How to Balance Academic Performance with Good Health in College 

Can you deal with both an academic workload and keep healthy while in college?

When the subject of higher education is brought up, it is often in terms of increasing one’s academic mettle and as a bridge to the real world. The world where the money is made and all freedoms are expressed as if by the mantra ‘do as though wilt’. Depending on your personality, the picture that will be painted in your mind of college students as you are just coming into this process is that of nerdy library junks, or happy-go-lucky, beer-drinking, fun-loving jocks. 

Rarely is the subject of a healthy student or healthy living incorporated in this picture. However, research conducted on students from Kuwait University shows that performance greatly increases if, in addition to academics, the three factors of exercise, good diet, and sleep are given due consideration. The study concludes that more than half of students do not engage in any form of exercise, have horrible diets consisting mostly of snacks and soft drinks, and get about 7 hours of sleep every night, which is less than the recommended average. 

Students, in turn, will justify this lifestyle as being driven by the need to perform well to maintain their academic performance and GPAs. 

While it can be agreed upon that sleeping an average of 9 hours a night and committing to hours of exercise every day is difficult, maintaining a healthy regime is not beyond doable. 

Here are a few lifestyle choices that you can incorporate to keep healthy.

Plan Your Schedule with An Organizer

One thing that graduates and those who’ve already finished up their college education will attest to is that they probably could have spent their time better. 

How is this possible, you may ask?

By keeping a diary and planning yourself. Yes. As boring, cliché, and mundane a task as this sounds, the truth is you cannot free up any time on your schedule to do such tasks as exercising if you don’t plan yourself accordingly. Don’t expect the assignments to get any fewer. As you move up the academic echelons, expect your classes to take more time and the assignments to get tougher, with an endless barrage of essays to submit simultaneously. 

Work your way around such situations by incorporating a planner into your day-to-day lifestyle. Technology has made a variety of planning tools and productivity apps such as Evernote available to students and freelancers at little or no cost. These can be installed on local devices like mobile phones, and you can update them at the start of each day or week. With time, this will incorporate into your lifestyle as a habit, and you’ll have a better perception of how you spend your time and how you use it. 

If you need to free up more time at a busy phase of the semester, a professional essay writer can assist you with tasks such as sourcing and creating proper essay outlines. 

Purchase Yourself A Non-Motorized Form of Campus Transportation

Students are often wary of going to the campus gym unless they are into college sports. One sure way to keep fit without going to a regular fitness center is to buy yourself self-propelled equipment for your transportation. Colleges often allow students to use such equipment as hovercraft, bicycles, roller-blades, scooters, and skateboards on campus, provided they obey all the rules. 

The upside of this is that you will form a hobby, and you can use the equipment in your free time to move outside campus, or just as a form of relaxation, and this is a habit that will stick even beyond campus. 

This shouldn’t stop you from visiting a gym once in a while or taking up college sports where possible. Nothing beats true exercise in terms of the health benefit, and this can even be achieved without ever going to a gym, provided you focus on cardio, endurance, and strength training, depending on your health goals. 

Purpose to Eat Healthy Before You Go into Campus 

The usual trend of meals on campus consists of microwaved food, soft drinks, ice cream, potato chips, and all the other junk that can be easily accessed quickly and cheaply. Students will often claim that they simply don’t have time to do meal preps, especially in the middle of busy semesters, but much of this is hogwash. 

Even if you can’t manage gourmet diet meals, the same amount you spend on all the soda and junk will be enough to buy you a week’s supply of fresh fruit, and frozen yogurt, and veggie salads from your local market. 

Purpose before you get to campus to eat healthy meals and drink lots of water. Otherwise, all the stress from lofty academic dreams not being fulfilled, emotional roller coasters from mates, family, and friends, and all the happy-go-lucky moments filled with beer and all-nighters will soon usher you into the Freshman 15 club.