Healthy Decisions

With all the stress that comes along with being a college student, my fellow students and I are almost sure to make unhealthy decisions in our day to day life. These decisions can pertain to a number of different safety concerns, fitness, nutrition, or alcohol and tobacco use. Hopefully, not all of us make bad decisions in every single one of these categories; however, we all have specific areas that need improvement. The two main areas in which I identified my two unhealthiest choices were tobacco use ad consumption of unhealthy food. Both of these areas negatively affect my otherwise healthy lifestyle and are things which I can improve on. As an athlete, completing this list really made me think of what I have been putting in my body. I will now briefly discuss these issues and how I can improve on them in order to elevate my lifestyle to the next level.
One area which I identified as having a negative effect on my health is tobacco use. I do not smoke a lot; however, any amount of smoking can have really hurt someone who is athletic. I never smoke before participating in sports and try to reserve it for the evening or before I go to sleep. Regardless of when I smoke I can always feel it when I run or cycle and I know it is hurting my overall performances, so I have came up with a few different solutions for this problem.
The solutions I have generated to fix this issue are to try to break the occasional smoking by replacing it with other, not a dangerous, items. I personally know people who have replaced cigarettes with toothpicks, chewing gum, or hard candy. I think all these are more positive ways to service the hand to mouth fixation that smokers so often deal with. It may seem strange, but just having something to chew or suck on really can calm your nerves when in need. For example, instead of turning to a cigarette to calm my nerves in the evening, I could have a few pieces of hard candy to suck on and the small sugar rush could hopefully calm me just as...