Weight Loss for Students on a Budget: Hostel and Canteen Food

Hostel mess food, a canteen that sells samosas and Sting, a 2 a.m. paratha before a paper, and no kitchen of your own. Weight loss for students on a tight budget has to work inside all of that, because none of it is going to change this semester.

Start with what you actually control

You do not control the mess menu, the cooking oil, or the hour the kitchen shuts, and you probably cannot afford chicken breast and imported oats, which you should not be buying anyway. None of that matters.

You control four things. How much starch goes on your plate, what you drink, what you keep in your room for late nights, and whether you walk. That is the whole article.

A warning before the detail. Students are the group most likely to try something stupid: skipping meals entirely, living on tea and cigarettes, ordering slimming capsules from an Instagram page, or doing an extreme cut before a wedding. Do not. Under-eating badly during exam season wrecks your concentration, your sleep and your mood, and capsules sold this way have turned up carrying prescription drugs that were never listed on the packet.

Eating in a mess or PG without cooking

Mess food is usually generous with starch and oil and thin on protein and vegetables. The good part is that you can rebalance the same tray, using the same ladle and the same queue, without asking anyone for a special plate or explaining yourself to a single person. Nobody notices.

1. Take the daal or salan first and take a proper full katori, about 150 g, asking them to go deeper in the pot for the solid part rather than the top oil.
2. Take the sabzi next, and take more of it than feels normal.
3. Then the roti or rice, last, into the space that is left. Two rotis instead of four, or one small plate of rice instead of a heaped one.
4. Tilt the serving spoon against the side of the dish to let the floating oil drain back before it lands on your plate.
5. Drink water with the meal. Keep the bottle filled before you sit down.
6. If there is an egg or a piece of chicken available, take it, even if it costs a little extra. It is the cheapest thing on the tray by usefulness.

One medium chapati works out at roughly 100 to 120 kcal, more or less by size and atta, and cooked rice is around 130 kcal per 100 g. You are not banning either. You are taking two instead of four. The desi plate method is the same idea with the katori sizes worked out.

Cheap filling food, ranked by what a student can actually get

Filling comes from protein, fibre and volume. All three are cheap here. A boiled egg, a katori of thick daal and a bowl of chana between them cover more of what a studying body actually needs in a day than anything sold in a shiny packet at the canteen counter.

Eggs come first. Roughly 70 to 80 kcal each boiled, high in protein, and they need nothing beyond water and a kettle or a shared stove. Kala chana and safed chana come close behind, protein plus fibre, filling for hours and cheap by the kilo; soaking and cooking kala chana has the timings. Daal is the everyday default, and taking it thick rather than watery is the whole trick, because that is where the protein sits. Dahi does two jobs at once. It adds protein and makes a dull plate edible, and 200 g with a little jeera is a real part of a meal. For mornings, dalia is cheap, filling and the thing most likely to hold off the 11 a.m. samosa, with recipes in the dalia guide. Whatever fruit is in season is the cheapest on the cart. Sattu, mixed with water and salt, makes a filling cold drink: see sattu sharbat.

Most hostel rooms have no fridge, so cook to the day, not the week. Eggs boiled in the morning keep in a bag until evening. Got a shared kitchen or a hot plate? Soaked chana in a pressure cooker gives you days of chaat for what one canteen meal costs, though in hot weather make a smaller batch and finish it the same day.

The canteen, honestly

Nobody eats plain food at a canteen for four years. So here is the realistic version, which assumes you will keep buying things from the same counter you have always bought them from.

• The cold drink is the single easiest saving. A regular bottle carries roughly 8 to 10 teaspoons of sugar. Water, or chaas if they have it, and you have already changed your week. Chaas is easy to make too.
• Chai with two spoons of sugar, four times a day, adds up quietly. Go to one spoon, then half. Nobody notices after a week. The chai sugar maths is worth reading once.
• If the choice is samosa or nothing, eat the samosa and move on. One is fine. The problem is two samosas plus a patty plus a drink, every day.
• Chicken roll or chana chaat beats fries. Anda shami beats a plain paratha.
• Buy the small packet, not the family packet. You will eat whatever size you buy.

Studying late without eating the whole night

Night before a paper, third cup of coffee, and by 1 a.m. you want food. This is normal. Plan for it rather than pretending you are above it, because the plan is what stands between you and a 2 a.m. paratha order.

Two rules. First, eat a real dinner. Students who skip dinner to “save calories” are the ones ordering paratha at 2. Second, decide what the late snack is before you get there, and keep only that in your room.

1. Keep a jar of roasted chana. Around 30 g is a sensible handful.
2. Keep roasted makhana. Huge volume for very few calories, and it crunches, which is half of what you want at 1 a.m.
3. Keep fruit visible on the desk and the biscuits out of reach, or better, out of the room.
4. Fill a 1 litre bottle before you start and finish it before you order anything. Much late-night hunger is thirst plus boredom.
5. Cap caffeine at roughly 400 mg a day for an adult, which is about 4 cups of strong coffee, and stop 6 to 8 hours before you plan to sleep. Energy drinks stack up fast and are a bad idea in quantity. Under 18, keep it much lower.

Short sleep makes you hungrier the next day and worse at studying, so the all-nighter is expensive twice over. Our desi snacks and portions guide has more options with sizes.

Movement when you have no money and no time

You already have the two best options. Walking and stairs.

• Walk to the department instead of taking the shuttle or the bike. On most campuses that is 20 to 30 minutes a day you were going to spend anyway.
• Take the stairs by default. Hostel blocks are free cardio.
• Ten minutes of walking after lunch and dinner, around the block or the corridor. Easier to keep than an hour you will skip.
• Twice a week, 15 minutes in your room: sit-to-stands from the bed edge, push-ups against the desk or floor, and a plank hold. Keeping muscle while you lose weight is what stops you ending up lighter and weaker.

Stop and get checked if you get chest pain, unusual breathlessness or dizziness. The beginner walking plan works fine on a campus.

What to expect, and what to ignore

About 0.5 kg a week once you are past the first fortnight, with exam weeks and Eid and going home all interrupting it. The first week often shows more, and most of that is water rather than fat.

Ignore the hostel roommate on a 900 kcal day, the fat burner capsules in the group chat, and anyone promising 10 kg in a month. Ignore the idea that you must give up roti, rice or chai. Portions and drinks are the lever. More at Desi Weight Loss, and if your family cooks one menu at home during the holidays, this piece covers eating from the same degchi as everyone else.