I am on The Ohio State women’s soccer team, so maintaining a well-balanced diet and a healthy lifestyle is very important to me as a student-athlete. My days and weekends are usually pretty packed, so it’s important that I am properly fueled for breakfast, lunch, snacks, and dinner, and that I am getting the proper sleep in order to have a healthy mood, low stress, and overall healthy lifestyle. My day starts off with rehab from 8:30am-9:30am, practice 10:00am-12:00pm, class from 2:00pm-6:00pm, and then tutors, studying, and homework after. As you can see this type of schedule every day can cause bad decisions in my diet, high levels of stress, not a lot of sleep, and my mood to sometimes be tired, irritable, happy, or energetic. I’m someone who really focuses a lot on my nutrition, getting as close to 8 hours of sleep as I can, and always pursing happiness and a stress-free life. Because these are areas that I can always improve on, I made it my goal this semester to keep track of them and see a hopeful improvement.
MAKING MY GOAL A REALITY
My goals became a reality after reading Legacy by James Kerr. His book was very powerful to read because it was all about motivation, the willingness to go the extra step, internal grit, and taking initiative of your life. There were many strategies and key points from his book that really helped me implement my goals into my everyday life and really stick to them in order to achieve them. Throughout my blog post you will read how impactful this book was to me and my efforts to achieving my goals.
Everyday Goal #1: Sleep…Something we wish we could all have more of
My goal for my sleep category was to get 8 or more hours of sleep each night which ultimately forces me to go to bed at a reasonable time. This everyday goal is very beneficial to my life because it allows me to get through my busy day without feeling like I’m going to fall asleep in every class or waking up tired and groggy in the mornings. Sleep inhibits my soccer performance when I don’t get the necessary sleep before practice. Having 8 or more hours of sleep really does help my long days’ worth of practice, classes, studying, and tutors. I know I’m someone who always wishes I could have more sleep in a day. I chose to tack my sleep through an app called Smartabase. This is an app that I already used prior to this project for me soccer team. It gives us options to select our sleep quality, fluid intake, food amount, overall stress, physical fatigue, soreness, and motivation. For this specific project, I chose to look at the sleep quality and the stress part of it. You’ll see below this is what the set up looks like on the app.
Everyday Goal #2: Stress…Always a fun thing in life
Most college students can agree that life is stressful. A person is expected to maintain a high GPA, work a job, apply to internships, study, have a social life, and get enough sleep all in a week’s worth of time. As a student-athlete my life is a lot busier now having to add practices, games, traveling, meetings, workouts all into it on top of all those other expectations. Instead of having the pressure from my parents and professors, I now have the pressure from my coaches, my academic advisors, and my strength coach. Stress is a big component of my life and something I work very hard to reduce every day. I am not an anxious person, but there are days when I do feel nervous or anxious and getting myself out of that state of mind and into a happy, calm, and positive state is hard sometimes. A great strategy that has helped me stay in my happy, calm, and positive stage is, “Mental preparation and relaxation is a vital component in having success” (Kerr 52). I am fortunate enough to go into the float tank in our training room’s facility. The purpose of the float tank to reduce your stress, ease your mind, and one hour of sleep in there is equivalent to 4 hours of sleep. The float tank is a small room/bath with saltwater in it which allows your body to float and just lay there.
“Focus on getting the culture right, the results will follow”
– James Kerr
WHO WANTS TO TALK ABOUT FOOD?
Everyday Goal #3: Food…I am a total foodie!
Breakfast, lunch, and dinner are the deciding factors in having a well-balanced diet. Breakfast is said to be the most important meal of the day, but what does that really mean to most people? Breakfast is an important meal to me because it’s what fuels me for my two-hour practices every morning. My breakfast compared to another college students might be a little different. I like to maintain consistency in my soccer performance, so I like to eat a consistent breakfast. Every morning I eat oatmeal with berries or a banana in it. For me, this is just the right amount of food that my body needs in order to maintain the energy levels I need for practice. Breakfast isn’t something I can afford to be lazy about. I can’t just eat a granola bar and think I will be fueled enough for practice. To me, it’s about finding the right balance between not overeating and not undereating.
Lunch to me is not one of my favorite meals. I’m not a huge fan of the typical “lunch” meals such as a sandwich or a salad. On the other hand, I need my lunch to be well-thought out about because it needs to contain protein and refueling nutrients. Something I struggle with is I like to eat snack such as a yogurt, apple, and pretzels and I usually end up starving after an hour. I need to make sure that I am making more balanced meals with protein and veggies in it because that’s what I need as an athlete. Sometimes I am limited on time to make a well-rounded lunch as well as having the energy to do so. Lunch is something I am still trying to be better at, however, lunch is a difficult time period for me. Going off of James Kerr quote from above, it discusses having on getting the culture right now so the results will follow. This is relatable to lunch because getting my culture and habits right at the grocery store and earlier in the day will allow the results and my body to recover better.
Dinner is definitely my favorite meal because it’s my time to make a big meal with protein, vegetables, and carbohydrates. I usually have the most time to cook dinner because I eat at the end of my day. As long as I have the right ingredients my dinner is well-balanced and exactly what I need at the end of the day and for the next day. However, dinners do get frustrating to make when I am away on soccer trips and can’t get to choose exactly what I want to eat and when I want to. In addition, a lot of my exams are late at night, so I do sometimes have to eat dinner around my exams too. I used the app Foodility to track what I ate for breakfast, lunch, any snacks I ate, and dinner throughout the day. At the end of the day I marked the day with a green circle to show a good day of eating compared to a day without a green circle to resemble a bad day. People can have many different interpretations of what a good day of eating is like compared to a bad day, but for me a good day is three well-balanced meals with protein and veggies while a bad is random snacks with not a lot of nutritional food.
The picture to the left is a “bad day” of maintaining a well-balanced diet. I consider this to be bad because as you can see my lunch is very small and barely any nutritional value to the apple and zucchini bread that I ate. My snack in addition, of plain crackers and grapes again does not contain protein or veggies that I need.
The picture to the right is a “good day” because I had a filling lunch with a well-balanced dinner. This was exactly what I needed a day of hard practicing. In addition, for a snack I had a protein shake that was filling and had a high source of protein.
With a well-balanced diet and a living a healthy lifestyle of stress free days and the right amount of sleep, my Smartabase definitely shows the days that I benefit from it, and the days that I don’t.
Takeaways
I was very happy with the results that I had as a result of this project. I think my diet and lifestyle greatly benefited from it because they changed for the better. This course project was so successful because of James Kerr’s Legacy book. His strategies discussed and the in-depth discussion of achieving your goals successfully kept me motivated and accountable with myself. I think the biggest struggle people have when setting goals is themselves. Yes, there can be obstacles in life that prevent goals, but when it really comes down to it, the only thing holding a person back is themselves. The strategies and apps that I’ve used I will continue to use because it’s a great way to hold myself accountable. I find myself eating less junk food when I know that I have to write it down and visibly see what I ate that day. I thought this project was very eye-opening because it showed me weaknesses in my life that are easy to improve upon with a little bit of guidance. Legacy was a book that was very similar to the class in a sense that it taught me new things and new strategies to try in my life. The goal of the book and this class is to better me as a person. I found this class and this project to really benefit me as a person greatly and will continue to do so as I move forward in life.
