recipes for a girl in college?! help help help!!

[kgarabedian]

Hello fit bit friends!! I got my fit bit for christmas and I cannot put it down. The only problem is I am at my university and the dining halls are always just a powerhouse of unhealthy. While I am usually surrounded by some of my favorite and very unhealthy foods, it is so tempting to veer off my healthy habits and just have pizza or fries and what not! What do I do! Any healthy but surprinsgly yummy dining hall secret recipes?!? 

 or snacks to eat in the dorm room when i get the college munchies?

[welt]

If you can have a crockpot in the dorm get one.  One of my favorite recipes is:

cut fresh green beans

whole smoked turkey wing

chopped onions

diced red skin potatoes

balsamic vinaigrette dressing and water

seasoning to taste (crushed red peppers, pepper, garlic, cayenne pepper, etc.)

Place all ingrediants in crockpot on high for 4 hours.  At that time the meat should fall off of the bone (remove bones), turn pot down to low and cook for another 2 - 4 hours.  That is a healthy pot of food to eat off of all week. 

If you order alot of pizza, order thin crust with nothing but tons of veggies.

If you have a microwave in your room, stock up on frozen mixed veggies and season with balsamic dressing.

good snacks include:  turkey sticks, fruit (honey crisp apples and peanut butter) and veggies. 

And drink plenty of water (add lemon for flavor).

All of this is easier said than done, I do some of it most of the time but not all of the time - not living in dorm either.  Good Luck!!

[smhermione]

I still have a month a year when I'm relying on dining hall food while I work on my master's and it is VERY difficult to make good choices at the dining halls.  A couple of things that helped me was looking up the nutrition facts for the food they are serving (if they don't post this information, they should have this available for you if you ask.)  There should be some healthy choices, the problem is choosing those consistantly when 1) there are tons of delicious, unhealthy options and 2) you get so ridiculously bored of the same foods everyday!  Just remember, you can have some of the unhealthy foods on occaision as long as you manage your portions.

I also benefitted from having breakfast in my dorm room every morning.  If you have a bowl of cereal, milk and coffee (I brought my Mr. Coffee machine) it should be much lower calories than the breakfast sandwiches, biscuits and gravy, mochas/lattes etc. that they have at the dining hall (and much cheaper).

Good luck!  Eating healthy on a college campus is truly a challenge!

[MRose]

This was the bane of my existence when I was in school! I just graduated, and my husband is still in school, so here is what we often did:

Whenever possible, we got fruit instead of the rice/fries/mystery slop they had. If you MUST get the pizza or burger (we've all had those late-lab-nights and wanted pizza for breakfast, I totally get it), take at least the top bun off of the burger, don't get mayonaisse, blot off any grease, and eat as little of the crust as possible. Get a salad or fruit as a side. I often went through our cafeteria sandwich lines and got just the grilled chicken, or deli meat and veggies. My campus dining hall was kinda weird, and often pretty gross, so I learned that you can make a salad a lot of different ways 😛 A lot of the time, if they are doing ethnic food of some sort, it is healthier, at least in part. You can get the veggie medley and opt to pass on the rice and eggrolls, and grab extra water or a reward lemonade. Let yourself have that "cheat day," though. It will not only help ease the cravings for that extra, unattended-and-lonely-looking cookie if you know you can have one every now and then, but having the occasional cheat day keeps your body from going into "starvation mode."

What really helped me the most in school was running. While treadmills aren't my favorite thing (I prefer to walk/run on the track), seeing the calories on a treadmill or elliptical machine really made me stray from the pizza and sweets because of how much time was spent away from the books and on the machines in order to curtail yesterday's chicken nuggets. Also, the more you move, the less that stuff will seem appealing anyway! Haha. One more rule that I set: Finals week is fair game. Do what you have to do to keep your studies up, and good luck with your schooling! It is really hard to eat right and exercise in school, I know! But habits that you set throughout school help in a lot of ways... the Freshman 15 is nothing compared to the Cubical Life 25. You can kick it before it even comes your way!!