Starting diet but exams approaching..

Alessandra

Hi, I'm looking for a bit of advice. I want to change my eating habits and lose some weight and be healthier in general for the summer. I am rather fit, go to the gym and cycle to college everyday. I allowed my weight to creep up last year and am finding it really hard to get rid of what I have gained. I have exams coming up soon and really don't have time for more excercise. It would be great if you could give me some tips on how I could go about changing my eating habits. When I get stressed around exam time, when upset I crave sweet things. However if I get into a routine and eat healthily I have previously lost over 3 stone and kept it off until now. Motivation and energy levels are a real problem fro me now with my finals approaching but I fear if I don't get on top of it now it'll never happen. I have started eating a breakfast of cereal and fruit, a salad for lunch, chicken and rice and veg for dinner. I also have found that by eliminating bread from my diet I feel much better. Would sticking to this sort of plan be enough? Should I be doing crunches at night as well. Any comments and advice would be greatly appreciated

CerebralCortex

Alessandra wrote:

Hi, I'm looking for a bit of advice. I want to change my eating habits and lose some weight and be healthier in general for the summer. I am rather fit, go to the gym and cycle to college everyday. I allowed my weight to creep up last year and am finding it really hard to get rid of what I have gained. I have exams coming up soon and really don't have time for more excercise. It would be great if you could give me some tips on how I could go about changing my eating habits. When I get stressed around exam time, when upset I crave sweet things. However if I get into a routine and eat healthily I have previously lost over 3 stone and kept it off until now. Motivation and energy levels are a real problem fro me now with my finals approaching but I fear if I don't get on top of it now it'll never happen. I have started eating a breakfast of cereal and fruit, a salad for lunch, chicken and rice and veg for dinner. I also have found that by eliminating bread from my diet I feel much better. Would sticking to this sort of plan be enough? Should I be doing crunches at night as well. Any comments and advice would be greatly appreciated

http://rheumatic.org/sugar.htm
Should be motivation to give up the sugar.

brianthebard

Yeah I think that's enough. My finals are coming up soon as well. I want to keep going to the gym as much as possible but these exams come first. Personally the most important thing is you aren't stressing out about anything else-there'll be enough stress from the exams! Your diet looks ok for now, and if you have more energy that's also good. I'm treating this period as a practise or warm up for the summer, when I will have more time to look after my diet and exercise, would that work for you?

justsomebloke

also read the stickies there is losts of info there about how to structure a proper eating plan.

especially pay head to the point about eating around 5-6 smaller meals a day instead of just 3, as this will help give you sustained energy through out the day and so you might not be as hungry thus lessening the amount of crap you eat.

I remember when I was in college I use to eat a lot of crap around exam time thinking that the sugar would help keep my focus up:rolleyes: where in fact it was the sugar crashes that where causing me not to be focused in the first place, and a decent healthy eating plan which gave me more energy throughout the day would of been more beneficial to me

Dr4gul4

so that why i nvr did so well at my engerlish all those redbull and lucozades never help'd me at all

tinkerbell

Hey Alessandra, I'm in the same boat as you. Got big exams coming up so haven't been able to go to the gym for the last two weeks but I am still eating healthily. What I have done is stocked up on fruit and brown bread (I'm only eating the brown bread freshly baked from a bakery, rather than sliced pan) and the like. I also gave up chocolate and sweets for lent and found that once ya get over the first few days of not eating it, it's much easier than that.

I'm not really a believe in doing crunches unless you have a flat stomach because you won't see the muscles there anyway unless it's completely flat. So try and get some exercise in regardless. Go for a walk in the evenings since the weather is so nice (this is what I'm doing now since I can't get to the gym).

As for eating - plenty of fresh fruit and veg. Switch to wholegrain rice and wholewheat pasta. What about your salad at lunch? Is this loaded with dressing? Get rid of the dressing. Personally I'm not a fan of salads as I don't eat them with a dressing and I find that they make me more hungry than before so I tend to avoid them.

Good luck in your finals! Maybe when you feel like you need to snack, buy a bag of brazil nuts / pistachios / walnuts / cashews. Good for you but keep them to a minimum, so only eat a few at a time.

Sleepy

What do you do in the gym? Maybe a shake-up of your workout routine would help?