My enthusiasm for promoting a healthy life style is not just through this blog. Part of my involvement on campus is with the Student Health Advisory Committee: SHAC. My freshman year, I saw an advertisement from Campus Health Promotions introducing the club to our school. We applied, interviewed, and became a brand new group of students interested and involved in “healthifying” our student body.

The first year is a little difficult to make a big impact, and we focused on structuring the club, planning and preparing for new events.

It’s inspiring and rewarding being around a group of like-minded people who want to see a change for the better in  our student population. My focus is always on nutrition, though I know there are many more aspects to health. We have a “Tobacco Task Force” who is working really hard to make our campus smoke-free, and other members working on different aspects of health.

For me, I would like to see the calories posted on all of the menus around school. We have a Starbucks that is constantly full, and I’m willing to bet they go through over 500 of their chocolate chunk cookies a day. Maybe if students knew that each cookie contained 400 calories, they might think twice before adding it to their latte.

So many of the choices in the cafeteria are so sodium-heavy and I think it would be great to see the kitchen start using healthy alternatives like garlic & lemon juice or pepper and herbs for dishes instead of salt, oils and grease. I know the main hurdle is cost, which is something we have to be extra creative about when SHAC creates its proposals to make healthy changes.

Currently I’m super excited about our newest project, hosting our very own “Amazing Race” for students to compete in teams of two. I love  The Amazing Race & have always wanted to apply for the real show. Until then, this mini-version should be just as fun and hopefully inspire a few more students to kick start some healthy habits :)