The beginning of another school year sneaked up on us, along with an opportunity to meet new people, join new clubs and do better in our classes (okay well I like to tell myself this, at least).  Unfortunately, it’s also the perfect opportunity to gain weight via late night pizza runs and all you can eat dining halls.

Thankfully, for those of you reading this, I have a suggestion, a small tweak really, that might just save you from packing on the pounds.  You ready for it? Like, really, really ready?

OK, here goes: only drink water (and if you must, the occasional coffee).

No soda, no calorie-laden smoothies, fruit juices, or any liquid edible substance with calories.  You would be surprised how much those added calories from beverages add up!

My advice comes from some pretty gosh darn daunting facts about our country of the overweight and obese. Scarily, as I type this, statistics show that thirty-five percent of Americans are medically obese and two thirds of them are overweight.  Also true? Twenty-five percent of our daily calories come from liquids.  This means that calories coming from drinks may play more of a role in our number on the scale than calories coming from foods.  The folks at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health have actually studied and found just that.  They published a report in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that states that the quickest and most reliable way to lose weight is to cut down on liquid calorie consumption.

Even beverages that appear to be healthy may contribute to weight gain and poor health.  The deceptively named, Vitaminwater, sold on many campuses, is anything but healthy. Despite being advertised as a product equipped to induce a “healthy state of physical and mental well-being,” it’s pretty much just sugar water, to which a penny’s worth of synthetic vitamins have been added.  Well, that and thirty-three grams of added sugar per bottle.  Seems like more of a soft drink than a healthy beverage to me.

So here’s my advice: save yourself money, calories, and unwanted pounds by drinking some good old-fashioned water.  If you must spice it up, add some lemon juice and a small amount of honey or maple syrup.  Even drinking one-half fruit juice, one-half regular or carbonated water will save you some pound-packing sugar. Also, relying on the paltry supply of vitamins in a drink like Vitaminwater for your nutrients is not a wise idea.  A much better way to get your vitamins and minerals is to eat real foods and load up on plenty of fruits and vegetables.  Oh, and don’t forget to read those labels!  Thirty-three grams of sugar in Vitaminwater per serving? Whoa, no thank you.

I’m sure most of us (myself included) don’t really stop mid-bite to ponder the effects of different foods on our teeth.  And while it doesn’t need to be at the forefront of our thoughts, we should still think about them chompers from time to time.

I don’t know about you, but I would rather not spend countless hours, dollars, and shrieks of pain getting dental surgery because I didn’t take care of my teeth early on… and refused to give up my daily coffee/candy bar breakfast routine.

Read on for the food rules of healthy teeth.

Drink tea: A study from the University of Illinois found that drinking tea without added sweeteners can significantly reduce the incidence of dental cavities.  Scientists propose that this is due to the polyphenol content of the tea, but the evidence is inconclusive.  Reduce the amount of cavities in your mouth by drinking at least a cup of tea each day, preferably after meals.  Remember that tea has plenty of other health benefits other than for your teeth, so drink up!

Avoid sugary foods: This one’s a no-brainer, but I thought it was worthy to include regardless.  Study after study has found an association between high sugar intake and high levels of dental problems.  Remember that other carbohydrates such as bread and cereals can also contribute to cavities if consumed in high amounts, so aim for balance in your intake of carbs, protein, and fats. If you are going to eat sugary foods, you can improve your dental health by brushing your teeth immediately after food consumption.

Chew sugar-free gum: Gum containing xylitol has been shown to reduce the incidence of dental caries by stimulating saliva production in your mouth, which can decrease plaque build-up.  Just be sure the gum you’re chewing doesn’t contain sorbitol, as it has less beneficial anti-cavity effects than xylitol.  Pop in a stick after snacks and meals to fight plaque buildup and thus, harmful dental cavities.

