It’s so serious an issue, in fact, that US military leaders are now viewing obesity as a potential threat to our national security. As I wrote last week, obesity is the number one reason why applicants fail to qualify for military service, and it poses serious health problems within the services.

It’s a truly disturbing sign of how modern life, with all of its conveniences, can undermine health and happiness – and perhaps even national security…

How Food Culture and Obesity are Related

As British chef and food advocate Jamie Oliver explains in the video above, our food culture has changed so drastically over the last 30 years, a majority of young children of today do not know what fresh, whole food is.

They can’t identify foods, let alone figure out where they come from or how they grow.

He shows how the three aspects of the “food landscape,” home, school, and main street, have all abandoned real food in favor of quick, cheap, processed foods.

Three decades ago, the food available in each of these three areas was mostly fresh and grown locally. Now the majority of foods served, whether at home, in school or in restaurants, are highly processed foods, filled with sugars and chemical additives.

During that same time, childhood obesity has more than tripled. Now, one in three children aged 10 to 17 is overweight or obese.

Healthy Eating Starts at Home

Home used to be the heart of passing on food culture. This rarely happens anymore, and children are suffering the consequences.

Many parents don’t even know how to cook with fresh ingredients, because their parents had embraced the novel convenience of the TV dinner back in the 50s.

I’ve said this for many years, and it’s worth repeating many times over because it’s one of the main solutions to the obesity epidemic – cook your food from scratch, at home!

Many people are under the mistaken impression that cooking from scratch is an extremely complicated affair that takes lots of time and costs more than they could possibly afford.

Listen, that’s NOT necessarily true!

There are plenty of sources for simple recipes, many of which are free if you have access to the internet. In this previous article, Colleen Huber offers a list of helpful guidelines on how to cook whole food from scratch, while keeping your day job.

It does require some pre-planning in many cases, but remember that learning to plan your meals may actually reduce your stress levels rather than increase them!

Many people resort to fast foods and processed foods simply because they’re too frazzled at the end of their work day to figure out what to cook. Planning a menu and shopping ahead could actually turn meal time into a more relaxed time spent with family.

Also remember that whatever money you think you’re saving now by using processed foods, you’ll end up paying many times over later on when your health begins to fail.

Proper nutrition, consisting mainly of whole, fresh foods, really is your number one health insurance policy.

Likewise, children will not know which foods are healthy unless you, as a parent, teach it to them. Please, understand that poor eating habits at home, combined with poor food selections at school, may set your child up for long-term physical and behavioral problems.

According to a recent national study, preschool-aged children, in particular, reduce their future risk of obesity if they regularly engage in one or more of three specific household routines:

1.

Eat dinner together as a family
2.

Make sure your child is getting enough sleep
3.

Limit your child’s television viewing time

I would add ‘cooking whole foods from scratch’ to that short list.

School Lunches are a Prescription for Disaster

Ideally, schools should arm you with solid tools for survival and success. Alas, proper diet and health is not on the curriculum in most schools. At least not if you judge by the foods served.

Considering the fact that most children eat two square meals a day in school (breakfast and lunch), these meals are a vitally important consideration in the fight against obesity.

Altering school lunches CAN help diminish the obesity epidemic, as one Swedish study has shown. They eliminated all sweet buns, sweet drinks, and candy from school premises, and saw a 6 percent drop in obesity in four years. Behavioral problems have also been remedied by giving kids healthier lunches at school.

Unfortunately, the system is largely run by accountants, not food experts, and budgets are tight. The result is cafeteria food that consists of cheap, highly processed foods with a long shelf life. Many schools use little or no fresh foods at all.

This type of diet is loaded with sugars and unhealthy carbs, which also break down to sugar in your body.

In a misguided effort to make children drink more milk, many schools even offer sugar-laden, flavored milk products. This is foolishness at its finest, as pasteurized milk is more harmful than healthful, and these milk drinks are loaded with fructose, which is the major culprit for the obesity epidemic.

It’s easy to see that if you, as a parent, do not take the time to teach your child about proper, health promoting nutrition at home, they simply won’t learn it. And as Oliver states, every child needs to know how to cook 10 healthy dishes from scratch. It’s an essential life skill!

