Winter can be wreak havoc on your body and psyche. Your skin is dry, your ears are cold and there is nothing sexy about long underwear. More than anything, I hate daylight savings; getting out of 4pm class to complete darkness is the worst. Having moved from Texas to New York, northern winters hit me particularly hard.  I visited Columbia as a prospective student in February, so I knew just how cold it could get up here. The one thing nobody told me just how long northeastern winters last! From November to April, I am absolutely freezing, and what was up with that blizzard on Halloween? This year I am taking a stand. Since I only have one year left of college, I’m determined to not let winter be the worst part of it. I am not going to order Indian delivery and hide under my covers all day. I have combined three years of actual winter experience with some online research to compile a winter blues action plan to get us through it.

Stay warm and dry.

This seems obvious, but maximizing your warmth and dryness actually takes some tact. You want to be warm, but you don’t want to look like a snowman or get wedgies. Layers are the key to staying warm while looking somewhat polished. Seriously, you probably couldn’t guess the number of layers I’m wearing right now. During the winter, I layer tights (usually with a flesh color at the bottom) and wear camisoles under my shirts. I also recommend a layer of cashmere or lightweight fleece under your coat. For ultimate warmth invest in good rain boots and an effective winter coat (I am a fan of Burton coats because they are stylish and sturdy). When it is really cold, I wear thick ski socks and weave two pashmina scarves (of complementary shades) together for double warmth. It is pretty annoying to take on and off layers upon layers whenever you enter or exit a building, but being warm is worth it.

Music

When you have to walk somewhere, distract yourself from the biting cold by listening to music. If you wear big stereo headphones, they can double as hipster ear muffs.

Exercise

Just because bikini season is over does not mean you should fall into a sedentary lifestyle. Staying healthy will keep you happy; the only reason your winter jeans should be a size bigger is to accommodate long underwear. Exercising regularly will keep your endorphins levels up and keep you feeling good about yourself. Wouldn’t it be magnificent to already be in good shape when spring comes around?

Indulge in winter-time treats

Winter comes with special food and activities: cider, hot chocolate, ice-skating, skiing, fireplaces Christmas markets, cuddle buddies. Getting excited about the nice features of winter can make it seem less dull, at least for the first few months.

Light

Don’t be left in the dark! Soak in as many rays as you can and work under bright lights. Lack of sunlight has been proven to be a depression trigger. Some people swear by light therapy; I personally haven’t tried it, but maybe I’ll get some brighter light bulbs this year.

Don’t Get Sick

Just because it is winter doesn’t mean you have to catch a cold. Wash your hands regularly, carry hand sanitizer, get a flu shot, take a multivitamin and maintain your healthy diet.

Don’t Get Congested

Maybe it is just me, but whenever the heater is on I wake up congested every morning. I try not to blow my nose too much because I am susceptible to winter nosebleeds. Every since I started including a Neti-Pot rinse to my morning routine, winter has felt less stuffy.

Vitamin D

If you feel like you need more vitamin D in your life, take a supplement or eat Vitamin-D rich foods. Don’t use a tanning bed!

Maybe I’m making a big deal out of this because I get sick if someone even sneezes in the same room as me, maybe it’s because I hate those people who don’t believe in tissues when taking a test. Whatever the reason, I hate the sick season and am planning on avoiding it at all costs this year.

So, if you would like to jump on this healthy train (no it is not made out of vegetables and no Tyra Banks is not the conductor) then read closely and make sure to share with anyone sitting around you, please..let’s prevent these germs from getting any further then your keyboard..

1. Vitamin C. whether it is emergency, or the CVS brand, stock up on it now..before it’s too late. The one time I actually took the doctor’s advice it worked. So now instead of air borne I’ve been drinking some extra doses of vitamin C.

2. Eat Healthy. Pizza and  McDonald fries is a good one a week splurge..but every night you go out? Probably not the best idea. Eating healthy will give your body the energy it needs to fight off all the gross disgusting things that are flying around.

3. Decrease your stress. It’s college, we get stressed. Stress weakens your immune system, which makes you sick, then you get sick which stresses you out because you miss class..see the cycle? Try to take an hour (or even ten minutes) to relax. Try a quick yoga video off of Hulu or read a chapter of your favorite book.

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Yes, it’s that time of year again. It’s getting cooler out, and before you know it the leaves will be changing, along with your wardrobe. You hear the crisp fall breeze whistling through the trees, the fallen leaves crunching under your feet, and…hacking coughs? That’s right, ladies, flu season is almost here.

