Slim Fast VoxBox...It may be YOUR thing, it's just not mine

I used to love the flavor of the canned version of this shake when I was younger and so I was actually pretty excited when I was notified that I would receive a SlimFast VoxBox through Influenster to test and give my opinions on. I have tried just about every 100 calorie snack on the market as the modern "diet" industry wants us to think that calories in = calories out and we should keep munching on expensive snacks to get us through the day rather than eating real food from the earth to keep you full and satisfied until your next meal. I have since tried very hard to stray from this idea and I try to eat as much real, whole food as possible.

In summary, I don't agree with the basis of the SlimFast program because while yes, if you follow their "plan" of replacing 2 meals a day with 190 calorie shakes or bars, and then a third 500 calorie meal and three 100 calorie snack, you will most likely lose weight. That is just simple calculation that if you eat 1100 calories a day, you will most likely lose weight. However, I don't believe that 190 calories of processed "food" is sufficient to be used as a meal replacement and I believe it is more beneficial to eat REAL food (fruits, vegetables, meat) as a way to be healthier rather than focusing so much strictly on calories. 

HOWEVER,

I was asked to give my opinions on the products that are contained within the VoxBox and I will now do so, aside from my personal beliefs about "dieting."

I replaced my usual breakfast with the chocolate shake and it did satisfy me for a couple hours and it does have a good amount of protein (20g) in it which is good. I also liked that it isn't just loaded down with sugar (only 1g). It does, however, taste very sweet due to the use of some sort of artificial sweetener which I also don't agree with. 

I then had the cinnamon bun crisps as a mid-morning snack. I was pleasantly surprised with the taste of these as I do have a pretty big sweet tooth and I love cinnamon. Again, not a fan of the amount of processing in the food but it was good for a quick indulgence and I was surprised with how many of them I got for 100 calories.

I then ate a sensible lunch of a spinach salad.

I didn't really need an afternoon snack so I saved my sour cream and onion crisps for the next day. These I was also pleasantly surprised by. The flavor was pretty close to regular chips and the texture, while not like true potato chips, was pleasant.

I then had the meal replacement bar for my breakfast the next morning. I found the bar to be a bit too small for a meal replacement as I was hungry again in about 2 hours. The flavor was good though.

So overall, while I wouldn't personally use these products as part of my diet, I do believe that if you follow the plan, you will probably lose weight and have a good experience with the foods you are eating while you're on the plan.


I receive this product for free in exchange for my review. However, the opinions stated here are completely my own.

Vaseline® Intensive Care™ Advanced Repair Review

So my newest VoxBox from Influenster came just at the right time! Just as the Michigan winter begins, my skin screams for moisture. And I must say this product answers. They give you this little guide to see how dry your skin really is buy pressing the swatch on your elbow (one of my driest areas) and then applying the lotion and pressing the other swatch on the same spot. The results are shown below. Obviously the top one is pre-lotion and the bottom is post-lotion application. I mean do you need any more evidence?

There is one caveat though. Immediately after applying, it almost feels like there's a film on my skin, which I'm assuming is due to the microscopic droplets of Vaseline that are incorporated into the lotion to create a barrier from the conditions. While this is probably contributing to how great my skin feels longer-term, I can't get over the icky kind of feeling immediately after applying, especially because I usually apply lotion right before sleep and I hate feeling sticky while falling asleep. So I tried to switch up my moisturizing routine and do it in the morning, but alas, then it feels awkward and difficult to put pants on.

Overall, I have no doubt that this stuff is doing its job by forming that barrier to the outside conditions with its droplets of Vaseline, so if you can get over the initial feeling for about 10 minutes of the layer of lotion on your skin, then this product is definitely for you! I personally will probably use the rest of the bottle, and keep searching for a perfect lotion (if that's even a thing).

Full Disclosure: I received this product complimentary from Influenster for testing purposes

Sally Hansen® Miracle Gel™ Review

I recently received my first VoxBox containing the Sally Hansen Miracle Gel manicure. You may be asking what a VoxBox is? All it is is a box of free products sent to me from an online organization called Influenster. They send it to me based on my likes and social media presence and I review the products and tell all my friends what I like and dislike about the products. A pretty great deal if you ask me! So anyway, I received this "miracle mani" kit or so it is called. Prior to this experience, I've used gel polish twice before, both using at home kits with UV lights included. So the catch on this product is that there is no light! Needless to say I was a little skeptical how this gel polish could last like the others without the use of the UV light. Not only that, but I am terrible at keeping nail polish unchipped for more than, say, 3 hours. Well it's been about 5 days since I applied my manicure and I am convinced that this is the easiest manicure that actually lasts without chipping! I even put it through the rigor by playing on the playground with my niece, hauling wood with my dad, and just not being careful in general like usual. There is honestly not a single chip in my polish. Another positive of this manicure is that it has some of the best color coverage that I've experienced ever. I don't buy very high end nail polish but when compared to other Sally Hansen varieties, it far outweighed them in the coverage, with just one coat being sufficient to fully cover and give good color. I highly recommend this product although I do not know how much the different colors cost in stores, but I will surely be looking for them! :)