Fructose is the Leading Cause of Childhood Obesity

Although the American Beverage Association claims there is “no association between high fructose corn syrup and obesity,” a long lineup of scientific studies suggest otherwise. For example:

* Dr. David Ludwig of Boston Children’s Hospital did a study of the effects of sugar-sweetened drinks on obesity in children. He found that for each additional serving of a sugar-sweetened drink, both body mass index and odds of obesity increased in the children he studied.
* The Fizzy Drink Study in Christchurch, England explored the effects on obesity when soda machines were removed from schools for one year. In the schools where the machines were removed, obesity stayed constant. In the schools where soda machines remained, obesity rates continued to rise.
* In a recent study, 16 volunteers were fed a controlled diet including high levels of fructose. Ten weeks later, the volunteers had produced new fat cells around their hearts, livers and other digestive organs.

They also showed signs of food-processing abnormalities linked to diabetes and heart disease. A second group of volunteers who were fed a similar diet, but with glucose replacing fructose, did not have these problems.

Please understand that while there are many contributing factors, I am convinced that FRUCTOSE is the primary cause of the obesity epidemic in both children and adults.Sweetened beverages and processed foods are the main sources of fructose.

For an in-depth understanding of just how fructose is destroying your health, and that of your children, please watch this excellent video lecture in its entirety (part 1, and part 2). Dr. Lustig’s presentation on this subject really opened my eyes to this issue, and then Dr. Johnson, who is the chairman of medicine at the University of Colorado, reinforced that with his book The Sugar Fix: The High-Fructose Fallout That Is Making You Fat and Sick.

If you disagree with my assessment then please review these resources above and see if you still hold the same position. The evidence is beyond compelling.

Common Sense Guidelines for a Healthier Life and Weight

By changing your lifestyle (or your child’s) in the following ways, you can naturally reach, or maintain, the ideal weight for your body:

4. Keep all fructose under 25 grams per day. Fructose is the number one source of calories in the U.S., and it is very clear that it is the primary cause of the obesity epidemic. Your children need to dramatically reduce foods that are high in fructose, such as fruit juices.

Fruits need to be carefully measured as well to make certain that no more 15 grams of fructose are consumed. See the table below to get an idea of how much fructose is in your favorite fruits.

I recommend limiting it to 15 grams of fruit because it would be VERY unusual for you not to consume fructose from your other foods, as it is added in just about ALL processed foods even though it might not be listed on the list of ingredients. Remember your TOTAL daily fructose intake should be under 25 grams, not just fruit.

Also keep in mind that most processed food is loaded with fructose and is best avoided completely. For instance, there are about 40 grams of HFCS per can of soda.

Fruit Serving Size Grams of Fructose
Limes 1 medium 0
Lemons 1 medium 0.6
Cranberries 1 cup 0.7
Passion fruit 1 medium 0.9
Prune 1 medium 1.2
Apricot 1 medium 1.3
Guava 2 medium 2.2
Date (Deglet Noor style) 1 medium 2.6
Cantaloupe 1/8 of med. melon 2.8
Raspberries 1 cup 3.0
Clementine 1 medium 3.4
Kiwifruit 1 medium 3.4
Blackberries 1 cup 3.5
Star fruit 1 medium 3.6
Cherries, sweet 10 3.8
Strawberries 1 cup 3.8
Cherries, sour 1 cup 4.0
Pineapple 1 slice
(3.5″ x .75″) 4.0
Grapefruit, pink or red 1/2 medium 4.3

Fruit Serving Size Grams of Fructose

Boysenberries 1 cup 4.6
Tangerine/mandarin orange 1 medium 4.8
Nectarine 1 medium 5.4
Peach 1 medium 5.9
Orange (navel) 1 medium 6.1
Papaya 1/2 medium 6.3
Honeydew 1/8 of med. melon 6.7
Banana 1 medium 7.1
Blueberries 1 cup 7.4
Date (Medjool) 1 medium 7.7
Apple (composite) 1 medium 9.5
Persimmon 1 medium 10.6
Watermelon 1/16 med. melon 11.3
Pear 1 medium 11.8
Raisins 1/4 cup 12.3
Grapes, seedless (green or red) 1 cup 12.4
Mango 1/2 medium 16.2
Apricots, dried 1 cup 16.4
Figs, dried 1 cup 23.0

