How to Optimize your Nutritional and Physical Health as a Busy College Student on a Budget
Many of us have struggled to be healthy when we are tired, a large college assignment looms, or we must go to work to pay our bills. We’ve all felt the stress, anxiety, and obscurity of thought that a situation like that induces. We do things that seem rational, like go to McDonald’s, skip the gym, and stay up late.
After all, on paper, we save 20 minutes preparing a meal, 40 minutes in the gym, and another 20 minutes prep and shower time subtracted by the 5 minutes at McDonald's. But are we effectively saving time? Or, instead, are we treating time as a simple math problem and not as what we can gain from the allotted time (output)? What if we can optimize for both?
In the continuation of this article, we will cover many easily accessible and practical strategies that can be implemented to make our busy college schedules more productive and open. By that, I mean it may be possible to optimize for health and feel more resilient in college and life without having to find more time during the day. The only caveat is having an open mind and a willingness to change. That said, let's get into the first category.
Optimizing Nutritional Health
What Not To Do:
Eating snacks throughout the day and having fruit with every meal
The idea of always being satiated or having sugar with every meal is some of the worst college advice for optimizing health. That is not to say that fruits are BAD or snacks are BAD; rather, we incline toward the most convenient fruit, such as apples, bananas, and grapes. And frankly, one banana will pack about 14 grams of sugar, and one apple contains about 19 grams, not considering the size and variety of apples today. Add one of these fruits with every meal (3 meals), and you’re consuming on the low end, 40 to 60 grams of sugar daily from fruits and upwards of 100 grams if also including grapes.
Yes, you're getting fiber, some antioxidants, and pectin from the apple. Yes, you're getting about 15% of your daily value of Potassium and Vitamin C needs from a banana. And yes, these fruits before a meal may cause you to feel more satiated (except for maybe grapes) and prompt a minor reduction in caloric intake. But even so, the downsides that come from poor timing or poor macronutrient combinations (such as brain fog, tiredness, high blood pressure, and heart disease) far outweigh the upside for many, especially when there are so many alternatives.
Before I get to those alternatives, it should be mentioned that the issues that arise are not with the fruit per se, but mostly in what we eat along with sugary fruit (high fat), how much we eat (calories), and at what time we choose to eat higher sugary fruits (when sedentary).
If, however, eating a banana or apple reduces your intake of fast food, then, by all means, eat the banana or apple. If you know what works best for you, please continue by all means. However, consider alternatives if you follow the fruit every meal recommendation and still feel tired, exhausted, and need an afternoon nap.
What To Do:
Eliminate snacks
To begin, eliminate all snacks between meals, even if they are considered healthy. Snacks have minimal benefit unless you train hard, are trying to gain weight, or use them as a meal replacement. And no, an hour a day of resistance training is usually not considered demanding training.
When we eat snacks, we’re potentially promoting glucose upregulation, subsequent insulin secretion, and eventual insulin resistance. And even if we are consciously minimizing this by choosing higher-fat snacks, we are nevertheless promoting a sustained and slight inclination toward anabolic pathways. And although these pathways are necessary for biological survival, their continuous expression can become detrimental regarding a healthy catabolic and anabolic balance. For instance, too much anabolism may neglect autophagic and catabolic expression and, in turn, elevate the risk of diseases such as diabetes, cancer, and Alzheimer’s.
If, however, you must have a snack, choose snacks that are filling, not highly processed, and will minimize insulin secretion. Some highly recommended ones that are easy to pack and durable in poor weather include…
Sardines or Anchovies (10/10)
Macadamia nuts (9/10. Easy to overeat)
Grass-Fed Beef sticks (8.5/10. Pricey)
Snickerdoodle Quest Cookies (7/10. Not nutritionally the best, but an effort is made to avoid concerning ingredients.)
Begin meal prepping
If there isn’t a requirement to get the university resident meal plans, I would instead establish a habit of meal prepping breakfast for the entire week every Sunday. In this way, you have complete control and can save time and money. For example, consider a university's typical one-meal-a-day plan, which is about $1000 to $1200 for 16 weeks or one semester. Take the average and divide it by 30 meals for four months, and you get a total of $9.16 per meal.
