How to Avoid the Freshman 15

As summer ends, fall is right around the corner and thousands of soon to be college students are packing their bags, eager to finally have their first taste of freedom. As the leaves start falling, these students are partying, snacking, pulling all nighters, and about to pack on the infamous Freshman 15.

Although it is called the notorious Freshman 15, this doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll gain 15 pounds. In fact, there is nothing significant about the number 15, it somehow, just kind of stuck. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that you won’t gain any weight. It could be called the Freshman 5, 10, 20, or 40. Many students gain less than fifteen pounds, while many also gain more than fifteen pounds. And, you’re most likely going to gain weight throughout your entire college career. So, you could possibly even call it the Sophomore 20, Senior 40, etc. But is the dreaded Freshman 15 really inevitable?

It’s all about finding a balance. Between sports, activities, clubs, work, fitness, and diet, skipping out on your diet seems to be the easiest. Sometimes it feels as though there aren’t enough hours in the day, and between school, work, activities, and sports, it seems easiest to grab whatever food is available to move forward with your day.

Dixie Robinson, sophomore, saw the effects of being busy, “I didn’t notice when I was a freshman in college, since I was out doing stuff all the time with school and work,” she said, “It wasn’t necessarily that I was eating so much, but what I was eating was so crappy.”

It’s easy to eat crappy. It’s been a long and stressful day, and you have to finish your homework, the last thing you want to do is cook a healthy meal. Sometimes crappy is the easiest. And when most of us are broke college students, crappy seems to be the cheapest. 

“I don’t pick good food,” Robison said, “there was a distinct time where I ate two mcdoubles a day every day for lunch. All bad. But it was cheap and it was good.”

In college it seems easiest to grab whatever is hot and ready. In between games, in between classes, and even in between studying. And on top of that, let’s face it, a lot of us eat when we’re bored. While many college students seem to gain a few pounds, there are ways to avoid gaining excessive weight. Changing your eating habits and trying to stay active can keep your body healthy and keep you from gaining excess weight. However, changing your eating habits and staying active could make you gain weight too.

“I gained 10 pounds,” Madi Johnson, freshman basketball player, said, “but that’s mainly because I was working out and that was muscle from the weight room.”