A paunch or the wish to lose weight

You hear it all the time... Students are lazy, drink a lot and have an unhealthy lifestyle. Unfortunately, the outcome of a recent poll still confirms this. It also emerged recently that most students indicate they would like to lose weight, drink less and get more exercise. Are you one of them too?

It is 31 December and you are celebrating New Year's Eve with your friends or relatives. Your body is still busy digesting all Christmas snacks and drinks, while the next social evening is very close again. 'There we go again', you think, while you take another pull of such-and-such a drink and a bowl of fat snacks has just come by once more. After a minute or so, you set your mind at ease, because, after all, you already intended to adopt a healthier lifestyle and to go and get more exercise. However, if you, being a student, really want to lose pounds, it is occasionally difficult to keep it up week after week.

Culture

Of course, it is awfully nice and particularly enjoyable to join an organisation of fellow students or a student club, but it goes without saying that a pleasant party or dinner party comes with it every now and then too. And, needless to say, you also drink just a little more than you had agreed upon with yourself beforehand. For the greater part, this has to do with identity or the fact that you do not want to rank second to the rest. After all, you do not want to earn yourself a reputation of 'that boring person' who has had enough after just a few drinks, while the rest of your friends or fellow club members go on drinking cheerfully. Likewise, heavy drinking is still one of the intrinsic features of the culture of students and their associations today.

To see and to be seen

When you go out for an enjoyable evening with your friends or housemates, all you can see is the outside appearance of everybody standing around you in the pub. Unfortunately, you cannot have a look at the inside of that pretty girl over there, and that good-looking hunk at the bar has no visiting card in his pocket giving an account of his characteristics. Self-evidently, being a student, you always prefer to look your best, so you can impress other people with your looks to your heart's content. But sometimes, no matter how much you do your best, you know at heart you could have made it easier on yourself if you had had a somewhat slimmer figure. Besides, you also realize that nowadays appearance matters more than the inner self. So, sufficient exercise and proper food can help you as well to make a smashing impression on that looker!

Wholesome breakfast

Breakfast is your first source of energy of the day. The saying 'Well begun is half done' applies here too. If you have a wholesome breakfast, you have absorbed 20 to 25 percent of the energy you need daily right away. In this way you reduce the chance of going through a bad patch during the day and you will remain focused longer during classes. Do you skip breakfast to curb your figure? If you do, keep in mind that during the day you will fancy snacks all the more, which you may find back when reading the display of the scales later. Consequently, breakfast is awfully important.

Dinner

Students also have a reputation of being lazy. This may not be true for you, but it may be assumed that lazy students will rather put a pizza in a microwave oven than cheerfully spend half an hour in the kitchen to prepare a more wholesome meal. If you want to lose weight, always choose a well-balanced dinner. In case you feel little inspiration to prepare a meal, purchasing a cookery book for students is an excellent solution. On top of that, it includes numerous dishes that are both easy to prepare and wholesome. If you still have a hungry feeling after dinner, eating a piece of fruit is the best way to alleviate this. Make sure you do not wait too long before doing so, as your body does not decompose any more substances late in the evening, so you will still put on weight.

Doing sport together

Apart from paying attention to your food, you have to do enough exercise as well. Practicing a sport with a friend is not only more enjoyable, but you will notice as well that you make progression faster. Not only can you set the pace together, but, for instance, if your friend runs a little faster than you do, there is also an immediate challenge for you to go and keep up with that pace. Likewise, you can motivate each other all the time, enabling you to develop just a little extra speed when running the last six hundred feet. If you have decided to go and do sports together, or with a small group, try to agree on two fixed moments a week.

Student sports club

Possibly another recommendable and, most of all, enjoyable initiative is joining a student sports club. There are well over four hundred of them in the Netherlands, numbering already more than a 100,000 members by now, so there is always a club to be found in your city. If you decide to go and play in a team, you and your team can participate in any of forty annual Dutch Student Championships. You may have heard of the Batavian Race, a renowned rowing race in which a number of strong student teams participate. Of course, after training you can choose to hang out with your friends at the club just for a while and have a good time, but take care you do not drink too much, or else you have still played sport in vain, however pleasant it may have been!

Of course, if you are in doubt about the sport you intend to take up, take your time to give the matter considerable thought beforehand. Do you prefer to do sport alone or as a duo, or, on second thought, in a team? Maybe it is also a clever idea to give it a try and just join in on a training at the student sport club. This gives you a good impression of how much you like or dislike a sport you have in mind, and, likewise, you can check out for yourself if joining a student sport club is really something for you.

A thirty-minute plan

Everybody knows that sufficient exercise has a positive effect on your body. But how do you know when you have actually had enough exercise? It is often heard that doing physical activities thirty minutes a day is a rule of thumb. Try to find a way for yourself how to build up this thirty-minute plan and fit it into your daily routine. For instance, take the stairs instead of the elevator, go to classes by bike instead of by bus or tram, or walk or cycle to the station.

Make the right preparations

First of all, make sure you have proper sportswear and shoes. Especially proper shoes are needed to prevent injuries when you start running. Usually you already have comfortable sportswear lying in your cupboard at home, so they will not cost you extra. When you start training, take good care you keep the urge in check to start off too fanatically, so you do not lose your breath too soon. Do not fancy you can eat more before or after practicing sport either. Besides, there is no need to eat before practicing sport anyway. On the other hand, it is clever to eat something that gives you energy well over an hour before training. A banana is a good and healthy example of this. Take care to drink enough water as well. When you start training, never put pressure on yourself right away, but listen carefully to your own body. When, after a number of months, you start feeling your condition and body are becoming stronger, you may choose to run on a schedule.

Sources: www.todio.nl