Avoid over-consumption of dark foods:  These can include coffee, red wine, and dark sodas.  Tobacco also has a similar effect, so stop smoking if you want those pearly whites (and lungs…)

Week after week (after week after week…), CollegeCandy and our pal John bring you some of the weirdest, funniest, and saddest things he hears on his college campus. And we know he’s not the only one who hears this stuff. Join the Overheard revolution! Listen in on some weirdos’ conversations and share them in the comments or send ‘em over. You know there’s a lot of funny things to be heard on your campus, so get listening.

(Frat guy, at a party.)

Guy: Okay, everyone! Dicks up, boy couch!

(Two guys in class, before lecture starts.)

Guy 1: My girlfriend broke up with me, and sent me pictures of her and her new boyfriend in bed.

Guy 2: Ouch.

Guy 1: Yeah, I sent them to her dad.

(Girl at a party.)

Girl: C’mon, let’s get out of here!

Guy: We can’t. You’re wasted. Let’s stay here.

Girl: I’m not that drunk. (Passes out into a pile of empties.)

(Guy, at one end of a long table in a diner.)

Guy: Yo, can someone pass me the cat?

Girl: What?

Guy: The jelly. Pass me the jelly.

(Guys, studying in the library.)

Guy 1: Shakespeare got to make up whatever words he wanted.

Guy 2: Like “s***dick.”

Guy 1: What? No, he didn’t.

Guy 2: He sure did. Never used it in his plays, though.

(Guy, on the phone.)

Guy: Guess what? Last night a BJ saved my life.

(Girl and guy, in the dining hall.)

Guy: Can you get me some soda?

Girl: No. I’m not your secretary.

Guy: Sure you are. Get me a Coke, titmittens.

(Girl and a guy, sitting in Taco Bell.)

Guy: You want to have sex after this?

Girl: Nah, I’m pretty full.

(Two guys, sitting on the shuttle bus.)

Guy 1: Hey, excuse me.

Guy 2: Huh?

Guy 1: Our butts just touched. Sorry about that.

(Two girls and a guy, talking in the dining hall.)

Girl 1: Would you want to be a guy for, like, a day?

Girl 2: I don’t think so. I wouldn’t want to feel my genitalia outside of my body.

Guy: You get used to it.

(Girl and a guy, reading the newspaper.)

Girl: Look. It’s you. (pointing)

Guy: Not really?

Girl: Yeah, if you were a little five-foot tall Nazi.

(Girl, alone at a check-out counter, with a bag of beans.)

Girl: I like beans.

There are only a few weeks left of the Spring 2009 semester, so how are you going to spend your summer? If you’re like many poor students across the country, you’re going to waste at least the first month of summer vacay working (and sweating) your ass off in the grueling heat in order to pay off the debt you racked up this term.

This past weekend was the first summery weekend in New York (and the Tri-State area), and as I walked through Manhattan, giving my pasty arms their first taste of real sunshine in months, I was infinitely jealous of all of the people in shorts and flip flops sitting outside the restaurants and cafes, casually throwing back margaritas and nibbling on tapas. I immediately regretted all of the cabs I took this winter when it was too cold to walk a few blocks to the subway, splurging on expensive bar nights (and overpriced coat checks), and every other frivolous nickel I threw away, because this weekend, I could not afford a leisurely afternoon of day-drinking. I realized that if I could not afford this luxury, how would I afford a fantastic vacation this summer?

Well, it’s not too late to cut costs where it matters and save up the money to enjoy the weather this summer and make the most of your three months away from school. By cutting down on what you think are daily necessities, you’ll be surprised by how much you can save in a short period of time.

1. Caffeinated Drinks

Now that you’re not pulling late-night study sessions, you can start to wean yourself off of lattes (it’s too hot for them now, anyway). Even if you can’t go a whole day without caffeine, start brewing your own joe in the morning, you know, since you won’t be rushing out the door to hit the 8 a.m. lecture.

If you grab a capp every weekday morning, you are probably spending, on average, $4 a pop. That’s $20 a week. So if you nix the Starbucks now, you’ll save $100 by Memorial Day. If you can forgo the habit for the whole summer, you’ll save about $450 by Labor Day. And that’s even a low estimate.

