DAPHNE OZ

While fad diets might seem like the quick-fix solution to lose weight, they won't help you get healthy in the long run.

My dad, who is a heart surgeon, works with many adult patients who did not take good care of their bodies in their formative years. He is able to teach them how to break old eating and exercise habits and reshape their bodies, but not without a great deal of resistance.

After my first week of no wheat, my stomachaches were gone, my mucous cleared up, and I felt incredibly energetic. My headaches were also less frequent and less severe, and I had lost 3 pounds, most of it swelling and water weight my body had been holding onto as part of its response to the wheat products in my diet.

Exercise is important, but exercise in a gym is not important. Go and take a walk outside. Skip the umpteenth coffee date and go for a hike instead. Take the stairs. Walk your errands.

A 'diet' is simply an individual's eating regimen: it doesn't have to mean the restrictive plan we've come to associate this word with.

I have two pairs of stretchy maternity leggings and jeans, which I will never give up, because once you experience an elastic band for a waist, you will never go back.

The Dorm Room Diet is nothing like the conventional diets you may have tried in the past. It offers guidelines for creating a healthy lifestyle on your own, without the daunting restrictions of a quick-fix diet.

My parents always wanted me to know why eating healthfully was important to overall performance, probably to drown out my whining for junk food.

I was a good 30 pounds overweight throughout high school, and it wasn't until I was going away to college that I really wanted to make sure I was doing everything possible to feel as confident as I could.

At my heaviest, I was 5'8" and 175 pounds. I ate well, but in too large quantities, and I rarely made a concerted effort to burn off the extra calories. I'd beat myself up about being overweight, even though I had the tools to be in shape. Then I'd resort to an unhealthy diet to lose the weight that was making me self-conscious.

I didn't grow up eating meat - I was a vegetarian until I was 18.

Everyone has their own definition of a healthy lifestyle, and mine has come to mean making health a priority but not an obsession.

A gluten-free diet still allows you access to almost every fruit and vegetable, a variety of grains and legumes, your pick of dairy products, fresh meats and fish and a whole slew of special gluten-free delights to satisfy your pretzel-bagel-muffin-doughnut craving.

Developing a diet that is healthful, balanced, and appropriate for your particular caloric needs is easy enough and is absolutely critical to establishing a healthful lifestyle that incorporates proper nutrition, adequate fitness, and mental resilience.

Figuring out how to eat healthfully on your own without your parents' guidance is one of the hardest lessons you must learn when you leave home for college.

I tried every diet under the sun and none of them worked but, more importantly, they were robbing me of my love of food.

I wanted to lose 30 pounds healthfully and still be able to enjoy my college experience. Having succeeded in doing just that, I wanted to share my experiences with others who could benefit from my direct knowledge of the difficulty of trying to balance college life with being healthy. It became a journey about healthy lifestyle choices, including tips and tricks for creating a new relationship with food where I was in control and could learn to love food healthfully again.

I have so many girlfriends in their twenties who live in a white box apartment, having mediocre meals with mediocre friends, waiting for the life they want to hit them in their forties or fifties. They are settling in the now - what's the point?

My mom is a great cook, and family dinners were a must growing up, even if that meant eating at 10 p.m. when my dad got home from the hospital. It's where we did our family bonding.

The most imminent battle our generation is going to have to fight is food transparency: how food is made/grown, where it comes from, the quality of the source, and how it will effect our health long term.

Growing up in my family, it wasn't important that we always be the best; it was important that we were going to try to be our best and give it our all.

I love to look at my life and look at what I can do better, how I can contribute more and where I can push myself.

If we make wholesome, healthy food accessible and affordable for everyone, we make the choice to be healthy an easy one.

You can tell your kids they are perfect and don't need to change - which could cause insecurity when they recognize their own shortcomings - or tell them they are terrible, which would undermine their sense of self-worth and confidence. There's a happy middle ground.

I do what I do because my favorite thing is to learn.