5. Follow my nutrition plan and tailor your diet to your nutritional type. These are the foods that are right for your biochemistry, so they will naturally push your body toward its ideal weight. (By the way, these foods may be high in fat, high in carbs, heavy on protein, or mainly veggies. It all depends on YOU).
6. View exercise as a drug. Many studies find that exercising for one hour, five days a week is ideal for weight loss, and I tend to agree with that. Sometimes you may need even up to 90 minutes of exercise every day.

For best results, be sure you are incorporating the appropriate variety of exercises into your routine. For instance, there is compelling evidence that strength training and high-intensity anaerobic interval training may be especially effective for weight loss, so you’ll want to incorporate these into your workout program.
7. Let go of your emotional blocks. Tools like the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) and Meridian Tapping Technique (MTT) are your friend and ally when it comes to losing weight. For some, emotional eating is more complex, and an experienced EFT practitioner may be able to help unravel some of your deeper emotional issues.

To give your child the best start at life, and help instill healthy habits that will last a lifetime, you should strive to lead by example. There is perhaps no better way to help your child lose weight than to model the healthy behaviors I’ve described above in your own daily life.
Related Links: Seven Risk Factors for Childhood Obesity The Three Variables That Affect Childhood Obesity Parents: The Weakest Link in the Childhood Obesity Epidemic

To overcome nature’s decreased HGH production many HGH supplements have been used to replace the missing HGH.   These supplements are used to increase metabolism, to boost your immune system and to support both physical and mental health.  After only 30 days on these supplements, many have seen tremendous results.

HGH is currently known as a hormone that controls many bodily functions and processes, such as the aging process. Naturally generated by the pituitary gland, HGH can help a person’s vitality, strength, energy and the  texture of their skin.    HGH promotes tissue repair, cell renewal in the bones, muscles and vital organs, and supports the immune system to fight infections and disease. As the body’s cells die, HGH acts as a command to ensure that healthy cells and replacements are readily available.

Human growth hormone also forces your body to burn fat for energy. This means that body builders can eat a lot of food when necessary and not see an increase in unwanted fat.  This is also wonderful news for people wanting to lose weight. In fact it is not really weight that people want to lose it really is fat that everyone wants to lose.  If you can get your body to  burn more fat as energy then the food that you do ingest will turn to muscle, which increases your metabolism and your muscles in turn demand more food, so you get lean and muscled.  HGH tells your body to use fat as energy and not to store it, so it can be very instrumental in helping people to lose fat and gain muscle, hence the “miracle weight loss“” moniker.

HGH is made in abundance by the pituitary gland from birth through adolescence and even into our twenties. HGH initially helps us to grow, but it is also essential for maintaining the tissues and organs of the body throughout life. Human growth hormone, commonly known as HGH, is a polypetide mixture that is secreted by the anterior pituitary gland of the human body. The principal form of HGH can be produced synthetically by a process called recombinant DNA technology.

Simply put, HGH is a mixture of proteins, consisting of 190 amino acids. HGH dietary supplements are an ally of someone trying to add muscle, whether for body building ,sports performance, or just to keep the fat and aging effects away.  HGH supplements have two primary functions – to build muscle and burn fat for energy.  Growth hormone supplements are nothing new but in the past  they were used by children wo were not growing normally and  who were found to be missing this vital substance.  But today there is an increased use of HGH supplements by athletes, by the elderly and by aging baby boomers trying to hold back the effects of time.

Most of the reported negative side effects of HGH supplements are excessive intake of HGH supplements or misuse of the product.

So if you want to help your body do what it was intended to do you may want to consider HGH supplements.  Be sure to work with a doctor as these are powerful products.

