Channeling your inner #BalancedBuckeye

Coming to college with a lack of parental input on what to eat can be difficult to navigate since most students have had this throughout their life. As it becomes time for them to take on this responsibility, students can fall into a few traps:

#1: Eating too little as they don’t dedicate time for meals.
#2: Eating too little to maintain or lose weight.
#3: Eating too much because they have this newfound freedom or they eat the wrong foods to have a balanced life.

These eating habits have a possibility to lead to eating disorders among other mental health issues.

Student Life Dining Services noticed this lack of overall balance in students’ lives, so they established the #BalancedBuckeye campaign. The campaign, unlike many diets, does not demonize foods so that students feel they need to punish themselves for eating anything in particular. This is not a diet but a lifestyle so that students can learn to build a long-term balanced life.

A great resource for students to utilize is Dining Services registered dietitians. Whether students are just beginning to discover how to eat and live a balanced life, have any degree of food allergies, maintain a halal or kosher life, or are moving off-campus and want to discover how to eat and cook for themselves, the dietitians can help navigate all these different paths.

Another great resource is Dining Services’ NetNutrition. This resource shows nutrition facts for every on-campus food service facility so that students can understand what they are eating. Additionally, it allows the user to filter options if they have a particular allergy or have a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle.

Here are some general tips on how you can be a #BalancedBuckeye:

1. Stay attuned to your body’s needs. Eat when you are physically hungry and stop when you are full
2. Focus on nutrient-dense foods or foods with more nutrients per calorie. Great examples are fruits, vegetables and whole grains
3. Increase your consumption of fruits and vegetables so that it takes up at least half of your plate
4. Make at least half your daily grains whole grains
5. Drink water or unsweetened beverages instead of sugar-sweetened beverages
6. Feel free to eat any foods you want as demonizing foods is not good for long-term eating habits, but be sure to eat everything in moderation in order to be balanced
7. Try to stay away from diets that demonize certain foods
8. Do your research before starting on a diet to see all of the possible effects
9. Plan ahead on what you are going to eat whether you live on or off-campus