We always like to start the year off with a few goals: achieve good grades, make fun memories, and not gain weight. As college students, it is hard to keep those unwanted pounds off. Late night study sessions, bonding with friends and the unhealthy dining hall options all seem to contribute to this ongoing struggle to keep off the weight. Â Luckily for us, there are a few helpful tips that may make this goal less of a challenge!
I don’t know about anyone else, but I certainly like to pig out after a long and stressful study session. A thick chocolate milkshake and some warm mozzarella sticks make the schoolwork slightly more bearable. Though this indulgence seems well deserved, it is incredibly unhealthy! Daphne Oz, author of the Dorm Room Diet says these simple carbs that we eat late at night will most likely end up as fat since we won’t be exercising in the wee hours of the night. There are healthier studying snacks that will satisfy our cravings without the guilt later on.  Oz adds that there are some essential snacks that will prepare us for those long nights.
Baby carrots, almonds, an apple, grapefruit, a pear, two small handfuls of semisweet chocolate chips, and a bag of rice cakes or soy crisps should be on hand before the study session. “When studying late, at the end of the first hour, have a small handful of almonds or some baby carrots,” Oz says. “At the end of the second hour, you can have a grapefruit, apple or a pear. At the end of the third hour you can have a small handful of semisweet chocolate chips or some soy crisps. Keep going at this pattern for as long as you are studying.”  These simple alternatives will make all the difference in your health, satisfaction and energy level!
College dining halls don’t necessarily specialize in nutritional food. We don’t always know how our food is cooked or what our food is cooked in. Also, meal portions are not always controlled so it is important to keep an eye out for these things. Authors of the Real Life Body Book, Hope Ricciotti, MD, and Monique Doyle Spencer say there is a simple way to remember appropriate portion size. “Your meat should be the size of a deck of cards and a teaspoon is about the size of your thumb,” Ricciotti said. Think there is no harm in getting a wrap from the deli? Watch out, according to the authors of Eat This, Not That, “Replacing bread with a manhole-sized wrap does not make a sandwich healthy.” Many of us get fooled by this deceiving and thin alternative to bread but in actuality, a wrap can be up to 400 calories alone!
Keeping these simple diet changes in mind, it is also crucial that we get our exercise in each day as well. Being that we are college students who mostly spend time trekking to and from class, we do get a good amount of exercise already. “Set aside 30 minutes for planned exercise daily,” according to The Real Life Body Book. This small addition to our daily schedule shouldn’t be too difficult. If we make these small and easy efforts a part of our campus life style, there should be no problem with maintaining that healthy physique.
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