“In times of stress, be bold and valiant.”

Almost 2 weeks down and 1 to go.  Every eight weeks I have three weeks of stress, or five weeks of less stress and today wasn't a good day.  I worked 9 hours virtually non-stop.  The only redeeming part is that it was someones birthday and one of the researchers pressed her face against my window and yelled cake.  I laughed, but I didn't eat it, didn't have the time (it also had pecans which I'm allergic to). 

I also had a rock in my shoe all day.  I thought to myself "that rock in my shoe is really annoying" as it rolled under the bottom of my right foot but for some reason I never stopped to take that rock out of my shoe. (MLIA) My priorities, I'll tell ya.  Anyway, my day hasn't gotten much better, in fact it's gotten more stressful for reasons that will go unnamed.  

Stress.  I hear it's not good for you, and I can tell you it doesn't feel good. This morning on Fox & Friends (say what you want, that show is hilarious.  They mess up reading the cue cards, look at the wrong cameras, etc. etc.) authors Dr. Howard Friedman and Dr. Leslie Martin were presenting their research based on eight decades of data, found in their recently published book, The Longevity Project.  The segment they ran was dispelling a few common myths.    They reported that worrying is actually not that bad "a bit of worry is not that bad, especially for men."  Dr. Martin went on to imply that people who worry (but not excessively) and who aren't cheerfully optimistic tend to care more about certain things that keep their lives on the ball.  My gut reaction was to find something to debunk this report.

In a very quick perusing of research I found that "Properly monitored and managed, the stress response contributes to a state of optimum health and well being (source)." But of course, improperly managed stress can be problematic in the entire spectrum of our lives.  In fact, skimming through other articles it seems that stress is commonly accepted as being protective in the right doses and damaging in over doses source.  Of course this makes evolutionary sense but when I feel stressed there is never a feeling of restoration.  Their is a feeling of rage, irritability, and sleeplessness to name a few.  When I'm stressed I'm not as nice to my friends and family, I need more alone-time, I neglect exercise and fantasize about being idle, for even a second.  But how am I to know, how am I to know when I've passed the protective stress and entered the damaging stress levels?

I took a yoga stress test found here: Yoga News Stress Test

I scored a 19 so I was ranked in the points from 16-20, right on the edge of achieving a level of awareness but sadly my 'yoga emotional stress' was:

"You are still swimming on the surface of life.  More effort is needed to penetrate life’s deeper dimensions and to start living with greater awareness and consciousness."

  This is of course is silly and by no means a scientific test but it's light hearted.

So there's stress.  And then there is exercise, which I continued to neglect again today....this dang wheeze. Then there is nutrition.  I think it's safe to say I'm a follower of Megan (eatmybeets.blogspot.com).  I had oatmeal for breakfast (made in the way that Megan introduced to me) and for dinner I am going to make cabbage (Megan texted me the way to make it today), chicken sausage (chicken raised without the use of antiobiotics, mind you), and prob a side of leftover rice.  

For lunch I had:

Natural peanut butter and organic pear sandwich. Side of organic tomatoes.  

(Again, I stole the sandwich idea from Megan's blog.  Megan, I think I love you.)  But here's the thing.  I had a side of cottage cheese with mango.  Usually I have cottage cheese with pineapple. But when I took a spoonful of the cottage cheese with mango, I spit it right back out.  It was gross!!! I threw it away, sunk cost.  Well...maybe the cottage cheese went bad I don't know, but I think I'll use the rest of the mango with some organic yogurt for dessert tonight!