But probably the biggest reason for drinking water as a weight control or to help you on any diet is to avoid adding calories or sugar or chemicals to your diet  Any type of drink, other than plain old water, has calories or sugar or chemicals and often these are hidden. Sugar and chemicals contained in things like soda or fruit juice, even if it is promoted as “no calorie” or “low calorie” can skyrocket your blood sugar and mess up your control mechanism.

If you are going to lose weight you are going to have to limit calories or sugars.  I hope everyone knows that low fat diets truly do not work as you need fat to burn calories.  Low calorie diets usually want you to you’re your calorie count to under 1600 calories per day; (depending on a few factors that we won’t go into like your starting weight)  Sugars too must be minimized in order to avoid insulin spikes.

Take a look at a can of soda:  A can of soda can have anywhere from 50 calories well up into the 150 to 200+ range. Sugar is another big problem and the sugars will range from under 30 grams to over 50 grams of sugar per day.

Consider that a healthy diet which helps you lose weight quickly and avoid insulin spikes allows you to consume  less than 20 grams of sugar per day.  So one can of soda has more sugar than is healthy for you in a whole day.

Sodas are really empty calories. You don’t get a full sensation in your stomach so you are still hungry after a soda and often times the sugar or the chemicals in fact spike your hunger. And, you regularly get caffeine and other chemicals that you just don’t need.

If you add a piece of lemon or lime to your water it becomes a fresh tasty choice.  Current diet wisdom tells you that you should be drinking about 8 ounces of water per day per pound of weight. So if you weigh about 150 pounds you need about 3 quarts or more of water per day.  If you aren’t sure just how much water you are getting, each morning fill a jug in the fridge with one gallon.  You must finish almost all of it or you haven’t gotten sufficient water for the day.

Learn to replace your drinks with lemon water and you will have saved yourself countless calories and avoided sugar overload. Your weight loss efforts will be greatly enhanced and so will your overall health.

So how do you avoid the extra calories and fat producing foods that seem to be part of dining out?    Fortunately there are a few tricks to make dining out a breeze and still allow you to stick to your diet.

• Go Online… Find out where you are going and check out the restaurant’s online menu. Many of the larger chains and even most good restaurants will provide a full menu listing.  Use this information to help you find the healthiest items on the menu. You can also use the internet to search for the recipes online to determine the likely ingredients.  Some well known chains will have their recipes on the web with full nutritional value to help you make the best choices;
• Don’t go out hungry… You know those negative calorie foods, the ones that cause you to burn more calories than you take in, eat one f them about 20 minutes before you head out to eat.  Chew on a cup of celery 30 minutes before meal time and you may find yourself comfortably full making it easier to make good choices;


I Love Seafood Salad

• At the restaurant…  Today most restaurants, will provide an ingredient and nutritional breakdown that will provide you with full details about  each menu item. You can then make your choices wisely;
• Low Calorie, Low Carbohydrate, Wheat Free, Dairy Free… There are so many allergies and so many diets today that restaurants often offer a wide variety of choices.   Some provide a section of their menu that is low calorie or heart healthy or… If you do not see what you want, ask.  Most good restaurants can make changes that suit your diet.
• Go Vegetarian for the Day… Vegetarian meals can be a good choice as they often contain few foods high in saturated fats and in calories. But be careful; deep fried, breaded, covered with rich sauce and loaded with butter or margarine is not going to help your diet;
• Beware the sauces and look for foods that aren’t coated… Those rich sauces and that heavy breading can be your undoing.  Ask the chef to leave them out. Or, ask for a specially prepared meal that fits your needs.
• Fast Food Restaurants… Here you can almost always find a salad with chicken breast or cheese added.  Be sure to avoid the salad dressings loaded with sugar and bad fats. Stick to olive oil and vinegar. Grab your commitment and stick to your diet even though you might want something else

Do these things and you will quickly see the pounds starting to melt away in which case the jealousy of your friends will likely be a much bigger reward than those empty calories would have been.

Did you read that headline? When I did I thought to myself, “oh brother, here we go again.. another fad diet.” But let’s face it that claim is pretty intriguing so I had to see if it could could possibly be true. I ended up shocked by what I learned!

