victoriaaa

For me, I:

1. try to get in at least 10,000 steps a day (this sounds like a lot, but it amounts to around an hour of walking a day). This is just my personal goal, doing any additional walking on top of what you normally do is going to reap a benefit. If you usually only get 4000 steps a day, aiming for 6000 is fine!
2. use MyFitnessPal to track my food and drink intake to keep me accountable. I find that I think twice before eating something if I know I have to record it, so it prevents a lot of mindless eating.
3. plan and prep my meals ahead of time. This can take time and energy that you may not always have as a busy student, but it is definitely worth it. Lowers your chance of buying take out when you're too tired to cook, eliminates the temptation to buy unhealthy food when you don't know what to make, etc.
4. keep healthy snacks on hand for when cravings hit. Whole foods are best.
5. find healthier alternatives for comfort foods (for instance, mashed cauliflower tastes a lot like mashed potatoes but with a lot fewer carbs and calories. Not exactly the same, but close enough that I'm not tempted to stray very often)
6. buy cheat food items like chips or cookies in as small a size as possible so they can satiate a craving without the temptation to over indulge. If you buy a big bag of chips, it's easy to just eat them all in one sitting, but if you get the little snack pack sizes, you can enjoy something you want without the ability to eat more (so long as you don't just head for the next mini bag!)
7. drink lots and lots of water. It helps keep you hydrated and feeling full.

Obviously, willpower is the most important part and none of these things will work if you're not determined to make them work, but if you're willing to put in the effort, it doesn't have to be that hard to keep your weight under control.

This whole post makes me sad. It's questionable to get a dog when you know your near future is up in the air and you might not be able to take care of it, but to have a dog and then wonder if it's going to make you miserable? I wish you put more thought into this before you adopted the puppy. I hope if you choose not to keep the dog, then you actively look for a good home for it. 
 
 

@victoriaaa, PM sent! I have recently been accepted for the MScPH program at McGill and will be moving there this summer.

Reviving this thread for 2017! Anyone looking for a roommate to live somewhere near McGill? I'm leaning towards Le Plateau or Cote-des-Neiges.

For me, I:

1. try to get in at least 10,000 steps a day (this sounds like a lot, but it amounts to around an hour of walking a day). This is just my personal goal, doing any additional walking on top of what you normally do is going to reap a benefit. If you usually only get 4000 steps a day, aiming for 6000 is fine!
2. use MyFitnessPal to track my food and drink intake to keep me accountable. I find that I think twice before eating something if I know I have to record it, so it prevents a lot of mindless eating.
3. plan and prep my meals ahead of time. This can take time and energy that you may not always have as a busy student, but it is definitely worth it. Lowers your chance of buying take out when you're too tired to cook, eliminates the temptation to buy unhealthy food when you don't know what to make, etc.
4. keep healthy snacks on hand for when cravings hit. Whole foods are best.
5. find healthier alternatives for comfort foods (for instance, mashed cauliflower tastes a lot like mashed potatoes but with a lot fewer carbs and calories. Not exactly the same, but close enough that I'm not tempted to stray very often)
6. buy cheat food items like chips or cookies in as small a size as possible so they can satiate a craving without the temptation to over indulge. If you buy a big bag of chips, it's easy to just eat them all in one sitting, but if you get the little snack pack sizes, you can enjoy something you want without the ability to eat more (so long as you don't just head for the next mini bag!)
7. drink lots and lots of water. It helps keep you hydrated and feeling full.

Obviously, willpower is the most important part and none of these things will work if you're not determined to make them work, but if you're willing to put in the effort, it doesn't have to be that hard to keep your weight under control.

For me, I:

1. try to get in at least 10,000 steps a day (this sounds like a lot, but it amounts to around an hour of walking a day). This is just my personal goal, doing any additional walking on top of what you normally do is going to reap a benefit. If you usually only get 4000 steps a day, aiming for 6000 is fine!
2. use MyFitnessPal to track my food and drink intake to keep me accountable. I find that I think twice before eating something if I know I have to record it, so it prevents a lot of mindless eating.
3. plan and prep my meals ahead of time. This can take time and energy that you may not always have as a busy student, but it is definitely worth it. Lowers your chance of buying take out when you're too tired to cook, eliminates the temptation to buy unhealthy food when you don't know what to make, etc.
4. keep healthy snacks on hand for when cravings hit. Whole foods are best.
5. find healthier alternatives for comfort foods (for instance, mashed cauliflower tastes a lot like mashed potatoes but with a lot fewer carbs and calories. Not exactly the same, but close enough that I'm not tempted to stray very often)
6. buy cheat food items like chips or cookies in as small a size as possible so they can satiate a craving without the temptation to over indulge. If you buy a big bag of chips, it's easy to just eat them all in one sitting, but if you get the little snack pack sizes, you can enjoy something you want without the ability to eat more (so long as you don't just head for the next mini bag!)
7. drink lots and lots of water. It helps keep you hydrated and feeling full.