On the other hand, I spend 30 minutes making seven 1090 kcal bars every Sunday with an average cost of $5.43 per bar. Subtract how much I pay from $9.16, and my savings total 3.73 dollars a day or 26.11 dollars for one weekly batch. Not only that, but I also use quality ingredients and save total time when considering the minutes spent walking to the dining hall, choosing the food to eat, etc., compared to thirty minutes of making them, cleaning up, and storing them. If you doubt this, I highly recommend you start a stopwatch immediately after leaving your dorm, selecting the food you’ll eat, and sitting down. Then multiply your total time by seven.
That is not to say that you need to make a bar to save money and time. There are plenty of options that are even less than 5 dollars, such as overnight oats, chia seed puddings, salads, chicken, egg-based options, or whatever else works for you and your health. By being conscientious and rigorous, you'll find that you can save a lot more money and be healthier than the average and above-average college student while eating high-quality and delicious food. It comes down to being mindful and creative in the kitchen and understanding how certain foods affect you throughout the day.
Learn to navigate the dining hall based on your goals and values
If you're required to purchase a dining hall pass, I suggest you follow the same meal-prepping strategy above for dinner or lunch. As for the dining experience itself, the most health-favorable recommendation is to avoid eating a combination of high-fat and high-carb in the same meal. Studies show that this composite of macronutrients not only lights addictive behavior but also makes you eat more and increases the amount of fat shuttled into the cell. Moreover, combining two opposing signaling pathways may blunt optimal energy production and promote metabolic inflexibility.
Instead, for my mood and energy, I find it best to separate fats and carbs by eating a high-fat, high-protein breakfast (nutritional bar: 54 g protein), a slightly lower fat, high-protein lunch (greek yogurt parfait with almond butter, walnuts, and berries: 45 g protein), and a higher-carb higher-protein dinner (fish, sweet potato, cabbage salad, and olive oil: 45 g protein). This way, I feel mentally sharp throughout the day with little change in my focus, attention, and mood while supporting my sleep due to higher nightly carbohydrate intake. Finding a nutritional plan that benefits your current goals and values is critical.
For example, I value optimizing health with an emphasis on the brain and heart, with a tertiary consideration of my finances. That is why I am willing to pay more for supplements such as Omega 3, Lions Mane, AG1, and high-quality olive oil. And it is also the reason why I always look to save money by combining Rakuten, promo codes, cash-back credit cards, subscriptions, and sales to buy in bulk. By being mindful of goals and values, we understand and project our next step more clearly.
Optimizing Nutritional Health Part 2
What Not to Do:
Load up on seed and vegetable oils
Seed and vegetable oils are contentious, and it's understandable, considering that not much corollary research has shown an association between consumption and poor health outcomes. Instead, I would suggest some caution.
Many seed oils such as canola, sunflower, and safflower use processing such as expeller pressed and solvent extraction. These processing techniques require friction and pressure, which creates heat, or boiling, to eliminate hexane from the final product. High heat may cause oxidation and produce harmful compounds associated with brain damage, Alzheimer's, and cardiovascular disease.
Moreover, we tend to cook with these oils, causing more reactivity among the many double bonds in polyunsaturated fats. That doesn’t mean these oils are the worst thing possible. Instead, if using seed and vegetable oils, look for cold-pressed oils labeled by the ingredients section on the nutrition label and try to minimize any added heat. And yes, it is almost certainly the case that the dining hall uses these oils since they have a high smoke point and are cheap, which is partly why you should choose food that isn't fried or minimally processed.
What To Do:
Load up on extra virgin olive oil
It may very well be the case that the dining hall doesn’t have olive oil, and if they do, it's most likely a poor-quality one, and a recent study by UC Davis suggests there are many falsely advertised olive oils. And rather than pretending the university has your optimal health as its priority, you should alternatively consider investing in a single bottle of olive oil monthly.
