Any college students out there?

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ilovelucy711
ilovelucy711 Posts: 381 Member
in Motivation and Support
Any college students out there looking to lose weight?

Watch are some great healthy cheap breakfast, lunch and dinner ideas?

I need ideas!

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  • tehzephyrsong
    tehzephyrsong Posts: 435 Member
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    Hi there! I'm a college senior. My staples:

    - Beans! You can get a ton for cheap if you're willing to put in the work it takes to cook dry beans.
    - Eggs are cheap and versatile, breakfast (scrambled, poached) or lunch (hard boiled, egg salad)
    - Onions and garlic form the basis of a lot of cheap, easy-to-cook dishes, so I try to keep those on hand at all times
    - Frozen veggies are convenient - instant side dish, or make a stir-fry depending on what else you have on hand
    - Rice/quinoa (sometimes the quinoa is on sale)

    I make a big batch of chili or stew on, say, Sunday and then I have dinner for a couple weeks. The great thing about both of those is that it's hard to f*** them up; just take whatever you have. I like beans, bell + jalapeno peppers, onion, garlic, tomato, and beer in my chili; for stew, I like carrots, potatoes, celery, onion, garlic, and corn, plus whatever cheap cut of meat is on sale. Stew meat doesn't have to be particularly high-quality. Buy a slow cooker if you don't have one; it makes short work of this sort of thing.

    Remember ham and cheese rollups from kindergarten? That's still a perfectly valid and tasty lunch. Add some grapes or apple slices to really relive your childhood. Those Tupperware-container lunchmeat packs are on sale pretty often, plus you get a reusable container to store your big batches of chili/stew/soup/whatever. I've also heated up some cooked pinto beans, melted some cheese over them and wrapped the cheesy-beany mixture in a slice of deli turkey. It's not classy, but it's tasty, and it filled me up for a while.
  • 33Freya
    33Freya Posts: 468 Member
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    I always have raw nuts and dried berries on hand for snacking. Otherwise, rice and beans are great, and I also oven-roast squash for lunches, oh and another thing I love to do cheap and healthy is make a big pot of veggie stew to take for lunches, though it can get tiresome day after day.
  • samanthacallan
    samanthacallan Posts: 2
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    I am a college student :)
    Getting back on track before I gain anymore weight!
  • AggieFan2011
    AggieFan2011 Posts: 551 Member
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    Hey I'm 23 and in college as well! Here are a few of the cheaper things I have found. I'm still looking for ideas though because I'm still sort of new to this eating healthier lifestyle...

    I really like eating bananas for breakfast. Sometimes I make a piece of toast and spread some peanut butter on it and then put banana slices on that. It's super yummy and not too expensive.

    Lunch meat is always good because you can make a package last for several meals. Sometimes I don't even use bread and just roll up a piece of cheese and turkey or ham together and eat it like that.

    Dinner is probably one of the toughest for me because the cheapest options seem to be the worst for you. However, I do like frozen vegetables a lot and I buy the frozen chicken breasts because they're easy to make in a pinch and a great source of protein. Also buying a big bag of salad mix is good because it can last several days and you'll get your veggies in that way.

    I also make smoothies a lot either for breakfast or as a post workout snack. I make mine with milk instead of yogurt because I don't like how thick the yogurt makes it, but yogurt should work the same. I mix 1 cup skim milk, 1/4 cup raspberries, 1/4 cup blueberries, 1/2 sliced strawberries, and 1 banana together with a few ice cubes. It's delicious and gets almost all of your daily fruit servings in at once.



    I'd love to hear other people's ideas too! It's always nice to find new cheap and healthy ideas to try!
    Good luck in your weight loss journey. :smile:

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