How to Eat Healthy on Campus

Video Transcript

"Hi! I'm Kristen Bryda here for Expert Village. I'm a dietetic intern at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and I'm here to today to talk to you about the freshman 15. I'm sure you've heard that eating disorders can be prevalent on college campuses. What can you do to make sure that you don't become obsessed with food or your weight. Well, there are a couple of things you can do. First of all, weighing yourself isn't the only way to monitor changes in your body. Although, it is a good indicator. It's more important about how you feel about yourself, how your clothes fit, and how your social life is. If you stop doing thing or you feel bad about yourself, you might want to weigh yourself and make sure that your body isn't making changes that are creeping up on you. There are different things you can when you go to restaurants. On the menu, look for words such as baked, broiled, or steamed. These are indicators of healthy choices. Stay away from words such as smothered, buttery, creamy, or fried. This should put a red flag in your head that these are not healthy choices. If you do want to eat these things, you can look at portion sizes and control how much of them you eat. Here are some examples. A ping pong ball is about the size of a tablespoon. A deck of cards is equal to about 3 ounce of meat, which a proper portion size. Fruit such as an apple or an orange, should be the size of a tennis ball or a baseball. If it's larger than this, you're getting more than one serving. By looking at your weight by changes through changes in your body and controlling your portion sizes, you can avoid the freshman 15."