In my article Understanding and Preserving the Function of One Heart Beat, I wrote in more detail about the benefits of olive oil on the heart. However, its benefits may extend beyond a healthy heart. Olive oil has been shown to enhance B-amyloid clearance and protect against Alzheimer's in mice. Furthermore, extra virgin olive oil has a high concentration of phenolic compounds such as oleocanthal, and oleacin, potent antioxidants that may help protect cells from damage.
And no, you don’t need to purchase a 35-dollar bottle of olive oil online but can make do with a cheaper $15- to $20 store-bought olive oil if short on money. However, if you’re to get it from the store, it is important to look for extra virgin olive oil whose origin is from California or Australia. This is because all of the oil sourced from California or Australia passed in the UC Davis study, while 66 of the 90 oils sampled failed.
Swapping seed and vegetable oil for olive oil won’t save you money which is why it's the only cost-negative intervention recommended in this article. And I highly recommend it if you’re willing to spend an extra 20 dollars a month. If you already use seed or vegetable oil, then replacing it with olive oil for an additional 10 dollars a month won’t kill you. It may do the opposite. If you choose olive oil, use it conservatively for high-heat cooking and liberally on cooked meals. This way, you’ll optimally preserve the integrity of the olive oil.
Optimizing Physical Health
What Not To Do:
Skip exercise on a busy day or week
Although the temptation to skip exercise becomes magnified with more required work, do not skip, especially if stressed. According to this research paper, exercising is one of the most effective treatments for regulating mood in a healthy population. If you’re stressed, anxious, or confused, exercise may be the best thing you can do for yourself at that moment in time. Moreover, it is unnecessary to train for an hour to receive immediate mood benefits. A shorter session can be just as potent as a longer one on mood and emotional regulation.
This randomized control trial shows that only 20 minutes of high-intensity exercise can significantly improve verbal memory and executive function in MS patients. A short but intense exercise may enhance overall self-monitoring, self-control, emotional control, organization, and the ability to adapt and access working memory, such as one's capacity for holding information in mind while listening to novel or new information. Mainly these effects manifest as enhancement in focus, processing speed, and fluidity of thought.
What To Do:
Be mindful of exercise
After trying many forms of exercise, I've consistently found, time and again, one that enhanced my mood and cognition more than any others— short-distance running. Essentially, all that is required is choosing a fast but sustainable running pace for 10-15 minutes. I often find that on the morning I run, I am far more productive, stable, and fluid in thought than on days I do resistance training.
High-intensity aerobic exercise has perhaps been one of the best cognitive and mood enhancement implementations I’ve made this past year. And although I highly recommend it for busy people, running is not the only exercise that may show comparable benefits. Try stair climbing, a variation of HITT, rowing, or swimming, but whatever you choose, the idea is to increase the heart rate healthily and safely.
On the other hand, if you’re hyper-busy, can’t find time for the gym, or trying to find any excuse not to increase your heart rate significantly, there are alternative strategies to consider. One of these is to do push-ups, body weight squats, or sit-ups every time you take a break. Whether you use the restroom, stop studying to scroll through your phone, or simply space out, do a quick workout for 1-3 minutes. Not only will you complete many reps during the day, but it may also promote efficiency by enhancing focus when writing or studying.
If you feel like skipping the gym, always put something like the 1-3 minute workouts in its place. Otherwise, when more days like this arise, you’ll begin to justify skipping exercise and will continue to excuse your actions until you quit altogether. Then you slowly but surely start to feel worse, and don’t attribute this to not exercising until much later. Instead, we tell ourselves something like I don’t have the energy to go to the gym. We often fail to recognize that a lack of energy can be synonymous with an unhealthy internal state. So, what do we do? We gravitate toward more stimulants.
