You gonna eat that?

Maintaining a sensible, healthy diet while attending grad school full-time is harder than doing so while having a full-time job due to two primary limitations: funds and time. And it doesn't help matters when family members send you home with a giant Ziploc bag of bite-size confections after Halloween.

I do not step on the scale every day as I once did. Now I get on every week or two. And each time, I expect bad news -- I remember the pizza I ordered for dinner one night, or that I've been having too much regular soda lately, or that I allow myself an occasional bowl of ice cream to smooth out the stress. And, yet, I have been finding that I am maintaining a steady weight. Granted that weight is naturally 10 pounds greater than my ideal weight, but I've been surprised at its 0% growth.

I attribute this to a few tricks I wanted to share with other people who might be in my circumstance:

1. Walk. I try to jog most mornings, but I think most of my calorie-burning is coming from walking so much -- to campus, from campus, to downtown (but usually not from downtown, since it's usually late enough that I take the shuttle for safety's sake). I want to pretend I'm using my weight bench, but it's a rare day that that happens. I should do better.

2. Purchase lean frozen breakfasts and dinners. Occasional pizza indulgences aside, I usually have a frozen meal for dinner, which grossly violates my values both taste-wise and health-wise. But frozen dinners are a great bargain, they're fast, and they can be relatively healthy, or at least low-calorie. Same for breakfast -- I like to have a healthy low-fat egg sandwich of some kind, or a variation thereof, with some fruit or yogurt.

3. Snack wisely. Bags of Halloween candy notwithstanding, I tend not to keep junk food in the house. No Doritos, Oreos or pork rinds around here. Currently, in the realm of snack food, I have snap peas, carrots, prunes, apples, bananas, organic yogurt, Triscuits, Goldfish crackers and laughing cow cheese ... and, in an uncharacteristic purchase, whole grain fig Newtons. Usually the "worst" thing I have is ice cream (I currently lack it), but in sensible portions I don't think ice cream is a big issue.

4. Don't be a stumbling lush. The most I've ever weighed is about 20 pounds more than I weigh now, and I attribute that to being in my mid-20s and having not much to do but drink. Now, of course, I cannot afford (financially or otherwise) to drink heavily often. I tend each night to have at most one cocktail -- maybe a Jim Beam on the rocks, or a glass of white wine, as the evening is wearing down.

5. Remember that thinking burns calories. ... I think.