Often times during the holiday season, college women tend to stray from their diets, only to see their perfectly sculpted summer body disappear. However, when armed with the proper information, you can actually eat whatever you want and still lose weight at the same time.
Want to eat your favorite fall and holiday recipes but maintain a healthy lifestyle? All you have to do is follow these five simple tips to keep your body, mind, and taste buds happy all at the same time.
The first way to start fresh is to slowly cut out foods that are bad for you. According to a Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report in 2012, more than one-third of American adults are obese. This is a scary and growing figure. Therefore, it’s important for young adults -you- to know when and what to cut out from their diets. Instead of eating a cheeseburger and fries or several scoops of ice cream with all the toppings three times a week, try to train your body to go longer periods of time without eating these unhealthy choices.
Yahel Romem, a junior kinesiology and pre-med major and employee at Eppley Recreation Center, said she eats a pretty healthy diet on a regular basis. Romem eats vegan cereal and milk for breakfast, a salad for lunch, and chooses the healthiest option possible when she eats dinner at the diner.
Maintaining a healthy diet is important to senior animal science major and employee at the ERC Melissa Garcia.
“I try my hardest to maintain a healthy diet because it’s our responsibility to represent campus recreation services and the university, and as workers of the Eppley Recreation Center, we have to be healthy and promote the lifestyle otherwise it’s kind of hypocritical,” Garcia said.
Regular exercise is another way to keep a healthy lifestyle. The popular site, WebMd recommends that we try to work out for at least 30 minutes a day. Although this is the minimum goal, people often exercise a lot less or not at all. Garcia offered advice to those who don’t work out often.
“There’s a lot of group fitness classes that I would suggest for them because that way they have someone telling them what to do and you have people working out with you, or if you’re really motivated, you could get a personal trainer to teach you how to do things or even just coming in the gym one day and trying out a new piece of equipment,” she said.
Remember that cheeseburger and fries mentioned earlier? If you can’t cut them out completely, why not replace them with a healthier alternative? Romem knows it can be difficult to rid a diet of all unhealthy items right away, so she suggests on-campus students choose the grilled food choice over something fried.
The fourth way to improve one’s wellness is by not eating bad foods close to bedtime. Many people get hungry around bedtime, and while late night snacking is not the worst thing you can do, it’s important to understand what you’re digesting before you go to sleep. According to prevention.com, greasy or sugary foods, red meat or proteins, and big portions should be off-limits before bed. Put away the cookies and try an apple or a cup of yogurt instead.
The last tip for maintaining a healthy lifestyle is to do everything in moderation. Since most of us won’t stop eating our favorite foods, one way to have our cake and eat it too is by limiting the amount we eat. Once this trick is mastered, it becomes much easier to make healthy food decisions.
Being healthy is not about only working out and cleansing your body of unhealthy foods, it’s about rewarding yourself for your accomplishments as well. If you follow these simple tips, you too will be able to splurge on your favorite foods and lose weight at the same time.