HEALTH COLUMN

Okay. Everyone wants to stay healthy and look good, but making poor decisions about eating can affect your overall health and physique.

Granted, Temple’s cafeteria doesn’t exactly make healthy eating easy, with French fries, pizza and all kinds of delicious artery clogging desserts to satisfy your palate, but there are other alternatives.

Instead of grabbing a couple of slices of greasy pepperoni pizza, opt for a chicken salad. Better yet, try “Wellness Wednesdays” on Vic’s lunch line. He offers a plate of pasta, topped with broccoli, sun dried tomatoes and peppers. Although pound cakes and cookies seem to be the dessert of choice, try a variety of fruit instead.

If anyone has ever lived in the dormitories, particularly Johnson and Hardwick, you know that when one person becomes ill, so does everyone else. However, it has been medically proven that eating a lot of fruit and drinking plenty of water (that’s my next point) can offset viruses during the flu season.

Drinking plenty of water, in addition to wiser choices in eating, will aid you in your quest for healthy living. Water, as we have all been told, has many beneficial effects. Not only is it filling, so you’re ultimately eating less, but water also plays a substantial role in clearing up acne-prone skin (such as mine) by flushing out the body’s impurities.

The customary eight glasses of water per day may be a bit disheartening to some, but once it’s incorporated into your daily routine, it doesn’t seem like a task anymore.

Of course, no healthy lifestyle is complete without some form of daily exercise. The problem with exercise routines is that, oftentimes, it becomes boring and monotonous. Therefore, you have to find exercises that you enjoy doing, and create a routine that fits your lifestyle. It is definitely to your best advantage to exercise at the time of the day when you feel most energized.

Personally, I’ll never get up early in the morning before class to go and exercise because it’s not a realistic goal to set for myself. Once you’ve figured out what is realistic for you and what isn’t, then you should exercise around the same time everyday so your body will become adjusted to its new schedule.

Now, it usually takes about a month to see some results, so be patient. There will, however, be some immediate changes in your general mood and behavior. You will begin to feel better about yourself and you’ll have more energy to handle the many tasks of being a college student.

In the meantime, set small, realistic goals until you’ve worked your way up to a full exercise routine.

For instance, when you get back to the dorms, instead of taking the elevator, walk up or down the steps.

Another aspect of your exercise regime you should take into account is whether you want to exercise at home or the gym. Personally speaking, I have no desire to exercise at home, especially since I don’t have any exercise equipment. At bes, I may do a couple of hundred crunches, but that’s it. That is why there’s always the option of going to the gym, and we have an excellent exercise facility right on Main Campus. Regular trips to the Independence Blue Cross student recreation center is a great way to get in shape.

The IBC offers an indoor track for running, walking or jogging, and a host of cardiovascular and strength training machines.

Experts have proven that women naturally build muscle quickly, so to avoid the “bulky” look when using the weight machines, less is more.

Females should use less weight and do more repetitions. For those who are unsure about this, repetitions are the number of times a particular exercise is being done. For instance, if you are supposed to do three sets of ten, then you would be doing thirty in all.

Making a conscious decision to eat healthy and exercise regularly is not easy. And it’s even more difficult to maintain that lifestyle. But using the tips that were mentioned will ease the transition. A little rule I like to go by is the 80-20 rule. If you watch what you eat 80% of the time, the 20% of junk that you may eat won’t make much of a difference.