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.

1. Take 10,000 Steps A Day. Invest in a $5 pedometer (a little clip-on beeper that measures how many steps you take in a day) and track yourself. You’re probably only hitting between the 2,000 and 4,000 mark. Every week, increase this number by 2,000 until you reach the 10,000 per day goal. Then maintain, and watch the lean muscle build and the pounds drop. A good way to increase the number of steps you take is to take opportunities to go out of your way: walk your errands, use a bathroom on a different floor, make multiple trips to get your laundry.

2. If you literally only have twenty minutes to devote to physical activity, try running stairs in your dorm, or doing a bit of yoga (possible in even the tiniest of dorm rooms). Strenuous cardio wakes you up and gets your blood pumping, giving you a nice flush and allowing your body to burn some of the extra energy it has sitting around. Stretching exercises, like beginner’s yoga and pilates allow your muscles to extend and relax, increasing oxygen flow to your whole body and building lean muscle mass.

3. In the most urgent of scenarios, where you really just have a couple of minutes to do something active, get down on the floor and do situps and pushups. Lifting your own body weight it a great way to get toned without bulking up, and you can adjust your movements to target different areas of your stomach, back, butt, and arms. Take a couple minutes to learn the proper form (you don’t want to hurt your back or neck by doing these moves incorrectly), and you’re all set to go!

[Photo courtesy of flickr.]

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.

2. Use Your Head. You’re in college. You know that salad is healthier than a cheese steak. Make sure that you fill up on foods that are high in fiber, with good protein and complex carbohydrate content, like big leafy salads with lots of veggies, or a sandwich on whole grain bread. In general, limiting fat is a good idea, though there are such things as “good” fats (think avocadoes, or fatty fish, like salmon). Beware though: things that should generally be high in fat and sugar (like cookies or chips) but that claim to be healthier versions are generally just loaded up with sodium and artificial sweeteners, which are TERRIBLE for your body.

3. Subsitution When You Can, Moderation When You Can’t. What this little motto means is that, if you’re happy to enjoy an apple instead of your banana-split sundae, that’s a great way to cut down on sugar- and caloric-intake (obviously). But if you really just can’t make this switch, be sure to observe moderation, whether that means only eating half the portion offered, or maybe even just a couple of bites.

4. DON’T Deprive Yourself. If you’ve ever tried a diet that demands you give up all the “bad” (and often delicious) foods you enjoy, you know that these sort of cold-turkey routines fail. When they do, they leave you diving for the forbidden food, only to gobble up five times the amount that would normally have satisfied you.

This lesson is very relevant in a dining hall setting, where chances are menus will repeat on a bi-weekly basis. Don’t get caught up in the famine-mentality that tells you to eat everything you can now because you’ll never be able to eat this meal again. If you really enjoy a particular dish made at your dining hall, don’t deprive yourself. But if it happens to be a full-fat macaroni and cheese, or a double fudge brownie the size of your knee, make sure that you limit how much you allow yourself to indulge (see tip 3).

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.

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. She’s both understanding and forgiving, for example:

Experts agree that the important thing is calorie intake over several days, not just one meal. So don’t be too hard on yourself if today was especially trying on your waistband; just get back on track tomorrow.

This book is definitely a must-have for all college women; if not to lose weight, at least as a guide to keep us all healthy as we stay up way too late, drink a little too much, and navigate the cafeteria (or student union food courts) for something to eat.