TRENTON, N.J. (AP) – Daphne Oz didn’t just lose weight her first year of college, she wrote a book about it.

The Princeton University student’s book, “The Dorm Room Diet: The 8-Step Program for Creating a Healthy Lifestyle Plan That Really Works,” is coming out Sept. 6, just in time for the new crop of students heading into the pizza-munching, beer-swilling world of higher education.

Published by Newmarket Press, the 240-page paperback tells how the student from Cliffside Park shed 10 pounds her first year at Princeton, instead of gaining the classic “freshman 15.”

Of course, it helped that she was able to get advice from her dad – a cardiac surgeon and best-selling health author who’s written the foreword to her book.

As Oz explains it, she was able to put herself on a new path in college, working with her dad, Mehmet Oz, to apply nutritional knowledge to lose the pounds. Along with Michael Roizen, Mehmet Oz had written the best-selling “You: The Owner’s Manual: An Insider’s Guide to the Body That Will Make You Healthier and Younger.”

Daphne Oz also has two grandfathers who are cardiac surgeons and a grandmother who’s a nutritional adviser.

Even with the wellspring of advice from family, Oz says she was overweight from age 7 to 17. At 5-foot-8, she was sometimes carrying 175 pounds. Because of her large frame, most high school peers didn’t notice. But she did.

“For any girl, any figure that is at 175 pounds is intolerable,” Oz said Wednesday.

After researching a nutrition project in high school, she felt motivated to lose the weight. Oz says a book contract that she had signed with Newmarket for a teenage health book eventually morphed into a book on health in college.

“I was never unhappy in high school, so it never sparked a need to change until I realized I was going to be leaving high school and it was my adult life starting and this was something I wanted to be in control of,” Oz said.

Now 20 and entering her junior year as a Near East studies major, Oz says she’s down to 145 pounds.

Gaining weight is common in college. Free of their parents’ monitoring, students often chow down at all-you-can-eat dining facilities and grabbing pizza and other fast foods as they rush through studying and classes. Parties heavy with alcohol expand the waistline, too.

Researchers at Cornell University reported in 2003 that a sample of college freshmen had gained an average 4.2 pounds during their first 12 weeks on campus. The weight gain was 0.3 pounds per week, almost 11 times more than the weekly weight gain expected in 17- and 18-year-olds and nearly 20 times more than the average weight gain of an American adult.

Oz considers the most important advice in her book is the need to be aware of college life’s “danger zones,” where it’s easy to get in trouble with eating. Such danger areas include studying for tests and writing papers, tailgating and sports events, parties and other gatherings, watching television, and late-night talks.

Students often eat badly not to satisfy physical cravings, but for other reasons, she said.

“So much of the overeating in college is done for emotional reasons instead of hunger,” Oz said.

Other advice includes drinking lots of water, counting up to one’s age before cheating on eating, not eating before bedtime, and eating healthy snacks every few hours.