So maybe you’ve never gone more than 24 hours without food. Maybe you’ve never taken a laxative or made yourself throw up after eating too much. You don’t have an Eating Disorder. But how much of your day is spent thinking about food?

When you are out with friends, are you comparing what everyone else is eating to what you are eating, figuring out the calories instead of enjoying their company? Have you ever doubled your workouts to compensate for splurging on a slice of pizza? Can you barely even remember a time when you weren’t trying out the latest diet?

You don’t have to have an eating disorder to have an unhealthy relationship with food. It’s called Disordered Eating and it can be emotionally draining, physically exhausting or even lead to a full blown Eating Disorder.

Disordered Eating starts with a mentality rather than a behavior. If you are lucky to eat one real meal a day during finals week because you are so crazed trying to cram everything in, it’s not good for you, but it’s not a symptom of Disordered Eating. If you only eat one meal a day during finals week so you can at least be in control of your diet since everything else is so hectic, that’s Disordered Eating. It can present itself in many ways, but here are a few of the most common. Read More »

"Oh god. I gotta go, guys. Like, really go. #2."

That’s where College Candy comes in. We’re not going to debate whether or not the Theory of Relativity actually exists (a disappointment, I know, but I’m a communications major and stopped taking science classes after Baby Bio fresh year). However, we are here to thoroughly investigate the most widespread college knowledge (no, not rhyming)—the myth.

If you go to college, chances are you’ve eaten at a dining hall. You’ve experienced gourmet menu items such as “liquid mashed potatoes,” “Sahara-dry chicken” and “green jell-o with mysteriously hard parts around the edges.” And as delightful as your dining experience was, chances are you felt the results of that extra serving of corn a short time later as you were flooring it for the communal bathroom. And if you were just lucky enough to have a meal-plan (like I was my freshman year), you got to experience the joy of this routine three times a day. Every day. For a year.

I remember wondering what the hell was wrong with me; I’d never spent so much money on toilet paper and air freshener before in my life. Did college trigger an internal mechanism that doomed me to poop all the time for the rest of my life? “No,” my roommate said, “The dining halls put baby laxatives in the food, duh.”

“OMG, why would they do that to us?!” I demanded of her.

“Because that way people get hungrier faster after they eat and go back for more; it helps the school make more money.” Read More »

I’ve never really been much of a health nut. Sure, I try to throw some fruits & veggies in my diet and I drink light beer, but other than that my nutrition quotient is pretty low. I still consider pizza and pasta the two most basic (and essential) food groups.

Despite the fact that I know as much about nutrition as say, someone on Celebrity Fit Club, I actually wasn’t surprised to see this article in the NY Times about those miracle “flushes” and “cleanses.” Basically, lots of doctors says they’re bullsh*t.

According to the article, many western docs think that detox diets are not only not good for you, they could also potentially be harmful. One doctor in the article was quoted as stating “What ends up being consumed during a ‘detox’ are essentially stimulants, laxatives and diuretics.” Ew.

Okay, let me back up a second for those of you who may be as nutritionally clueless as I am. Most “cleanses” are like extreme diets that you undergo for a couple days or weeks. Basically, you avoid certain foods and replace them with nutritional and herbal supplements. In turn, your body that was once full of evil toxins is supposed to rejoice (after you feel like absolute sh*t for a few days) as you remove what the article calls “sludge” from your “constipated” body. Read More »