Why Does College Make You Fat?
A recent study of 800 college students shows that going to college may be related to weight gain.
Researcher, Ingrid Logren collected health data from 800 of her students enrolled in a nutrition course at the University of New Hampshire. The results of the research were startling.
At least one-third of UNH students are overweight or obese, 8 percent of men had metabolic syndrome, 60 percent of men had high blood pressure, and more than two-thirds of women are not meeting their nutritional needs for iron, calcium or folate
One-third of the students were overweight, which seems to follow the trends of the U.S. adult populations.
According to Dr. Janet Colson, "Most incoming college students don't have mom to pick out their foods for them anymore or pack their lunches, and so (the students) start making unwise choices," including in the campus cafeterias and grills, where fast-food fare abounds. “
Poor food choices, sedentary lifestyle and irregular sleep habits combine to make overweight college students.
60% Have Hypertension?
One other startling finding was that 60% of the college men were already beginning to have hypertension. Remember, these are 18-24 year olds, who are supposed to be at the peak of their health. Having hypertension at any age, can eventually lead to arterial wall damage and even heart failure if not treated in a timely fashion.
By the time many of these students are in their fifties, the damage from hypertension may be irreversible. As the article points out, these college students are on a path to being having much greater health issues then their parents.
A Good Age to Take Action
One positive aspect of this study was that now that these college students are aware of their health issues, they are at an age where it is fairly easy to improve their health with simple diet and lifestyle changes.
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The last paragraph is very true. There are plenty of ways begin a new and healthier lifestyle in college. There are gyms, recreational activities, intramural sports and healthy meal options. Just get a roommate or a friend and help each other develop a plan.
ReplyStudying.... convenience foods.
Lots and lots of alcohol.
No longer having someone cook for them; and never having been taught healthy habits on their own. (The two semesters of health/PE in which things were barely, barely covered that it was down to by my generation notwithstanding)
Feeling of immortality.
I'm not sure it's rocket science.
ReplyI was fine my first semester at school but my second semester is what really messed me up.
Stress + easy access to junk foods = disaster
Cheeseburgers, fries, chips, sodas, bagels.. all were available at the swipe of a meal plan card. Especially late at night when all that's left is bags of chips and bagels, that's what I would eat.
And also alot of alcohol due to stress, on top of the munchies..
So bad.. I've lost 40lbs since I've been home for summer, and I'm never going back to those old habits!!!
ReplyThis hits so close to home for me. And I will say that if you are living with a roommate (as most do), your roommate's choices will influence yours, for good or bad.
Here's an example: I had a roommate who was a health ed major and she was very good about eating a balanced diet, taking her vitamins, getting exercise and so forth. That in turn encouraged me to eat better, especially since we'd sometimes cook together.
Fast forward a year -- my roommate had graduated and I had two new ones who had not-so-good eating habits. Sure enough, I fell somewhat into their habits. It was so much easier to order a pizza than cook a balanced dinner! Sure enough, I started struggling with my weight, which I still do to this day.
What's the answer? College is a tough time, with the stress of making the grades, possibly working a part-time job and not having much left over for good, nutritious food. But the choices we make in college may follow us the rest of our lives. Sure, the occasional pizza and beer doesn't have to mean your downfall -- unless you let it. But making smarter choices every day will help you for years to come.
ReplyDiet and exercise is the most important. College kids are on their own for the first time in their lives. Eating out, having parties and drinking alcohol is usually what they do. Then they have their studies which leaves no time for exercise or to eat healthy. At least that is the way I remember college.
But we also must remember for those who are not part of the party scene at college and still seem to have a weight problem there could be other underlying issues.
ReplyYour body changes as you grow. Each person goes through different stages and cycles. Some have better metabolisms than others, some may have thyroid problems or many of the other problems related to obesity. For these people diet and exercise is part of the answer but the rest needs to be determined by their physicians.
