Je mange beaucoup de fruits en France

Seeing as we haven’t been doing anything terribly special during the past couple days, I’ve had some time to do some real thinking.  I’ve noticed a few changes in my daily habits and routine here, mostly in regards to food, and wanted to share my thoughts.

I eat a lot of fruit here.

I know that probably seems like a silly thing to comment on, but let me also say that my pants were falling off my butt while walking up our daily two flights of stairs.  I haven’t eaten this much fruit on a regular basis since I lived in (you guessed it) Europe.  Spain to be specific.  So as I was sitting there eating a banana during our coffee break in class, I said to Jon “I really hope I continue to eat this much fruit when we get back to the States.”  This turned into a debate about why we eat more fruit here than we do in the US.

First of all, fresh food markets are very prevalent here, and the fact that there’s one on the same block as our school probably helps with our daily fruit habit.  But every single day, at the start of our coffee break, we walk to the little market, pick out an orange, maybe a banana, sometimes an apple or a pear, pay less than 50 cents for it sometimes, and go back to class.  In the US, if I wanted to have just an apple, I’d have to get in my car, drive to Publix, and then just buy an apple.  But with all that effort, shouldn’t I do more shopping while I’m there?  That brought us to problem number two.

In the US, when I do my shopping, I usually do so once a week, maybe once every other week if pennies or tight or I’m going home soon.  So I buy some snacks that aren’t so good for me, and some fruit, and various other food items to use throughout the week.  But the snacks that aren’t as good for me are supposed to be a treat, that I split up throughout the week and enjoy in small quantities.  The problem arises when that never actually happens.  I usually end up eating the snacky foods first, and then by the time I remember that I bought fruit, they’ve gone bad.  Not good for my health, and definitely not good for my wallet.  So when I get home, I plan on changing my shopping habits so that this doesn’t happen.

It’s impossible to go on a low-carb diet in France.

Home of the baguette, the French usually cringe at the prospects of a meal sans pain.  Bread is as much a part of French culture as pasta is to Italian, or potatoes are to Irish.  Nevermind the fact that it’s incredibly inexpensive; 40 cents for half a baguette from the little bakery on our corner.  I was genuinely worried about this, given the minor success I had eliminating carbs from my diet state-side before we left, and thought that the moment I get to France, I would swell up like Violet from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (minus the blue face, of course).  But as mentioned before, my pants are falling off me.  I think the amount of bread I eat is outweighed by the amount of walking we do.  Obviously we don’t have a car, but even if we did, it would be completely impractical, and mad sometimes, to use it.  With a public transportation system like they have here, even if you do take  a bus some place, you still have plenty of time to walk off all those carb calories.  But I don’t think all the walking explains the general “thinness” of the French.

People seem a lot less stressed here than in the United States.

Any of my readers who know me quite well know that I am a bundle of stress almost every day, regardless of whether there is an important deadline approaching or not.  But after watching the French, and listening to our professor speak about the general way of life here, I think the French just don’t bother stressing about much, unless its something seriously worth losing sleep over.  Anyone who knows a few things about weight loss would also know that being stressed is one of the best ways to keep weight on.  Obviously not for everyone; some  people can hardly thing about food while the GRE is near, while others find themselves at the bottom of their second box of cookies.  Aside from different eating habits while stressed, the presence of stress puts your body into “fight or flight” mode, resulting in the excess energy, shifts in metabolism, blood flow, and the production of excess hormones.  One of these hormone in particular is the culprit for many cases of stress-related weight gain: cortisol.

Basically, when you’re stressed, your body feels as if it’s about to be harmed; hence “fight or flight” mode.  With this comes the overproduction of cortisol, a hormone that slows down your metabolism and triggers fat storage in the tummy region.  So even if you’re one of the lucky few that don’t eat or starve your emotions, you can still find yourself susceptible to weight gain.

Translated into the French lifestyle, the absence of stress leads to not only the absence of emotional eating, but also wards off the unwanted boost in cortisol levels.  The way of life here is incredibly laid back, with plenty of time to relax, and a meager 35 hour work week.  I know that doesn’t sound like that much of a difference, but consider this: you get up and get to work at 9 AM, you usually get a very short lunch break, and come home from work around 5 PM.  The French, on the other hand, get to work at 9 AM, leave work at 11 AM for their two-hour lunch break, return to work at 1 PM, then work until 6 PM.  Sure, they technically leave work later in the day, but they got a nice two-hour break at lunch time to eat a proper meal, relax, even take a nap.  The schedule in the US does not allow enough time to eat lunch, resulting in both poor eating habits and fatigue.  Fatigue affects the quality of work, and a lack of quality in work results in stress.  Voila!

