things to do during break: create reading lists and work them off one by one, watch movies in foreign languages, attend lectures or seminars at places you’ve never been to before, discover a new library, visit museums and galleries, send postcards to your friends, take up a new skill like photography/digital drawing, write a daily poem, take an online course on something you always loved, pick flowers and press them, rate 10 cute cafes in town, test how much you can buy for 5$ on a flea market/in second hand shops, just start walking and see where the day takes you, plan a walk/hike/bike tour, start a new blog, create a vision board, write a letter to your future self, go to indie concerts, send cute anonymous messages, try out new ice cream flavors, make your own smoothies, buy artsy magazines, take the train/subway to nowhere, go to a party where you don’t know anyone, ditch a party and spend the whole day reading outside, set up a bullet journal, jot down 5 things you are grateful for each day, create playlist for different moods, try out a new language learning app, unwind and do not use your phone for a day, try meditation, go to a food market, sleep the whole day because you can, go to the theatre/cinema/opera, take aesthetic photos of the prettiest buildings in town
🌿 Got coffee with friends? Leave ¼ of it in the cup when you throw it away. It’s a reasonable amount that won’t make anyone suspicious, but it turns a 135 calorie medium latte into 100 calories.
🌿 You don’t need oil to cook vegetables. Just add a little water whenever it starts to stick. 1 tablespoon oil is 120 calories. Just saying.
🌿 Anything that potatoes can do, cauliflower can do better. 100 grams of potato is 77 calories, but 100 grams of cauliflower is only 25 calories. Mashed cauliflower, roasted cauliflower, you name it.
🌿 Cut the crusts off your sandwiches (if you eat those). That’s at least 10% less surface area, so 10% less calories and less space to put fillings on. And you really won’t notice that there’s less food.
🌿 20 minutes of yoga or stretching in the morning can knock off 50-100 calories right off the bat (it depends on your weight and how much effort you’re putting into it.)
🌿 Almost any recipe that calls for eggs can be substituted for egg whites instead. Pancakes need two eggs? Use 4 egg whites instead, which is 68 calories instead of 166. The only things this won’t work for are recipes that specifically call for egg yolks, like custard.
🌿 Throw away 10% of every plate of food you make. A 200 calorie meal turns into a 180 calorie meal, for example.
🌿 Craving ice cream? That’s packed with calories, though (274 a cup!!). Make your own, instead. Freeze one small banana (90 calories), and ½ cup of blueberries (42 calories). Peel and slice the banana, and put it and the blueberries in a blender/cuisinart with one tablespoon of unsweetened almond milk (2 calories). Blend it up, and freeze it for ½ an hour. 134 calories total (less than half of ice cream, and it’s fucking good for you.)
🌿 Put sparkling water in your juice. A 16 ounce glass of 2/3 sparkling water, 1/3 orange juice, is only 84 calories (16 ounces of straight orange juice is 224 calories). It still tastes like juice, just bubbly!
🌿 Unsweetened almond milk can do pretty much anything that cow’s milk or soy milk can do, for 1/3 the calories. It’s good in mac and cheese, mashed sweet potatoes, tea, coffee, baking, etc.
🌿 Order all salad dressings on the side and either ignore it, or dip the tines of your fork into it between bites. Way less calories.
🌿 There is a low-fat/low-cal/low-sugar version of almost everything. Find it.
🌿 Still hungry after one serving of a meal (especially dinner)? Make a cup of very hot tea and drink it as quickly as you can. It’ll make you feel completely full.
🌿 Want a tablespoon of peanut butter? Or cream cheese, or butter, or hummus, or whatever. Get 2 teaspoons instead (that’s 2/3 of a tablespoon). It won’t make you feel any less full or satisfied, but it’s 33% less calories.
🌿 Steal 0 calorie sweeteners from diners and coffeeshops. You can use them instead of sugar when baking, making coffee, etc. 1 tablespoon of white sugar is 48 calories. Get rid of it!
If you’re an adult, do the stuff you couldn’t as a kid.
Like, me and my sister went to a museum, and they had an extra exhibit of butterflies. But it cost £3. So we sighed, walked past, then stopped. We each had £3. We could see the butterflies. And we did it was great. We followed it up with an ice-cream as well because Mum and Dad weren’t there to say no.
I was driving back from a work trip with 2 other people in their early 20s, and we drove past a MacDonalds. One of the others went “Aww man, I’d love a McFlurry.” And the guy driving pulled in to the drive through. It was wild. But it was great.
I went to a park over the weekend and I was thinking “Man, I’d love to hire one of those bikes and cycle round the park.” It took me a few minutes to go “Wait, I can hire one of those bikes!”
I guess what I’m saying is, those impulsive things you wanted to do as a kid – see the dinosaur exhibit, play in the fountains with the other kids, lie in the shade for 2 hours – you can do when you’re an adult. You have to deal with a whole lot of other bull, but at least you can indulge your inner 8 year-old.
I am in no way an expert, but these are the few things I’ve noticed while I was studying for my ib exams.
1. Use Post Its I think we underestimate how useful post its are. I find that writing down notes on post its and tagging them on the pages really helps me during revision, especially for content heavy subjects like literature and history.
2. Colour coding I really enjoy making my notes ‘pretty’ so that I would want to look at them again and again and again. Therefore, personally, lack of colour makes my notes dull and I find them boring to read. Colour coding is good too cause its easier for your brain to remember things based on the colour that you’ve assigned.
3. Booktab Having mini tabs and tagging all the important pages saves you SO MUCH time. When you’re trying to cram in some last minute information an hour before the exam, you don’t have time to flip through your 800 paged textbook. So save yourself the trouble and booktab important pages!
4. Handwriting notes I find that handwriting notes make things easier to remember. HOWEVER, sometimes you just don’t have the time for it. So, you have to be strategic! you can only handwrite certain subjects and digitalise others.
5. Time Timing is so important. The earlier you start, the more time you have to do revision. If you’re still making notes one day before the exam, you clearly didn’t have enough time. You should have planned your revision so that you have enough time to look through and try past year papers.
6. Notebooks compared to binders, I really think notebooks are more useful. They give you a sense of organisation because ALL your notes for that subject is in one place. Unlike binders, you won’t ever lose a page or mix up pages.
7. personalise! your notes are, ultimately, yours. The only person they should matter to, is you. So, always make sure your notes are formatted to cater to you, and they are easy to understand for you. as long as it works for you, even if the rest of the world doesn’t understand, it doesn’t matter!
I hope you guys found this useful! All the best in your exams!
SugarFreePeach 