You work out. You eat healthy foods (most of the time). You choose fro yo over ice cream, and 100 calorie packs over double fudge brownies. You drink lots of water, get lots of sleep. You do everything you’re supposed to do to live a healthy life and you’re still gaining weight.

WTF? What’s a girl got to do to drop a few lbs?

Avoid these five surprising things, to start.

Diet Soda
It’s one of those things we just assume is good just because it has the word diet in it. WRONG. According the San Antonio Heart Study, the more diet soda someone drinks the higher their risk of obesity. Why? Well, another study reveled that the fake sugar in diet soda tricks your brain and actually makes you hungry for sweeter foods. Because the temptation of Reese’s in the vending machine wasn’t already great enough.

Carb-free Liquor
At first glance you’re like, YES! FINALLY! So you down, like, 12 and feel light as a bird (and drunk as a Disney star). If only it were that easy. The truth is, it’s important to take carbs into consideration, but it’s equally (if not more) important to be on the look out for calories. And I’m sad to say many, if not all, carb-free liquor beverages are still pretty high in calories. Calories that turn to fat. On your thighs. Read More »

We’re well into another new school year and to honor that, we at CollegeCandy are bringing back the fan-favorite series, “We’ve All Been There.”  (We tried to get another national holiday/long weekend for you guys but it’s way harder than we thought so this will have to do.) Every week, Lauren – University of Michigan will comment on the common experiences all college women share – like blue book exams or, everyone’s favorite activity, procrastinating. Read, relate, cringe and enjoy.

Somehow you ended up with four 9am classes this semester. WTF? You can barely get up for your kickboxing class at noon on Fridays, and someone expects you to make it to class (ready to learn!?) by 8:50am the rest of the week?

Oh hell no.

You hope your professor doesn’t expect you to look presentable. Hell, he should just be happy you left yourself enough time to brush your teeth. Your morning routine is always the same: you roll out of bed at 8:30, grab the first pair of sweats you can find on the floor, throw your hair into a ponytail and run out of the house. You pop into the campus coffee shop en route to lecture and grab a coffee (“Giant, please!”) and something to munch on (“Give me the butteriest bagel you’ve got back there”).

What? It’s early and you need comfort.

You slide into your seat just as the Power Point appears on the wall in front of you. If it weren’t for the food, you’d probably fall right back to sleep – you’re just so comfortable. When class is over, you go to your next class, or to the library, or home for a nap. Whichever you choose, you sport the sweats for the rest of the day: through the classes, the breaks, the meals…

You spend so much time in your sweatpants during the week, in fact, that when the weekend comes and it is time to wear something that doesn’t say “Pink” across the ass you have trouble getting into them. No, not motivating yourself to get dressed; actually getting into them. After the first few weeks of classes your clothes feel a bit snug but you can still make em work (“I must have shrunk these a bit in the dryer….”). As the semester wears on, however, putting on your going-out-jeans has become a sweaty workout. Read More »

This post provided by college nutritionist, author, and all around excellent source of healthful info, Melanie Jatsek.

It’s the start of the new school year.  For some of you this will be your first time away from home and you may be feeling a little nervous about meeting your new roommate and dorm life in general.  For others it’s like coming home again, only this time you are moving into your own apartment.

Let’s face it, there are many things in college you can’t control, but what you eat isn’t one of them!  Because certain foods improve your focus and brain health (while others destroy it), your food choices will have an impact on your grades.  What about the so called “Freshman Fifteen”?  You don’t have to fall victim to it or poor eating habits if you play it smart from day one.  In fact, your eating habits can actually improve in college (yes, I did just say that)!

Eating healthy doesn’t have to be hard if you keep it simple.  All you really have to do is remember the 5 basics and build your meals and snacks around them:  fruits, vegetables, grains, dairy products and meats/meat substitutes.  Whether you are a first year college student and only have a tiny dorm room refrigerator (and an even tinier cupboard to store your food) or you are a returning student living in an apartment with a kitchen, here are the 13 foods you must stock up on to stay on track: Read More »

Whatever your pleasure, I think all of us ladies can agree on how great it feels when you realize you need to go down a pants size when you are trying to lose weight. Over the past two years, I got to experience this phenomenon a whopping 5 times as I descended from a size 12 to a size 2. I’ve also thrown it in reverse and bumped back up to a 4. For some that might be the worst feeling, but for me, putting weight back on was necessary. And it made me feel even better.

