Student Weight Loss Help!

gail200186
gail200186 Posts: 59 Member
edited December 2 in Health and Weight Loss
So I'm a full-time nursing student with a very full course load. I find it really hard to find the time to go grocery shopping, food prep for the week and arrange my food for the next day between the ridiculous amount of reading, essay papers and exams I have to do for classes and practicum at the hospital. So of course, the food court at school becomes my kitchen some days.
Does anyone have any suggestions for weight loss. I always seem to start with good intentions, but never seem to be able to keep it up long term....peetering out within a few weeks.

Replies

  • capaul42
    capaul42 Posts: 1,390 Member
    If you have a slow cooker, I usually cook up some boneless skinless chicken thighs (on high for 3-4hrs, low for 5:30) and shred them. I use them for adding to my eggs in the morning, quick wraps/sandwiches for lunches, quesadillas for dinner. Makes prepping meals pretty easy as they're already cooked and I can just grab and go.
  • queenofpuppies
    queenofpuppies Posts: 189 Member
    foods you can toss in your backpack: instant oatmeal, granola bars, baby carrots, apples, oranges, beef jerky, trail mix. I would put carnation instant breakfast in my coffee when I was in school, since it was glued to my hand at all times anyway. You can have a small container or that on you and mix it up at school.
  • ashliedelgado
    ashliedelgado Posts: 814 Member
    Second the slow cooker. It makes batch cooking a lot easier if it's on auto pilot! Grab and go food will help, but read your labels!
  • caroldavison332
    caroldavison332 Posts: 864 Member
    Cook tub of hard boiled eggs, tub of soup/chili, tub o oatmeal, pound of mixed veg. Eat daily. Grill a meatloaf of burgers and salmon loaf-burgers. Freeze and eat one daily. purchase BAKING nuts and mix together for low sodium snakes, pack slices of cheese, dried or fresh fruit. Freeze a 1/2 water bottle of water overnight and add tap water before class. Pack for school and take little money. Instant oatmeal and instant breakfast are too sugary in my book. Best to you.
  • vczK2t
    vczK2t Posts: 309 Member
    how bout just making one small change each day until it becomes habit, then work on the next small change?
  • abatonfan
    abatonfan Posts: 1,120 Member
    Keep it simple and learn how to make multitasking your best friend. My food prep is washing/cutting vegetables that I can take to school (I'm also a nursing student), but at the same time I might be cooking some chicken breasts in the oven to have for lunch. I'm a big fan of cook once, eat twice (or thrice/4+ times) -my family might have a big pot roast over the weekend, and I will have enough leftovers from it for lunches the upcoming week, or I might cook an extra serving of dinner to pack away and have again tomorrow (the big thing is to keep it simple -often times the simpler meals like meat + veggies + grains/potatoes tastes better as leftovers than something elaborate). If money is not a huge concern, then buy the pre-prepped vegetables if that will give you the time to allocate to other things (I personally cannot justify it being double the price for the same weight of prepped vegetables when it might only take 5 minutes for me to prep them).

    This sounds really dorky, but I often do my nursing readings and videos (simulation prep, some classes have online lectures, watching Youtube to see if someone else can explain a confusing topic better) while walking in circles around the kitchen island or dining room table. I get my readings done, and I am able to burn a few extra calories compared to if I was sitting while doing the readings (which means that I don't need to allocate as much time to exercising).
  • YorriaRaine
    YorriaRaine Posts: 370 Member
    edited July 2016
    I feel ya, I'm graduating this summer and school really did in my progress sometimes. If you live in a place with standard cooking supplies (oven, fridge/freezer, etc), try making either slow cooker (like above said) or tray dishes where you can put stuff in and forget about it either all day or for an hour depending on which method you chose. Then just have those for lunch/dinner.

    For breakfeast, I personally like protein heavy things like protein shakes or quest bars (if you like eggs that would be one but I personally hate eggs).

    For snacks, grab yourself something nut/dried fruit based or something protein based again.

    Dessert is usually fruit for me.