Be mindful of stimulants
For some, this is an extra cup of coffee in the evening that ends up disrupting sleep by delaying circadian melatonin, deep sleep, and total sleep time. For others, it is an impulse for potent stimulants such as Adrafinil, Phenylpiracetam, and Adderall, which up-regulates dopamine, wakefulness, tolerance, and potential neurotransmitter dependency. Whatever this means for you, excessive stimulants usually continue the cycle of hormonal imbalance, feeling lousy, and unnecessary monetary expenditure.
That is not to say that stimulants don’t have utility. Stimulants can enhance cognition, focus, and performance. However, the problem arises when stimulants take control, and we can’t accomplish a productive day’s work without them. Instead, stimulants should be used to enhance the infrequent off day and, for the most part, not be used after 2 p.m.
If you find that you’re susceptible to addiction when using stimulatory drugs, then it would probably be best to avoid them altogether. And if you find that your health and exercise routine is sub-par, then above all else, get yourself in a health-promoting rhythm before opting for any stimulants.
Optimizing Physical Health, Pt 2
What Not To Do:
Not having a fixed exercise schedule
Do not choose your time of exercise based on the day's availability. If you do this, stop unless you’re exceptionally fluid and disciplined. However, what typically occurs when you don’t schedule your workout or know when you’re going to exercise is a gradual disinclination to follow through with the movement, which leads to inevitable cessation.
This is because when we don’t define or position something firmly in our schedule, we are less likely to have an obligatory association with that thing. And anything that's not fixed will eventually be shaken when more defined things (such as increased course workload, relationships, bills, and social tension) emerge into our narrative.
If working out is not established, it is only a matter of time before it is foregone (in the form of conscious or subliminal rationalization) in place of more “pressing concerns.”
Repeating the same workout over and over
Working out is better than not, but modifying your workout every so often is crucial. For example, suppose you adapt comfortably to 4 sets of 10 rep squats at 135 lbs and don’t modify it. In that case, you’ll have a lowered adaptive response and not only fail to improve performance but also decrease the cognitive benefits of exercise.
That is not to say that there will be no benefits. Instead, if you’re trying to optimize for time and health, you may be better off modifying or changing your workout to increase the stimuli, assuming it's done responsibly. An example could be restructuring the movement or changing the sets, reps, and weight. This same concept applies to aerobic exercises like running, swimming, and biking. Except in this case, it would be changing speed, distance, or frequency.
What To Do:
Schedule your workouts
Scheduling your workout at a specific time every day is almost necessary when you’re busy. Of course, some exemptions apply, but for the most part, it's a healthy rule to follow. Moreover, no matter when you schedule your workout, there will almost always come a moment when it is inconvenient to work out. This is why you must also be fluid enough to rearrange your schedule when necessary and disciplined enough to follow through.
That is because when we eliminate objectives from our schedule, we are, at some measure, informing ourselves that when things reach this level of intensity, I am incapable of following through with everything. In other words, we create a boundary that says this is my limit.
This does not exclude you if you’re the type of person that functions by adding many things to your schedule in order of greatest importance to least importance. Instead, get everything that is most important done all the time. And if you fail to do this because of unexpected work, travel, or any other event, consider the short workout strategy mentioned above.
Avoid prolonged sitting
Although beneficial, an hour-long walk is unnecessary if time is limited. However, no added time is required to study on your feet, pace about in your apartment, or even move your feet and hands when seated. A study found that those who fidget their hands or feet more when sitting in a standard chair burn 75 to 100 extra calories an hour. Dr. Andrew Huberman discusses this concept in much greater detail in his podcast, How to Lose Fat with Science-Based Tools.
As for standing, a study published in the Prevention of Chronic Disease shows that workers who changed their sitting habits by standing an extra 66 minutes per day reduced upper back and neck pain by 54%. If you have neck or back pain, consider lightly pacing when studying or using a standing desk.
Or if you often get tired after eating, another study on 14 young adults found that those who took 2-minute activity breaks every 20 minutes for about ten times decreased the glucose response of the meal. However, you may also benefit from standing or lightly pacing for twenty minutes after eating a carbohydrate-rich meal.