Through my long and trying journey, I’ve come to learn that both losing weight and gaining weight can be fantastic feelings, so long as you are changing your body for yourself.

For me, it started my senior year of high school. As a graduation requirement, we were forced to watch videos released by the USDA that talked about balanced eating. It was here that I realized just how bad all of the junk food I ate was and what I had to do to fix it. A great, eye-opening experience, right? Except that I’m a perfectionist. I took my eating and exercising to the extreme.

By the summer after I graduated high school, I had become completely obsessed with losing weight. The girl who never ate a vegetable in her life was existing on romaine lettuce and fat-free yogurt. The girl who never exercised was spending 2 hours every day on the elliptical machine. By July, I had lost 80 pounds, but that wasn’t it. My hair was falling out. Despite the summer heat, I needed to wear sweaters as soon as the sun set. I lost my period month after month. Read More »

With all the fuss lately surrounding healthy body images and the perfect abs, it seems a bit surprising that Donna Simpson, a 42 year old New Jersey woman has actually made it her goal t be the world’s fattest woman. She’s even said it would be “a fantasy” to reach 1,000 pounds!

No. A fantasy is stealing Brad Pitt away from Angelina for a night of steamy hot sex. A fantasy is moving to a deserted island with half-naked men fanning you with palm leaves. A fantasy should NOT be holding the world record for World’s Largest Woman, because that translates to poor health and a dramatically shorter life.

There are so many things wrong with this situation. Here are 4:

1. She’s got a daughter
While Simpson actually tries to wolf down enough food to gain another 350 lbs. onto her already obese frame, her three-year-old daughter is still in the picture. Shouldn’t she be less concerned with her goal weight and more concerned with living long enough to see her daughter graduate high school? And the $750 a week eating habit is money that would be better spent on toys, clothes, and outings with her daughter. She might be in the running for a Guinness World Record, but it certainly won’t be for World’s Best Mom. Read More »

It’s not easy being a woman. We only earn $.78 for every dollar dudes earn, we have to put up with things like periods and high heels, and—maybe worst of all—we’re constantly being bombarded with advice from lady mags, lady sites, and lady-oriented talk shows that purport to know what we should be doing to get thinner, sexier, and happier. Too often their tips are questionable at best and downright moronic at worst.

So every week I’m taking a look at the advice that falls into the “moronic” end of that spectrum. If I can convince even one girl to reconsider whatever’s being professed in her glossy of choice, I’ll sleep a little better at night.

In the relatively small pool of article templates that women’s magazines turn to month after month (find the best jeans for your body type! Learn how to make a smoky eye! Consider swinging—wait, whaaa?) there are two perennial models that will never go out of style: tips on how to lose weight and tips on how to snag a man. Knowing this, the editors at Women’s Health have come up with a genius idea for an article that combines both topics. It’s called “Prevent Love Chub,” and it’s about how your S.O. is making you fat.

Yes, even though ladymags believe any female who isn’t constantly attached to or trying to become attached to a man is kind of sad at best and totally pathetic at worst, now Women’s Health is also saying that boyfriends are any body-conscious chica’s worst enemy.

See, men sabotage our toned limbs and flat bellies in five distinct ways—they love eating out (… at restaurants! Get your mind out of the gutter!), they prevent us from being physically active, they encourage us to eat more in order to keep up with them, they buy unhealthy food, and, worst of all, they make us happy. And as author Jill Waldbieser says, “Research shows that what’s good for your heart may be bad for your hips.” More specifically: “A study published last year in the journal BioPsychoSocial Medicine found that happy people were less likely to succeed at losing weight than those with a ‘slightly negative and cautious outlook.’” Read More »

Mmmm holiday cookies.

I could eat my own weight in Grandma’s “Won’t Fail Fudge,” but do I really want to carry around an extra me in 2010? Not exactly. Spring comes quick here in Santa Barbara, so bikinis and spring runs are just around the corner. If you’re located somewhere where you’ll be wearing large sweaters for the next four months – lucky you! (I guess?) But even if you will be bundled up for a few more months, that doesn’t mean you want to have to trade your skinny jeans for your dad’s sweatpants thanks to a few weeks of indulging.

So, here ere are some tips for navigating holiday parties and rounds at the bar so you can enjoy yourself and still look damn good in the new year.

Surviving Those Holiday Gatherings
Food can seem like the main event at holiday parties, but isn’t the point to mingle and mix with one another?

