I am obese. Close your mouth, because it’s true. I have weighed, measured and calculated. My body mass index, a calculation based on individual height and weight, is 32.3 percent. Over 30 percent is considered obese, though the calculation does not take muscle mass into account.

I have a beef with health and fitness.

First, the health. Drink water, they say, and eat a balanced diet. For those of us stuck in college-student world, that means cut out the Spaghetti-Os, the pizza and the beer. No skipping meals, and no more vending machine suppers. It isn’t a change of diet, but a change of lifestyle.

After extensive research of http://www. msn.com health sources, here are the best tips for a healthy, and surprisingly simple diet:

• Eat breakfast. OK, so it’s 7:55 and you have class at 8. Skip breakfast, right? WRONG! For future eventualities, keep eat-and-run breakfasts on hand. Protein shakes, such as Slim Fast, or multi-grain cereal bars are perfect for that two -minute dash to class.

• Eat snacks. It’s not a lie; you have permission to snack. I’ll even let you get a snack from the machine. My favorites are the little bags of pretzels and the trail mix. Not only are they economic (50 cents each), but they are just enough to sustain you through that 9:30 English class. A stick of string-cheese or a sugar-free Jell-O cup are also fun options.

• Drink water. You’ve heard it for years, and you’ll hear it again. The suggested minimum for water intake is eight eight-ounce glasses of water a day. Sounds hard, but let’s do some math. Multiply the eight and eight, and magically you have 64 ounces of water to drink. That comes to just over three 20 ounce bottles of beverage, probably right at the number of caffeinated beverages the average student consumes in a day.

There are other tips, such as smaller portion and fewer carbs and sugars and what-not, but these three are the most user-friendly. Change starts small.

Second comes fitness. Who has the time,besides the people who are paid to be fit?

We all have time. Recently I joined Curves, a ladies-only gym that prescribes a 30-minute workout three days a week.

Don’t despair, fellas, you can get a personalized workout, too, fresh from the local Intramural Center.

I never understood the importance of diet with exercise until my research explained a little-known secret: if you diet and don’t exercise, you lose more muscle than fat. Scary, huh? Exercising increases your metabolic rate, and those helpful, between-meals snacks keep that rate going.

It’s OK to be skeptical; you have permission. Typically, if something seems too good to be true, then it probably is.

But this works. Need proof? Right now I’m wearing pants I haven’t worn in over a year. So take that.

 

Sharon Moore is a senior journalism major from Natchitoches and serves as associate managing editor for The Tech Talk. E-mail comments to sem010@latech.edu