Most incoming college students don't have mom to pick out their foods for them anymore or pack their lunches
Without fail, every person I knew in high school made their own food choices with some regularity. While many enjoyed pre-planned dinners with family, most made their own decisions at breakfast and packed their own lunches. That was roughly 10 years ago, so maybe things are different now. But, ahem, back in my day we had plenty of opportunities to decide what we would eat before going off to college.
Sure, we struggled with that freshman 15, but we didn't become obese eating campus food. What I'd like to know is how many of these kids were already obese or overweight before enrolling in university.
ReplyMy dissertation, which I handed in in May, begs to differ. The students I studied, compared to non-students of the same age, had exceptional dietary habits and activity levels. Alcohol intake was exceptional though. Of course, the group studied being only sports science students may have had a big influence on the result :)
I did mention that.
I think it depends on the college you go to. They diet you pickup in college probably does stay with you for life, until you get married. But in my college, exercise levels were decent for the majority purely because everyone walked to class.
ReplyThis also fails to note that many colleges have buffet-style dining halls with very limited hours to get food. I'm a natural grazer, but going to the dining hall at lunch knowing I wouldn't have access to food again for six hours always made me over-eat to be sure I'd stay full. And God forbid you try to take an apple with you when you go. I had a dining hall worker actually make me throw it away when she spotted it. I started taking big purses and stocking up on fruit to eat for breakfast the next day instead of going to the dining hall for pancakes and French toast.
ReplyInterestingly enough, when I started law school someone told me there was a reverse freshman 15 ... that you're supposed to lose that much your first year. I did lose some weight, but I'm not sure if everyone did.
I lost 5 or so pounds my first year in college. I think it was because I didn't have the money to order a pizza every night or take the bus everywhere.
ReplyAs a friend of mine used to sarcastically joke "Everyone's an alcoholic in college". It's not politically correct (or even accurate, obviously) but the underlying idea is right - kids get excessive when they get out on their own. Even "good" kids try out the fun stuff - junk food, beer, take-out, late night eating. I think it's a combination of all of the above. By the time you hit 22 or 23, if you aren't still active, that teenage metabolism has worn off, and most people stop playing sports once they get to college.
Replyjunk food is ready made, usually cheap, and readily available. eating a bage of chips while cramming for a test goes by unnoticed by all but your waist line...
ReplyDoes this "freshman 15" myth also count for those going to a community college?
ReplyI gained 30 lbs in the first 3 months of college. I know why I did, too...I was eating pure unadulterated crap simply because it was there. Delicious cheeseburgers, fries, and raw cookie dough for lunch...ice cream from Babcock Hall (fantastic super premium stuff)...pizza for dinner. Plus, when I was studying, I'd eat entire packages of cookies and whole boxes of Pop Tarts. I realized at semester break that I needed to do something quick before I ballooned up to 300 lbs.
So I took advantage of the healthy foods that our cafeteria had...salads, low fat yogurts, cold cereal, skim milk, fruit, steamed veggies, etc. (I lived in an all womens' dorm and the cafeteria always had "figure friendly" options). I stopped eating all the snacks I had been eating and started doing Tae Bo tapes and pretty soon the 30 lbs and then some was gone. I kept up the healthy habits and got down to very healthy weight. I definitely think it was good that I learned the good habits then, because they've stuck with me so far.
ReplyYES! I had a huge problem going from meal to meal and would eat TONS of food at each meal. Fortunately, I was vegan for the first 3 years of college, so I was eating huge plates of rice and beans, soy burgers, tofu and balsamic vinegar... no desserts or cheese-covered casseroles. (okay, well it would have given a low-carb person FITS but was provided *some* level of healthy constraint)
The other thing no one's pointed out is that if you live in the dorms, you don't usually have a kitchen. If the dining hall wasn't open at my college, you could either go to the fried-food on-campus soda fountain or eat what you had in your room. And it was very hard to keep anything but pre-packaged foods around for long.
The number of forces that make it easy to form bad habits are huge. And, yeah, it's easy to be active. But if you're relying on the easy availability of intramural or varsity teams, sometimes it's hard to keep that activity level going once you graduate. I know people who have had problems with that.