I learned why I had not been able to lose weight with diet pills and sticking to a low calorie diet.   I also learned that Big Pharma and the diet industry DO NOT want me to lose those extra pounds and that they create lots of products to make sure I put on weight while I am trying to lose. Those diet sodas put on more weight than regular ones which are just loaded with sugar.

If you are tired of constantly being on the diet treadmill like I was then you might want to give Zero Friction Fat Loss a try.

6 Mean Ugly Lies The Diet Industry Tells You:

1) “Feeling Hungry Means You Are Burning Fat.”  Isn’t this what you have been taught to think?  Don’t you feel guilty when you are hungry and want to eat but you are trying to lose weight and you know that eating is bad. THIS IS A LIE! You can’t lose weight trying to semi-starve yourself. In, Zero Friction Fat Loss you’ll learn that when you go hungry your metabolism actually shuts down the fat-burning processes and instead stores everything as fat for later use.  Your body reads this constant “hunger” as a sign that you are in a starvation situation and so it tries to conserve your fat to protect you.

2) “Lots of Sit-ups, and crunches will give you six-pack abs.”   The truth is that to get those obvious well muscled lean abs, you need to shed the belly fat and then you’ll notice your abs will begin to show.  The Zero Friction Fat Loss program explains how you can slim your body without ever going to the gym or doing a single sit-up! You can’t help but like that?

3) “Watch Your Fat Intake If You Want to Lose Weight” Can you believe it? In fact low fat foods and a low fat diet actually have prevented you from losing weight! Zero Friction Fat Loss explains that many of these low fat foods contain chemicals instead of the nutrients our bodies need in order to function properly. Replacing these nutrients with chemicals forces our body to go into “lock down” mode and causes our body to store more of that fat that we don’t want!  In addition if you want to burn fat you have to eat fat, but the right kind of fat. Zero lFriction Fat Loss wil show you how eating foods that you already love but doing it in the right rotation is what will make your body burn twice the amount of fat that it is currently burning.

4) “If You want to Lose The Weight for Good then You Must Lose it Slowly”   The big diet franchises DON’T WANT you to lose the weight fast. Why would they? The faster You reach your ideal weight, the faster they lose customers. Losing weight slowly makes it so much harder to stay motivated and stay on the program so you have to pay to go to meetings and talk to fellow sufferers. Lose weight fast and it is easy to see the changes and stay motivated.

5) “The Celebrity endorsement… If Miss X a can lose weight using these products, then you can too!” Zero
Friction Fat Loss explains it best: “If Fad Diets, or Diet Pills or… Really Worked, Oprah Would Be Skinny…” nothing against Oprah, but these celebrity-endorsed diet products forget to mention that celebrities have
personal trainers, live-in chefs, they can eat all sort of weird and expensive super meals and oh yeah their pictures are airbrushed!

6) “You Have to Eat Fewer Calories Than You Burn” So many people end up trying to live on 1200 calories a day and punishing themselves when they go over and of course you have the starvation problem all over again. Not all calories are created equal. Just eat in the right way and that fat you’ve been storing will start to disappear, and you will never need to count calories again.

The Zero Friction Fat Loss Program made me realize that I too had bought into many of these lies that were designed to sell stuff, not help me lose weight.

Zero Friction Fat Loss explains that your body works like a factory, and it uses the food you eat as the fuel to
create energy.  So when you eat the right foods at the right times of the day, your body will run and perform like it should. It will naturally burn all that unwanted fat. If you simply follow their step by step eating program, then you too can become one of those people who can eat all they want without getting fat.

So, what is the Zero Friction Fat Loss Program? Click Here to Check it Out

If you like to eat, you’ll love this program! You pick the foods you like best from their delicious list of everyday foods, but there is a right time and wrong time to eat them. The foods you are allowed to eat are all natural whole foods, no gimmicky meals prepared with a lot of expensive unnatural ingredients. Have you ever read a Jenny Craig meal label? Yuch!

You get a computer program that will generate a personalized 2-week meal plan that separates your foods for the day into breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. There is no need to count calories or read the labels.  The meal planner is specifically designed to help you burn the most calories by eating the most appropriate foods at the right times during the day.

