getting through them, but she said she really liked this exercise for me and I had good form. Ann Marie was very interested to learn of my love of art and my enrollment in the UC Interior Design Program. She, herself, pursues a professional acting career along with her training. What a cool lady. She said that I give the vibe of an artist, and it is easy to judge a book by its cover and just peg me as an athlete, but there is much more to me than that. Today, we also started some yoga, which I was very excited about. I found out immediately it’s a lot about stretching and breathing. Once we get more of a routine going, I will throw in some poses and pictures of each.

6:45- Dinner at Chipotle. I needed to be up at Hawken to put my AP Art Portfolio on the AP website, so I needed dinner on the go. I tried to pick a place where I knew I would be in control of what was going into my food, and I could make healthy choices. I chose:
Burrito Bol
Rice, chicken, black beans, sour cream, tomato salsa, corn salsa, mild salsa
It kind of sounds like a lot, but I was hungry and tried to get something from all of the food groups. By leaving out the cheese and the giant tortilla, I kept from going overboard.

9:15 Snack- At about 9 o’clock, I felt my stomach rumbling. So I knew what I needed to do. One of my cardinal rules that I follow is to eat promptly and adequately in response to hunger. One nutritionist that I used to see, Nancy Blazar, would always tell me that in order to reach my healthy weight for my body, all I needed to do was listen and respond quickly to real, actual hunger.

8 oz 2% milk with 2 tbs. Chocolate sauce (to make chocolate milk)
½ Serving Cocoa Puffs (I know, not the best for me, but there were only a few left, so I decided to finish them)
A little bit of milk for the cereal

I think I’m actually starting to figure out my body’s needs and what they look and sound like. Also, today I was very happy with the sports bra walk, and I plan to incorporate those into my routines a lot more.

Reading Material
It’s late and I’m almost out of time for tonight, so I’ll catch up on this tomorrow. But I will give you a preview and say The Diet for Teenagers Only is a great read and has a lot of great facts, but it said something that irked me a lot today. Just so you know, it has to do with BMI. Most of the time it’s great, but I’m a special case. BMI doesn’t factor in muscle mass versus fat in its calculations. AKA Lebron James would probably be considered morbidly obese according to the BMI chart, but this book sets a lot of store by those numbers. That probably works for other girls, but not for me sir. We’ll chat tomorrow.
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