Everyone enjoys food, which is why it is common for special holiday meals to be extra unhealthy.

Good or bad, holiday meals only come a few times each year. This is helpful for those students who are very self-conscious of their weight.

According to a recent survey conducted amongst Carlmont students, 41 percent of students say that they worry about their weight during the holidays. This means that there are a lot of students that are self conscious about how much they eat.

The best ways to recover after you indulge yourself during the holidays is to control your serving sizes while you eat. This limits the amount of calories you take in, so you would be able to burn off the extra calories you gained a little easier.

Another way to lose weight is to exchange certain foods for healthier substitutes. Poultry and fish are much healthier than red meat. Try to avoid fried foods because they have at at least 100 more calories than baked foods.

Some students avoid eating certain types of foods and food groups by becoming either vegetarian or vegan.

Senior Julia Albertson, who has been a vegetarian for several years said, “It’s better for you to eat lots of veggies, eat smaller portions, and not to eat too many sweets.”

Exchanging other drinks for water is one way to help you lose weight. Water has no calories compared to drinks like coffee, smoothies, and soda.

Exercise is not the most effective way to lose excess weight. This is because after you lose a little weight, it becomes much harder to keep it coming off. It could very easily come back if you eat more food than you should.

Teenagers sometimes say: “I exercised the other day, so it’s okay for me to eat this.” This statement is not necessarily true, because the extra food you would take in would over compensate for the calories you lost during the exercise.