10 Diet Tips to Help Postgrads Lose Weight

One aspect of postgraduate life that is important to maintain is that of physical health.  It’s very easy to disregard this side of your life when you get busy. Unfortunately, for some of you this means that your man-boobs have been getting larger, and what used to be your stomach is now a breeding ground for lard.

If you don’t want this to be your fate (or you want to reverse current trends), then you gotta be careful with what you eat after graduation! Eating unhealthy and not exercising is a definite way to gain unwanted weight. Remember, no matter how much you want to tell yourself that typing is exercise, it’s not.

For me, after I graduated from college my double chin was in full effect, and my abdominal area was really starting to jut out. Sadly, I was in constant denial about my weight.  I would always try to fit into these really tight clothes thinking that they made me look attractive.  Unfortunately, one time when I bent down to pick up a pencil, my pants literally ripped in half. I guess I had put on so much weight that my pants didn’t fit anymore. Yeah. That was sad times.

I’ve lost about 25 lbs since the pant ripping trauma, and feel really good right now. Remember, you’re getting older now. Everyone’s metabolism slows down eventually, and you can’t eat the same as you did in high school and expect to never gain weight.

Here Are Some Basic Diet Tips

1. Drink water instead of Coke. The best thing that you can do for your calorie intake, right off the bat, is to drink water instead of soda.  Personally, I end up drinking Diet Coke or Coke Zero, but I try to limit my consumption of those products. However, my daily water intake has drastically increased this past year.  In particular, I have grown quite fond of Smart Water. Smart Water is Sexy Water.

2. Eat a healthy breakfast every day. It’s very important to eat something very healthy for breakfast. Eating a bowl of healthy cereal with soy milk (which is what I prefer) will not only give you more energy, but will help your metabolism tremendously. Pretty soon, your poo is going to be gorgeous. Take a picture, post it up online, and remember to thank me for your glorious poo.

3. Try to eat at least three meals a day. When we’re busy, it’s hard to manage this.  But the reality is, eating smaller meals throughout the day instead of a couple large meals is the healthiest way to go.  Most experts nowadays recommend eating somewhere between five and six meals a day.  I realize that this isn’t practical for most people, but here’s a simple way you can achieve this:

• Cereal at 7-8 AM.
• Cliff Bar/Granola Bar/Fruit at 10AM
• Sandwich at 12-1 PM
• Smoothie/Cliff Bar/Granola/Fruit at 3PM
• Light Dinner (Turkey/Chicken/Fish Entry) 6PM

4. Do not eat after 8 pm. Because you are obviously inactive when you sleep (unless you’re a super sleepwalker like Mike Liu), you will not burn off as efficiently anything you eat before you go to sleep.  Therefore, try to give yourself a 4-5 hour cushion between when you ate last and when you’re about to go to sleep. Eating late at Denny’s at 2 AM once in a while is not a big deal, but try not to make a habit out of it.

5. Choose healthier options. I know it’s hard to avoid that fast food restaurant, or the greasy sit-down restaurant once in a while.  However nowadays, when you go to places like this, there are always healthier options that you can choose.  For instance, the BBQ Chicken Sandwich at Carls Jr. is actually only 380 calories, is consisted of wheat bread, and doesn’t taste too bad.

6. Eat brown instead of white carbs. Generally speaking, carbs that are brown (wheat, brown rice, barley, rye) are much healthier for you than white breads/rice.  It’s not that white bread and white rice are necessarily bad for you.  But what you gain from eating brown carbs is enough to consider switching from white to brown.

7. Take a multivitamin once a day. Your body benefits a lot from vitamins, and in particular, this can actually help suppress hunger at times and give your body the nutrition it needs to help keep you at peak performance.

8. Track your calories. Another thing you may want to do is track your calories.  Generally speaking (although height, gender, and other attributes play a role in determining this), the average person wants to consume around 2,000 calories a day.

9. Give yourself a cheat day. One of the best ways to make sure that you stay consistent with your diet plan is to give yourself a cheat day.  Pick one day out of the week and just eat however and whatever you want on that day (within reason, of course).  This can help you keep your diet going.

10. Be consistent. That’s really the last and most important point.  A diet is not a short term goal, a diet is a lifestyle.  You need to make sure that you’re eating healthy throughout your entire life.  The small sacrifices you make today will definitely pay dividends in the future.

Any other diet suggestions from our readers? I know many of you guys have had to adjust your diet after graduating! Post a comment and let everyone know your diet secrets!