Transitioning from the relaxing days of summer to the stresses of school can be hard on your body, especially if your eating habits change with the season.  All the tests, homework, projects, clubs, and sports can majorly stress out students, and in turn, girls will often reach for junk food to “feed” their emotions from school-related stress.

Juniors Hannah Knoop and Hannah Schmidt know how to stay healthy under stress.  With swim practices almost every day, and hours of homework, the swimmers stay smart about what they eat.

“We eat lots of granola,” said Knoop.  Schmidt added that they eat many apples for the fiber.  These healthful foods fill the swimmers up, and still provide them with the energy they need.

Stuart Wolpert, a writer for UCLA’s newsroom online interviewed Fernando Gómez-Pinilla, a professor of physiological science at UCLA.  According to Gómez-Pinilla, healthy food has been proven to affect processes in the brain that promote necessary learning and memory.  Junk food, on the other hand, can negatively affect the brain and how well it processes information.

If you make a conscious choice to eat healthy food each day, you may feel better physically and emotionally.  Make a list of healthy foods that you would enjoy snacking on and ask your parents to go grocery shopping with them.

Try replacing your unhealthy after-school snacks with healthy ones for a full week, and see how you feel.  You may find that you are more focused in school.   You probably will feel much less hungry, and your body will thank you for filling it with nutritious food.