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Tyler Yang

A Never Ending Journey

Everyone wants to become a better person, but each person has a different idea of how to better themselves. My focus for my CLA digital media project was about how having a healthy lifestyle affects my college experience. I wanted to focus on having a better healthy lifestyle because previously in my junior year of high school I was at my highest point of being healthy, but it soon went south after school got really busy. I wanted to give myself a restart a journey I once went through before, and see how it affects my college experience rather than a high school experience. At first, I assumed it would make my college experience more fun and help me focus better on school.

Previously said, everyone has a different idea of how to better themselves, and my way was by cardio/weightlifting and eating healthy. My first step towards a better health was setting up a program that I thought was easy enough for me to follow and change along the way. Planning out the workout schedule was pretty easy for me since I have been through this process many times. At first it was a particular muscle part was given its own day for the 5 days in the week. A brief explanation of the schedule; Monday would be arms, Tuesday would be shoulders, Wednesday would be chest, Thursday would be cardio, and Friday was legs. Of course as time went on this schedule completely changed at the end of this project. The other change besides exercise was eating healthy. I tried my best to keep my meals as high protein based meals. Limiting myself to about 1900 calories a day with about more than 100 grams of protein per day.

During the experience, I asked 5 different people to answer different questions about health and what it means to them. I wanted to ask these questions because I wanted to see the perspective of one person, and how their health affects them.

The following questions I asked them were:

How much sleep do you get? How often do you exercise? Do you eat healthy? Describe. How does your health style affect your school life?

1st. Melody — Freshmen — UW Stout

  • 4–5 hours
  • Does not exercise at all
  • Not enough time to eat because of school, quick food like ramen is her food to go.
  • Her health style really makes an impact on her school life because it is really stressful. Her sleep is the main factor that really contributes to her energy because she has less focus in the morning and it decreases as the day goes on.

2nd. Jonathan — Sophomore- UW Stout

  • 5–6 hours
  • Does not exercise at all
  • Does not eat healthy because of his love for delicious food
  • His health style makes school less stressful because he doesn’t have to worry about anything else beside school.

3rd. Levi — Junior — Metro

  • 7 hours
  • Does not exercise at all
  • Does not care what he eats at all because he a healthy life style is not his priority at the moment.
  • Since having a healthy lifestyle is not his priority, his school life is easy for him at the moment because school is his only focus.

4th. Alex — B.A. at UMNTC, Undergrad for Animation- MCAD

  • 7 hours
  • 1 hour every weekday
  • Cooks own meal for track of protein and carbohydrate intake and avoids eating out.
  • His health style makes him more focus on his school life, and also his amount of being in school also contributes to how he is able to manage it well.

5th. Patrick- B.S. in Electrical Engineer from UCSB in 2012

  • 6 hours
  • 3 times a week
  • Does not eat healthy because of his high metabolism, and his love for sweets.
  • Since being out of school and working at Medtronic, his amount of stress has decreased since then and says his health style does not affect him at all.

After comparing all answers, it led up to the point that having a healthy life style or not having one depends on the person itself. Some people don’t want to have one because of their own opinions. Those who do have a healthier life style makes school easier in the sense that they are more focused and having more energy throughout the day.

As the experience went on, there were many positive and negative moments. Everyone falls once in awhile, and we learn from our mistakes. My first negative moment was during mid term exams. Exams had me stressed and especially my film studies class. I did horrible on the exam according to my own opinion of the score. My mentality fell as well, and moments afterwards went downhill. The lost of motivation surrounded me during that moment, and it was horrible. I eventually picked myself back up after listening to a live stream on TwitchTv.

After moments like this and the way they have made my experience at school, I watched a TED Talk video on the true meaning of being healthy, read an article about the truth about fitness, and also begun to read a book about willpower.

Quick Summary: We as people tend to believe that being healthy means getting enough sleep, eating a healthy meal, and exercising. All of that is true, but Lissa Rankin also said that being healthy requires other parts of our lives in order for us to be truly healthy. For example, having a enjoyable and healthy job, expressing our feelings, being spiritually connected, our sex life, being financially stable, the environment around us, our mentality, and most of all our body. In the beginning of the TED talk, Rankin said that our body represents our life. Our life being presented by our body, we as people know whether or not we are suppose to be living this life of ours. If we know we’re suppose to do something greater, then we must fix ourselves before we can fix our body. Thus leading to a greater and healthier life.

I personally experienced all of the points Rankin had made about 2 years ago, but as of last year I lost touch of most of them. Recently I have been trying to redevelop those skills, but I never knew that being healthy had all those aspects to it. I thought after watching the video, it gave me a better insight about what I can do, and how I can approach my situation in a better way.

During the experience, I liked to lurk around the fitness sub-reddit on a website called Reddit, a social network in a way. I lurked my way into an article shared by another user on the site, and it was quite interesting to read. It was called, Everything You Know About Fitness is a Lie by Daniel Duane.

Quick Summary: The article is split up into 5 different sections focusing on one main topic. There was a lot of information so in all from the article, it most said that our first times at the gym it is quite overwhelming because we don’t know what to do, and there is so much in the gym. In order to rebuild ourselves first we must break ourselves down. In short, learning more about what we need to improve upon which relates to the next topic mentioned later in the article finding our weaknesses. Find your weakness and make sure to make it strong. The next two also relate to next each other and they are being able to have freedom, and being able to coach yourself while in the gym and enjoying it overtime.

I agree a lot with the article because when I first started working out, it was overwhelming. I did not want to look like the weakest person in the gym, I wanted to be the strongest, but I did not know where to start. From the article, I think overtime we tend to grow those experiences mentioned, and I think it makes us a better person because we learned from our own mistakes.

As previously stated, I had many negative and positive moments, and I came across a book called, “The Willpower Instinct” by Kelly McGonigal. I believed that I was lacking willpower in my life. The definition of willpower according to McGonigal, “ the ability to control their attention, emotions, and desires” (McGonigal 8).

Willpower became an important aspect because being able to control who I am and what I do will impact my life in a positive way is important to me. Without willpower, I would tend to just wait and let things come my way. I’m afraid of stepping out of my comfort zone at times, and that leads to me not being able to do what I want then it leads to affecting my life in a negative way. Being able to learn to more about willpower and ways to improve it is a great opportunity to take as it will help me with school and other aspects of my life.

In the end, everything was better than I expected. At first, my thoughts were that I wasn’t going to achieve much because of previous unrecorded attempts. I was never as focused as now because I did not care for it as much. Even though this is the end of the digital media project, it does not mean I stop what I started. If I did, this would of meant nothing to me and it would not had made life a little bit easier. As of now, the finished project of being healthy, just turned into a never ending journey.

Work Cited:

Yang, T. (2015, October 25). Personal Interview.

Rankin, Lissa. (2011, December 5). The Shocking Truth about your Health. [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tu9nJmr4Xs

American Intercontinental University. (2012). 5 Reasons College Students Should Make Time For Exercise, Retrieved from http://www.aiuniv.edu/blog/september-2012/5-reasons-college-students-should-make-time-for-exercise

McGonigal, K. (2011). The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It. Penguin Random House Llc.

Duane, D. (2010). Everything You Know About Fitness Is a Lie. Retrieved from http://www.mensjournal.com/magazine/print-view/everything-you-know-about-fitness-is-a-lie-20120504