Obviously, willpower is the most important part and none of these things will work if you're not determined to make them work, but if you're willing to put in the effort, it doesn't have to be that hard to keep your weight under control.

Assuming you are an otherwise healthy person with just some excess body fat (i.e. you are a person capable of moving relatively pain-free), one of the most effective ways to lose weight is by short bursts of high intensity workouts. You need to couple this with weight training and proper diet, but you don't need to spend huge numbers of hours in the gym. Something like 2-3 hours a week (5-6 visits for about 20-30 minutes each) is enough.
Here's what you can do:
Three times a week, with alternating days, do full body weight training. Do whatever exercises you'd like, as long as you're fitting in time for core/back, legs, and arms/chest.
Two to three times, do alternating walking/jogging and full out sprinting. Start out with low repetitions (maybe just 6 cycles) and work up to ~15. Just do 30 seconds of each, so start out walking (briskly!) 30 seconds, then sprint 30 seconds, and repeat 5 more times. Eventually jog 30 seconds, then sprint 30 seconds, and repeat 12 to 15 times.
Couple this with a lowish carb and high fat and protein diet.
 
 
I find long workouts to be somewhat therapeutic sometimes, but since this thread started touching on fat burning, and we all could always stand to have more time on our hands, I figured I'd add the ideas for effective and efficient fat burning.

again, and hopefully for the last time.. carbs is energy for your body (and brain). if you're not on carbs, you're running on fat and/or protein, which is is bad, because fat makes you fat... again, not all carbs are the same. you can get it from candy, fruits, bread, even vegetables. just because you're not eating bread doesn't mean you're not eating carbs. just because potato chips make you fat doesn't mean carbs is bad for you. if you can't eat bread or pasta, try rice, or something that doesn't upset the stomach..
your body get its energy on carbs. to say that carbs is bad for you only means that you're not eating the right carbs. substituting protein for carbs (as previously suggested) is wrong and stupid.. I don't know any simpler way of saying this.. 

Dude. No. If you are exercising, and the OP said she is, you HAVE to eat protein. Lean protein (chicken, fish) or protein shakes, but if you're not eating protein, you're just going to burn off all your muscle. 
Also as @GreenEyedTrombonist said, everyone has different needs. What works for you may not work for other people. Fasts make me end up eating more but they do work for some people if done right. 

Ahh, I see. I thought you were worried what they might say to you if you withdrew your acceptance. I don't know how this program does their funding, but if they always do this early deadline thing, I'm sure you are not the first person to be in this predicament. They must obviously make it work somehow.

From what I know, asking students to accept or deny offers before April 15 is considered unethical in and of itself in the grad school field, so X program is already being kind of unreasonable asking you to make a decision when you don't have all your cards on the table yet. You shouldn't be pressured into going to a school you're not completely sold on because they've decided that they want to kind of force students into picking their school by closing them out of their other options. If this program is going to insist on doing this, then they can't exactly be surprised if students accept and then withdraw their acceptance.

If I were you, I'd accept it but be ready to withdraw if a better program accepts you. I really don't like the idea of schools pretty much forcing the hands of their students, so I figure they get what they get.

Unless your two remaining schools are ones you'd pass up the one you received the acceptance to for, I'd personally save the money and forego them. If the acceptance that you got is for your dream school, then why bother! They could have been safety net schools in case you didn't get your top choice, but you did, so congrats!

Yeah, it sounds like you do have a tough decision to make. For what it's worth, I think personal fit is just as important as career fit when choosing grad schools. Although I don't know what your program is like, I know that for me, if I'm not happy with where I'm living etc. then I am not as productive. If I'm worrying about money and making ends meet, I'm not as productive. I guess one question for you is whether or not having courses listed on your transcript will help you get the job you want later on? Many jobs don't even ask for transcripts, so if you can get the same experience/knowledge some other way, there might not be any advantage to Alberta. Also, make sure those courses are actually regularly taught---I saw many departments where courses that are only taught every 4-5 years are still listed!
Good luck making your decision! And it's always nice to meet another UBC alum

