Here’s How to lose weight in college

on 16/04/2019

You open up lots of opportunities as soon as you begin with college life. Even though, eating healthy in college sounds like something nearly mythical, especially for those students living in a dorm. What you get there is fun and, sometimes, study sessions with friends. What does that mean? It’s simple. Dorm life (as well as apartment life) in college means parties till the dawn, late night snacks, processed food, ready-to-cook meals, caramel macchiatos, and pizzas. Salad? No, thanks, you are working too hard for this degree to get full from leafy food. What’s next?

As freshman year dictates, Beer Pong becomes the main game for most of us instead of sports. Mornings are the worst times, so you try to sleep the most of it and then dress up in up to five minutes and head to classes without breakfast. No time to cook, so you drink lots of coffee, smoke, and take advantage of chocolate bars from the nearest vending machine down the hall. In the common room, you play video games, and guess what’s the fuel for your heroes and war machinery - right, chips and cola. The result? Plus (you name it) dozens of pounds. Now you can say goodbye to finals bikini party this summer and quite certainly, cancel a couple of dates and start hating your reflection in the mirror. Dear, if you found at least a few words in this portrait sound like you, then you know it’s time to stop.

Being body-positive and thinking that this body is the image of healthy are two extremes. While seeing life in black and white is natural in your twenty-somethings, it is useful to practice mindfulness in everything you do and think. Especially when it comes to your health and body image. Avoid being too positive closing your eyes on health issues and too negative, to the point when you start hating your poor body that enables you to experience life in its variety of forms and feelings. Losing weight in college is a useful practice to begin a dialogue with your body rather than being careless and torturing it with loads of foods that do only harm. It is also an excellent chance to start being more organized and in charge of your life. If becoming thinner is something that will make you feel better physically and mentally, taking pride in your success, then a healthy college diet is something you should work on. Let’s see how you can lose weight while in college and maintain a healthy lifestyle after school.

 

Freshman 15 or Why You Gain Weight in College

 

Freshman 15 is a term used in the US for those excess pounds that you gain during your first year in college. While it is not particularly proved by surveys and studies that students get 15 pounds the first year in average, the expression “freshman 15” is popular and regarded as a common problem of the vast variety of students these days. If you are one of those who want to lose weight while in college, this easy guide is for you.

So, how to eat healthy in college? This is the question that most of us are concerned with because understand that, like the age-old adage says, “you are what you eat”. Honestly, some attributes of the college life certainly won’t do you good, like midnight pasta, alcohol gallons, the absence of breakfast and lunch, lots of sweet, sugary snacks and coffee supplements. It’s time to fight the foods that are killing you. After you leave college, it won’t be easier - things just tend to get worse because of the habits that you practice for years. Having said that, let’s start the new, healthy habits that make us beautiful and energetic!

The goal to lose weight helps not only to get rid of pounds that you hate. Regardless of your beliefs about what the body should look like, healthy college meals also bring benefit to lots of other areas. Here are the disadvantages that you fight additionally when you start eating healthy meals for college students:

• Digestion - we usually don’t talk about unpleasant things like bloating, constipation, diarrhea, nausea, hangover, throwing up. But if you have unhealthy eating habits, those symptoms are not uncommon to you. Want to forget about those? Eat healthily, and you will feel much better during the day.

• Skin - both for guys and for girls, acne, eye bags, spider veins, either oily or too dry skin, unhealthy skin tone, huge pores - are highly undesirable. Want to know the reason for those? You know it - alcohol, bad sleep, stress, unhealthy meals.

• Fatigue and depression -  the lack of energy for life mean that you don’t get enough nutrition with your food. Creative activities, fitness, meditation along with good food will bring you back on track.

 

Unlike most people still think, losing weight doesn’t mean eating less. While in college, you absolutely need the high rate of nutrients since your brain works actively and needs some excessive energy for your successful studies. If you don’t eat enough foods that transform into real energy in your body - you will feel stressed, and your body will work in a so-called emergency mode. That is good for a couple of minutes when you have to escape from a real threat to your life. But, when you constantly live in this mode for days and months, you gain weight. Meanwhile, your body organs start to drain, which means problems with kidneys, liver, blood sugar, blood vessels, and heart. You need to stop this tendency asap, that’s why you want to lose weight and eat healthy while in college.

