Healthy Eating Tips for Students
BY SYLVIA KOHL
College years may seem like the best time of one’s life – you meet new people, take part in wild parties, take up new activities and in general have more freedom than at any time before or after. It is, however, also rife with stress, crunch times and all-night exam preparation sessions – which are just some of the reasons why many acquire unhealthy eating habits when at college. At the same time, keeping your diet healthy and being mindful of how and what you eat can considerably improve your success at studying and lay foundations to a healthy lifestyle for which you will be grateful in the years to come. So how should a student go about it?
1. Start Your Day with a Good Breakfast
Breakfast is widely considered the most important meal of the day. By skipping it, you severely limit your ability to process new information throughout the day which is, of course, detrimental to your learning. Lack of time is no excuse – start getting up earlier and read up on some quick breakfast ideas.
2. Stock up on Healthy Snacks
When you are studying late or have too much on hand to spend time cooking or eating out, hunger always sneaks up on you unexpectedly. When you are tired the allure of a vending machine’s fare, chock full of corn syrup, sugar and fat, can become irresistible. However, if you keep healthy snacks like organic chocolate, nuts, dried fruits, granola or suchlike on hand, it will be easier to just dig into them.
3. Drink a Lot of Water
Optimal water intake for a grown human is about eight glasses per day; if you lead an active lifestyle, you may easily need twice as much. Coffee, tea, and sodas don’t count. In addition to generally being beneficial for your well-being, it helps you eat less. Most people eat much more than they need, and to a certain extent, it is caused by them not drinking enough water. So, by increasing your intake, you will take additional care of your waistline as well.
4. Eat Natural Whole Foods Whenever Possible
Processed foods you see everywhere today are specifically designed to provide immediate gratification, artificially sweetened, full of flavor enhancers and so on – but they possess very little regarding nutritional value. Natural whole foods may be harder to come by and more expensive, but they are full of nutrients (which means that you need to eat less) and are good for your health – which means that they are more of an investment than an expense.
5. Eat Less Sugar and Salt
Sugar contains a lot of calories but isn’t exactly rich in nutrients. It may provide a pleasant sugar high that can make you feel energized and ready to take on the world, but this feeling is fleeting and is soon replaced by its exact opposite – which means it is inefficient as well as instrumental in causing obesity and tooth decay. Salt is necessary for the functioning of our bodies, but not nearly in the quantities most modern people consume it. You see, both sugar and salt are rather hard to come by in natural conditions in which humans have evolved. Thus, our brains are hard-wired to eat them whenever we can find them, which plays a sick joke on our health in today’s world in which both are easily available.
Maintaining a healthy diet is important at any stage of life, but students are probably among those who can benefit most from it. By establishing healthy habits at this formative period, you have a chance of laying a sound foundation for your entire life.
Sylvia Kohl is an IT teacher with more than 8 years of professional experience. Her main spheres of interest are e-education and she convinced that learning process doesn’t stop after years in school and university.
