How to Lose Weight While Studying Abroad?

Struggling with body issues, specifically weight, is something that almost everyone is familiar with, experiencing the same during various stages/phases of life. One such phase of life comes with the transition from home to college abroad. With the varied circumstances of foreign life alongside a change in environmental factors, a student witnesses many differences in their health. It’s natural for that to happen, as after one’s body leaves its shell of comfort and settles in a foreign one, with different kinds of cuisines and food intake, the adjustments it gets accustomed to means experiencing change in the body weight as well. As time passes, and with the absence of awareness of the reasons behind this change, along with a lack of care, students struggle with losing weight while studying abroad. So what then? If you are wondering how to lose weight while studying abroad and are here with answers in your wish list, read on. If you have made your decision of losing weight, and have decided that for yourself, we provide you with some tips to stay healthy and lose weight while studying abroad. 

Self-Care

Self-care holds a different meaning for each separate individual. In fact, the form of self-care that works best for you, might not work for someone else at all. So we advise you to look for different ways you can care for yourself, find out what best suits your needs and follow through with the same. Some examples of self-care include preparing a journal of your daily activities and thoughts and maintaining it on a regular basis. Next, it could also mean something as simple as taking regular hot baths, watching your favourite movie, or having a chat with your go-to person; without guilt that you are missing out on working towards losing weight. This is because stress causes one of the major contributors to gaining weight. And when you disregard this stress by taking into account the things that do make you happy, and feel better about yourself, you continue to take care of yourself without thinking about the perceptions of your body. Self-love and self-care are one of the most important guiding principles that will help you while you study abroad. 

Reach Out To a Support System

Another way of managing/losing weight is to mitigate the factors that are contributing to you gaining weight in the first place. As mentioned in the preceding point, stress is one of the major factors. And the lack of a community to support you in difficult times only worsens that stress, hence adding on those extra kilograms that you try so hard to get rid of. One way to tackle this problem is to look for and reach out to a counsellor, or appropriate support systems that accept you for who you are and stay by your side on your journey of getting healthy for yourself.  

Make Lifestyle Changes

Observe each facet of your daily lifecycle and make notes on what you think might actually be considered ‘unhealthy’; distilling the steps towards a healthy lifestyle. This can start from something as simple as improving your sleep cycle, minimizing consuming alcoholic beverages on a regular basis such as beer, going on regular walks, mindfulness, and focused exercises. Follow a routine taking the aforementioned into consideration, making sure that you are not sleep-deprived, and have ample time to rest and relax your muscles. Furthermore, we also encourage you to regularly drink water at timely intervals, remaining hydrated and consistent with your new routine-inhibiting the lifestyle changes. 

Intuitive Eating 

What does this term mean? It’s like having a diet where you can eat whatever you want just not whenever you want. Going by the name, eating your food with intuition and with intention at regular time intervals can help you go a long way in your journey of managing weight. In simpler words: eating only when you are hungry and coming to a halt when you are full is known as intuitive eating. It is a great method of developing and establishing a healthy relationship with you and your food. By maintaining a healthy food relationship as you intake healthy food, do you start to naturally manage and lose weight as per your preference?  

Self-cooking

Though we understand how hard it is to cook for yourself in a foreign land, making food with your own hands and consuming it at least twice or thrice a week can help you not make unhealthy food choices every day. Not only does this method cut on expenses, but it also ensures that you are treating your own self with care and with freshly cooked meals at home. However tasty and tempting the cuisines in the foreign land may seem, it always comes with great risk. So trust your skills, and go for self-cooking! 

FAQs

Those were some of the major pointers on how to lose weight while studying abroad! Remember, the foremost step is to accept your own body and not fall into the trap of self-shaming. It is completely normal and you can for sure stay in shape once you put your head to it! For more articles on study abroad, follow Wings by Leverage Edu.