2. Bar Nights

The bar scene is especially appealing in the winter, when you want to wear a halter top and work up a sweat on the dance floor in frigid temperatures. But once summer hits, there’s bound to be a pool party, barbecue, bonfire, or keg party every weekend. Stay at home and make your own margaritas or sangria’s by the pool, and you’re probably only going to spend about $10-$20, especially if you make a large batch and split the costs with your friends. Even if you go to a party with a door charge, you’re probably forking over $5 for all-you-can drink.

If you can forego a $10 club cover charge for twelve weeks of summer, you’ll pocket $120.

If you usually drink three full-priced cocktails a night at $8 a pop (average mixed drink price) and tip at least 20%, you’ll save almost $400 by the end of August.

Factor in the other expenditures, such as cab fare or coat check (if applicable), and you’ll find you can cut $700-800 easy out of your summer party budget.

3. Food

No more rushing through the campus deli for a plain, overpriced turkey wrap. No more drunken deliveries after an already-expensive night at the bar. It’s summer- take advantage of picnics and barbecues!

Made-to-order sandwiches and combo meals can range from $5-$10, so your lunches could be costing you $25-$50 a week, or $100-200 a month, or $300-$400 in a three-month period.

Delivery options can cost up to double, especially when you factor in gratuities. Spend just a week’s worth of your takeout allowance on frozen chicken breast and hamburger patties, and you can cook out for “free” for the whole month of July, with enough cash leftover to buy a cute bathing suit for the fireworks on the 4th.

4. Transportation

The New York City subway costs over $80 a month. When I had a car, I was putting at least $30-40 into the tank a week. Now that the sun’s out, you can walk, Rollerblade, skateboard, or ride a bike. Or you can just stay home and invite your neighbors to a game of volleyball in the quad of your apartment complex. Even if you can just cut a fraction of your transportation costs, you’ll save more than enough for the gas and parking when you take a road trip to the ocean.

5.  Soft Drinks

Like coffee, many college students down Coke, Pepsi, or Mountain Dew to keep going all day.  Or, we grab Sprite, Iced Tea, Gatorade, or another flavorful beverage to quench our thirst.  The heat this summer is going to make you even more dehydrated and thirsty all summer, so be good to your body and save on vending machines by filling up a Nalgene bottle every morning from your own kitchen sink.  Drinking two store-bought drinks a day can rack up $28 in quarters a week (based on $2 bottles), which is $112 a month, or $448 from May to August.  Not only will your body thank you for replenishing the liquid you lose in sweat, you’ll cut calories– and you’ll have enough for a round-trip flight to a variety of locations when you realize summer’s almost over and you have yet to take a holiday.

These are five little things that we tend to over-indulge on during the winter months when we’re busy with school, freezing our butts off, and simply overspending to battle the depression and cabin-fever that sets in when the dismal winter season starts to take its toll.  If you’ve been cooped up in the dorms and retreating to your parents’ houses for the summer, you’ll save an exponentially greater sum on housing and utilities, grocery shopping, and even laundry.

What expenses are you most looking forward to cutting this summer? And, more importantly, what summer splurges are you going to spoil yourself with once classes are over and you have almost four months of freedom?

Sugary sodas and juices went out the window as soon as my parents realized the havoc they were playing with our health (not like the aspartame in diet soda is any better…but…I mean…let’s not think about that), and since that fateful dentist appointment 13 years ago, I have been very conscious of the hidden bad stuff inside innocent-seeming liquids.

Sometimes, even the good, “healthy” stuff can stab you in the back. Need some examples?

Glaceau VitaminWater (20 oz)

This shiz has 130 calories and 33 grams of sugar. I love VitaminWater because it makes me feel like I’m ingesting actual vitamins, but when I force myself to think about it…how healthy can something that tastes THAT sweet really be?

Pina Colada

This summer drink has 625 freaking calories and 75 grams of sugar. Do you KNOW how many miles on the treadmill that is? Give me some rum and a splash of lime — still tropical, but waaayyy less mean to the waist line.