You also get a “Fast Food Survival Guide” for those times when you are on the run and just can’t take time to
prepare the right meal. These helpful charts will help you to pick out the foods that are safe to eat even at
drive-thru places.

The Zero Friction Fat Loss program has been designed for anyone that wants to lose weight naturally without having to consume any powders, potions or pills. You receive a step by step daily plan of what to eat and how much to eat at the optimum time throughout the day to burn fat fast.

The zero friction fat loss course was designed so that you lose weight naturally by eating everyday foods BUT at the correct times of the day so that you get the best results.

Is Zero Friction Fat Loss just another “me too…how to lose weight” program?

It really is not. this program is quite different Not only do you eat natural whole foods and meals you can prepare yourself so you save thousands of dollars. but you get the meal Plan Generator so you know what to eat and when to eat it.

Zero Friction Fat Loss will not only help you to attain your body`s maximum fat-burning zone but it will make
you feel good and give you lots of energy at the same time. Additionally since you are often eating foods that you love, you don’t feel like you are dieting and there is certainly no hunger or deprivation.

The Good and The Bad

There are no real exercise routines to target belly fat or any particular area you may be concerned about.  If you have been around the diet industry for a long while like I have some of the information may sound pretty basic but it is accurate and in fact leading edge when you get right down to it.

This program is not stressful and your body is not forced to feel hungry half the time.  It is very realistic as they even teach you how to deal with encounters with Fast Food restaurants which for many of us are a fact of life. Thanks to the Meal Generator you will know what to eat and when to eat it and how much to eat, so there is no need to think or worry.

The weight starts to slip away pretty quickly so you will likely find it easy enough to stay motivated and lose the fat you want to lose.

Click Here To Start Losing 12lbs Every 15 Days With Zero Friction  Fat Loss

Fad diets are not as new as they might seem at first. These date back to the mid 19th century when an obese Londoner was prescribed such a diet on experimental basis. Now, after a century and a half, fad diets have become popular among people with weight problems. Teens and young adults especially flock to fad diets for answers to weight problems, but most end up not losing weight.

Fad diets are usually centered on a higher consumption of fats or proteins while stressing to go easy on or, in some cases, completely cut out carbohydrates. It is the low intake of carbohydrates that brings about rapid weight loss. In fact, this rapid loss is the loss of water that glycogen has stored. With loss of glycogen, the large amount of water stored in it is also lost and body weight drops. The fats are still there and as the fad diets are given up, the body regains its proportion of water lost, mass goes up and you end up not losing weight.

Normally, carbohydrates remain the source of energy for work. With fad diets, the carbs are no longer there so the body starts using the stored fat, breaking it down. This may appear beneficial but in fact it is not. In the absence of carbs, fats cannot be completely oxidized and put to work. Hence, the body feels fatigued and weak. In addition, the ketone molecules resulting from the fat-breakdown accumulate in the blood and are excreted out via urine, causing dehydration.

Given the harmful health effects of fad diets, it is important for us, especially the weight-conscious people, to recognize and beware of these diet plans. Watch out for diets that:

•  Promise quick weight loss 
• Publicize before and after pictures 
• Present weight-loss testimonials 
• Tend to limit natural food choices 
• Require a large sum of money

Fad diets may be popular, but they can greatly hurt your body. Be careful with any diet or exercise program and ask your doctor to be sure it is safe, because you may end up not losing weight but losing your life.

What is really bad for the diabetic to eat? This is what would be a bad diet for everyone else. The answer is a diet that is high in fat, salt, sugar and the over processed foods that you can find. This sort of foods is often filled with poly saturated fats or trans fat, which cannot be burned off through exercise. They are going to stay in the body and clog up the arteries. If you have diabetes it can be the worst thing for your diet and this will increase your chances of getting heart disease, stroke, and other heart problems that can lead to complications.