    If your dorm lifeing it up and you can't have any cooking things in your dorm then try to find the healthier options in your school cafeteria and be mindful of portion sizes. You can still log everything with food scales and try to find equivalent entries in the database to what your eating if your school does not offer calorie counting. For example, if your eating your school's pizza and it looks like another brand of pizza you know then just use that brand of pizza to log your food.

    Example of a tray dish that easy:

    - Chicken Thigh
    - chorizo sausage cut into cubes
    - Baby Golden Potatoes
    - Oregeno, Salt, Pepper
    - Lightly coat the bottom of the tray in some sort of non-stick spray

    Bake at 425 for about an hour. Mix things up after 30 minutes to get the Chorizo touching everything. Takes 5 minutes maybe to prep because I just quickly wash the potatoes and cut them in half. Just make sure you log everything as normal.

    There are lots of 1 tray dishes like that where its quick prep and low maintenance. Then just have a ready made bag of salad greens or something to go along with your meals if you want.
  • gail200186
    gail200186 Posts: 59 Member
    queenofpuppies wrote: »
    foods you can toss in your backpack: instant oatmeal, granola bars, baby carrots, apples, oranges, beef jerky, trail mix. I would put carnation instant breakfast in my coffee when I was in school, since it was glued to my hand at all times anyway. You can have a small container or that on you and mix it up at school.

    I've become a huge fan of overnight oatmeal recently. I just use vanilla greek yogurt, rolled oats, and frozen rasps. Not a fan of the instant stuff. And I've been buying protein shakes from Costco as I found the Breakfast to go ones a bit sugary. But great idea on the jerky! Never thought of that!
  • gail200186
    gail200186 Posts: 59 Member
    abatonfan wrote: »
    Keep it simple and learn how to make multitasking your best friend. My food prep is washing/cutting vegetables that I can take to school (I'm also a nursing student), but at the same time I might be cooking some chicken breasts in the oven to have for lunch. I'm a big fan of cook once, eat twice (or thrice/4+ times) -my family might have a big pot roast over the weekend, and I will have enough leftovers from it for lunches the upcoming week, or I might cook an extra serving of dinner to pack away and have again tomorrow (the big thing is to keep it simple -often times the simpler meals like meat + veggies + grains/potatoes tastes better as leftovers than something elaborate). If money is not a huge concern, then buy the pre-prepped vegetables if that will give you the time to allocate to other things (I personally cannot justify it being double the price for the same weight of prepped vegetables when it might only take 5 minutes for me to prep them).

    This sounds really dorky, but I often do my nursing readings and videos (simulation prep, some classes have online lectures, watching Youtube to see if someone else can explain a confusing topic better) while walking in circles around the kitchen island or dining room table. I get my readings done, and I am able to burn a few extra calories compared to if I was sitting while doing the readings (which means that I don't need to allocate as much time to exercising).

    LOL.....thats awesome....hahaha. We nurslings certainly have our quirky things to help us study eh?! What year are you in?

    I think my biggest problem is that I don't look after myself during the school term because I feel guilty that I'm not studying......kinda like the fear of missing out...lol. And because by the time I do the shopping and get home and prep, 2 or 3 or 4 hrs have gone by already. I agree with you on the pre-prepped veg, I have done it on occassion tbh.
  • fitgirldc
    fitgirldc Posts: 55 Member
    edited July 2016
    I just wanted to say, I don't have tips yet...Finish my last set of prereqs this Fall and then I begin my Nursing program in the Spring. Yay! (BSN)
  • sunnybeaches105
    sunnybeaches105 Posts: 2,831 Member
    I used the "I don't have enough money to eat" diet through school. Kept me lean.

  • daniip_la
    daniip_la Posts: 678 Member
    Everyone gave you great recommendations, I'm just going to throw in that you have to make the time to do these things. I got through a BS in Chemistry while working full time, and am now in grad school working on my PhD. It's super easy to just accept that you're too busy and not do the prep (at least for me it was), but I had to force myself to not go along with the "grad school life" of eating out constantly because of time constraints.
  • Asher_Ethan
    Asher_Ethan Posts: 2,430 Member
    It sounds like too big of a deficit is hard for you to stick to. Set your diary to only lose .5 pounds a week. It may take a little longer for you to lose the weight but you will feel satisfied (and you need the good for energy while you're studying)

    I hope this helps.