Now, I have a bit of a strange confession to make – I’ve never had the flu! It’s not that I don’t get sick. In high school, I used to get sick every winter without fail, but I usually got stuck with sinus infections or bronchitis. Never the flu. As you probably remember, in the fall of 2009, which was my freshman year of college, the swine flu hit. Almost every friend I had made at school got some version of the flu, whether it was of the piggy variety or just your grandma’s regular old influenza. I was scared. I’d just been sick for weeks (bronchitis AND a sinus infection) and had missed tons of classes. So what did I do? I got vaccinated for the swine flu and the regular flu. And it worked. No flu for me.

Even though I had a good experience, I’m still never sure whether or not I should get a flu shot, and I’ve heard lots of my friends say the same. I’m not a medical professional, so I can’t give a recommendation on the topic, but I’ve put together some information about the pros and cons of the influenza vaccine to help you (and myself) to make the decision this fall.

First, the facts: this link from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will give you all the basic information you need to know about the vaccine itself, including the different types of vaccines, and who should not be vaccinated. Read More »

[This summer a dream internship with Lucky magazine moved me from Austin, Texas, where I’ve spent all 21 years of my life, to New York City for the summer. Come along for the ride and follow me through this column as I take on all that the city has in store for me. I’ll share tips I’ve picked up along the way about everything from how to pack (stop, drop and roll people!) to dating to fitting in (or standing out) and so much more.]

In the shuffle of moving and getting settled in the city this summer, I lost the balance of the healthy lifestyle I led through the school year. With my gym back home not having any branches near my place in New York and full workdays that left me exhausted at the end of the day, I was getting restless.

Tip #15 – Take a day trip to cure your fitness itch.

If you’re anything like me, you need to switch up your fitness routine with things that don’t actually feel like fitness. If you’re sick of walking the streets of New York and need a respite from hot air up your skirt courtesy of subway grates, take a day trip outside of the city. Long Island is the perfect day trip if the city has you forgetting what a sunset looks like and it’s only an hour train ride away. A $21 ticket will score you a round trip ticket to the beach as well as an all-day beach pass. Get active on the beach by running, playing a few rounds of beach volleyball and even if sunbathing is more your style, exploring the town for adorable boutiques by foot will be a workout in itself. Bonus – you can bring a cooler to the beach stocked with guilt-free snacks. Read More »

[Everyone’s got a vice, a bad habit, something they know they need to change. Unfortunately, everyone also has a million excuses why they just can’t do it. Not anymore. Every month we will be following a different CollegeCandy writer as she takes on a personal challenge. Last month, Khalea gave up fried food. This month, Michelle is going to come face to face with stress eating. Can she stop the emotional ice cream binges? We'll find out....]

Ah, June. You have been a month to remember. Between trying to stop stress eating, trying to get back into working out, dealing with entering a long distance relationships and looking for a job, I’ve encountered a lot of pressure from many different directions. Along the way, I’ve written some pretty heavy articles here on CollegeCandy about confronting the reasons for my (and maybe your!) stress eating. Have I always been successful in trying to stop stress eating? Most of the time. Can I claim that I stopped stress eating completely? Not really. Read More »

[Everyone’s got a vice, a bad habit, something they know they need to change. Unfortunately, everyone also has a million excuses why they just can’t do it. Not anymore. Every month we will be following a different CollegeCandy writer as she takes on a personal challenge. Last month, Khalea gave up fried food. This month, Michelle is going to come face to face with stress eating. Can she stop the emotional ice cream binges? We'll find out....]

The first few days

The past weekend was one of the worst weekends I’ve had in a while. I will admit to crying about 75% of the time. Several times, I called my lovely boyfriend on Skype only to immediately start crying at him through my computer. Trust me, crying into a keyboard while your boyfriend stares at your blurry webcam video is the least helpful form of communication for a relationship.

Since I started this challenge, I have struggled with one fundamental question: Why do I eat instead of feel? It’s a good question. Why do some people do drugs, or drink too much? Why do some people compulsively shop? What makes us neurotic?

I enjoy food – I really do. Since I write the Intro to Cooking column here at CollegeCandy, I obviously enjoy food. But sometimes, I use food as a crutch. Anxiety is something I have always dealt with: I feel a great deal of anxiety when it comes to school, but also in relationships and dealing with people. When I e-mail someone and they don’t reply for a few days, I don’t get annoyed with them; I get anxious that they’re mad at me. A lot of this has to do with my own insecurity and my incessant need to receive assurance that I am a good, capable person. But a huge part of it contributes to my stress eating. Instead of asking someone to reply to my e-mail, or telling people, like my boyfriend, that I need more reassurance, I eat.

But why don’t I allow myself to feel real emotions?

Whenever I have a crying spell, I usually end it by putting in on of my favorite movies and eating something with carbs (a sandwich, macaroni and cheese, spaghetti, garlic bread…) I don’t really allow myself to just cry. Eating forces me to use my mouth in a way other than contorting into “ugly cry face” (I am a victim, kids). A movie draws my attention away from my feelings and into a different world.

