{"id":29155,"date":"2016-10-05T09:09:24","date_gmt":"2016-10-05T13:09:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/?p=29155"},"modified":"2016-10-05T09:09:24","modified_gmt":"2016-10-05T13:09:24","slug":"the-rocky-road-to-healthy-eating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/2016\/10\/05\/the-rocky-road-to-healthy-eating\/","title":{"rendered":"The Rocky Road to Healthy Eating"},"content":{"rendered":"This summer, I was enrolled in full-time classes. I would be on campus several days a week from 10 a.m.\u00a0until 5 p.m.. As a commuter, unwilling to burden myself with more heavy things to carry, I bought pasta every day for lunch. By September, I had twelve dollars\u00a0left in my bank account.\r\n\r\nIt hadn't taken me long into first-year to realize that I often had to choose between healthy eating and cheap eating. Loaded with extracurriculars, my days spanned twelve hours; I would subsist off snacks, water, or\u00a0cave in and buy a sandwich or pasta. When I first discovered food trucks, I had been delighted -- finally, a filling meal for under five dollars! But I soon realized that each poutine -- however cheap, hearty, and delicious -- made my body feel bloated and uncomfortable for hours afterwards.\r\n\r\n\"Food<\/a>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThe only other option was to pack food, which cut into my busy schedule and was cumbersome to lug around. I also only knew three or four quick recipes, and kale salad every day of the week got boring very fast. Only this September, when faced with no more funds, did I finally resort to bringing proper lunches.\r\n\r\nI have a big advantage in living with my parents at home; I don't have to cook every night. This past month, I have been bringing leftovers from dinner of the night before. Initially, I had been quite picky about what I would eat. Cold food had no appeal. But microwaves are magical and easily found on campus: at Sid's Caf\u00e9, Robarts' food court, Ned's Caf\u00e9, and more. Leftover pasta, fried rice, chicken, mashed potatoes, or salmon definitely did the trick.\u00a0On the days when no leftovers were available, I tossed arugula or baby spinach with cherry tomatoes and\u00a0bocconcini cheese balls (almost no cutting or preparation necessary) into a Tupperware, and brought a separate container of olive oil dressing, pre-prepared, to pour over when ready to eat.\r\n\r\n\"Salad<\/a>\r\n\r\nTo solve my heavy backpack issue, I started carrying around another bag, usually a tote bag or\u00a0gym bag, on the days I had many books to bring. It is still cumbersome, but worth the effort. This allowed me to also bring a few granola bars, and more importantly, a water bottle to stay hydrated daily. To my surprise, with water always\u00a0at hand, I would drink three or four bottles a day -- a huge difference from my water intake without convenient access.\u00a0Cutting in fresh lemon slices in the morning also makes the taste consistently appealing.\r\n\r\n\"Backpack<\/a>\r\n\r\nI have been quite happy with my lunch routine so far this month. For the first time, I look forward to my meal without the ensuing guilt of having bit into more of my savings. To make sure that I was on the right track and to see if I could pick up more tips, I dropped in to the Healthy Habits workshop at the Hart House Reading Room this Monday.\r\n\r\n\"Healthy<\/a>\r\n\r\nPart of the Hart House Weekly Wellness series, Healthy Habits is a nutritionist-led talk that takes place every Monday (except Thanksgiving) from noon until 1 p.m.. Each week's session focuses on a different theme; last week's was eating on a budget, and this week's was nutrition for a healthy mind. The themes get decided at the workshops, based on students' requests, but I found most of the time was\u00a0taken up by unstructured questions and discussions.\r\n\r\nI came away from Monday's session with plenty of useful tips and guidelines: eggs, avocados, and oats are the best breakfast foods; the fastest way to waste money is to buy junk food (including food truck food); packing a quick salad as I was doing (add seeds, hard-boiled eggs, or grains for more nutrition!) did make\u00a0for a\u00a0great, healthy\u00a0lunch. It was a casual and\u00a0enlightening hour. I left the room\u00a0not only knowing more but also feeling inspired to keep up my packed lunches, learn more recipes, and stay away from\u00a0the cheap and easy options -- even if it means spending Sunday night making salad dressings.","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This summer, I was enrolled in full-time classes. I would be on campus several days a week from 10 a.m.\u00a0until 5 p.m.. As a commuter, unwilling to burden myself with more heavy things to carry, I bought pasta every day for lunch. By September, I had twelve dollars\u00a0left in my bank account.\r\n\r\nIt hadn't taken me long into first-year to realize that I often had to choose between healthy eating and cheap eating. Loaded with extracurriculars, my days spanned twelve hours; I would subsist off snacks, water, or\u00a0cave in and buy a sandwich or pasta. When I first discovered food trucks, I had been delighted -- finally, a filling meal for under five dollars! But I soon realized that each poutine -- however cheap, hearty, and delicious -- made my body feel bloated and uncomfortable for hours afterwards.\r\n\r\n\"Food<\/a>\r\n\r\n
Continue reading “The Rocky Road to Healthy Eating”<\/span>…<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"author":295,"featured_media":29171,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[25500,12627,216,88,1177,25506,1883],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29155"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/295"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29155"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29155\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29175,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29155\/revisions\/29175"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}