Almost Done!

Everything is pretty much the same with the project as from the last time I posted. We’re going to try to set up a meeting with Dr. Dunn ASAP so we can see if health services will share our blog with students. This way more students will have access to valuable information.

Other than that Allyson and I will be meeting this Friday to organize notes and information for our presentation next week. I am excited to share our finished product with the class and to show them all of the information we have collected and organized within our blog. I truly believe that our blog is a great landing point for people of any age to provide them with insightful information.

Until next time!

-Julie

What We’ve Been Up To

Just wanted to post about what Allyson and I have been planning for the blog and what not.

Basically, we are still posting pretty much every day so hopefully you’re checking the blog as much as you can! I’ve been trying to incorporate more workouts than recipes lately in order to have a good balance… plus we all want to look good in our bathing suits righttttt? Or at least comfortable in our summer clothes. I know I could shed a few lbs. for the summer season.

Anyway, we have decided to meet with Health Services to promote our blog and provide students the necessary information to stay healthy. We have yet to set the meeting up, but it should be happening within the next week. We made a graphic/handout that students will receive that shows them our blog’s URL so they know where to go. Hopefully health services will think our blog is a high quality source… but I guess we will see what they think about it at the appointment!

Until then here’s a sample of our graphic…

Ciao,

Julie

 

Weekly Progress Report

If you’ve been keeping up with the blog you’ve been seeing continued posts about recipes, exercises and personal stories written by Allyson and myself. This is something that we are going to continue with up until the end of the semester. I’m still enjoying finding the content to post and learning about new exercises and random nutrition facts as well!

Something I’d like to add to the project dawned on me in class today. Someone had suggested that another student get in touch with the Marist abroad offices for his blog, and I thought we could do something along the same lines for our project. I think it would be beneficial to get in touch with Health Services/Counseling Services to share our blog with students. I’ve noticed that health services sometimes does seminars about eating healthy/living healthy and our blog definitely drives home this message as well. I have a meeting with my counselor Andrea tomorrow so I plan on bringing it up during our session!

I’m excited about this idea because I hope we will be able to help even more people change their lifestyles for the better.

Thanks for reading!

– Julie

Post Spring Break Plans

Hello again,

If you’ve been keeping up with our project blog, you’ll see that I was able to post some material over spring break (surprising I know). I also got to write about my boxing class experience which was fun to do! I will probably write another post on how the workout benefits your body and break down the workout step by step, just so you know what you’re getting yourself into ;) Other than that, I had posted some summer-y recipes since the weather has been getting so warm!! From here on out, Allyson and I want to incorporate more visual aids such as videos into our blog so that you can see how to do the workouts that we post on the blog. Again, I’m going to try to see if my boxing instructor wants to write an article about a detox program he e-mailed to us during boxing; it will really flush your system out and have you looking great.

This week Allyson and I plan to work on our grading rubric as I stated in my last post… Probably will have that finished by Wednesday or Thursday! Looking forward to meeting back up with her and working on the project; we have mostly been doing independent work thus far with the blog posts and what not.

Other than that we continue to keep posting exercise routines, recipes, etc. If anyone has any requests on what we should post feel free to comment :)

Thanks for reading!

Julie

Progress Report Thus Far

So if you’ve been keeping up with our actual project blog @ healthycollegehabits.wordpress.com you’ll see that Allyson and I have been busy posting recipes, workouts, inspirational photos, etc.

The next direction that I would like to take the blog is writing a spotlight on my boxing experience with Ron Lipton and our boxing course. It was an awesome course and not to mention you can take it here at Marist at a class; if that’s not convenient then I don’t know what is!

Additionally, we plan to start working on our grading rubric once we come back from spring break. I think that it will be a pretty simple task to accomplish, but it will be interesting to hold the fate of our project in our own hands. I can’t say that I’ve ever had the freedom to determine HOW a project/paper/assignment will be graded, so this will be a new experience for me.

I’ve enjoyed posting and blogging as I’ve stated in my previous posts, and I’m really thankful for Pinterest. If you aren’t familiar with it, I suggest getting an account! It is a great way to organize your “ToDo” projects, workouts, cute outfits, etc. And it is certainly a great tool for our project; just another example of how technology and social media is so helpful and accessible.

Anyway, just wanted to check in before spring break! Again, check out our actual project blog @ healthycollegehabits.wordpress.com.

Ciao!

Julie

Capping Update Pt.2

So, as you can see Allyson and I have fine tuned our proposal and this is what we are going to base our project off of for the rest of the semester.

I have really enjoyed working on the project so far. I hope that students are benefiting from the information we are posting, because I know that I really have. It has been fun to sift through everything that’s out there, test it and then write about it on the blog.

