Let’s face it – you’re busy! In between classes, homework, mixers, meetings, parties, and dates, every college student’s dream is to find the 25th hour in the day. And that’s not generally so they can use it to head to the gym for a strenuous cardio session.

Unfortunately, if you spend all your time in a sedentary position, snacking to kill boredom and keep yourself awake, you’re body will have no choice but to store the extra caloric energy as fat. When it comes to weight gain, all you need to worry about is whether the number of calories you expend is greater than the number of calories you ingest. In order to not gain weight, you need to burn more calories than you eat.

Making sure you hit the gym a couple of times a week (4-5 times would be ideal) for at least a half hour is a great way to jumpstart your metabolism and burn some extra calories. But when you can’t make it to the gym there are ways to make sure you’re still being active and moving around—even on the busiest of schedules. Read More »

Welcome to the Dining Hall! It is a new year, but the menu hasn’t changed much since the spring semester. While its cuisine might fall short of the five-star Michelin rating, your dining hall is still offering the same mediocre-to-decent fare that you’ve been demanding as students with only a few minutes to eat, anyway.

As a freshman, you might have been awed by the mere expanse of food before you. Inspired by the hustle and bustle of upperclassmen milling expertly around the different food stations, you were elated to find that dessert is served at every meal. But come October, the honeymoon glow dimmed to a faint flicker, and your affair with the dining hall turned into something of a mess.

The economic, all-you-can-eat style buffet, serving food that is generally fatty, sugary, and over-processed, leads many collegiates to pack on the pounds as they struggle to navigate this danger zone. Whether you’re shoveling tasteless food as fast as you can to make a class in ten minutes, or leisurely enjoying a couple hours of all-access binging while chatting with friends, the cafeteria offers a wide variety of ways to overindulge. Here are a couple of tricks to help you avoid the pitfalls of college dining:

1. Survey the Scene. Make a tour of the available options of the day so that you don’t load up on all the stuff at the beginning of the line, only to have to nab a second plate for the food at the next station. Read More »

If you are a fan of Oprah you are quite familiar with her friend, Dr. Mehmet Oz. Oprah counts on him to enlighten her (and all of us) on everything from getting rid of stinky feet to what a tapeworm looks like.

Yum.

Well, Dr. Oz has a daughter and she is awesome. She also happens to be an expert in healthy living in college and shares her expertise with you in her book, “The Dorm Room Diet.”

The Freshman 15 has no chance when you have Daphne Oz on your side.

She will be guest blogging with us this week and sharing great tips for surviving the cafeteria and fitting workouts in between all that partying studying.

If you are struggling with the free ice cream in the caf., stick around – Daphne’s got your back.

Now that you freshman ladies have a few weeks on campus under your belt, you can plainly see the difficulties that arise when attempting to maintain a healthy lifestyle (or weight) in college.

Between the late night pizza runs, pre-football game beer runs and the inability to find anything remotely healthy and appetizing in the cafeteria, avoiding the Freshman 15 is harder than anyone thought.

And, without mom and dad making you those well balanced dinners like the old days, staying healthy doesn’t get all that easier as the college years go on, either. I tried it every year I was in school, but all I knew how cook was Mac and Cheese and leftovers of Chinese take-out.

And soon my fat jeans became my only jeans and my immune system went into shock.

Enter, The Dorm Room Diet, a new book by Daphne Oz; daughter to Oprah’s favorite doc, Mehmet Oz. Daphne, who struggled with weight issues all her life, is a sophomore at Princeton and chock full of great ideas to maintaining a healthy lifestyle in the dorms.

Her ideas are sometimes obvious, sometimes not what you want to hear, but always guaranteed to keep you healthy and happy, even after a rough night on the town.

Daphne’s book is entertaining, witty and outlines a plan that includes healthy eating, exercise and vitamins. The perfect combination to keeping healthy in college. Read More »