So what am I going to change when I get home?

Well, that’s kind of a silly question, but obviously all of this.  When I go shopping, I’m going to buy fewer “bad” snacks, and more fruits and vegetables to snack on, keeping in mind the amount of time I have to eat them before they go bad.  I’m going to find new outlets to release stress other than my terrible mini Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups habit and my Oreo habit (these were standard around exam time).  Obviously, I can’t control my work day (well usually, unless I reach a point in my life where I can work for myself), but I can control what I eat during my lunch break.  And I won’t let myself get stressed over enjoying a little bit a bread every once in a while.

Add that to the fact that I’m starting a new running program in an effort to prepare for the Sister Run, an Ovarian Cancer Awareness 5K (the significance of this race is that my mother is a very lucky ovarian cancer survivor), and I foresee a much healthier Caroline within the next several months.  I think it’s a little weird that after 2 months and a few days in France, these are the things I’ve pulled away and plan to bring home with me.  Obviously among some other things, but these are the things I’m most excited about, and most relieved to have learned at my young age, before the stress and poor eating habits get the best of me.

Until next time: Mange une pomme!

Nous sommes malades, encore une fois.

So, I hope everyone else had a much more enjoyable weekend than we did.  Jon has been sick with a cold since Friday, which he has so wonderfully passed on to me.  This resulted in an extremely mediocre weekend.

Saturday morning started out nicely though.  We got up at a reasonable time and headed to the beach before the little brat could actually start screaming (yes!) and enjoyed a little over an hour in the sun.  Seeing as I have yet to purchase sunscreen, an hour was all I was willing to risk.  Fortunately no sunburn, unfortunately still no color.  We came home, made some lunch, and pretty much did nothing the rest of the day.  We’ve run out of things to do in Nice.

Sunday was definitely even worse.  I had a paper I had to write that I had been putting off forever because of the sheer stupidity of the assignment.  I’m going to vent for a moment: I am a Sociology major.  One of the core classes for my major is Research Methods, of which the objective is obvious.  Now, the class I am currently taking is a Sociology elective called Social Psychology.  Any professor who teaches a class for Sociology majors aught to know the requirements for the degree, therefore, they should go off assigning papers and assignments that meet the requirements of other classes.  This is exactly what happened.  Last semester I took Research Methods and completed an article deconstruction paper that teaches you how to properly read academic research articles, where to find these pieces of information and so on.  My Social Psychology professor assigned an identical paper; same questions, same objective.  Kind of a waste of my time, don’t you think?  Anyway, so given the fact that I knew it was a waste of my time, I didn’t work very efficiently on it.

While trying to avoid my paper I decided that, although I currently seriously detest running, I want to teach myself to enjoy it because its the easiest way you can work out and can be done almost anywhere you go.  So after looking at various running plans, picking a 5K for me to do when I get home (as a goal for myself so I don’t just blow it off), and enlisting the partnership of my sister, I decided that I would walk down to the Promenade des Anglais and see exactly what sort of running I am capable of.  Bad idea.  It being the beautiful Sunday it was, promenade was PACKED with people; stupid people too, you know, tourists. The kind that step right in front of a person thats running and then stops dead in their tracks.  I can’t count the amount of people I ran into, and nearly knocked over a few small children.  It was frustrating, and did not give my new running habit a good start.  And now that I woke up with Jon’s cold, it’ll be at least a few more days before I can find a better time to try and run in Nice.  Wish me luck!

I will however, say that I finally got my mother to Skype me.  I say that like she’s been able to the whole time and just hasn’t, but really she just hasn’t had a camera to do so.  Well I finally got to talk to her and it was nice.  I also had some much needed conversations with some friends back home, so at least I can say some parts of the weekend were enjoyable.

Today we started our third level of French.  We also moved to a smaller classroom, but ended up with pretty much just as many students.  I like this classroom better because its more intimate, but until the three fifteen year old girls from Italy leave after this week, it’ll be a little crowded.  Thats not to say they aren’t nice, just that they’re only staying for a week, along with a bunch of their other classmates scattered throughout our classes.  Must be Spring Break?

On a farm update, we have yet to hear anything definitive from Ireland.  Just a maybe should a Spanish couple fall through, but they have until April 15th to confirm.  Send good vibes!