Left: One coat of Sally Hansen Miracle Gel in Redgy
Right: After the curing top coat

Feeling Too Damn Good

Wow. Things could not be much more different from the last time I posted than they are right now. Next time I get all depress-y, remind me that my life is not that bad. I don't even know where to start to update because I feel like my life has done a 180 since then. Well I'll start with the hovering question that was posed at the end of the last post. Yes, I decided to retake the MCAT because I  wasn't about to let one little test get in the way of following my dream. Although I decided to forgo the early assurnace program that required me to retake the test within the month, I wanted to take my time to be able to increase my chances of getting a score that would be overall a better representation of my ability. I got a 28Q the second time, which still isn't spectacular (and I still believe I could have done better) but it was good enough to get me an interview at three different schools and get ACCEPTED into two of them! I got accepted to Central Michigan University and Michigan State University which I both loved when I went and interviewed. The other which I won't name, I interviewed at and did not get accepted to, which is okay because I was not impressed when I went there for an interview anyway and I definitely think the other two suit my personality much better.

So I've been accepted and then ensued the months-long decision process of which school I would thrive most at and which would give me the best opportunities to take my career where I want it. This was a very very hard decision because I really loved both schools and their mission statements both sets of faculty were welcoming and friendly. I won't expand too much on this decision process because I could go on for hours about how back-and-forth I felt during this time and I truly believe that I would have succeeded and loved attending both schools. However, I ultimately decided that I would attend Michigan State University College of Human Medicine in the Fall of 2013 :) Even though I made this decision months ago, I still get so excited when I say that and have had nothing but support for my decision from my family and friends (even the Wolverine fans in the family).

More exciting news since the last time, I will be attending MSU CHM at their Grand Rapids campus which is absolutely gorgeous. Seriously, if you know nothing about it, google Secchia Center and you will see how incredible this building is. This decision was also quite a roller coaster for me. I talked it over with family and with my boyfriend since we were planning on living together wherever I ended up while he finishes up his Doctorate of Physical Therapy program with an internship for two semesters. This posed quite the issue because he had to choose this before I found out definitively where I would be located. We ended up deciding GR because there were more options for him there and did I mention the MSU CHM GR campus is gorgeous? Well it turned out that MSU wanted to put me in East Lansing. Mind you this is already after my boyfriend was set in GR. We were devastated. Well I was, he was fairly calm and said we would wait a year and live together when fate said we would. But then, just a couple weeks ago I got a call that I could switch to the GR campus if I wanted to. Uh, duh! So now my boyfriend and I just secured our first apartments together so I'm once again on cloud nine. This time though, I will tread lightly with my excitement because the last couple times life has gone this well, something has come to sit me down.

So that's what's happening for me lately. Much less depressing than the last post, right? I told you I wasn't all gloomy and stuff normally. So here's to the next step in my education, career and love life starting this fall. I could not be more excited. So it could be quite a while from now until I write again, since I imagine the rigors of medical school won't allow me much spare time to do things like this. So until then, stay positive and stay awesome :)

MCAT 1, Rachel 0

So I've decided to do my first post since the end of my medical ethics class to actually turn this into a pre-med journey type of blog for other pre-meds or just for me to look back on when I will (hopefully) be a real doctor and can reminisce about what it took to get where I am. Or at this point it may be something more like: 'What made me actually think I could do this?'

Right now I think I just need to vent about this path I've taken, so if this post seems fairly pessimistic, I'm sorry. I promise I'm normally one of the most optimistic people you will meet so this isn't typical for me, and don't be scared away and never come back to my blog solely because of this post.

To be honest, I'm realizing how much this pre-med path sucks. But so do a lot of things in life that we do anyway because it's good for us. Like exercising. Good exercise sucks because its hard, but it's good for us. I personally love a good workout that will have me doubting halfway through whether I can finish, just so I can get the feeling of overcoming that doubt. But this is all beside the point. Back to the real story.