Practice a breathing technique
Perhaps the quickest way to reduce anxiety and stress is practicing a form of breathing called boxed breathing. Also, consider the 4-7-8 breathing exercise advocated by Dr. Andrew Weil.
Box breathing is a simple breathing technique known as 4-4-4-4: four seconds of inhalation through the nose, four-second hold, four-second exhalation through the nose, four-second hold, and repeat 6-12 times. Or continue this technique for upwards of five minutes if needed.
A study shows that slow breathing techniques like the one described increase alpha waves and decrease theta power which can induce comfort, relaxation, pleasantness, vigor, and alertness. If you’re still skeptical about using breathing techniques or exercises to control one's state of mind, consider another study published in the PNAS.
In this study, Wim Hof and 12 healthy volunteers were all injected with an endotoxin that would cause diarrhea, stomach cramping, nausea, and vomiting in normal conditions. But instead, by practicing their breathing techniques, they all could voluntarily increase epinephrine levels and pro-inflammatory mediators and avoid symptoms. This voluntary sympathetic nervous system activation was only discovered because of this study. Click the link to learn more about the Wim Hof breathing method by Wim Hof.
Recap
By utilizing mindful strategies, we can simultaneously support our health, productivity, and time throughout college.
In the beginning, we discussed eliminating unnecessary snacking. Doing this may avoid excessive insulin secretion. Furthermore, we should be mindful of consuming high sugary fruit to prevent or mitigate a combination of sugar and fat in a single meal. Studies show that this type of macronutrient combination lights up the addictive center of the brain and may lead to metabolic inflexibility.
I also mentioned dining halls and how to navigate them if you must. Avoid foods fried, steeped in oils, or drenched in unidentifiable sauces. These types of food are most likely oxidized and can predispose to undesirable health outcomes. If dining halls are not a requirement, then learn to meal prep. Not only can you save money, but you have complete control over what goes into your mouth.
And if you have the luxury to spend an extra $20, consider spending it on extra virgin olive oil sourced from California or Australia. This type of oil is more stable than seed and vegetable oils and may carry cardiovascular, neuroprotective, and cellular benefits.
In the second half of this article, we discussed exercise and how we can sustain our physical health by being open to options outside our regiment. Some of these include a short but intense 10-15 minute run. This type of exercise can improve verbal memory and executive function.
Another suggestion, if our schedules are even tighter, is to do push-ups, body weight squats, or sit-ups for 1-3 minutes whenever we take a break. Doing this many times throughout the day can quickly accumulate reps and help us be more productive while also getting exercise in.
Towards the end of the article, we discussed scheduling a routine for when to work out—designing a practice creates a more defined bridge. And when you do your workout, it is important to modify it once in a while to affect different stimuli and adaptive responses.
Lastly, we finished today's article with breathing techniques and strategies to avoid prolonged sitting. Studies show that standing for an hour extra daily can decrease neck and back pain by 54%, and standing after a meal may increase digestion and carbohydrate metabolism. If standing is not an option, I briefly touched on fidgeting. Those who move more when sitting burn an extra 75-100 calories hourly.
And if you have a stressful day or are feeling anxious, consider using breathing techniques. A simple one that works for many is called box breathing: 4-second inhalation through the nose, 4-second hold, 4-second exhalation through the nose, and 4-second hold; by controlling our breath, studies show that we can increase alpha wave and decrease theta power leading to a relaxed, calm, and focused state.
In conclusion, you will feel more liberated by learning correct breathing, navigating nutrition, meal prep, moving, and exercising. You may notice less stress and anxiety, more control, and higher cognition in the process. However, nothing is guaranteed. In that regard, if you implement something and don’t notice an improvement, always feel free to remodel, calibrate and fine-tune according to your biological uniqueness.
Disclaimer: All information in the Service is provided "as is", with no guarantee of completeness, accuracy, timeliness or of the results obtained from the use of this information, and without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including, but not limited to warranties of performance, merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. The Company will not be liable to You or anyone else for any decision made or action taken in reliance on the information given by the Service or for any consequential, special or similar damages, even if advised of the possibility of such damages.
