In Moderation

Maintaining a healthy lifestyle is really hard. It really is a difficult task and I understand why most diets don't last very long. 

Maintaining a healthy lifestyle in college is even harder. There option of pizza and ice cream is available in dining halls every single day. Furthermore, if you just want a simple snack, the cafes on campus can always provide you with a wide variety of a chips and cookies. With that type of temptation constantly exposed to you, I found it almost impossible to be able to keep a clean diet. 

You need to read the nutrition labels. Trust me, you'd be surprise with some of the statistics on that lable. 

If you are craving a sugary drink, there are natural options. The grocery store offers freshly squeezed juice with no extra sugars. This is great alternative.

I find that the best option for food is to cook your own meals. This way you won't always be exposed to the junk food in dining halls. However, the downside with that suggestion is that this isn't a very viable option for freshmen in college. I can't even make a smoothie in the morning for myself; I have revert to pre-made ones in cafes. 

In addition, being in college also means staying up really late, which also means that you'll probably be craving junk food at 1 am. I think that not eating past 8 was actually one of the hardest part about my entire week.

On the bright side, I've felt energized all week. I haven't had any stomach aches from eating too much greasy food at all. In addition, everything I ate this week was also extremely easy to digest. 

It is almost always possible to find a healthy option in a restaurant (even McDonald's, the grilled chicken salad without dressing isn't all that bad); It is whether you choose to look for these options or not.

Eating healthy can be just as delicious as eating unhealthy. However, once in a while you do need to treat yourself. Don't deprive yourself from a brownie here and there.

Maintaining a healthy lifestyle will be much easier with a group of a friends. One of things I didn't mention in my daily updates was that I also went to the gym every single day. It was actually was pretty fun in the beginning of the week because all my friends went with me and we did group workouts together. However, near the end of the week, as homework picked up, fewer and fewer of my friends wanted to come along and by Thursday night, I ended up going by myself. Due to my diminishing motivation, I only ended up staying at the gym for 30 minutes. 

Variation is key, in both dietary habits as well as exercises. Like I said, by the end of the week, none of my friends wanted to go to the gym with me. However, they all had a change of heart after I suggested to go on a hike in Ithaca on Saturday.

I realized that the lifestyle changes I made were too drastic. I went from eating burgers, pizza, dumplings, quesadillas, etc. to essentially eating chicken salads everyday. I found that in order to reach an ideal healthy lifestyle, you need to slowly climb up and not just jump to your final destination (or else you'll just end up falling right back where you started).

And thus, I'm deciding to take a few steps back. I still want to try making adjustments to many of my old habits. For instance, I'm going to continue drinking water with fruits and chia seeds in it. However, for now, I'm still going to eat ice cream once in while; I'm still going to eat steak here and there; And during finals season, I can assure you that one of those late nights, I will be eating mozzarella sticks at 1 am.

However, with perseverance, the right mind set, and an enthusiastic group of friends, it is possible to live a satisfying yet clean and healthy life.