Eating the right amount and eating the right foods matter.
And when it comes to students, the transition from adolescent eating habits to mature habits can be difficult.
With spring just around the corner, the variety of fresh and local foods will increase, but the desire to go out and eat will also rise. Nutritionists and dieticians have suggested a few ways to maintain health and weight this spring.
“When you order a meal, a lot of the time the meal is enough for two people,” said Megan Mcgussey, graduate working toward a master’s degree in health science and a registered dietician. “So you can ask for the to-go box with it and you can box half of it or you can share it with a friend. You can also save money that way.”
She also suggested students look at the menu options online before going to the restaurant so they have a better idea of what the healthy options are and can find nutritional information. Even though sharing a meal or boxing half of it can help a person maintain weight it’s important to keep a few things in mind according to Veteran’s Hospital registered dietician Susan Digrazia.
“You’ve stopped your growing, and you definitely need to start focusing on maintaining rather than a consistent gain which is inevitable; if you eat the way you were when you were a teenager and growing, and you keep up that calorie level, you’re going to just gain by default,” Digrazia said.
Metabolisms slow down, and a person’s body in their 20’s and 30’s doesn’t need the amount of food it did in its teens.
So some people may deem it lucky they have free online tools at their disposal.
“I love them (food trackers),” said Alyssa Gallagher, registered dietician and a certified diabetes educator at Humphreys Diabetes Center. “I think they’re great, and I use them with a lot of my patients. We’ll email records back and forth, and I can make suggestions. Often times when you write down everything that you eat, you realize that you’re eating a lot more than you think. So, writing down those foods can really help highlight areas you can choose to work on.”
Whether or not a person meticulously enters every parcel of food they eat into a food tracker or if they just base their eating habits off of when they’re hungry or not, eating a well-balanced and proportioned diet is essential to preserving health and weight according to the nutritionists.