On Monday, I found myself standing in my parents’ kitchen holding three graham crackers coated in a generous layer of Nutella. I ate all three in about two minutes. I didn’t even give myself a chance to think about it. It was my first “cheat” – my first crack. I started to wonder if I could ever stop stress eating.

Immediately, I sat down to work on this article. I began to wonder, again, why I don’t allow myself to fully feel my emotions. Being emotional – that is, really feeling emotions fully – is uncomfortable and generally not very fun. Can I help myself to stop stress eating… by forcing myself to feel uncomfortable? Will it make me happier to stop stress eating… or will it make me unhappy?

What Works?

⦁       Talk it out. It really helps to have someone to talk to. Recently, this has been my boyfriend. Hearing his voice when I’m having a crying spell, or having him reassure me that I will get a job and that I’ve always made the right choices when it comes to my career, is the greatest comfort ever. Being able to tell him exactly why I’m upset forces me to really, really feel my feelings – rather than hide in my bedroom and eat them away.

⦁       Yoga? Okay, I’m gonna shatter some worlds here. Yoga is nice. It’s a nice way for me to start my morning. After my incident with the graham crackers Monday, I tried to do some yoga… and I ended up just getting really cranky about it. The last thing I wanted to see was a woman in a pink spandex jumpsuit doing yoga on the beach. It helps to relax me in the morning and generally keeps me relaxed… but if I’m already stressed, I want nothing to do with it. So yoga is a mixed bag for me right now.

⦁       Staying conscious. I got this idea from a friend. How often do I realize that I am eating due to stress versus actual hunger? Do I sometimes confuse my anxiety with hunger (or, do I justify my stress eating as legitimate hunger)? Society teaches us that we should keep our emotions in check – how many books have been written about women crying in the workplace? – so it has become easy for us all to hide our real emotions. Staying conscious of how we really feel about things can help us stop stress eating, seems to be my logical thought. Part of this, for me, is journaling. Writing down what I feel, when I feel it, and potential reasons for it, helps me get back in tune with my real emotions… so I can feel them, rather than eat four pieces of peanut butter toast.

Final Thoughts

A huge part of this challenge for me is increasing my self-awareness. As a writer, I tend to be very observant of others and the environment around me, but not necessarily of myself. It is difficult to re-learn how to look at yourself, and how you feel and think, all in one month. This isn’t going to be a month-long process, just a one-month glimpse of a longer battle.

For the past week, I have been on edge – without my regular stress eating sprees, I’ve been forcing myself to actually feel, or to at least think things through thoroughly. But I don’t want to just force myself to feel, I want to address what it is that makes me choose food rather than my own thoughts. By confronting what it is about really feeling that I want to avoid, I will be able to more easily stop stress eating, because I’ll be addressing the larger, underlying issue. What is it about feeling emotions that makes us uncomfortable? And how can we change it?

If you’re taking on this challenge with me, how’s it going for you? What has been your greatest difficulty? How have to dealt with the temptation to stress eat? 

Remember when you were little and you came down with a cold? Mom or Dad would make you soup, tuck you into bed, and feed you medicine. Well, now you’re on your own, and chances are when you are hacking all over place even your best friend won’t want to get near you. What to do!?

First things first…if you wake up in the morning feeling like total crap, give yourself a sick day. We have a tendency to push ourselves to the limit in college, but remember: even big corporate offices give sick days, and that’s for a good reason. If you try to keep going like normal, chances are you’ll make yourself even more sick, thus forcing you to possibly miss even more time than if you just took it easy early on. Obviously if you have an important exam or test you may have to suck it up and go to class, but otherwise, just stay in bed.

Make sure to sleep in and get some extra rest–close the blinds and don’t turn on the TV (not yet, at least!). When you feel like you can’t sleep anymore, take a hot shower. Sudacare makes these great tablets that you stick on the floor of your shower; they react with the hot water to make a really nice steamy vapor that opens up your sinuses (and calms you down). Read More »

If you are anything like me – fabulous, sexy, hilariously funny, and just about perfect – then you are also trying to balance your party life with your staying-healthy life. You workout hard every morning, eat salads with the dressing on the side and always (always) order diet soda.

But you also like to party. Like really party.

After all, we are in college. And despite what our parents say, the biggest part of college life happens to include a giant pitcher of beer….or Long Island Iced Tea.

Unfortunately, though, staying out and drinking Miller all night doesn’t allow for 9am pre-class workouts the following morning. So, what is a girl like you (or me) supposed to do?

Give up drinking? Hell no.

Give up our super skinny, super cute jeans? I get teary-eyed just thinking about it.

Lucky for you, I spent my first two years of college (and an extra 20 pounds) figuring out the perfect balance to keep you in those hot jeans (until you find someone at the bar to take them off, of course). Read More »