Beating the Freshman 15... So Worth it!

When we enter college for the first time we are given many types of new freedom. We no longer have our parents telling us what to do, when to do it, and how we should do it. In many ways this is AMAZING, that is until you miss your first homework assignment, or you realize just how tired you really are after only three hours of sleep, or you gain your freshman fifteen. For those of you are currently thinking to yourself, “self, what is the freshman fifteen?” let me enlighten you. The freshman fifteen is a wonderful little thing which many freshman in college fall victim to. After high school many people are, for the first time in 6 plus years, no longer participating in competitive sports nor eating meals with their parents. This means that many freshmen no longer work out and begin eating more of what they want, which in some cases is that person’s favorite food repetitiously until they become sick or fat. The fat part is what is known as the infamous “freshman fifteen”. This extra weight comes from eating unhealthy food and failing to live an active lifestyle. Unhealthy food includes all that stuff that your mom always avoided cooking because it was ‘bad for you’, so foods which are fried, high in sugar, greasy, and or covered in cheese. An active lifestyle does not include your walk across campus to your class either (although sometimes the hills at UT Tyler make me feel like it should). Instead an active lifestyle includes actively choosing to participate in physical activity. Don’t get me wrong, I love all of those wonderful foods and sometimes I would much rather sit at home than go to the gym. But, once I started realizing my own weight gain in my freshman year I decided I should probably put down the microwavable brownie and take a step back to look at what kind of decisions I was making in regards to food and exercise

As I talked about in my previous article, when you make the decision to be a college student you are making the decision to be low on cash. One thing I noticed when I decided to eat healthier is that healthy food is EXPENSIVE! People say you should eat healthy, but have those people seen the prices on some of those fruits and vegetables?!?!? I could buy like 6 tacos with that money! But, sometimes there is no way to get around this. So I did the mature thing and spent more money on groceries, I mean this is my health here. I also made a deal with my roommates that we would go workout in our campus health center (since we pay for a membership there anyway) at least three times a week.  Does anybody want to guess how long that lasted? It didn’t. This was when I realized that changing your lifestyle is a process. I can’t just start running five miles per day and eating only vegetables and fruits. I had to gradually introduce these things into my lifestyle. So I did and sowly but surely I lost the weight and began living and active lifestyle. Here is a few tips on how to begin living a healthier lifestyle:

·         Start slow! This includes both your diet and your exercise.

·         I recommend trying a diet that doesn’t call for extreme measures (those never work) like Eat This Not That or another diet that equips you with the knowledge to make good decisions in your everyday life!

·         Try an exercise program like Couch to 5k that starts you off slow, so you can actually enjoy your workout instead of dying every time you try to run (which just makes you hate running anyway)

·         Utilize your resources like the campus gym and the courses they offer, at UT Tyler this is an amazing resource for those of you who have no idea what to do once you get  to the gym.

·         Get accountability! Friends will help make sure you do what you say you will, plus its great to know somebody else is going through junk food withdrawals.

·         Set goals for yourself that you actually achieve. Like “I want to look good in this shirt I already own” rather than “I want to wear build-a-bear sizes like the girl in my nine o’clock lecture”

·         Don’t lose hope! You may not lose 25 pounds in the first week, but that’s OK!
·         Check out more tips from Student Health 101

Ultimately you have to come to this decision on your own, otherwise you won’t do it. But when you are healthy you not only look better you feel better.