FINISHED

The craziest part about being finished?  I am totally not finished at all!  There are always new projects to work on and new 1000s of pages to read.  But honestly, making it to this time today has seemed so impossible the past few days.  Considering the hours of sleep I missed out on and the hours of my life span taken away by stress, I am just grateful that everything actually got accomplished!  While I could worry about grades and my scores on each of my assignments, I am going to choose to be content with the fact that each assignment is turned in, complete, and was completed to the best of my ability, considering the resources (ie time) that was available to me. 

Speaking of stress, I have become a bit more educated on what it can do to your body.  IT CAN MAKE YOU GAIN WEIGHT LIKE WOAH.  So secret revealing time: I have gained 12ish pounds since starting my masters program in September.  That's alot, people.  The confusing and frustrating part to this is that I am actually eating less (I'm busy, friends) and exercising more (for sanity, yo).  Now I am not saying I deserve the healthy person of the year award, but my habits are better than they were this summer, for sure.

I was talking to my doctor about headache medicines (they cause weight gain too) and she mentioned that the weight is probably because of higher levels of stress hormones in my body.  Daily stress is more damaging to your body than trauma.  For reals. And your body internalizes this daily stress via the fight or flight concept.  So when I eat, my body saves ALL of those calories for future battle.  And when I exercise, my metabolism is not boosted by as much as it used to be.  So...I have to destress......

#48: Getting through these past few days
#49: Helpful doctors who don't think I'm superficial when voicing that spontaneous weight gain is no fun
#50: Freedom to not feel ashamed about my body.  This is an every day battle, but I am confident that I will continue gaining more and more freedom in this realm.