Nursing school sent me to 200lbs

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Replies

  • shrinkingletters
    shrinkingletters Posts: 1,008 Member
    CompM wrote: »
    Unfortunately it may not get any easier when you're on the nursing floor. My fiancee was a floor nurse for some years in acute care, med/surg, and in nursing homes. Between the candy/treats that facility liaisons handed out, a lack of time to eat right (necessitating stuffing your face with vending machine goods), combined with the stress of high patient loads, it sounded pretty rough. This may be a good opportunity to get used to managing your time wisely. A lot of it depends on where you work, but nursing is a very demanding profession.

    Be strong, you can do it.

    Is this for real? I'm not American, so I don't know what facility liaisons are, but does a health facility really hand out candy to the staff/students? And don't they give you time to eat/rest? It sounds so backwards. How can this be allowed?

    This is definitely for real. I too work at a hospital (although I'm not a healthcare practitioner, I'm a number-cruncher), and during any kind of "appreciation" week, we get candy apples, ice cream, fast food burgers, cupcakes, root beer floats, etc., etc.
  • hekla90
    hekla90 Posts: 595 Member
    I'm a nurse and anyone who says its that hard to eat healthy is either lazy or has no self control. It's super easy not to gain weight as a nurse: don't eat everything in the break room. Plus, you'll be walking a ton on top of that. If you don't take your lunch and breaks that's on you: they are legally required. You get to take them, unless you choose not too I can only imagine how bad at time management someone has to be not to fit in their breaks. I work in a level 2 icu and we cover for each other's breaks all the time. I get food breaks and I damn sure don't hold my pee for 12 hours. If you choose to do that, that's on you. If no one is willing to cover for you, you might want to take a hard look at yourself and figure out why. And even then I'm pretty sure at our hospital the charge would have to cover you regardless because it's illegal not to give breaks.
  • nail_polish
    nail_polish Posts: 16 Member
    I'm keep a mini stationary bike under my desk. I pedal while I type/read. On a good day, I pedal over 4 hours.

    You can also go up and down stairs, if you have them. Do this once every hour for a week; the second week, twice every hour, etc. You can do squats every time you go to the rest room. Start with a certain amount and increase every week.

    There are also many phone apps with short workouts using only your body weight.
  • StacyJ8888
    StacyJ8888 Posts: 23 Member
    I am currently a nursing student too. We have two 8 hour lectures a week and it's hard to get through them without sugar and caffeine (I really like to squish two skittles together, study the pattern in the broken shell, then eat them..lol). Everyone was squeezing into their scrubs and testing the strength of their seams by time finals rolled around last semester, even the super athletic nursing students that run 5 miles for fun. I started using MFP during summer break and have dropped a good chunk of weight and the scrubs pants that were too tight in May are now sliding down if I have anything in my pockets. I will need to buy a size smaller before clinical starts up again. I bought a couple of bento boxes to help with portion control and a food scale. I do try to pack healthy salads, but its the sugar cravings that kick in during hour three of a monotone lecture that kill me. I am going to pack bite sized fruit to try to satisfy the need for sweet. I am also going to try to avoid the group lunch breaks at Chipotle. Those bowls add up fast. But I do like the ride with my class buddies back and forth, good for bonding.

    A lot of the people in my class record lectures and then listen to them while driving. I have good recall on things I hear in class once and so far the professors pretty much base 99% of the exams on lecture material. But maybe listening to the lecture again while walking would be a good way to study as well.

    I have worked at companies that like to feed you non-stop and yes two companies actually had designated "treat givers" to hand out candy, popcorn, etc. I have bad reactions to gluten so I have a "get out of pot-luck free" card without offending anyone. People already know I am "weird" about food and most are happy with the food "allergy" excuse, without much argument. My reactions to gluten are painful so there is nothing about that birthday cake or box of doughnuts in the break room that says "eat me"