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July 15, 2006
How To Stay Healthy While Working Those Hours
Hazel asks how one can stay healthy working the hours I've been working. Here's one thing that helps: don't do it forever! My work is always more than forty hours a week, but these periods of never stopping and sleep deprivation don't go on for very long at a time. The last five weeks or so have been particularly busy, and the last two before a major vote especially so.
Most organizers, under the pressure, resort to bad coping mechanisms like overeating, smoking, or drinking too much. It's so easy to think that a quick fix like that will make you feel better, when in the long run it makes you feel worse. I found that keeping low calorie really helped me maintain my mental focus in the last days. There's something about eating just on the lighter side of what I really need that makes me calmer and sharper.
Planning is really the key. We made the savory muffins over the July 4th weekend, and they were really a health-saver in these last two weeks. Being able to pull a 275 calorie package of perfectly Zoned yumminess out of the freezer, engineered to have 27% of the RDA of everything, made grabbing healthy food in a hurry easy. I had savory muffins for breakfasts on most days with such toppings as hot sauce, mustard, and fat free cream cheese. I really enjoy these little critters, so I felt like I was feasting instead of feeling deprived. Since MR packs my lunch time salad, filled with an amazing array of greens that pack a nutritional punch along with pumpkin seeds for zinc and fat and eggwhites for protein, I had lunches taken care of. And I was lucky enough to be working in a place that has a convenient Subway, so Subway salads and low carb wraps were always available. Subway can really be a blessing to the health conscious on the run.
The good news is: WE WON!!! And we won big. 272 votes for us, 128 for the other union, and only 19 for no union at all. It was a fight up until the end, including threats of violence from the other union. Don't worry, Mommies and Daddies out there... I was very careful never to be alone anywhere, I am being extra cautious. Our leaders inside the hospital were under a ton of pressure as they got attacked by both management and the other union, but so many of their co-workers were supportive that they held up beautifully. Now they finally have a chance to negotiate a contract that gets them the kind of salaries, benefits and working conditions they deserve. It's about time.
I'm off to a meeting to plan next steps... the fun never ends! And then tonight I will, for the first time in ages, be home to cook a delicious CR'd meal for my Orange One.
Posted by april at July 15, 2006 11:57 AM