Eating healthy on a college campus is hard, and everyone wants to avoid the freshman fifteen. Here are a few ways to avoid eating ramen in your dorm room and stay full and energized all day.

Breakfast:

Based off of choosemyplate.org, women from ages 19-30 should be getting 2 1/2 cups of veggies per day and men from ages 19-30 should be getting 3 cups of veggies per day. From my experience, meeting your daily veggie intake is fairly difficult in a college campus. Especially during breakfast. Frequently, breakfast for a college student turns into a bagel from Bruggers or a donut and coffee from Dunkin Donuts on the way to class. You might think your sausage, egg and cheese bagel is a good way to start your day but did you know that your bagel is considered 4 servings of grains? According to choosemyplate.org, women from ages 19-30 should eat 6 servings of grains each day and men from ages 19-30 should have 8. Also half of your grain intake should be whole grains. So, starting at breakfast, if you eat the everything bagel, you have already consumed half of your grain allowance for the day and it is barely 10 am. Your sausage is also ridden with fat and sodium. The egg is the only source of nutrition to start your day. Instead of trekking all the way to Turner for a bagel, here is a much quicker, cheaper and healthier way to start your day and it can be done in the comfort of your own dorm. You even get a serving of veggies in during breakfast!

Easy Microwave Omelette

Its super simple and it takes only 3 minutes to make:
First grab a mug and crack two eggs into it. Add a splash of milk and a pinch of salt and pepper just for flavor. Whisk all of that together with a fork. Here is where you get to be creative and customize what you like. I like to throw in some yellow and red peppers, sliced mushrooms, chopped onion and just a sprinkle of cheese. Mix all of that together and pop it in the microwave for about a minute to a minute and 30 seconds. Pull it out of the microwave and you have a healthy and nutritious breakfast that took less than 5 minutes to make.

Overnight Oats:

Say you are trying to eat healthy and decide to make some quaker oats oatmeal in your dorm. That instant oatmeal is full of sugar and isn't as healthy as you would think. An easy way to still have oatmeal is buy non-instant oatmeal. Old fashioned oats have 1 gram of sugar while one packet of maple and brown sugar oatmeal has 12 grams of sugar. Overnight oats just hit social media and they are easier than you would think. All you have to do is put of the ingredients in a container when you go to bed, put it in the refrigerator and wake up the next morning with healthy and delicious oatmeal. Here is my favorite recipe, but pinterest has plenty!

1/2 cup of unsweetened almond milk

2 tablespoons of peanut butter

1 tablespoon of unsweetened cocoa powder

1-2 teaspoons of stevia depending on how sweet you like it, I think it is sweet enough with 1 teaspoon.

1/4 teaspoon of vanilla extract

1/2 cup of rolled oats

It is super simple, you grab some kind of container with a lid, add all of the ingredients except the oats together and mix it up, add the oats in, mix one more time and pop it in the fridge for the night. When you wake up the oats are soft and you have a great breakfast that you can eat on the way to class!

Lunch/Dinner:

Okay lunch has two different ways it can go, you can simply eat in the dining halls or you can cook easy mac in your microwave in the dorm. As good as our food is at Virginia Tech, I still got bored and needed to switch it up a bit, especially during lunches. So, last year I started cooking in the dorm for lunches a little bit. I enjoy the cooking, but I hate the clean-up and I found an easy solution that requires significantly less clean up. It is called… A crockpot! I found one at target, it is small enough to sit on your desk, it is two quarts and you can even buy liners for the crock pot. It literally requires zero clean up you just take the liner out and throw it away and the crock pot is completely clean. Pinterest does become your best friend in this situation because there are thousands of crock pot recipes, and all you do is put the ingredients into the crock pot before you go to class, turn it on and you get back from class two hours later with a completely cooked meal. It really is the lazy college student dream. I have recently found a healthier buffalo chicken dip recipe that can be made in the crock pot:

Healthier Buffalo Chicken Dip:

Ingredients:

4 oz (half a block) of greek yogurt cream cheese

1 cup of plain greek yogurt

1 cup shredded part skim Mozzarella cheese (shredded)

1/2 cup of hot sauce

1 tbsp. of ranch seasoning

3 cups of shredded chicken

Mix all of the ingredients in the crock pot and cook it on low for 4 hours or high for 2 hours until the cheese is melted and serve on celery sticks.

Hope you guys enjoyed and found recipes and ideas that you can use in your dorm! Happy Cooking!