Unfortunately, if you spend all your time in a sedentary position, snacking to kill boredom and keep yourself awake, you’re body will have no choice but to store the extra caloric energy as fat. When it comes to weight gain, all you need to worry about is whether the number of calories you expend is greater than the number of calories you ingest. In order to not gain weight, you need to burn more calories than you eat.

Making sure you hit the gym a couple of times a week (4-5 times would be ideal) for at least a half hour is a great way to jumpstart your metabolism and burn some extra calories. But when you can’t make it to the gym there are ways to make sure you’re still being active and moving around—even on the busiest of schedules.

1. Take 10,000 Steps A Day. Invest in a $5 pedometer (a little clip-on beeper that measures how many steps you take in a day) and track yourself. You’re probably only hitting between the 2,000 and 4,000 mark. Every week, increase this number by 2,000 until you reach the 10,000 per day goal. Then maintain, and watch the lean muscle build and the pounds drop. A good way to increase the number of steps you take is to take opportunities to go out of your way: walk your errands, use a bathroom on a different floor, make multiple trips to get your laundry.

2. If you literally only have twenty minutes to devote to physical activity, try running stairs in your dorm, or doing a bit of yoga (possible in even the tiniest of dorm rooms). Strenuous cardio wakes you up and gets your blood pumping, giving you a nice flush and allowing your body to burn some of the extra energy it has sitting around. Stretching exercises, like beginner’s yoga and pilates allow your muscles to extend and relax, increasing oxygen flow to your whole body and building lean muscle mass.

3. In the most urgent of scenarios, where you really just have a couple of minutes to do something active, get down on the floor and do situps and pushups. Lifting your own body weight it a great way to get toned without bulking up, and you can adjust your movements to target different areas of your stomach, back, butt, and arms. Take a couple minutes to learn the proper form (you don’t want to hurt your back or neck by doing these moves incorrectly), and you’re all set to go!

[Photo courtesy of flickr.]

Yum.

Well, Dr. Oz has a daughter and she is awesome. She also happens to be an expert in healthy living in college and shares her expertise with you in her book, “The Dorm Room Diet.”

The Freshman 15 has no chance when you have Daphne Oz on your side.

She will be guest blogging with us this week and sharing great tips for surviving the cafeteria and fitting workouts in between all that partying studying.

If you are struggling with the free ice cream in the caf., stick around – Daphne’s got your back.

Between the late night pizza runs, pre-football game beer runs and the inability to find anything remotely healthy and appetizing in the cafeteria, avoiding the Freshman 15 is harder than anyone thought.

And, without mom and dad making you those well balanced dinners like the old days, staying healthy doesn’t get all that easier as the college years go on, either. I tried it every year I was in school, but all I knew how cook was Mac and Cheese and leftovers of Chinese take-out.

And soon my fat jeans became my only jeans and my immune system went into shock.

Enter, The Dorm Room Diet, a new book by Daphne Oz; daughter to Oprah’s favorite doc, Mehmet Oz. Daphne, who struggled with weight issues all her life, is a sophomore at Princeton and chock full of great ideas to maintaining a healthy lifestyle in the dorms.

Her ideas are sometimes obvious, sometimes not what you want to hear, but always guaranteed to keep you healthy and happy, even after a rough night on the town.

Daphne’s book is entertaining, witty and outlines a plan that includes healthy eating, exercise and vitamins. The perfect combination to keeping healthy in college. She’s both understanding and forgiving, for example:

Experts agree that the important thing is calorie intake over several days, not just one meal. So don’t be too hard on yourself if today was especially trying on your waistband; just get back on track tomorrow.

This book is definitely a must-have for all college women; if not to lose weight, at least as a guide to keep us all healthy as we stay up way too late, drink a little too much, and navigate the cafeteria (or student union food courts) for something to eat.