You’re living in a college dorm and feasting yourself with the dining hall menu. Delicious Belgian waffles with yummy syrup, double-cheese burgers with all the toppings and double-fudged layer cake stare at you every day. To eat healthy at college, you need to rev up your food prowess and choose the right foods and right portions. If you don’t, you’ll be finding yourself with the dreaded freshman 15, not to mention poor heart health. You’ll also need to implement healthy eating habits to keep your brain functioning at its optimum level for all your studies. Eating healthy sounds like a no-brainer, yet so many college students fail Healthy Eating 101.
Learning how to eat healthy living in a college dorm is easy; it all begins with smart choices. For example, your dining hall is serving up eggs, hash browns and bacon or whole wheat bagels with low fat cream cheese for breakfast. While the first dish looks and smells tempting, you’re better off with the second dish. There’s a lot of cholesterol in eggs and bacon, and the hash browns have probably been fried. Choosing the whole wheat bagel with low fat cream cheese is a healthier choice. Natural grains are low in fat and cholesterol and actually burn fat. You’ll be getting energy from its carbs while burning fat at the same time.
Follow through with making smart choices for your lunch meals also. Low fat hamburgers may be good once in a while, but going vegan for lunch is a better choice. Take advantage of the dining hall’s fresh salad bar and feast in a leafy green salad with broccoli, sprouts and beans. While getting all the vitamins and nutrients your body needs from fresh veggies, you’ll be pleasantly surprised how tasting and filling greens can be. The only caveat here is the salad dressing. Make sure you use a low fat dressing and in moderation. Loads of non-fat blue cheese dressing will destroy your good intentions of eating healthy. Remember, less is better when it comes to salad dressing. If you’re a sweet tooth, at all costs, avoid the temptation of all those devilish iced cakes. Go for a low-fat Boston cream-pie yogurt to satisfy your sugar craving.
For a healthy dinner, choose lean meats and fishes. Be wary of those veggies that are topped with cheese and look for veggies that are grilled with tasty spices instead. You’ll be saving yourself a ton of calories and fat. Learn to skip desert, you don’t need it. If you’re a real diehard when it comes to desert, limit yourself to only one slice of your favorite cake a week. That way, you won’t really feel like you’re just torturing yourself.
Probably, one of the biggest mistakes students make when eating in college dining halls is just plain eating too much. Somehow, that psyche of eating all you can takes over as if they’re from a third world country and have been starved all their lives. So, get your smarts on and only take a handful of each serving. You’ll still be well-fed and healthy.
Labels: health, Introduction