The College Diet

I promised everyone that I would post some better dieting tips, since most dieting plans are simply just unreasonable. However, instead of teaching you how to "portion" (I still think this is a myth), how to "reduce calories" and how to lose weight - I am going to teach you how to save money, something more important, I think. There are five important staples in the College Diet - all very essential for a successful college experience.

• Coffee/Redbull (Well Just Caffeine in General) - There is really only one way to make it through a paper, a night of studying or to stay awake long enough to get extra partying in on a Friday night - caffeine. When you start to feel your eyelids weighing themselves down, attempting to force you into sleep, just drink more caffeine. Sleep is only necessary after college, there is really no way to fit in partying, video games, movie watching, concerts, football games, basketball games and homework without losing tons of sleep (studies saying loss of sleep during college can reduce life expectancy are just stupid). So there is a simple fix, fill in sleep with caffeine. Since Redbull isn't cheap and we are all broke, there is also a drink known as Rhino. Rhino is a much cheaper version of Redbull (MUCH CHEAPER) which tastes very similar and gets the job done (great for Jager bombs, since you are drunk anyway and won't notice any taste difference!).
• Spaghetti - None of us have any money, and if you do - stop reading this blog and go buy a personal trainer or something because you obviously don't need my help. Anyway, something that is perfect for college life is spaghetti. It costs like 1-2$ per box of spaghetti or linguine or rigatoni or whatever etti, ine, or oni noodles you prefer. It is also really inexpensive to buy marinara sauce to top these delicious carbohydrates. And that is also why they are such an important staple - carbs. What better way to prepare for exams and the day than cheap and delicious carbs. My roommate successfully eats like six boxes of spaghetti a day and he is always full of energy (it could just be that he is an idiot, but I am going to go with the spaghetti).
• Chicken - Spaghetti can't be the only thing in your diet because you must have some protein in your diet. Frozen chicken breasts are the perfect solution, cheap, delicious, high in protein and low in fat. The only problem is once you eat your 178th chicken breast in one semester, it doesn't seem to taste like chicken anymore - more like tofu or soy because the flavor is just blehhh. However, there is a fix for this. Hot sauce, chicken seasonings and more hot sauce. Which brings me to my next staple...
• Hot Sauce - There isn't much I really need to say about this necessity... it is just awesome. Hot sauce can make boring chicken better, pizza taste better, rice taste better... the list just goes on forever really. (Crystal hot sauce is a very good choice, not too hot and full of flavor).
• Natty Light - This beer is incredibly cheap and I like the taste (well sort of)! You really can't go wrong when you can purchase thirty of these beers for between 11.99$ and 13.99$... you really can't beat that with any other beer (except for Keystone which kind of tastes like metal). Since you can't really go through college without drinking about twelve hundred or so beers, Natty Light should become a staple in every College home, apartment or dorm. So take my word for it, once you have a few, you really won't notice the difference in taste between this and a PREMIUM!(not really, all American yellow beers are crap) Bud Light. It is also low in calories!

It really is not easy to eat healthy in college, since healthy foods are usually more expensive and more difficult to prepare. When time and money are an essence, take my advice and stock your place with spaghetti, natty light, frozen chicken, coffee and hot sauce. You won't be disappointed, and you can just run off the extra calories at the gym - because you are obviously going, doesn't every college student? And you can use this calorie calculator to see how far you must run to beer off the seventeen Natty Lights you drank the night before. Diet complete.

Also... look into buying a Natty Caddy

Plus I found this new blog on dating advice from women for men... seems pretty funny so far, this post was pretty funny (it was too long so I haven't read it all yet, but she called the post Kardashian sized, big butt, get it? funny right...) Anyway, I figure a lot of College students really need dating advice so I think my next post will be about the - I don't want to date you, I just want to "hang out" until we can't have sex and just be friends anymore, that pretty much every college male employs at one point or another.

Testing Tips - http://healthylifetips.tumblr.com

So recently I added a few blogs to my blog roll, one of them being The Healthy Life Tips blog. I was reading over this blog and noticed it is similar to my blog, since it gives you life tips. Then I realized that was about the only similarity that was involved. This blog was not funny, the tips were very different, nothing involving organization or life effectiveness. So i had an idea, I would try out a few of these tips and share my experiences.

• Yoga - So I sat on my floor, yoga position, ready to "develop self-focus, control and body awareness." I lasted about 17 1/2 seconds before my ADD kicked in when I heard something funny on T.V. So I decided to try again, with the T.V. off this time. I got into position and realized that my legs just did not work quite like the lady in the picture, so I decided to give up. Yoga sucked, I decided it just isn't for everyone, much like exercise and other healthy life choices. Just kidding, everyone should exercise - yoga is just dumb.
  
  
• How to Lose Weight in Seven Easy Steps - The first step was confidence - I had that one completely under control. I just said loudly to myself, "I'M GONNA DO THIS!" Confidence - check. Step two, goal-setting. They write that setting a realistic goal is very important, something very achievable is best since you won't become discouraged. So I did just that, I set a realistic goal - lose one pound in the next week. This is very reasonable I think. Step three, limiting calorie intake. How much should I limit? So I decided removing one cookie and one beer a day would reduce my calories by almost 200. Perfect. Step four, remove junk food. I skipped this step - just not plausible. The next step was planning my meals - this is easy enough right? There is never an issue with scheduling as a College student. So i set up a schedule - Breakfast - most likely skip it, no time. Lunch - sometime between 11am and 4pm depending on classes and whether or not I skipped breakfast. Dinner - sometime between 5pm and 9pm depending on lunch. Second dinner - between 10pm and 3am, depending on whether or not Panda is having there late-night buffet and whether or not I have been drinking. The next step was reducing my portions, I decided this was also not possible - I decided to give up, this weight loss thing sucked too.
  
