Intro to College Eating

Forget the Freshman 15. A Junior Dishes Advice on Staying Fit, Not Fat, Amid Temptation.

Do college students really need another book telling them how to fight the dread Freshman 15 and eat healthy? Assuming the answer is yes, why would they want to take the word of a 20-year-old? Daphne Oz is prepared to answer both questions.

Oz, a Princeton undergraduate, is the author of "The Dorm Room Diet: The 8-Step Program for Creating a Healthy Lifestyle Plan That Really Works" (Newmarket Press). Despite the title, it's not really a diet she's offering, but rather a series of practical tips for maintaining health amid the relentless pizza, beer, junk food, parties and comfort food of college life.

Oz speaks from years of personal, if not professional, experience. She says she struggled with her weight through high school, topping out at 175 pounds on her 5-foot-8 frame in her junior year. That officially qualified her as overweight.

The daughter of author-cardiac surgeon Mehmet Oz, she lost 35 pounds during her first two years at Princeton -- returning to the "normal" weight range -- by developing and sticking to a set of low-maintenance tactics to avoid campus-food land mines.

We spoke to her last month while she was babysitting her younger brother and preparing to ship off for her junior year.

Why should readers follow the health advice of a 20-year-old without an undergrad degree, much less a PhD or MD?

Growing up with a father and grandfather who were cardiac surgeons and a grandmother who was a nutritional advisor, I could not have avoided being inundated with information on health and wellness. And not just the traditional take on it, but also more the Eastern therapies and homeopathic remedies that my grandmother was interested in. Whenever a controversial new study came out, there was always a big uproar in my household. It was hard not to get caught up in that. In high school, I was reading JAMA [Journal of the American Medical Association] studies and Columbia University health texts. In writing the book, I worked with three nutritionists and had four of my dad's doctor friends verify that everything made sense. While my name is listed as the author, really, my whole family helped.

Much of the info in "The Dorm Room Diet" can be described as general lifestyle common sense: Don't eat for emotional reasons. Make time for exercise between studies. Choose the healthier offerings at the cafeteria. Why do students need this book?

It's always easier to hear something from a peer than from some 60-year-old doctor. Also, the book is unique in its approach: I talk about the different eating scene you face in college, and its social repercussions. For instance, if you're following the lifestyle I recommend but you don't always want to be the girl who brings carrot sticks to the party, what do you do? I haven't yet seen that addressed in a way that's appropriate for kids my age.

What are the five food-oriented danger zones you write about as being unique to college, and how can students better deal with them?

The buffet-style cafeteria is a big one. Suddenly, you have complete control over when and what you eat, with no parental guidance and no outside influences -- nothing except what your taste buds dictate . . . When faced with that much food and that much freedom, many students don't know what to do. In the book, I talk about having cafeteria will power and how to make the healthiest choices there.

Two others danger zones are late-night studying and late-night talks, both of which usually happen in the dorm room. You're exhausted, you've been studying -- or talking -- for hours. You run to the store for bad snacks at 3 in the morning, when your will power and common sense are greatly diminished. But if you've already stocked your dorm room for that night with an apple, baby carrots, almonds, you can keep your brain fueled for studying -- or talking -- and you won't take in that unnecessary 500 calories.

But you don't want to keep your room too stocked, or you'll overeat.

Parties and tailgates are big danger zones, too. Parties are usually late at night and offer a snack table, which, if you let it, becomes your dinner. Or a second dinner. What's scary is it takes about 700 calories in Doritos to make you satiated. Steer clear of that snack table. Tailgates? You can expect burgers, pizza, chips. It's a good idea to try and contribute a dish that's healthy. Then, when you're at the game, walk around a lot instead of just sitting there.

What about alcohol? As you say in the book, college students consume 430 million gallons of alcohol yearly. And yet you only give a few pages to this. Are healthy lifestyle guidelines that don't take alcohol into consideration realistic for college students?

Alcohol is definitely a big part of college life, and I didn't want this book to require that you curtail that college experience; I didn't want to lecture. And alcohol isn't something that can always be avoided on campus.

Instead of offering tips for avoiding it, I provided a lot of scary facts about alcohol that tend to stick with people. And I press the fact that one drink has about 100 calories. People can make their choices from there.

In the book, you recommend taking vitamin C, echinacea, elderberry and zinc for colds. But recent studies -- one of which was published in the New England Journal of Medicine -- showed that experts can't find enough evidence to recommend vitamins and supplements like echinacea and vitamin C to prevent illness.

To be honest, I don't place much weight on those studies, and neither do the health care professionals I know. In my experience, those supplements seem very effective. People have differing opinions. My grandfather said that an issue with one of the echinacea studies is that they used the wrong potency, and they took it from perhaps the wrong part of the plant, and the dosage wasn't the correct amount, either, to be effective in any way.

Do you have to be a goodie-two-shoes to follow your plan?

It's the easiest diet plan I've ever followed. I did Sugar Busters and The Zone diet, and on those I was depressed, unhealthy and obsessed with food.

The book is not restrictive; I didn't want to recommend that students curtail their college experience at all -- but just use moderation. Have some of that birthday cake if it's important to you, but only one small piece.

Have beer at that party, but very little. It's imperative that students don't feel deprived or they'll start obsessing -- they'll feel like: How much longer can I take this before I collapse? What's also helpful in making this plan accessible to more than just the goodie-two-shoes is that young people are very health-conscious these days. There's a Whole Foods on practically every campus.

Have you ever wantonly fallen off your own healthy-lifestyle wagon?

Oh sure. One night, I was studying for a microeconomics final. It was 3 a.m. and I still had three chapters to read. At that point, I lost control and couldn't be bothered with my celery sticks. I needed a burrito, and Doritos, and soda and Nutter Butters, and I went and got it all. Loading up on all that garbage didn't help me refuel, though; it was a rough night. But then I got right back on track the next day. It's okay if you do that once in a while -- you just can't do it regularly and stay healthy. My maxim is: Substitute healthy choices where you can, and use moderation where you can't.

Have some pizza once in a while, but just one small slice. ·

Suz Redfearn last wrote for the Health section about strained friendships. Comments:health@washpost.com.