Last but not least, we should say another word about alcohol. Wondering why you gain the unwanted weight and how you got that belly? You don’t even eat that much. It’s simple - remember your last booze night? How many beers or cocktails did you drink? Now take a look at our alcoholic beverages chart.

 

 

For comparison, one serving of minced beef (nearly 100 g) is worth 225 calories.

Now, what if we compare the numbers mentioned above to your daily calorie ratio? For an average man, it’s 2500 calories to maintain, and 2000 calories to lose weight. For women - 2000 calories to maintain, and 1500 calories to lose weight daily.

So, what if you drink five smallest glasses of beer (12 oz or 300 ml) a night? That would be 440 calories, almost a quarter of your daily calories rate to consume, while you don’t get any nutrients and don’t feel full after binge drinking. Girls, four Margaritas equal 1812 calories, that number exceeds your DAILY calorie rate, in case if you are planning on how to lose weight in college. If you have some snacks, coffees, and pizza that day, you might exceed that rate in three, four, five times. Now, it’s not surprising, where that belly, cellulite, and pimples are coming from.

How to Lose Weight in College

 

Sometimes you feel like in a never-ending battle. You try different diets, take all that your gym membership offers you, and when you step on scales, you see that things don’t change much. And after you lose three pounds, the next week you can gain all five. We know that it might seem unfair. Though, your body is not something you should combat. It’s something you should nurture and support.

Just think about it. Your body patiently endures all your diet and fitness experiments, all the junk food, alcohol and negativity that most of the students are generous with. Isn’t it enough to say “stop” and start loving yourself, at least, a little bit more? If you still find it hard to maintain motivation every day, we have collected a bunch of useful tips on how to lose weight in college.

Take a smart approach

Your plans on losing weight might be connected to your self-esteem. If you want to stay healthy and not to become a martyr of your stereotypes, just employ a more balanced, scientific approach to college dieting. Find out, how many calories you should consume daily, what nutrients and in which proportion should you receive. By doing so, not only you will feel much better but also your body will have the perfect shape.

Why do you need calories? They count as an equivalent of energy that your body gains. Workout exercises also use these units to measure how many calories you burn when you are active. To lose weight, just burn more calories than you consume each day. Another approach is to correct your BMI index.

BMI (Body Mass Index) = kg/m2 where kg is a person’s weight in kilograms and m2 is their height in meters squared. By calculating your body mass index, you can see whether your weight is considered healthy or you need to change your diet to feel and look better. Note that these measures don’t apply to athletes with increased muscle mass and pregnant women since their body proportion significantly changes during that period.

Underweight = <18.5

Normal weight = 18.5–24.9

Overweight = 25–29.9

Obesity = BMI of 30 or greater

You can find lots of diets all over the Internet. Yet, we highly recommend you to beware the ones that require eating less. Starving yourself is not healthy. Instead, you can eat more proteins to curb cravings and naturally increase metabolism (which means more burned calories). Thus, you can eat all that delicious seafood, chicken, cheesecakes all day without feeling guilty! Don’t forget to add some whole grain carbs, fruits, and veggies to supply the whole range of nutrients to your beautiful body. As you can see, eating healthy in college is easy, just take some time to create a meal plan and stick to it.

Lose weight in college: do’s and don’ts

 

To lose weight and stay healthy while in college, get used to making meal preps in advance. Creating a grocery budget for the week ahead also helps you to eat tasty and healthy while also avoiding to burn a hole in your pockets by buying countless snacks.

You can prepare healthy snacks for college that would be your lunch or instant starving helpers during study sessions. Those could be chicken sandwiches, salmon and cheese wraps, fresh salads, nuts, fruits. Drinking green tea increases metabolism, which also helps to lose weight in college.

There’s also one or a few places on campus where you can exercise for free. Grab a friend and make it fun in case if you feel too shy to do it on your own. This might be a great place to meet a new date!