    Best of luck.
  • megsi886
    megsi886 Posts: 27 Member
    Do you have Trader Joe's in your area? They sell a lot of good cheap single serving salads, including low and moderate calorie options. Sometimes I just go buy a week's worth of lunches at a time there. I tend to eat them without the dressing, which makes them very diet friendly.

    The yogurt tubes marketed for kids freeze well and make a good snack or on-the-go breakfast.
  • pomegranatecloud
    pomegranatecloud Posts: 812 Member
    daniip_la wrote: »
    Everyone gave you great recommendations, I'm just going to throw in that you have to make the time to do these things. I got through a BS in Chemistry while working full time, and am now in grad school working on my PhD. It's super easy to just accept that you're too busy and not do the prep (at least for me it was), but I had to force myself to not go along with the "grad school life" of eating out constantly because of time constraints.

    This. I worked full-time (often 50+ hours) during a vigorous grad school program, and I still found the time to exercise and cook while keeping on top of my school work. I'd go grocery shopping on Friday or Saturday and cook 2-3 things to eat for lunch and dinner during the week on Saturday or Sunday. I'm sure you can find 1-2 hours to go grocery shopping and do some basic meal prep. You don't need to cook something every night or prepare 5 complex meals. It takes less than 15 minutes to make a salad, including clean up, even if you make the dressing yourself.
  • laur357
    laur357 Posts: 896 Member
    Check out your school's food service pages to find which food service provider and nutrition information for what they're serving. Many use services like Sodexho, Morrison, and Eurest, which are pretty good at posting nutrition information. They're often used in hospital cafeterias as well where you might find yourself doing clinical rotations.

    Find a few go-to items that fit your caloric intake so you aren't faced with a huge buffet of choices every time you need to use the cafeterias and food courts. Soups were big for me (even the creamy soups turned out to be reasonable), and grilled chicken tenders, grilled chicken sandwiches, a certain roast beef sandwich. Even a slice of pizza + a side salad were do-able. The hospital I worked at was usually pretty good at offering some creative, healthy entree options as well.
  • seattlerain
    seattlerain Posts: 189 Member
    Make time. I have everything scheduled out. I'm a part time student online, full time ER nurse and a Mother of 3. I make it to the gym for an hour every day. I schedule when I'm going to do my homework and when to meal prep.
  • Spliner1969
    Spliner1969 Posts: 3,233 Member
    The easiest solution, if you can find the time for it, is add 30-60 minutes of exercise to your daily routine. That'll easily shave 200-500 calories (depending on the exercise, maybe more maybe less) a day. 500 calories a day is 3500 a week which can equate to a 1 lb per week loss without changing anything you're eating. If there's no time for the exercise, then you'll have to do your best to change what you eat. It's all about CICO, if Calories In can't change, Calories Out have to change or vice versa.
  • sophomorelove
    sophomorelove Posts: 193 Member
    I'm in the same boat. I easily lose weight over the summer (when I just have my job and family duties), but it all comes back during the school year. For me the critical factor is the lack of sleep. When you are awake for 19-20 hours every day (add the weekly all-nighters, a kid, and my job), it's hard to sustain on only 1200-1500 cal. The exhaustion and stress get to me. I have one more year of school, so this thread is highly interesting to me. Maybe I'll figure out a way to do it better this time
  • beaglebrandon
    beaglebrandon Posts: 97 Member
    edited July 2016
    You can lose weight even at McDonalds. Grab a cheeseburger with a cup of water. Have a kids meal with a water.

    Just eat less. Choose 1/2 a sandwich or burger. Don't add mayonnaise. Buy something and throw away half of it. Choose veggies like tomatoes, pickles, green peppers, banana peppers, jalapeños, mushrooms that have very near 0 calories each.

    Usually there will be a grilled chicken sandwich. Choose one with no mayonnaise.

    Always drink water. Try not to eat fried anything. No sides unless they're pickles or veggies.


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