Speedbump 4: Leaving the nest and adjusting my life

This is a continuation of my story documenting the parts of my life that have brought me to Day 0, when I decided to change my daily habits for life, and for the better, to ultimately achieve my goals of reaching the best shape of my life, being fit and healthy, and full of energy. For other posts, see the rest of my story.

I have a bit of extra time this morning since I woke up early, and the start of the ShredderSphere has given me a bit more incentive to revisit and explore where I came from, and reinforce my PRW (see Adam's My Biggest Secret).

My last speedbump left me getting ready for university and learning to deal with ulcerative colitis. I had spent the summer building my strength up and getting my UC under control. However, with UC, flare-ups have a high occurrence during periods of stress.

Well, I just found this site that documents stressful life events and their relative stress level. When I put in the situations that I was in when I moved away to college, even though I was lacking the big ones, like dealing with death and divorce, I still would have scored over 300 on this test. This would have put me into the high range. Well, that sounds like a recipe for a flare-up, even after I had brought my UC down to a more manageable level over the summer through medication, rest, and moderate exercise.

I was moving away for the first time longer than a week or so, living in residence, living with a roommate, eating residence food (blech), dealing with my UC, seeing a chiropractor for my back pain, making new friends, not seeing my old friends, no longer playing sports, all the while taking a full course load in engineering with the pressure of having to maintain a high enough GPA to retain my scholarships. I came from a small town, so I was really unsure of how the small, "hometown hero" would handle the big city (relatively speaking, I am from Canada...).

I was sick. I was on a restricted diet, eating almost nothing but plain broiled chicken breasts and boiled potatoes (no salt, butter, toppings of any kind). I had to severley restrict my intake of salt, spices, flavourings, fat, fruit, fibrous veggies, dairy, sugar, caffeine, and the list goes on and on. If it had any type of fancy taste, I wasn't allowed to eat it. Bascially, I dreaded eating, but I was so hungry all the time. I was starving, but anything I ate would make me naseuous. Not only that, but as a first year university student, I had to severely restrict my alcohol intake as well. I had maybe 2 or 3 drinks my first semester. Not really the Animal House frat party lifestyle that people think about when going to college.

In addition to this bland diet, I wasn't exercising. I wasn't playing any of the sports that I used to. At this time, I was concentrating on getting my UC under control and doing the best at my studies. My body slowly withered away. A lot of my strength and muscles I had built up from my years of playing sports was disappearing. I didn't gain the freshman 15, I lost 10, and I'm sure most of it was muscle. This didn't help my back either. I needed those back muscles to keep my body stable and the pain down, and sitting at a desk all day doing schoolwork doesn't help the matter.

I was tired, and miserable, but still trying to enjoy the university experience. I made a lot of new friends and still managed to enjoy myself on the odd occasion. But it was a very hard period of adjustment. I was able to relax a bit more in the second semester after I had received my fall term marks. I had scored a perfect 4.3 GPA, straight A+ in all my courses. I had made the jump from smalll town high school to large University standards. To keep my all my scholarships, I only needed to keep a 3.7, so I now knew that I had a little bit of wiggle room and didn't have to stress myself out more about my schoolwork.

I slowly adjusted, gained some strength back. My UC wasn't as bad, and I slowly added more things to my diet. I also signed up for a couple intra-mural sports that weren't too demanding on my body. I ended the year with all my scholarships intact. I felt a bit more myself and was staying more active, as well as enjoying all the new friends I had met. Things were a lot different in my life at this time, but it was a new life that I was adjusting to. I was happier, but I was still sad about the life I had left behind. Growing up is hard to do, and my illness and injuries were putting me through more growing up than I wanted to deal with at this point.