Destressing

So today was very stressful.
I had a psych paper and a Jane Eyre paper due. Somehow, I got to the point that I was happy with both of my papers (a rare occurrence).
Work was also incredibly busy. I work at an Italian restaurant (conveniently located adjacent to Whole Foods, so luckily I never feel compelled to eat the food there) and I waited on three large tables (one was a for a business meeting, another was a group of women who apparently were celebrating a win at the tennis club, and I think the other was some kind of family reunion). I would never expect this on a Thursday, and to top it all of one of the girls who works there called in sick.
My point is that today was incredibly stressful all around, and I handled it with the usual mixture of healthy and unhealthy habits.
This morning, turns out I slept through the alarm. At 8:30 I woke up and had to make a 9:00 class.

Needless to say, I had to grab a quick excuse for a breakfast on the run. I selected a tablespoon of my homemade raw almond butter (thank you blogosphere for showing me I can eat almond butter cheaply, and thank you Whole Foods for selling organic raw almonds in bulk). The healthy fat and protein kept me full for a surprisingly long time.

After class, I had to edit those papers I mentioned.
I ate a handful of almonds:

And proceeded to resort to a go-to unhealthy habit: "binge drinking" diet drinks.
I was about to fall asleep at my laptop and I was stressed, so I drank two entire cans of this.
The next logical step was, of course Diet Green Tea.

Finally, I switched to water. Too bad the damage was already done. Why am I so addicted to artificial sweeteners? I actually took the step and bought Stevia, but I am terrified to drink it in my tea. However, I am extremely excited to try that "Zevia" drink as soon as I can save up enough to rationalize spending so much on a drink.

Next, I had a piece of Genesis bread:
With two tbs of organic peanut butter:
Later, I snacked on a handful of soy nuts (11 grams of protein per serving, hell yes):

And a huge bowl of popcorn. I made this in my air popper so there were only abou 150 calories but I cannot express how huge this was.
Thank you grocery stores for carrying a huge bag of organic popcorn that lasts me weeks and only costs $1.17. I am an addict. You'll see...

And then, I of course had to have some more almond. Sorry for the blurry picture.

And three Mexican "Matter of Flax" Raw organic crisps. I am still in love with these (unfortunately I have only tried the Mexican and Italian ones).
And of course a Larabar
Three organic strawberries:


I demolished what remained of this bag of grapes:
And had more popcorn. Why not, I said.

Unpictured, I had another 1/4 a cup of frozen organic blueberries.

When I get stressed, all I do is snack and ruin my appetite for actual meals. This is not good because then I never plan out my nutrition or eat correctly.

After work, in the dead heat of the day, I went running.
The trail I went to today is .75 miles around per lap. I ran three laps, taking a long water break between each lap, and then walked a cooldown lap. I blame the heat (and secretly my out of shapeness) for this horrible run. Luckily, the run still released the stress and gave me enough endorphins to make it through... the commute home.
I went home and immediately CRASHED on my bed. Very productive. However, I would like to think that this half hour of sleep makes up for the fact that I only got three hours last night...
After the run a friend and I met up to get snow cones. Instead of eating ice with syrup, I asked for ice with fresh lime. I was very happy with this choice.

In review, my stress managment was...
The healthy:
running
napping
complaining to my co workers (maybe not so healthy for them)

the unhealthy:
stress eating
the flood of aspartame that is now probably incubating a huge cancerous mass in my stomach. what happened to my diet coke with splenda?

I think I need to cut out some unhealthy habits... possibly?
And now I have that wonderful caffine + sleep deprived induced tired but wired stare.

Finally, I was just reading this article on nytimes.com about how food allergies are linked to obesity. Very alarming.