I hope to incorporate some videos into the project very soon. I’m thinking something along the lines of a crash course beginner workout… I believe adding a video component would be a nice change of pace from typing everything out!

I also would like to get in contact with my boxing instructor to see if he would like to write a spotlight article on either nutrition or working out, as he is knowledgeable in both areas.

Overall, I am enjoying this project thus far, and will continue to feel this way! As stated before, it has certainly been beneficial for myself, but more importantly I think this would mean that it is helping the readers out there (hopefully!)

-Julie

Capping Proposal

Here is a copy of the proposal we doctored up for our semester-long project.

We have chosen to focus our capping project on giving college students, athletes or not, the necessary tools to create a healthy lifestyle. The project will include a Twitter account, blog and hopefully an event to push this information out to Marist students. The blog will be our focal point and landing page for this material; we plan to have subsections covering recipes, workouts, nutritional facts and other healthy tips and tricks. Currently, the event that we have in mind would be to comprise a panel of coaches, athletic trainers, nutritionists, etc. and have them speak to students on how they can attain this lifestyle.

The inspiration for this project came from our own personal experiences. As a freshman non-athlete, trying to figure out an exercise routine can be challenging. Additionally trying to create a nutritionally balanced meal when you eat at the cafeteria for every meal can seem impossible. When student-athletes are in between seasons, these same problems arise. Furthermore, athletes experience their friends coming to them for advice on work out routines and nutrition, so we hope this project will help them better communicate these notions. Overall, we would like to provide both an affordable and achievable template that allows students to live a healthy life.

Through our set social media outlets, we are going to push information to followers and readers. On our blog, as mentioned above, healthy and quick recipes, workout routines, nutrition tips and other advice regarding healthy habits will be provided. It will be up and running on February 6, 2012. Our individual Twitter accounts will be used to further promote our blog and bring attention to the articles.

Julie is currently taking a boxing course through Marist and will write about how students can easily mirror and attain this workout as well. Allyson, as a cross-country and track runner, will write a spotlight on how easy and surprisingly fun it can be to implement running into your daily life. Additionally, we will make use of video recordings and pictures to show students how simple it is to cook up a healthy meal in minutes.

In closing, it is our hope that through this project we will provide students with a crash course on how to live healthier. Our overall goal is to teach students, whether they are freshmen or seniors, how to eat a balanced diet, how to work out regularly and ultimately how to feel better about themselves.

Follow our project blog!

Hey all,

Please follow our actual capping project blog at healthycollegehabits.wordpress.com to stay up to date with what we are posting :)

Thanks,

Julie

Capping Update

It has been about a week or so since my initial post so I just wanted to update everyone with the behind-the-scenes progress that has been going on. Allyson and I had met last week to map out our project and create our proposal as well; it was a successful meeting. We also laid out our goals that we will achieve over the course of the semester. Essentially, we really want to push the information featured on our blog and Twitter accounts to our target audience (college students) at a steady rate. This is definitely something that can be attained.

From here on out this will be my personal blog where I talk about what is going on with our project and the progress we have made. Allyson and I have created a new blog that is going to essentially “be” our capping project. The URL for that is healthycollegehabits.wordpress.com. We will make our first blog post(s) today February 6, 2012 so keep an out for them!

Overally, we are going to try to make a minimum of five posts a week to keep everyone’s interest piqued and to stay active in the blogging community.

Don’t forget to follow my Twitter account as well @JulieAMaio.

Thanks!

Julie

Introductory Post

Hey everyone,

As stated in my about section, this blog is dedicated to my senior capping project. For those who don’t know what “capping” means, it is essentially a class that is meant to bring everything I have learned throughout the four years as a communication major into one project/assignment. The project plans to provide college students with healthy and affordable eating options as well as quick and easy workouts. This blog is going to be the main landing point for communicating these ideas and tips. Videos, polls and other interactive media are to be used to make sure that the information provided to readers is what they want to see.

The inspiration from this project has come from my own personal experiences. After playing sports all throughout high school I was somewhat lost the first semester of college. I didn’t know how I could get the same type of exercise I experienced in high school from the gym and I certainly didn’t know how important nutrition played into the mix. The information is out there, but the overabundance of different websites and opinions can certainly be daunting. Again, this blog aims to organize and filter that information and provide it to you, the reader, all in one place.

The point of this project is to achieve a happy medium in an environment that typically pushes us to unhealthy choices. This isn’t an overnight change, but it certainly can be done! And no one is perfect – so have some Pleasant Ridge pizza from time to time, but don’t make it the staple meal of your daily diet. This blog will help you substitute healthy choices in place of those “munchie” foods.

With that being said, please answer the poll provided because I want to make sure I’m posting information that piques your interest.

Thanks for taking the time to read :)

Here’s to being healthy!

-Julie