10 Reasons I Might Die Young

As I’m about to cap off my spring break and resume my regular routine of college and work, I am also about to resume my regular routine of bad habits.  I’ve been told that these bad habits will come back to bite me one day.  My response to this has always been: if I die young, at least I’ll die happy.

10 Reasons I Might Die Young

1. I am 80% junk food, 15% caffeine, 2.5% real food, and 2.5% other (whatever else makes up the human body).
2. I don’t drink water.  Exceptions: I’m dying of thirst and there’s nothing else around.  I’m dying of thirst and you’ve put ice in it (I only drink cold things).
3. I never purposely seek healthy foods.
4. I can’t read a nutrition label any more than I can read a foreign language.  Carbs?  Calories?… Crickets…
5. I’ve never exercised outside of PE, which was mandatory, in grade school.
6. I sit.  All day.  I get to school – I find a place to sit.  I get to class – I sit.  I get on public transportation – I sit.  I get home – couch, I sit, bed, I sit.  Exception: When I’m sleeping, I lay down.  When I’m working, I’m on my feet, but I don’t work every day.
7. I go to sleep in the wee hours of the morning, and my alarm goes off at 5:30am.  After two semesters, I am very sleep deprived.
8. My stress level is always off the charts – from school and work, where I’m new and have no idea what I’m doing.
9. I don’t take medicine.  If I get sick from #1-8, which occasionally I do, I sleep it off.  I’ve been very fortunate thus far to have not come down with anything serious or life-threatening.
10. I have the attention span of a peanut (see my post here).  This is mainly a cause for concern when I’m on the road and driving.  I think you can see why.

DON’T GET ME WRONG:

I may have inadvertently given you the impression that I am careless, lazy, frighteningly at risk for a serious heart attack, and a threat to society.  This is not at all the case.  Okay, maybe it is.  But I should explain myself on some of these points.

• I don’t exercise not because I don’t want to, but because I don’t have time to.  Most days, I have classes from 8am-4pm, which means I’m up at 5:30am and home at 5pm.  I give myself 30min. to eat, because sometimes I don’t have time to eat anything at all during the day, and then I bury myself in my books for the rest of the night, coming up occasionally for air.  On days that I finish classes early in the morning, I work from afternoon ’til evening.  Kudos to my friends and for any of my readers who manage to fit exercise into a fully-loaded schedule.  I know people who can and do do it, and it befuddles me.
• I do sit for 90% of my day – because that’s the norm for students in a lecture hall, and because I need to sit to study at home and elsewhere.  These tasks take up almost my entire day.
• Don’t worry if we’re on the same road.  I’m actually an okay driver!  I make a conscious effort behind the wheel to stay focused, and I’m getting better at it.
• …I have no excuse for the junk food and caffeine obsession.  But, in case I misled you, I should mention that I am not 2,000 lbs.  I chalk that up to fast metabolism.

If you’ve made it through my excessively long post, congrats!  You have a better attention span than I do.  And thanks for reading it all!