College students have so many responsibilities and so much pressure on them all the time. It’s one thing to keep your grades up and to keep yourself from being perpetually broke, and it’s another thing to do it without compromising your health. Indeed, all the stress and the busy lifestyle of a college student can make it easy to give in and eat fast food every day. Couple that with the lack of energy for hitting the gym and you have a recipe for disaster. Whether the product of that disaster is weight gain, illness, or crippling depression, if you don’t prioritize your health, it will start to affect your academic performance. Here are some low-effort ways to stay fit and healthy in college.
Shop for Your Own Groceries
If you want to make sure that you are always eating healthy, then you have to be the person who shops for all of your groceries. When you eat at the cafeteria or in restaurants, you never really know what all the ingredients are in your meals, or how many calories you are consuming. Plus, you will save a ton of money by shopping for your own food and preparing it yourself, rather than eating out all the time.
Take Yoga Classes
There’s a good chance that there is some kind of yoga class you can take on campus, and possibly even for free. It might seem like the last thing you have time for, but if you give it a try, you’ll find that it will actually enable you to have more time. That’s because yoga has an amazing way of relieving stress so that you can clear your mind and work more efficiently. If you’ve never tried yoga, you’ll be impressed with how much better you feel when you start to do it regularly.
Keep Snacks in Your Backpack
When you are in long lectures, and when you are in between long lectures, you are going to work up a very big appetite. It’s just normal that you will feel hungry most of the time. For this reason, you should always have healthy snacks that you keep in your backpack. Try to carry fresh fruit, carrot sticks, trail mix and granola whenever you can. This way you won’t be tempted to buy junk food from the vending machines and you won’t have to spend all day starving. You also want to keep a water bottle on you so that you can stay hydrated.
Use Your College Gym
Most colleges are equipped with some kind of gym that is available to the students on campus, which is just one of the perks of paying astronomical tuition rates. If you go to an expensive college, like University of San Francisco, then you should definitely take advantage of this perk. Also, if you have a hard time motivating yourself, then you should find a friend to go with you on a regular basis. This way you can push each other and have fun at the same time.
