I've been taking a nutrition class this quarter. Actually...I've wanted to take this class since I was a freshman, but could never fit it in my schedule with my core classes that I needed to take. Alas, I waited 4 years and finally had the chance to take the class the very last quarter of my senior year. I wanted to take this class not only because it is one of the most popular classes here at UCD, but also because I find this sort of thing interesting. Never had I imagined that taking this class would affect my life so much though. I should have known...I took a Healthful Living course 3 years ago, and that was the class that scared me out of drinking coffee everyday. They told us about how bad caffeine was and showed us a picture of this old lady who drank a lot of coffee over the years...and I think that picture scared me enough to drop the habit completely. Now I just drink coffee...every other day....

So in my nutrition class we had a "Diet Project" where we recorded everything that we ate and drank (aside from water) for 3 days, and recorded all of the vitamins...nutrients...etc. Then we did all this fancy calculation stuff to see how healthy our diets were and how we met our daily nutritional needs. I've always know that I wasn't the "healthiest" eater...but this project just showed how much my diet sucked. I was deficient in EVERY single vitamin and nutrient except for....saturated fat. How I am not 2000 lbs. I'm not quite sure. Apparently with the amount of fat I'm eating, I should be one of those people that get transported from their homes with a tractor. I was especially deficient in my fiber and Vitamin C intake. Yesterday, when we turned in our projects, the professor did a sort of "game" to see how bad the class was. She had us raise our hands if we were under a certain amount for our diet intakes. So she calls off certain ones...."Fiber, how many of you have less than 20g per day?" (The daily value is 25g) So about 100 people raised their hand and she gasped....then she goes down to 10 g....with even more gasps from the class....and then...she asked for anything lower than that. I had my hand raised still because apparently my daily intake was only 5 grams! But I was sitting on the side of a huge lecture hall and she didn't see me. The guy that won only got 8 grams.....haha sucker! I beat you...uh um...I mean... So the teacher asked that guy, "how are you still alive???" and gave him a box of Fiber One cereal. Then she moves on to Vitamin C and did the same thing to see who got the lowest percentage of Vitamin C. The person with the lowest had 30% of the daily value...yeah...I had 20%.

My friend who sat next to me in class kept going, "Oh my God Kimmy." At the end of class he gave me a granola bar which he told me has 2 grams of fiber....Thanks. After that class yesterday I realized that I am going to die if I keep eating the way that I do. How I'm alive now, I'm not really sure. God loves me. My roommate who is a dietician, took a look at my project to see what foods I was eating. I didn't really understand where the problem was because I don't eat junk food that often. She said that I am eating well, but that I need to add other foods to my diet so that I can increase my amount of vitamin intake. After I got off of work, I raced home and went to the grocery store. I bought all these healthy foods like...broccoli, salad, Fiber One cereal, fruit juice....and I had a "balanced healthy" dinner. I'm going to be healthy from now on.