ReplyOh yeah, I forgot about drinking...I went to a big party school and there were a lot of keg parties and whatnot. I never drank much, but one of my roommates put on a good 15 pounds when she started drinking her favorite "concoction" several times a week....an 8 ounce glass of half and half with 2 shots of Kahlua and a shot of vodka. We found out it had something like 700 calories and once she cut those out, she lost weight pretty fast.
ReplyThis article fails to mention the other end of the spectrum. The high prevalance of eating disorders, such as anorexia in college. There are way more underweight and starving girls on campus than overweight ones.
ReplyI agree with Ann. (I know I'm late on this, but I was on vacation!)
Also, the buffet style dining hall options are horrible for you! Healthy options are limited, but there is pizza and burgers by the handful. When I was in college (graduated in 2005), there was a huge push by the students to post nutrition information with the food, instead of just online.
Everyone was shocked. Even seemingly healthy options were terrible! Who knew that two veggie tacos (minus the cheese, even!) would be 47 grams of fat? After that, there was another push for healthier food. The contracted food company finally started to respond (Sodexho, btw), and it's better now. Still, though, for those of us whose parents cooked and taught how to cook low-fat meals (alfredo sauce made with skim milk), it was a shock to learn some of the nutrition information (1/4 cup of alfredo sauce being 600 calories and 64 grams of fat).
Replya lot of students are on a budget
Replyand sometimes its easier to get a
5$ fast food meal than to spend 30 $ or more
on groceries to make a healthy meal !
it sucks but . . . thats also a factor : (
I know my old campus has improved it's eating facilities in the past few years, but even when I was living in residence with a kitchen I only shared with 3 or 4 other girls, I know I didn't eat very well. It was the time taken to get to the grocery store, cook and eat as opposed to getting a pizza with the roomies and hiding in our respective rooms to read the mounds of pages or write papers or hell, go to our part time jobs! There's nobody really to look out for you in that environment, when most people are making unhealthy choices.
The worst though, was that for 2 years I happened to get the 'binge eater' who would exercise and diet herself to excess, and then eat my damn cookies or something. That almost made me want to eat more to make up for her being so insecure? It was so weird.
ReplyI ate poorly the first two years of college, but not too much worse than I had been before. What really killed me was studying abroad. Extreme homesickness and culture shock, combined with convenience stores on every block, not to mention suddenly being of legal drinking age... I was walking and bike-riding more than I ever had in my life, and still managed to gain ten pounds what with binging on cookies, white bread (I grew up eating whole wheat) and "familiar" fast food (even though I barely ate it once a year in the States).
As soon as I got home I started dieting and reading up on nutrition. I've lost that weight and then some, and have firmly entrenched the new eating habits into my lifestyle. Right now my biggest obstacle is getting over a newfound fear of dietary lipids, but I'm trying to work around that by eating low fat (not fat-free) dairy and snacking on small servings of cashews at work. It's a learning curve.
ReplyAaah..I remember college days..typing papers & assignments late at night, accompanied by milk & cookies (Oreos!) as a midnight snack. Luckily I walked a lot during those days. But indeed, I did made poor snacking choices on college.
ReplyThe 'Freshman 15' is no joke. Students tend to drink lots of alcohal, eat lots of pizza, and sit around writing papers.
ReplyOvereating, however, is not the sole problem plaguing campuses. Eating disorders related to restriction/purging/other symptoms I am sure the reader is familiar with also run rampant in universities.
Perhaps food abuse is a socially acceptable coping mechanism in all its forms in higher education?
it ain't a big mystery at all!! when you are in college,there's social pressure,there's pressure to finish assignments on time, pressure to study for quizzes and midterms and finals, having to get up early and coming back late,it's a hectic life, and you put on weight not just by eating unhealthy food, but because of having to eat a lot to overcome the stress and the depression,,atleast i speak for myself!
ReplyThis is so true! We are always studying and working we never GET A CHANCE TO EXCERCISE
Reply