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