1. Don’t Go Hungry! Pretty self-explanatory, but don’t do it! Eat sensibly throughout the day, and maybe skip a snack if you want to bank a few extra hundred calories for later.

2. Choose foods that are “worth” it to you. Choosing to have a little taste of the things that you’re really craving, say Christmas cookies or some mini-quiches, while holding back on the other hors d’oeuvres at the buffet line can save you hundreds of calories without making you feel deprived. Pick to have a small portion of your favorite one or two dishes, and load the rest of your plate up with veggies and low-fat dips. Some great options are salsa, guacamole, and other vegetable-based dips. Read More »

So the fall semester is rolling round again. For you freshies that means the dreaded “Freshman 15.” For the rest of us it means the shame of gaining an undisclosed amount of weight even though we are supposed to be “adjusted” and know how to stay healthy while we’re away from home.

It’s not like we don’t know what is healthy and what isn’t – we do. And we all vow that the next year will be different – that we’ll stop getting seconds at the caf and drinking 6 nights a week – but then classes start, beer pong ensues and it all goes out the window right to our asses.

To most of us calories are just confusing; who the hell knows how many calories we actually consume on a daily basis. How much work we need to do in order to burn off dollar pitcher night.  How many calories we burn walking to the library? But those things definitely need to be figure out if we want to steer clear of the not-so-attractive muffin top.

So, I thought I’d break it all down in a way everyone could understand: comparing the things we love to eat to our daily activities.

There’s always going to be that day when you have two tests to study for and an essay to write, which means zero time to cook yourself a healthy meal. But perhaps those days will be a little further in between knowing that you’ll have to wash dishes for five hours the next day to burn it off:

Two Slices of Domino’s Cheese Pizza (540 calories)= 3 hours of vacuuming (which is probably 1,214 laps around that 10X12 box of yours)

One Order of “General Tso’s Chicken” From Your Favorite Chinese Place (844 calories)= 2 hours of running on the treadmill at the gym

One Grande Starbucks Cinnamon Dolce Latte (330 calories)= 3 hours of taking notes in class

One Plain Bagel With Cream Cheese (436 calories)= 1 ½ hours of dancing at a party

One Bowl of Ramen Noodles (296 calories)= Walking around campus for an hour

One Subway 6” Philly Cheese Steak (520 calories)= 4 hours of doing laundry Read More »

Summer is almost here and, ideally, we should all be eating lots of fruits and vegetables and hitting the gym every day. But really, who wants to do all of that work? We’re too busy to focus on eating well. We don’t have enough money to buy healthier foods. Sugary cocktails are too good to pass up after a hard day. The list goes on and on.

The point is, in most situations, we will come up with any excuse possible for eating badly. I’ve seen it happen too many times to count, and I also definitely admit to coming up with some pretty lame excuses myself. So, I’ve compiled a list of the most commonly heard excuses. Maybe the next time you’re about to say one, you’ll think about this and make a healthier choice.

1. “Finals are coming up. I’m stressed. Chocolate makes me feel better.” Yes, finals and the end of the semester do cause a ridic amount of stress, and eating chocolate might ease the pain, but while you’re scarfing down that king-sized Snickers bar, consider this: you could possibly be causing yourself more stress. When finals are over, and you look in the mirror and see that you’ve gained about 10 pounds, you will definitely start stressing about wearing that cute new bikini. Don’t let the stress get to you – chew some gum instead. Read More »

Somehow you ended up with four 9am classes this semester. WTF? You can barely get up for your kickboxing class at noon on Fridays, and someone expects you to make it to class (ready to learn!?) by 8:50am the rest of the week?

Oh hell no.

You hope your professor doesn’t expect you to look presentable. Hell, he should just be happy you left yourself enough time to brush your teeth. Your morning routine is always the same: you roll out of bed at 8:30, grab the first pair of sweats you can find on the floor, throw your hair into a ponytail and run out of the house. You pop into the campus coffee shop en route to lecture and grab a coffee (“Giant, please!”) and something to munch on (“Give me the butteriest bagel you’ve got back there”).

What? It’s early and you need comfort.

You slide into your seat just as the Power Point appears on the wall in front of you. If it weren’t for the food, you’d probably fall right back to sleep; you’re just so comfortable. When class is over, you go to your next class, or to the library, or home for a nap. Whichever you choose, you sport the sweats for the rest of the day: through the classes, the breaks, the meals… Read More »