There is no underestimating how exhausting and time consuming it is to be a student. Balancing school work and classes with a part-time job and life tasks like cleaning can feel impossible — but we’re here to tell you it’s not.

There are a lot of moving parts when you’re a student living on your own, but don’t let your health suffer. It is possible to eat healthy and maintain a healthy routine when you’re living on your own, and we have proof!

Here are some easy tips to help motivate you to eat healthier this year:

Don’t Skip Meals

If you are full or not hungry that’s one thing, but when you are busy it’s common to just forget to eat. The first step towards healthy eating is making sure that you are actually making the effort to eat — even if that means just having a smoothie in the morning.

Meal Prep

You’ll hear this time and time again — meal prep is the best way to maintain a healthy eating routine. No one wants to be cooking every single night, it’s exhausting. When you are studying and have early or late night classes, the motivation to cook something healthy is non-existent.

If you pick one day a week (Sunday, or whatever day you may have off) to do your cooking for the entire week, you’ll be so glad you did! There are plenty of meal prep recipes and videos out there — we love the meal prep guides from Buzzfeed — that will inspire you to get cooking.

Ration How Much Junk You Keep In Your House

To say never buy chips and chocolate is not only unrealistic, but unfair. The best way to ration less healthy foods is to keep a lot less of it — this will also help you to portion control how much you have!

If you buy one bag of chips and tell yourself you won’t buy another one for two weeks, that will give you some more incentive to eat less of it so that it will last longer.

Pre-Cut Your Fruit

Have you ever wondered why your carton of strawberries always sits in your fridge and goes bad before you get to it? When you buy fruit, pre-wash and cut it.

This way, you don’t have to wash and cut your fruit every time you want to reach for it. Having your fruit ready for you to just put into a container makes it that much more appealing to pack it for a healthy snack to munch on at school.

Find Healthy Alternatives

Are you someone who likes salty and crunchy? Instead of buying a bag of chips on campus, try buying some roasted cashews! They are healthier and satisfy that craving.

There are plenty of salty and crunchy alternatives to snack foods like pretzels and chips. We personally love Popcorner’s Bean Crisps that have everything you love about chips, without the fat and salt content!

Get Your Friends Involved!

Things like meal prep and grocery shopping can seem tedious if you’re doing it alone when you’re tired, and all you can think about is going to bed and grabbing a quick lunch on campus tomorrow.

Enlist the help of friends, roommates or both to meal prep together! If everyone makes a different meal you can pool together your resources to provide variety for your meals throughout the week.

Grocery shopping with friends will also encourage you to make better choices! Maybe your friend is reaching for frozen fruit because they love making smoothies in the morning — follow their lead, and get their recipe!