From a third party's perspective, your post sounds like you definitely want to be at McGill more than at Alberta. I think if you are 100% sure you want to go to McGill over Alberta, then make the decision now. You say you are 95% sure so it's just a matter of determining what will make you go that last 5%. 
I don't think accepting early makes a difference in whether you get the extra money, however, I wouldn't necessarily believe there is extra money unless the school says so. A contact might have wrong information or that it might have happened in previous years but not this year. So, unless McGill has mentioned this scholarship somewhere, I would not use it as part of the decision making process.
It sounds like the only appeal of Alberta is the courses but you also say you really want to complete a thesis. So, what will help you achieve your post-degree goals more? In most cases, by definition, thesis programs have fewer courses so it seems like if courses is what will help you get to the career you want, you should consider Alberta more strongly (i.e. now you need to weigh your personal preferences against better career fit), but if thesis work is what you need, then McGill is definitely the better choice because it would be the right fit academically and personally. I'm not sure how your field works so I'm not sure if there are PhD programs that you're interested in. But generally, PhD programs want you to have thesis-based Masters, so that's something to keep in mind too.

Hi every fellow
I got accepted to a ph.d biology program in McGill, I received a MS in applied mathematics from a public university in Chicago US.
The amount of student support I received is 1500CD annually, it seems not too much but based on some googling I did, it looks that is enough to survive a productive student life in Montreal.
I will start this winter, January 2014. I still don't have any place reserved yet, some Craigslist statistics indicate that the average renting is around 550 for a room in a shared apartment in a walkable distance from school (I know but 2.5 miles is walkable in a cold day for me) I tried by emailing to arrange some deal before I get there, but didn't work will.
I d like to find a room in an apartment shared with other Ph.D or MS student like me for some reasons "that all of you kind of know".
I will be happy if some kind, help giver, advise giver, ... Any thing to guide my move.
By the way I m looking for some rent <= 400 all included, I believe that I still can get a decent place for that price.

Cheers

Fingers crossed! If they gave it to me, it'd seal the deal with them. The cherry on the top of an already very attractive cake.

Holy shit I just got into Berkeley. An email at 9 pm, after I had resigned myself to a rejection. Shitting complete bricks right now...

From what I've heard, Alberta usually offers quite a bit of money, but I do understand the appeal of being closer to your family after living abroad for a while. I'm in the opposite situation where my family is from Toronto but I would really like to get out of there and go somewhere new because the furthest I've gone from them is in other Southern Ontario areas. Montreal's a great city and McGill is fantastic too!

Yeah maybe Alberta's deadline has been moving later and later each year. I'm not sure yet which school I'm leaning towards. I've heard a lot of praise for both UBC and Alberta so the two of them seem pretty ideal. The weather in Vancouver is really swaying me in the direction of UBC though. How about you?

The international struggle. I don't know if this is feasible or not, but you could maybe try letting the school know you'd like to visit but have to return to Seoul on X day and ask if they'd be willing to let you visit on an earlier date. They might say no, but they might say yes and then you could get to experience the school culture etc. and not have to change your flight. That is if you want to go and can change your current US plans to allow it to happen... 

Man, that sucks. I think our acceptance rates can be about the same depending on which school and what program you're applying to, but I haven't heard from too many people who didn't get in anywhere. I'm seeing lots of really qualified people in the results pages who are getting turned down from every school, which just really shouldn't be happening. Obviously, people who aren't qualified for the programs they're applying to are going to get turned down, but if you meet or even exceed every school's requirements, to not get into a single one just blows my mind. I've got my fingers crossed for you!
More than 7 for English, but second language education (my field) does have much fewer, yes. You guys down south have a lot more options available to you, and I suppose competition would be higher with a bigger population. Still crazy to see people applying to ten schools and not getting into a single one. I'm praying for all of you!

Thank you! It seems like McGill acceptances are going out pretty steadily, so I'm sure you'll hear back soon. Alberta is anyone's guess, apparently. Also, I see that you applied to UBC, which was where I did my undergrad. It's a gorgeous school, I highly recommend it. I'd go back if they had the field of study I wanted, but they don't, so.

Two for three on acceptances so far with offers from McGill and Carleton in Canada! Still waiting on the University of Alberta, but no one seems to have gotten anything yet according to the results search. Anyone get any word from them?

Thank you! It was my long shot dream school, didn't think I'd get in due to not having majored or minored in education, but 5 years of experience, a persuasive SOI and what I assume were strong LORs goes a long way, apparently!

Any Canadians around? I got accepted to McGill's Second Language Education MA program and would be excited to meet anyone else going! Still waiting on Alberta, but I'll probably accept McGill's offer.