Double Chocolaty Chip Frappuccino Blended Crème (16 oz)

Oh Starbucks, you tricky little chain store, you! First, you inject your coffee with crazy cocaine-like caffeine (am I the only one who feels like they’re on speed after a cup there?!), then you go and make a drink with 510 calories and 59 grams of sugar. I know you’re trying to take over the world one over-priced concoction at a time, but giving your loyal subjects drinks that could possibly lead to arteries clogging? Not the best idea…

I could go on for seven more paragraphs, but I think I’ll spare us all and just recommend that you look at the ingredients of everything you ingest — including drinks. Just because something has “HEALTHY” or “LOW FAT” or “REAL FRUIT” on the label doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Read the details. Treat yourself right.

…And don’t fall asleep with candy in your mouth.

Chicken Pot Pie gets a bad rap for being kind of time consuming but there are some very easy short cuts to take to go from unpacking groceries to hot and ready pot pie in less than 50 minutes (45 if you’re a good chopper).

Ingredients:

1 Medium Yellow Onion

3 Carrots

3 Celery Stalks

1 Cup of Frozen Peas

1 TB Butter

1 Store-Bought Rotisserie Chicken

2 Cans of Cream of Chicken Soup (10 3/4 oz. Use A Name Brand)

1 Cup of Milk

1 Box of Roll-Out Pie Crusts

1 Egg

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 400 for a 13×9 pan or 425 for a deeper casserole dish.

2. Remove the skin from the chicken and cut or rip the entire chicken into bite-sized pieces. When you’re done, you’ll have about 3-4 cups worth of chicken pieces.

3. Combine the chicken, cream of chicken soup and milk in a stock pot or large saucepan. Stir. Bring the mixture to a boil. Once it boils, set it aside.

4. Prepare the carrots and celery (Washing, peeling, etc) and chop them. Don’t make the pieces too large or too think. If the pieces are larger than a quarter they’re probably too big. Peel and finely chop the onion.

5. Saute the carrots, celery and onion in the butter on medium high. They’re done when the onions become translucent.

6. Remove the vegetables from the heat and pour them into the creamed chicken. Stir until combined.

7. Pour peas into mixture.

9. Spray pan with cooking spray and put pie crust in the bottom.

10. Pour ingredients into the dish and place the other pie crust on top. If you’re feeling crafty, you can crimp the edges of the crust with your fingers to give it a decorative look.

11. Slice a small X on the top of the crust so the ingredients can bubble up from the pie.

12. Crack the egg and beat it with a fork. Use a pastry brush to brush the top of the pie with egg. If you don’t have a brush you can lightly dab the egg on pie with a paper towel. The egg gives the pie a beautiful golden brown color.

13. Bake for 30 minutes then check on the pie. The pie is done when the top is golden brown and the insides are beginning to bubble. If the pie isn’t done, continue baking in 5 minute increments.

That should do it! You’re only 13 simple steps away from a delicious pot pie. And that soda on the side? I recommend a root beer…or just a tall glass of milk.

It wasn’t until around a year ago that I really started to pay attention to the things I ate. And I took on my new knowledge of what’s nutritious, how to lose weight, and how to really exercise…well…kicking and screaming.

I was always that bitch with the really fast metabolism who didn’t gain weight. I’d come home and go from eating a can of Pringles to an entire pint of Ben & Jerry’s–easily. I never was bigger than a size 7, however, I did slowly become more concerned with being healthy. So what if I could eat a bucket of lard for dinner? That didn’t mean it was doing my health any wonders or that I felt GOOD after one of my binges.

Plus, I didn’t think it’d kill me to be a little smaller if losing weight did end up being the outcome of the diet change. Now that I’ve been a size 3 for about nine months, I’ve learned that a lot of girls who ask me how I stay small believe a lot of bullsh%t diet myths.

And as long as girls who want to be healthier and lose weight the RIGHT way keep holding onto these dumb ideas about “what works”, I’m going to have to deal with a lot more insecure girls who can’t shed their extra pounds in my day to day life…so I may as well present to you all the truth.

