Your body is a temple. It is the only body that belongs to you, and it is your responsibility to take care of it.
Although we all know how important it is to maintain health, it seems like college students, in particular, are forever doomed to the junk food, sleep-deprived, and caffeine-addicted lifestyle that so perfectly matches our role as full-time learning machines. Plugged into our classes, powered by coffee, and sustained by Netflix cool-downs, it feels like we have become a species of high-maintenance computers to be tended to. Most of us depend on several lifestyle forces to avoid different computer viruses. Coffee to fight off exhaustion, social media to fight off loneliness, television to fight off boredom, questionable foods to fight off cravings, and an ongoing list of unhealthy practices that you probably depend on.
If you don't feel as happy, fit, or mentally sharp as you used to be, it is because you are habitually doing things NOW that have changed you. Your emotions might become dark and unpredictable if you've recently been listening to hateful music. Your body might become soft when classes are out because you are no longer walking that collective mile from class-to-class each day. Your brain might feel spacey if your evenings now depend on shutting off your mind and zoning out in front of a screen for hours. You might feel irritable every night because you depend on going out for a drink with your friends on a constant basis.
I had fallen into a strange rut at the beginning of this summer. Feeling as if my energy had been zapped, my body feeling constantly uncomfortable, and my mind foggier than usual, I realized I was on a downward slope to becoming a full-blown "couch-potato". I discovered that I had about six different things that I was totally dependent on to feel normal every day (not crazy things, just caffeine, canned foods, Youtube, etc.). Being held up by six different life-crutches in order to wake up, satisfy my cravings, stay entertained, stay focused, and to knock me out at the end of the day, I felt a little pathetic. Waking up to find zero coffee in the house would be a catastrophic emergency. I knew that I was a prisoner to the multiple services that I had become dependent on.
I remembered what a friend of mine in high school called a "cleanse". In his case, alcohol became a very routine part of his life, so in order to rid himself of the problem, he took what he called a "cleanse" and quit alcohol (cold turkey) for a temporary period of time. Although there are better terms for what it was, that momentary detoxification of the body led to him denouncing alcohol altogether. He lost his dependence on drinking and fell in love with the idea of clearing his life of bad habits all at once without tapering off. He found that by ridding his system of a few bad things for about one week, he would feel better, and would usually never resume those bad habits.
The hidden genius in this lies in that brief time commitment. When I did my seven-day cleanse, I quit six things that I daily indulged in, because I knew it would only be for seven days. I did not say "I will never do these things again", but instead "It's only seven days, I can make it that far." Once I got to the seventh day, I lost the urge to do most of those things, and TO THIS DAY, I have not resumed them. What I thought was a week-long baby step turned out to be the answer to my prayers.