This will not mean that you have to cut out the fat forever, however some fats are healthy and necessary. It is very important if you have diabetes to know which fats and foods are good for you and which fats are harmful for you too. Fats are found mostly in processed foods and found in most of the fast food restaurants and are not healthy. Omega -3 fatty acids are found more in fish and are very good for diabetics due to the fact that they can help decrease the risk of sudden heart attack. When you are working on your diet, you need to remember that you can still have some sugars and fats but in lower amounts. The way that these foods act with your body will increase the chances of health problems happening in your body. You need to eliminate them from your diet so that you can have the good effects for your health that your body needs for a certain amount of fat to be healthier.

You need to control your intake of carbohydrates because it is important for diabetics. This is because of the excess carbohydrates will turn into sugars in the body and diabetics should be careful about the amount of getting too many carbohydrates in their diet. This will affect their blood sugar levels. Diabetics can learn about how to count their carbs from nutritionists or a book that is good on the subject. This can help them in deciding how much to eat and with what type of meal.

When you are a diabetic it does not mean that you have to limit your diet to foods that have no taste. You can still have the foods that you want as long as you keep the portions under control. It is about taking control so that you are not eating more than what your body can process and that is the diet that everyone should have in their life to be healthy and happy too.

Weight control for the diabetic should be a relatively easy thing to achieve due to the healthy diet they are forced to eat.

More often than not, the foods that we consume during a period of depression are unhealthy foods that we kindly refer to as “comfort” food. We tend to eat foods such as ice cream, chocolate bars, cookies, brownies, cakes, pies, and we tend to over eat these not so good for us foods. It is almost as if we have a hole inside of us that we are trying to fill up but we can’t fill it up no matter how hard we try so we continue eating, it’s a never ending cycle.

Suffering from depression makes us tired, moody, unable to sleep, and just miserable all the way around. We don’t have the energy to do any kind of physical activities, we don’t feel like getting dressed up and going anywhere to socialize, we get tired of trying to put on a happy face and pretend that everything is fine, and we can’t sleep because we can’t stop thinking about ways to make us feel better. It seems that the only thing we can do is eat.

Eating is an easy way to deal with depression. It doesn’t take any energy to eat, it doesn’t have to involve socializing with anyone, and it doesn’t require any physical activity. All you have to do is go to the cupboard or refrigerator, pull something out, and curl back up on the couch, in the chair, or in your bed to indulge in whatever food you grabbed from the cupboard or refrigerator.

Eating in itself is not a bad thing as it is necessary for you to live. What is bad though is using food as a way to try and cope with depression because the more depressed you feel, the more you will eat, and the more you eat, the more weight you will gain, and the more weight you gain, the more depressed you will feel. It becomes a nasty little cycle that is very hard to break without the help of a professional. If you notice yourself or someone close to you displaying this behavior, it might be wise to consider professional help.

It is first important to settle into an eating routine. At home, you would probably never eat after a certain time at night-don’t at college either. If you’re used to eating breakfast, wake up before classes in enough time to do so. At the very least, be sure that you have time between classes for a balanced lunch and dinner. Don’t skip meals.

If your schedule is hectic, as most people find, you’ll need to schedule time to eat. Instead of grabbing food from a vending machine when you are hungry, plan ahead. Take a healthy salad or sandwich with you to eat if you have class over mealtime. Most professors don’t mind if you bring food to class as long as your eat it quietly.

When you do have time to eat in the cafeteria, it is important to make healthy decisions. Most colleges offer pizza and a variety of desserts every day, but that doesn’t mean you have to eat them! Look for choices that have a balance of the food groups in every meal. A good indication that you have a nutritious meal is color. If your tray is colorful, with fruits, vegetables, and proteins, you are on the right track.

Of course, not every college has a cafeteria, and even if yours does you might choose to eat elsewhere. It’s very tempting to order Chinese food or other delivery, especially when participating in study groups. Try to find the best options here and allow yourself to splurge only on special occasions. For example, if someone is ordering pizza, see if the pizzeria also offers salads. This may be a healthy option. Try to stay away from fried or greasy foods.

College is one of the best times of your life. Don’t let poor eating choices ruin the experience. You might also want to note as a closing thought that alcohol has more empty calories than most of the foods you can eat at the cafeteria combined. Staying away from it can not only keep you safe, but also healthy. 

Remember, ‘weight control’ is easier than ‘weight loss’.