Take care of yourself! Find clothes that look flattering on you and wear them every day. Don’t forget to snap a selfie every time you find a nicely-looking location with good lighting. On the contrary, old T-shirts ten sizes bigger than your actual size, unwashed hair, and ungroomed eyebrows, frankly, won’t boost your self-esteem.

Finally, to stick to healthy habits make friends with positive, empowering people that wake up the best in you. Friends who are always up to party all night long and then come back plastered at 11 a.m. might be fun to hang out with, but let’s be honest, they might also be toxic if you are striving for a better life.

College weight gain

 

Although it’s not obvious, the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development reports, that 8.4% of boys and 12.4% of girls in the US are underweight. For such students, when you enter your puberty, it sometimes feels even worse than being overweight. Because boys look weaker than their peers, and girls look less feminine than their classmates. Additionally, you might have health problems related to the lack of body mass, as well as the risk to make it chronic. All these facts lead to lower self-esteem. Ironically, it is much harder to gain weight for those who can’t, than to lose weight for those who struggle with excessive body fat index.

If you tried to eat a lot and to exercise strength and your booty is still hard to find on your body, it’s time to think about how to enhance your diet with nutrients. Junk food will neither turn into pounds on your hips nor will it do any good for your health either (the calories it has will simply go away fast and won’t deliver enough energy to your body). Better stick to whole foods rich in proteins that are easy to digest. High-carb and high-fat foods are also highly recommended to you.

It might be hard for you to eat a lot - that’s why you can also try sports nutrition - like gainers, protein shakes, energy bars.

Top Foods to Gain Weight in College

• Meat: the fattier, the better

• High-fat cottage cheese, yogurt, cream

• Oils and butter

• Whole milk

• Nuts, Trail mixes

• Dried fruit

• Whole grains

• Tubers: Potatoes and Yams

• Granola with nuts, fruits, honey, chocolate, milk

 

College student recipe: The Nutritional Lunch

 

This lunch recipe is extremely easy to make. It tastes awesome without reheating and doesn’t need to be stored in a refrigerator if you want to eat it later in the day. A great start for the day whether you want to lose weight or to gain some!

Hummus and Grilled Vegetable Wrap

 

Ingredients:

• 4 pieces of sheet pita (about 23cm diameter)

• 2 medium zucchini, cut into 1/2-cm slices

• 250g hummus

• 25g pine nuts, fried

• 55g spinach leaves

• 50g red onion, peeled, thinly sliced

• 1 medium bell pepper, thinly sliced

• 2 tsp olive oil

• Salt and freshly ground black pepper

• 25g fresh mint leaves, thinly sliced

1) Preheat the frying pan or sandwich maker on medium heat. Grease zucchini slices with olive oil both sides. Sprinkle them with salt and pepper. Cook about 8 minutes on both sides, until zucchini becomes slightly brown and soft in texture.

2) Lay pieces of pita sliced into serving pieces. Spread about 4 tablespoons of hummus over each one. Sprinkle one tablespoon of pine nuts over each one. Then add some zucchini slices, fresh spinach leaves, slices of bell pepper, some onion (optional), and mint leaves thinly sliced over each piece of pita.

3) Roll the pieces of bread wrap and cut in half diagonally. Your lunch is ready!

College Student Workout Plan

 

The myth about the “freshman 15” has stuck around in the minds of students. That’s why, they mostly believe that it’s almost impossible to lose weight in college. However, it is real! If you are one of those who believe that college student weight loss takes up too much time, we are going to prove the opposite.

Ones who have found their ideal college student workout plan, claim that keeping yourself in good shape and also maintaining a higher than average academic record is not that hard. Usually, fitness coaches would tell you that what you eat versus how much you exercise should relate nearly in a 50-50 proportion. Others assume that, due to the rule that you should burn more calories than you consume, you should eat less and exercise more. So not true! If you really want to find out how to lose weight in college fast, discover the benefits of high-intensity interval trainings (HIIT)!

