The holidays are over. No more eating your weight in pie. No more shoving your face in a Christmas ham or drinking eggnog until you drop. Mere months separate us and spring break, meaning you’ll have to show the world your bikini body, and hopefully, you won’t have a little extra Christmas cheer hanging off your love handles.
Personally, I was a victim of what they call “Last Supper Phenomenon,” which means I ate an extraordinary amount of food over the holidays in anticipation that I would go on a diet in January.
I feel the pressure. The idea of being in the Bahamas, on my twenty-first birthday, during spring break, with photos to haunt me for the rest of my life is breathing down my neck.
But I think we can help each other out. If you keep all forms of cupcakes, pizza and peppermint bark out of my face for a few months, I will give you my top diet tips.
Deal? Okay.
1. Step away from the snack section
• When you are at the grocery store, avoid the snack section like the plague. In fact, don’t even go into the aisles. Grocery stores put healthier foods around the perimeter of the store. If you stay in the outskirts of the store, you are in the clear.
2. “Forget” to bring your wallet
• Eat your meal and be done with it. When you go on campus, do not bring your wallet. Then, though the fumes of Chick-fil-A enter your nose with delicious enticement, you are cashless and unable to purchase even a single waffle fry.
3. Work out. For real.
• The University of Florida RecSports has this wonderful system that allows you to sign up for classes, but also makes it incredibly difficult to remove yourself. Therefore, you have to go, even if you don’t want to. So, sign up, think later.
4. No soda.
• Don’t drink soda. Not even diet soda. Google aspartame. You will never drink diet soda again.
5. Think of what you can add to your diet, not take away.
• Do you need more vegetables? Protein? If you eat more of the foods you are truly lacking in, you will be less likely to have room for all that stuff you shouldn’t be eating and you will have a more balanced diet.
