How do you stay healthy?
timr: The Grad School Diet!During the time I spent in grad school, I completely changed my body.  Today I weigh about the same amount that I did in high school, I can run for miles, and I have a lot more lean body mass than ever before.  But after my undergrad, I was overweight (by about 50 pounds), and something as simple as walking up a long flight of stairs would wind me.By far the most important thing that I ever did to get in better shape was to change my eating habits.  Thanks to grad school poverty, I cut soda out of my diet entirely, stopped eating out frequently, eliminated most booze and learned how to cook.  As I became more aware of what I was eating, I found that my caloric intake went down, and the amount of "real" foods that I was eating went up.  Nobody seems to believe it, but you can consume calories far more quickly than you can burn them through exercise, so if you can do nothing else, eat less crap, and your body will still thank you.The second most important thing (again, thanks to grad school poverty), was to begin walking everywhere.  I'm no longer in school, but even today I walk to most of the places that I go.  Most people don't realize how little they walk/move around on a daily basis -- my first job out of grad school, I was climbing the walls because the daily car commute didn't afford me a great deal of exercise (I had to start running daily to make up for the loss).Finally, and least importantly, I got in the habit of going to the gym regularly (I do cardio and lift weights).  This probably isn't very important in terms of calories burned, but it keeps me sane, and the weight lifting has definitely improved my body over time.  I'm in the habit now -- I actually feel "scummy" if I don't work out every day -- but if I had simply jumped into a gym routine with the expectation of becoming "fit", I'm sure I would have failed.  The key ingredient was that I started to go to the gym to deal with stress, and it gradually became a healthy habit.  The benefits of the habit took years to become apparent, but  like I said...now I'm an addict.So there you have it -- the Grad School Diet.  I should write a book...