The Student Diet

The Student Diet: What to Eat, What to Avoid

When you go away to college, you are thrown into an unfamiliar environment. Sleeping in a bed that is not your own and dealing with a new roommate you don’t know may be difficult enough, but you can’t forget about learning how to eat healthy foods while at college. Healthy eating is important so that you keep the weight off and keep your immune system healthy.

It is first important to settle into an eating routine. At home, you would probably never eat after a certain time at night—don’t at college either. If you’re used to eating breakfast, wake up before classes in enough time to do so. At the very least, be sure that you have time between classes for a balanced lunch and dinner. Don’t skip meals.

If your schedule is hectic, as most people find, you’ll need to schedule time to eat. Instead of grabbing food from a vending machine when you are hungry, plan ahead. Take a healthy salad or sandwich with you to eat if you have class over mealtime. Most professors don’t mind if you bring food to class as long as your eat it quietly.

When you do have time to eat in the cafeteria, it is important to make healthy decisions. Most colleges offer pizza and a variety of desserts every day, but that doesn’t mean you have to eat them! Look for choices that have a balance of the food groups in every meal. A good indication that you have a nutritious meal is color. If your trey is colorful, with fruits, vegetables, and proteins, you are on the right track.

Of course, not every college has a cafeteria, and even if yours does you might choose to eat elsewhere. It’s very tempting to order Chinese food or other delivery, especially when participating in study groups. Try to find the best options here and allow yourself to splurge only on special occasions. For example, if someone is ordering pizza, see if the pizzeria also offers salads. This may be a healthy option. Try to stay away from fried or greasy foods.

College is one of the best times of your life. Don’t let poor eating choices ruin the experience. You might also want to note as a closing thought that alcohol has more empty calories than most of the foods you can eat at the cafeteria combined. Staying away from it can not only keep you safe, but also healthy. Add an exercise routine at a local gym, and you’ll never see that freshman fifteen!

Specialization

One of the things that you can do if you find a body part lagging behind the rest is to practice a principle called specialization. This old bodybuilding principle is really an extension of one of life's principles: If you need to improve on something, focus your efforts on it and you will see success. Let's use an example. Let's say that your upper arms have fallen behind the rest of your upper body. You look like a T-Rex: All torso and legs. No arms. Kinda like Tom Platz before he figured out how to get his arms in line with his massive thighs and calves. There are various ways you can approach the problem, of course, but they all rely on specialization. Certainly, you could let the rest of your body go, shrinking in size until your arms were of equal proportion,

BUT THAT'S JUST PLAIN SILLY!

What you really want to do is re-double your arm efforts. Here's how.

SPECIALIZATION

You could either take the approach I suggest in Arms Race, focusing one single workout on your arms (it's a day-long workout, by the way, and it is to be repeated once every several weeks, if not months)

OR

You could incorporate specialization into your normal workouts. Let's say you currently have a split where you work your arms and shoulders together, normally working the delts first, the arms last. Instead, focus on your weakness first. Surely, your shoulder work will suffer. However, by placing your arm work at the beginning of your workout, you can blast your biceps and triceps with your heaviest weights and volumes.

The ideal situation would be to combine the two ideas above into one hybrid (near-perfect) solution: Here is my suggestion to you.

Perform your arm exercises in a single workout day. Let's say you currently are on a 4 day split (2 days on, one day off, 2 days on, 2 days off). On your non-concurrent off-days, do only arm work. On the first arm day of the month, take on the Arms Race workout.

For a short period of time (no longer than 6 weeks), you can train with heavier weights, higher reps and sets, and greater intensity on a lagging body part with great success.

During your specialization phase, however, make absolutely sure that you're getting the nutrition and rest that you need. You are putting a greater stress on your body overall by performing this extra work, so up your calories, your supplements, and get more sleep!

Strategies to Avoid Overeating

I just posted an article about how to avoid overeating. If you ever have issues with eating too much (as evidenced by jeans that are too tight and shirts you can no longer button), then you'll want to check this one out.

Can Walking Really Keep You Fit?

Syndicated from eZineArticles
If anyone says that you can achieve fitness and maintain a healthy lifestyle without ever moving a muscle, be assured that they are most certainly not a fitness expert by profession. If you do not move your body, your body will not burn the extra calories it may have received from food and you would eventually gain weight. Read more…

Weight-Free Muscle

Courtesy Men”s Health
Try the workout that burns fat, lengthens your life, and makes you look great naked Read more.