  
• Sauna Health Benefits - So I decided to try this sauna thing, I turned my bathroom into a sauna using the shower. This may seem implausible, but can someone please tell me where to find an actual sauna? They aren't exactly common. This seemed to be going well as I sat on a chair in my bathroom with steam swirling around me. However, three problems arose - the smoke alarms were set off outside, I got really hot, and our magazines got really soggy and wrinkly. My room mates weren't very happy about my sauna idea, so I decided to write this one off as a fail as well.

So I came to one conclusion - healthy living is really tough. I give tons of props to those able to "adjust food portions" (I quote it because I still think this is a myth, who eats those ridiculously small portions, especially when supersizing is only like 30 cents, seriously... seriously). Also, I was completely unable to find any benefits from Yoga and I still believe that those people doing yoga out on the mall of UMD or at yoga classes, are just pretending something is actually happening. I would much rather watch Daniel Tosh or South Park to relax, laughter is the best medicine remember! So I plan to give you guys much more reasonable tips, things that are truly possible to accomplish. Tune in next week for my next attempt at following another blog's tips and explaining why they are just unreasonable...

also watch this, it's funny... kind of how my stomach acted when I attempted smaller portions... it wasn't very willing to accept it.

Organization - Never Necessary Until it is Necessary

First off, instead of a motivational poster - I just want to say that I finally got around to attempting an Xtranormal.com cartoon to add to this post, so please let me know if it sucks or not, thanks.

So I have this really, really, really big problem (I don't actually think I can truly represent the true bulk of this problem with words, so I will leave it at that). Imagine this - every morning you wake up, the sun is bright and beautiful and immediately you are in the best of moods. You shower, the water is a perfect temperature, warming and relaxing every part of your body. You leave the shower feeling clean and totally refreshed. I check the clock, for once I am on time and everything is going perfectly - NICE. I make a boisterous breakfast worthy of at least a king or four and I continue to just feel freaking awesome. I gather my books for class, and I grab my laptop and toss everything into my backpack. I am ready to go! Or so I think, keys? UMD ID card? Wallet? None of them are anywhere to be found. Excellent, I have an extra six whole minutes until I need to leave for class - of course I can find them right? You have to be kidding... I need three days to find the things that I lose (seeing as my room looks something like a post nuclear holocaust, riddled with clothes, books, papers and other miscellaneous objects). I look around for twenty minutes, no luck. Screw it, I will find them later I think and I scurry off to class, late again....

Does anyone else have this problem? I know I am not the only one - not everyone can be perfectly organized like that perfect person who is just perfect and neat and organized (bahh I hate those people). Okay back to my point, plenty of people have this kind of problem. I propose a few fixes for this type of problem.

• The Back-up Wallet - Okay, so you are the guy that leaves his wallet in the jeans he drunkenly wore last night. These jeans are now somewhere completely lost to all mankind (under your bed, bottom of the hamper, in your room mates room, etc.). You have no chance of finding the damn thing before your class starts or before you become so hungry that you eat your own fingers (and you can't cook dinner either because you have been too lazy to go to the grocery store for the last four days). Simple fix, the back up wallet. This guy contains the bare essentials that we need for survival as college students. Money - somewhere between the three dollars needed to buy 3 tacquitos from 7-11 and twenty dollars to buy a lot more tacquitos. This wallet also contains something like a dominoes gift card (or subway if you are the healthy type). Now if you are as bad as me, this wallet will contain another essential - the backup swipe (Student ID).

• The Back-up Swipe - Throughout my life at Maryland, I have lost somewhere around... twelve to fifteen swipes (I can't be sure because I often find lost swipes and then re-lose them). Therefore I have found it has become very important for me to have backups ready. When I am late for class, swipe is nowhere to be found and time is of the essence, I can simply grab my backup until the original is found. (and hope that I don't lose this one too).

• The Special Spot - Now for a chance to NOT lose everything in the first place. Think of this - everything that is important for daily function, is always in the same spot. Go to Target and buy one of those sticky 3M hook thingamajiggys and stick it somewhere in your room - we will name it "The Key Hook." Now whenever your keys leave your pocket or purse or man bag (I won't judge) you can put them on this hook and you will never again lose them. Now, somewhere on your desk create a cellphone/wallet/ID/(whatever else you carry) friendly environment. This could be just empty space, a spot on a shelf, or a special little station to store all of this stuff. You should also find a way to route a charger for your cell phone as well. This will help make sure that you don't lose your phone because it is off charging somewhere random in your house or apartment.

Not only will you feel more organized, you won't keep losing your shit. Can you imagine that? No more lost phones, no more lost keys, no more lost wallet - a dream come true. My room mates always complain about my things being scattered across our apartment, a phone in this corner, wallet in this corner, hat under the couch, and more. If I could impliment these exact ideas - none of this would ever happen. I'm trying, eventually I will get into a routine and life will be more simple.... trust me... Have faith in me (cuz I don't).