You’ve probably been there before. You exhaust yourself with long and tiresome workouts and what you get is zero results. The weight stops on the numbers that it was a few weeks ago. So, what’s the reason? In actuality, it is not much of a secret. When you stress your boy too much and additionally, you don’t get enough nutrition, and you don’t lose weight. Your body works in an emergency mode and to keep you alive, and it won’t burn fat. That’s why taking breaks between pieces of training is extremely important if you want to lose weight in college.

Another reason for those who can’t lose weight is, surprisingly, the lack of food. If you don’t get enough nutrition, you won’t build healthy muscles and good shape. We recommend you to take some time on Sunday evenings or whenever you have a gap in your tight college schedule and make meal preps for the week ahead. By doing so, not only you reduce the time for cooking later in the week, but also you have more control over your nutrition plan due to your weight goals.

So, what’s the ultimate workout plan for a college student who wants to lose weight? Here it is.

College Student Workout plan to lose weight:

• Make the workout harder but shorter in time;

• Mix sets of cardiovascular activity and resistance (strength) in one training;

• Make sure you do jumping jacks;

• Then do some mountain climbers;

• Cardio can include running, cycling, running up and down the stairs;

• Typical strength exercises: squats, pushups, lunges;

• Burpees and squat jumps both count for both cardio and strength;

• Set your stopwatch for 30 seconds - that’s a set time for doing exercises;

• After you perform fast and intense sets for 30 seconds, rest for a similar amount of time;

• Change the set vs. rest time to 15/45 seconds or 20/45 seconds if it feels hard to make 30/30 seconds;

• Do the set/rest mix for a few minutes and work your way up to 10-15 minutes a time;

• Your college student weight loss plan for a day is done!

• Do it outside when the weather is fine;

• Repeat for a few times a week.

 

Remember, the intensity is more important than frequency! Make sure you are well-rested between the sets and between the daily workouts. Your metabolism will boost, which will burn the excess fat and keep you in good body shape. You will also feel more endurance. Your heart won’t race every time you climb a few stairs. Finally, you should also mind that abs are made in the kitchen. Develop a proper meal plan and stick to it. If you don’t feel like eating, try sports nutrition cocktails. They are easy to digest and have lots of proteins, carbs, and other useful elements to keep you fueled with energy, hydrated, and full.

 

How to lose weight in college without exercise

 

When you curl under the sheets in your dorm after the hard studying day in college, different thoughts are flowing through your mind. Sometimes, you feel like you are not being the one you can be or the one you always wanted to be. And in this flow, the days go on and on.

We know where you are coming from. We really do. And you know something? It’s okay for most teenagers to feel insecure. Try to take some time off your regular self-monologue and stop thinking of how to lose weight, though. Think about things like, who you are? What do you really like doing? What would you like to wear? Who would you like to chat with? These thoughts should be not based on your assumptions about self-worth. Just give yourself some freedom. It’s just a journey in your mind, so it’s absolutely safe, and no one will know.

When you have some ideas about what we’ve just mentioned, think of a plan on how you can reach it. Let your dreams become your goals. Because you can! To tell you the truth, we asked some real students about how to lose weight as a college student, and here’s what they said.

Most of the girls say that after their daily struggles with their own bodies, they finally came to realize that their size doesn’t define them. It’s just a number on the scales. Stop hurting yourself mentally. If you can’t be body-positive with the shape that you’ve got, for now, think of the ways how to lose weight in college without exercise. You can count calories in mobile apps, get some good sleep, reduce stress, eat whole food and lots of veggies - and you’ll see the result that you’ve been wanting for so long.

Some girls with an “obese” BMI live a full life more than any other girl - they can squat 400 pounds, run marathons, swim on long distances. The weight doesn’t define them in the way that it is common to believe. They are curvy and they love it! So stop noticing those blemishes and cellulite and think of amazing things that your body does without you even noticing it. It keeps you alive 24/7 performing billions of complex chemical and physical reactions that no scientists could replicate in our highly-technological times. So why don’t we just appreciate this magic that happens even when we are underestimating the power of our own, exceptional bodies. Turn your struggle with how you want to lose weight into a constructive dialogue with your physical self, and you will immediately see the improvement!