Eat Food. Do Good.

The best way I learn is through reinforcement -- I learn something once, learn it again later, then blog about it. TRIPLE REINFORCEMENT!

For this particular blog post, I'm referring to eating breakfast.

Vitamin D--licious!

I don't know when was the first time I learned that eating breakfast is good for you. Cereal commercials? Teachers? Parents? Peers? It's probably a combination of all of them. Anyways, it's highly recommended by everyone to start your day with a healthy meal. Studies have shown over and over again that students who eat breakfast score higher on tests, have better concentration, have higher attendance rates, maintain a healthier weight (and the list goes on and on).

I'm happy to say I'm on the breakfast bandwagon. There's not a day where I don't get some food in my system in the morning. If it's not a full meal, I'll at least grab some fruit and hydrate. After learning about all those benefits, why wouldn't I?! However, those are all just general statements. I never learned why. Why does breakfast help with concentration? Why does breakfast help with higher test scores? Why? Why? Why? My questions were finally answered (-ish) in my KIN 352 (Bioenergetics of Movement) class the other day! Well...come to think of it, I'm sure I've learned about it in my other classes before (especially Human Nutrition)....but I don't remember. Anyways..........

Here's my little blog post about what I learned, so let's break this baby down! The most basic function of food (Ahem. Breakfast) is to fuel our bodies...like a car! Our main source of fuel are carbohydrates...unlike a car. This can come from whole grain foods (bread, cereal, pasta, rice), vegetables, fruits, beans, etc. Trust me, a lot of our food has carbohydrates. Typically, carbohydrates should make up  between 50-60% of what we eat. That's a large percentage of our food! But there's a reason.

In the body, these carbohydrates are broken down to its simplest form, glucose. Glucose is energy -- energy for our cells to work, energy for our muscles to work, and most importantly, energy for our brains to work. NOTICE: OUR BRAINS CAN ONLY USE GLUCOSE TO FUEL OUR BODIES. And eating good carbs is the best way to do so. Bad carbs consist of sugary foods like desserts and soda. Anyways, since our bodies and brain always needs glucose for fuel, it's very important to refuel in the mornings after waking up to get us ready for the rest of the day.

We do have glucose saved up in our systems for times when we can't eat. Excess glucose gets stored in the liver and muscles in a form called glycogen. Glycogen exist more abundantly in the muscles; however, muscle glycogen is used by the muscles. If you haven't eaten and your brain needs fuel, it needs to take it from your liver glycogen. Liver glycogen is much more limited, so it's important to just eat breakfast in the morning instead of relying on your stored liver glycogen to fuel your brain and body through your day until lunchtime.

Joe's A Clean, Mean, Rolling-Like-Crazy Machine

I laugh my ass off every time I watch these videos. Before coming back to Urbana-Champaign for school, I gave Joe (my dog) a bath and recorded him after I dried him off a bit. He always had a ritual of running around the house like a maniac after every bath. My family had Joe for 11 years now, and it took us that long to finally get a video of it. It's sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo cuuuuutteeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!

Joe needs a name for this move. It's reminds me of something 

the racers would do in Tokyo Drift....except Joe is cooler.

The main attraction!

Homecooking

CAULIFLOWER (boiled and curried) and RICE.This is my first self-cooked meal since being back from Winter Break. (This meal was made last week by the way) I've cooked noodles before, but that doesn't count. I've been eating out at restaurants, eating at events around campus, and, actually, eating in dining halls a lot since being back.

It's like a stoplight!

Lil' Smokies and Steamed Cauliflower w/ Garlic

Rice w/ Rice on Rice.

Curry Cauliflower

I ate a whole ¿head? of cauliflower that day. YUMMY! I brought it back from home (I think) and I was afraid it'll go bad, so I just cooked it all. I didn't know how fast cauliflower spoils... I also didn't know how to cut it when I was cooking it. Nothing eHow couldn't fix though.

 In the end, it was a really good meal though I was very disappointed with the lil' smokies. I remember always getting really excited when my mom would buy lil' smokies. From the context of that memory, it's safe to assume lil' smokies must be pretty awesome. NOPE!! They're just hot dog-flavored. How disappointing. "Tsk tsk, Lil' Smokie."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

On a side note, I made 11 slices of French Toast today. Just like last semester (as blogged about in a previous post), I had a lot of bread that was going to go bad, so I made French Toast of all of it. It was delicious! There are no pictures to show. Sorry. I could have just reposted pictures from the last French Toast-ing, but that would just be dishonest.

I Love Getting Hit By Cars...

I love getting hit by cars.... in a virtual reality.

This treadmill was a huge bean-shaped thing though. It matched the curve of a person's walking pattern. This is probably an outdated photo.

Two weeks ago, I participated in a research experiment for.... Actually, I don't know what they were studying. Something with cognition. In the beginning, I had to spend about 30 minutes completing really annoying computer tests (ex. either "> > < > >" or "< < < < <" or "> > > > >" or "< < > < <" would appear on the screen for a series of really quick trials...press "z" if the center arrow is pointing left and press "/" if it's pointing right). This was one of the many different computer tasks. It's sooooo boring!

After all that crap, I got to cross streets in a virtual reality!

I'm not sure for how many trials I had to cross the street, but it took about an hour of crossing. Maybe an hour and a half. Since the researcher already told me how many trials I needed to complete, I wanted to get it over with as fast as I could, so every trial I would just try to run across without stopping. Imagine if we did that in real life. Regardless of cars coming, you would try to cross the street faster than the car could drive into you. Well.....don't try it. That tactic got me hit by a virtual car many a-times....and also, by the end, I was dripping with sweat from all the running.

Okay. I'm done with my post. I'm really sleepy, and I've got a lot of work to do.

Bonjour!