Guide to Healthy Living

 

So, make any New Year’s resolutions for this year? Did they involve actually working out from time to time? Well, you are not alone. This time of year, college students around the world take some time to desperately lose some of those holiday pounds before Spring Break. It’s just finding the motivation to actually get up and do something that’s the trick this time of year. It's cold, it gets dark at what seems like 3 pm, and we're starting a new semester full of classes. Not a time when it’s easy to put on workout clothes and go running when you could be under a blanket, drinking hot chocolate and putting off your Anatomy homework. Need motivation to leave the blanket? Well, for starters, check out the library's new Information Wall display! It features the “New Year, New You” display, that includes several books about exercise and healthy eating, and some of those handy inspirational quotes that everyone pretends don’t work, but actually totally do. To go along with this display, I have found some resources right here at the library to help you keep that resolution, and have a healthy (or at least, healthier) semester!

The Dorm Room Diet [RA777.3.09] is a book about creating a healthier lifestyle in a college setting. The book deals with typical college issues involving food and exercise, mostly about getting fit and healthy, but also touches on things like eating disorders and self-worth issues. It gives tips on good exercise habits, easy ways to change your daily routines to make them more active and healthy, and new food to try to substitute for ones that are less than healthy. While it tends to focus on students just starting college, it’s a good read for any college student who wants to get healthier, without feeling like they’re being lectured at.

Want to give the whole internet thing a try? Check out  the University of Michigan's CampusMindWorks Nutrition site, where you can look around the page and learn about nutrition and healthy eating in college (again, but now online!) in a more intellectual way, giving straight forward information about nutrition and wellness, and how to make smart eating choices as a college student. It goes through a lot of problems that college students  have with healthy living, like finding a consistent eating schedule, and making time to get healthy foods, not just whatever you can find. It even gives you links to other websites to help you keep track of calories, and get more information about general health and fitness. So check it out, and see how much it can help you!

 

Now, you might be saying to yourself, “I don’t want to give up my cheeseburgers and double chocolate chip cookies! Eating them three times a day is how I operate! It’s the American way!”  Well, don’t panic. If you watch the short film Portion Size Me [ DVD TX370 .P67 2006], a study of healthy fast-food choices, you can see that you don’t have to give up all your guilty pleasure foods, you just have to limit them! Based on the hit documentary that came out in 2004 (about a filmmaker who ate nothing but McDonalds for 30 days, supersizing every time someone asked if he wanted his food supersized), Portion Size Me takes two kids who pledge to eat only fast food for 30 days, but instead of eating tons and tons of it, they eat smaller portions in proportion to their body weight. The film shows that eating so-called unhealthy foods is alright, as long as you don’t get that giant order of fries you have been eying. It proves you can have the best of both worlds, the yummy foods, but without the not so yummy calorie intake.

 

Still looking for more books about healthy living in college? Then you might want to check out The Smart Student's Guide to Healthy Living [RA 777.3.S63]. This book doesn’t just give you tips on better living, it also gives you recipes made for dorm life, real actual foods, without ramen or toast or anything! It all sounds tasty and pretty easy to make, and will be a lot more productive than that time your neighbor set her microwave on fire trying to make Easy Mac, and your whole building had to be evacuated for an hour. It also moves on from food and exercise and goes into organization and stress relief, as that can also affect your general health, giving tips on how to stay motivated, and how to stay on schedule. It has a list of easy ways to relieve stress, everything from forgiveness to car washing to snowball fights. It deals with students' emotional and financial problems, as well as their physical ones. Take a look, and see how carving a pumpkin or making your own chicken and dumplings can save your collegiate future (or something).
 

Any of that sound interesting? Well it’s a brand new year, and it’s time to get out there! We have an entire gym we can use for free, fun work out classes, basketball courts in the inside, and plenty of healthy food options. So stop reading this rambly blog of mine and get out there! I promise, whatever show you're watching, you can watch it online with less commercials later, get going! You won’t regret it (but you might want to get on that Anatomy homework, might regret skipping that)!

CP