1. You’ve gotta watch your drinks. You’re aren’t much better off with drinks like Gatorade and Vitamin Water or even lots of teas than you are with sodas–calorie wise. Of course there are differences when it comes down to nutrients, but if you’re trying to lose weight…switch all of your drinks to water so you can save calorie room for those alcohol and caffeine splurges. Once you get used to drinking water with every meal, you won’t even be able to tolerate drinking sodas and juices as thirst quenchers.

2. People say that eating before you go to bed will make you gain weight. Those people are wrong. Taking in more calories on any given day than what you’re burning is what will make you burn fat. The problem with eating late at night is that you usually have already reached your calorie limit for the day.

3. Carbs are not going to make you gain weight. As I stated above, the only thing that makes you gain weight is taking in more calories than you are burning. Carbs happen to usually accompany calories, however. They are actually WONDERFUL energy foods to eat before the gym, a hike, or a long day of work. The problem is that they taste great and people often times don’t think about them in terms of how much energy they will be burning.

The most important thing that I learned, however, was that getting healthy and losing weight is part of a LIFE TYLE change. You can of course indulge in bad things now and then. However, you need to be very disciplined most days if you want this to work.

Know any other diet myths? Do share!

For one thing, it’s small and has to house two sets of foodstuffs (me and my roommate’s), and for another, it was already gross when we moved in.

Every once in a while the roommate or I will feebly attempt to sponge off decades worth of black stuff that better not be anything other than mold, or Lysol the whole thing in hopes of dispelling that slightly musky odor that just won’t go away, but no matter what we try, our fridge seems destined to be nothing but a crappy machine that keeps our milk cold.

Some people, however, love their fridges. Something about their fridges makes them proud.

So proud, in fact, that they want the world to know how deep their mechanical love goes.

That’s where Fridgewatcher comes in. A website devoted entirely to photos of refrigerators, Fridgewatcher aims to give people all over the world an opportunity to share every inch of their fridge.

People send in photos, those photos are uploaded, and then…the watching begins.

True to their name, there isn’t much else to do on the Fridgewatcher site besides stare at still pictures of other people’s iceboxes. I know that might sound boring, but believe me, there’s something strangely engrossing about seeing how people arrange their food.

Do people in Chile eat the same things as people in Demark? What country has the worst looking fridges? And how much soda do Americans really buy?

The questions can go on for hours, so don’t go visiting Fridgewatcher without adequate time to ponder the finer aspects of fridges. Because honestly, you will.

• For 3 hours this Saturday there are going to be a lot of angry fat kids. We should probably be a little nervous. (MSNBC)

• Who needs a masculine jock-y boyfriend when you can just drink man-flavored sweat soda? Mmmm. (Business Week)

• Penn State is bullying little kids out of using their logo. Cause you know, using a dangerous looking animal as a mascot is an original PSU idea. (Fredericksburg.com)

• Going to attempt to cram 50 dressed-up classmates into your dorm this Halloween? Of course you are! Here, we did a little shopping for you! (NerdApproved.com)

Not sort of bad like, when you dry your undies on high heat and your life turns into a constant wedgie. Bad in a Diet-Coke-is-Bad-For-You way.

I understand that this news may be shocking to no one else but me, but I am just devastated. Sure, I knew all along that the artificial sweeteners that make up my favorite bev-y were bad for me.

Something about causing cancer or something, right? Well, excuse me for ignoring the warning signs and resigning to the fact that everything I do (like standing in front of my micro and watching my 94% fat-free popcorn pop) causes cancer. At least I wasn’t drinking regular Coke!

That stuff rots your teeth. And makes you fat. Duh.

Well, this little ditty explains that diet soda causes tooth decay too. And staining. And – brace yourself for this one – fools around with your brain to mess up the messages that tell you if you are hungry or full. Which means, people, that some DC drinkers may be more likely to overindulge.

What does this all mean? It means, my fellow DC addicts, that Diet Coke can actually make us FATTER (the high sodium content also contributes to weight gain)!

Researchers say the best bet to avoid bad teeth and a wide belly is to drink……

Water.

Another big old dose of obvious.

Awesome. I wonder if water will help me get through my 2pm slump?