Melanie Jatsek is a speaker, author and registered dietitian who teaches college students how to eat to look better, feel better, think better and stress less!  She is getting ready to publish her book, written especially for college students, called “Brain Food for College Students,” so we thought we’d bring her on board to share some of her best advice with our CollegeCandies. Get to know Melanie here, then come back every week for advice on staying healthy from welcome week through finals and beyond.

5 Questions We Ask Everyone

1. What’s your favorite college memory/the most trouble you’ve ever gotten into?
I was a bit of a nerd in college, so I didn’t get into much trouble. (I got into enough trouble my senior year of high school and must have gotten it all out of my system.)  I would say that my favorite college memory was taking advantage of NOT going to the Ohio State University football games and going shopping!  There were no crowds and I had the whole campus to myself because everyone (except me) was at the game!

2. Name 5 things you can’t live without:
My running shoes
My Smartphone
Cheese
My earplugs (when I sleep)
Coffee!!

3. What is your favorite song to belt out in the car/at the bar/for karaoke?
Even though I am married, “Single Ladies” by Beyonce

4. What is your motto/the advice you live by?
I have two. The first is that I can choose to be happy and make the best out of any situation or complain about it and be miserable. This always helps me stay positive even during the most challenging times! The other is that everything happens for a reason.

5. Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
I will have written 3 books for college students and completed my second or third college speaking tour! Read More »

Some “buttah” is exactly what dietician Edith Blum recommends in her new book, Eat, Drink, and Be Gorgeous, which claims that eating full-fat foods instead of fat-free foods can help you lose weight!

So what does this mean?

Chocolate every day? Check.

Cocktails? Check.

Cheese, chocolate cake, biscuits, avocado, whole milk, chips, and sorbets? Check, check, and check.

This “no-diet diet” allows you to enjoy the foods you love that are usually condemned by the common fad diets that we occassionally follow. Or try to follow, at least. But lemon water, cabbage soup, and a crate full of bananas just aren’t realistic methods of losing weight in the long run. Blum advises us to forget our traditional beliefs of what good foods and bad foods are, and focus on the nutritional qualities of each food instead.

On food:

Fat is good; we need cholesterol and certain saturated fats to make and regulate our hormones, so we can avoid depression and even cancer. Quality trumps quantity in importance, Blum stresses, so certain “fabulous fats” found in nuts, seeds, and olive oil should be ingested at every meal, while “frankenfats” such as those in low-fat, low-cholesterol spreads and margarines should be banned from your diet to ward off headaches and and joint aches. Eat egg yolks in conjunction with egg whites, and don’t say no to that little voice in your head that screams for a smear of hot butter on warm toast. Starchy foods like rice, beans, and corn are also good for you, as well as the occasional cocktail, as long as there’s no sugar. Read More »