There's a man downstairs wearing a bright blue suit and a pink tie

Hey guys it’s Scott, you remember me right? I’m the one in med school! I’m your son, nephew, boyfriend, uncle, daughter’s boyfriend, brother, cousin, that kid you see occasionally. I know it's been a while. I have been crazy busy over the past few weeks. Jenna has been hassling me because I haven’t seen her in a week now, but that’s the price you pay when you make the big bucks like me.

So dissection is over, I finished a week and a half ago. So that means that for the rest of my medical career I might not be personally dissecting any cadavers. Sad, I know, but I still have anatomy and still spend a lot of time in lab. Plus I may have a chance to get in and dissect some things come head and neck, so that’s something to look forward to. We also had exams last Monday that went well with not too much studying since I was a dissector I really didn’t have to study for anatomy. Were in a few week hiatus now between tests, but the next round is pretty much like finals week. We have 2 on the last Friday of February then 2 Monday Wednesday and Friday the following week with a reading day between each. That is going to be horrible, but after that we have 2 weeks then spring break with pretty much nothing to do. They asked us to please not leave for break early, but that may just happen, we’ll see.

I have been so busy lately because we had a snow day last Wednesday. On that day I had 9 hours of class that all had to be rescheduled. One of my classes was reschedule to Friday night so I was in a small group session until 7:00 on Friday night. Med school is awesome. However, afterward we had a mixer thing with the vet and law school at a bar off campus. It was really fun. You can tell that everyone is cooped up all day and then just wants to get out and have fun. Unfortunately that meant a late night and a late morning, so even though I was extremely productive, I still didn’t get as much done as I wanted. Then Sunday was half wasted because of the superbowl. Adding to the trouble that the snow caused was the fact that I had to dig my car out of my spot to go to Jenna’s after we got all the snow. It took about 30 min to dig it out and remove enough ice from the windows to see. I broke my ice scraper within the first few minutes of breaking ice off of the windshield. It was about 3 inches thick covering my windshield wipers because it had basically rained/sleeted/snowed that whole day. So I basically was just beating the ice with my broken stick of an ice scraper to get it off. Then I had to clear snow out behind the tires so that the car would even move at all. I had to rock it back and forth a bunch to get it finally out. Then when I came back later the plow had come by the lot that it’s on and pushed a big pile right in the entrance to my spot as it went by. So I had to dig 2 tire tracks with my feet so that I could even get my car back into my spot. It was an eventful journey for sure.

I have still had time to work out to my liking, though. I’m at the gym almost every morning before class and almost every night to run/bike/swim. Although for a few weeks I wasn’t able to run because of stupid shin splints in my right leg. For those of you who don’t really know what they are, it’s when muscles that help you basically push your foot down get inflamed. So the pain is in the posterior compartment of the leg toward the middle of the body. The “shinbone” is the big bone that you can feel in the front of the leg, and the pain is just medial (toward the midline) of that about 6-8 inches above the ankle. It’s pretty debilitating, which sucks. Every step that I took hurt when the pain first started, which eliminated running. So I switched to biking and swimming at night for a while, which is nice cause now my swimming has gotten waaay better. Ive been running for the past couple days, my longest being a mile and a half and my leg is pretty good. Still a long way to go to 100% though.

 P.S. everything prior to this was written about a week and a half ago, if not more. I wrote it in a word doc when I was in my apartment one day and just never uploaded it to this interweb thingy. 

Since then I have studied and stuff. I also strictified my diet more. For those of you who know, I have been very health conscious for quite some time. The more I have been reading about grains and processed foods, though, the more I found out that cutting them out gives me a better overall diet. So that was when I started eating paleo. That means protein (meat), fats, fruits and more veggies than you can shake a stick at. That went well, but then I found out more about the Zone diet. Basically what it is is getting proper proportions of carbs, fat and protein in the diet by weighing and measuring food. Note: I am in no way doing this to lose any sort of weight, I do not have body image issues, and I am definitely not starving myself in any way. If anything I am trying to put on a little weight to increase my workload capacity and get stronger. So after reading about the diet I decided to give it a 2 week trial period. I found out how many "blocks" I needed (a block is basically an elemental unit for measuring equal parts protein carbs and fat so you are always taking in 40% carbs, 30% protein, and 30% fat), and I set to work combining the paleo aspect (no processed foods, meat, veggies, fruits, nuts, etc.) with the proper portion sizes of zone. In order to get the proper amounts of carbs in each meal with veggies alone, you have to eat very large amounts of them. Some meals I will eat like 6 cups of broccoli, an apple or orange or something, a chicken breast and a half, and some almonds or peanut butter for fats. I was skeptical at first because of the sheer volume of food intake, but the calories from all those veggies is actually very small compared to what I thought it would be. After having done this for a week and a half now, I have already seen improvements in my workouts. I have pr'd (personal record) in my swim times each time I get in the water, and I pr'd by 30 pounds last week in my overhead squat weight. This is huge. I also just feel better during my workouts. Basically the diet is great (P.S. I hate the word diet because people associate it with starving yourself to lose weight, but this is quite the contrary.) I eat usually more than I think I can handle, haven't really gained any weight or lost any weight (fine with me), and have gotten stronger and faster. I am also never hungry because of the amount of food that I am able to take in. So think what you may (parents who think I should be eating pasta and bread and stuff), but seeing the results I have so far, I think I will be sticking with this. Also, if you don't take fish oils, take them. There's basically no substance that I can think of that has more health benefits than proper doses of fish oils. Regardless of diet, age, activity level, anything, just take them. You're better off. K I'm off my soap box. 

Gotta study. See ya'll later.

Oh and if you were wondering, yes I still ride my bike to class every day and have ridden it every single day since winter break ended, in the snow and all.