hopeasfro

Hi and welcome. If you’re new to the blog, it’s Hopeasfro and it centres around Lifestyle Art and Literature. This post is on the lifestyle segment.

Life on Campus is a new series that’s about living as a student on campus. I’m going to be touching on things such as spending, saving, studying and lifestyle changes as we go into it. There are few people who have always been living in bubbles (not their fault! ) and come into uni like ‘what’s going on?’, if you’re like that, then these series is for you. Or if you want to learn some tips, for you too.

Don’t skip meals

School requires almost every part of you, including your time. Skipping meals can become a habit, especially if you’re like me, that loves finishing up what’s being done before going to the next task. In a year, I lost up so much weight. Apart from risking being under weight, I risked falling sick. It might not look like it, but your body is taking too much.

I only got to know this when I stood in front a mirror. Dang I was skinny! I didn’t really feel hungry anytime I didn’t eat ’cause my stomach got smaller.

What I did to stop skipping meals

We are all about healthy living, right? And we’ve all come to the conclusion that there’s no point skipping meals, right? I mean, no one intends to faint in a pile of homework, at least not me.

I became very serious with mealtime : This meant setting reminders on my phone. I assigned specific times to eat and that includes getting up in the morning so I have a lot of hours to space my meals in-between. This includes eating three times a day and taking light snacks between.

This does not mean the three main meals were large, or just a chunk of carbohydrate, I became more specific with the nutrients I was taking. A balanced nutrition is key to staying healthy.

I downloaded a fitness app. Currently, I’m using myfitnesspal and I’ve been loving it. On the app I have a sort of diary where I can write down the meals I’ve had, the snacks I had and also the amount of water I took. It can also calculate how much calories you’ve lost in a day (that’s if you connect it with your step tracker).

After inputting the meals I had, it then calculates how much calories I’ve taken and compares it with my daily nutrition goal, apart from this, I get a rough picture of my nutrient intake. One good thing about myfitnesspal is that it has data for not just popular foods but less popular ones like indigenous afro-carribean foods.

I set up bodygoals. Now, It’s perfectly OK to be slim and equally OK to be plump. However, it’s not OK to be underweight or overweight, if we’re being real. I’m slim and I love it that way. However, during that period I lost considerable amount of weight and I was in the brink of being so unhealthy. In fact, I looked unhealthy, stressed, I just looked like a mess! What I did was look up healthy looking pictures of me and others, and sought to get to that look. However, I was being realistic. Can you be that size if you take care of yourself better?

Set up a diet timetable. I drew up a timetable of foods I could be eating to meet up with my daily nutrient goal. As a student in campus, you can be tempted to just eat anything.

Well, while some foods are super healthy, others add nothing much to your body, they just take up space. So, I had a mental note or list of foods I could eat, that I ticked off when I was going to get food or eat out.

So that’s it guys for this, there will be more to come later on. Remember y’all it’s not advisable to skip meals as that’s what gives you part of energy to study. Also, be very careful on what you eat, every food you eat should serve a purpose, that is giving you the needed nutrients.

If you have questions or comments, feel free to comment down below and I will see to that.

Have a nice day!