I got my MCAT scores back last week. The moment of truth. Drum roll and.........crap. A 24N. I knew I didn't do as well as my potential, but didn't realize it was this severe. Unluckily, I got these scores in the middle of my spring break while I was in Florida with my softball team for spring training so I knew it was going to either make or break the enjoyment of the rest of my week. However, I was able to keep it off my mind during the rest of that week only to get back to school this week and finally realize the extent of my suckiness. Needless to say, many tears have been shed since returning to reality. What's worse is that the early acceptance program I applied for at MSU CHM requires at least a 25....one point? really?

So now the big question. Do I retake it before the April 28th deadline, having only about a month to study to improve my score and hoping to raise it by at least 1 point in order to qualify for the program? Or do I say screw the early acceptance program and wait to retake until July when I will have sufficient time to prepare in order to improve my score to make myself more competitive for the regular application cycle?

It's times like these I question whether this path is for me. I would like to say it is, but if I can only get a sub-par MCAT, how would I really do once actually in med school? So many people have been encouraging and saying that I will do better the second time around because nerves will be less and I'll know the test format better but there's a few problems with said "excuses": A. I felt very calm on test day, and have never had a problem with test anxiety even when it came to standardized tests (got a 32 on the ACT), and B. I took online practice tests prior to the real one that were the same exact format of the real test (from the AAMC website and all) so I was familiar with how it would look. and C. I studied for the entire Fall semester before taking the last MCAT and only managed the 24 so how can I think that studying for one or two more months will improve my score by a needed 6 points or so.

I am now facing tough decisions that I didn't think that I was going to have to be making. You see, I'm a 4.0 student at a private college and have never really been an "average" test taker, but an above average one. So by default I expected to achieve at least above the national average. Not. The. Case. So now the question isn't whether to retake it, because that's a gimme, but when.

Sorry if you looked to this blog for good MCAT advice, because this post is anything but that. I don't think you would want to find it here coming from a 24 anyway because even I would be skeptical taking test advice from someone that scored at the national average.

I will post again when I decide where my life goes from here. Until then, I'll try to stop labeling myself "a 24" to keep myself from being so depressing. And yes, I could have been studying with the time it took to write this post, but like I said, I'm in the "what's the point?" stage of grief right now and hopefully in the near future I'll be in the "I'm going to do something about it" stage.

Pre-natal Diagnosis and What Comes After It

Last week in class, we discussed the issue of prenatal diagnosis and genetic testing. I view these methods themselves as very beneficial technologies that can make our lives easier. The bigger issue is what is done after these tests have been done. I think that being able to find out if your child has certain disorders such as Down Syndrome or Tay-Sachs can greatly help the family in having time to be able to prepare for the challenges that the disorder can bring. However, I do not believe that this is a case where abortion should be pursued if the child is found to have a genetic anomaly. This is mostly because I think that it would  open doors for parents to be able to abort solely on the basis that the child is not exactly what they want. For example, if they wanted a certain gender or a more intelligent child. That reminds me of the books that we all read in high school about the utopias in which all embryos are genetically developed to be a certain way (Huxley's Brave New World ring a bell?) and it's kind of scary to think things could be heading that way.

As far is the possibility of genetically correcting the DNA when prenatal diagnosis happens, I am still not sure exactly where I stand on that. I think it could pose problems similar to those that arise by aborting genetically abnormal children such as the nonacceptance of having an abnormal child causing psychological distress to the parent or child. However, its not as severe as aborting so it has its positives, too. When I was thinking about it, I realized that if the child that was found to have a certain disorder was born and then we found a cure for it, it would be a no-brainer that we would want to give the child that cure, so why not correct it before the child is even born. Therefore, I find this to be a much better alternative to not taking the pregnancy to term due to a genetic abnormality.

Not Pro-Life OR Pro-Choice? You're not alone.

Concerning the issue of abortion, growing  up being a Catholic and attending church every week, I normally only got to hear one side of the story: that pro-life is the only right way to think, no matter what the case is. Then on the news I would hear the other side of the Pro-Choice activists that were all about the right for women to be able to choose. Naturally, when thinking about where I stood, I felt out of place because I felt like my stance fell somewhere in between. It was especially troubling in junior high and high school when we would have debates for class or papers to write, we were forced to choose one or the other and support that view.  This is why when we started talking about the subject in class and Professor Marable explained that most theories on the issue are in-between ones, I was happy that we wouldn't just be going back and forth between pro-life and pro-choice and why we thought each one is right or wrong. Personally, I found both Marquis's and Thomson's views to be the most fitting for my opinion that abortion is immoral for most cases besides extreme ones such as rape or if the mother's life is in jeopardy. Thomson's violinist analogy was very odd but it did bring up a good point I suppose. Overall though, I think abortion is going to be a hot topic in politics for many years to come because there are so many different opinions stemmed from personal or religious beliefs, and what can and can't be regulated, that coming to a consensus on one will be tough.