Help Your Kids Avoid The Freshman 15

>>> If you've got kids, grandkids, nieces, nephews or younger siblings heading to university, what can you do to encourage them to eat healthily?

Not much! Sadly I think good nutrition is bottom of the priority list for most students. When I was a student life was all about playing hard, drinking hard and eating whatever you could get your hands on... thankfully I managed to spend quite a lot of time in the gym to balance things out.

The sad truth may be that there is nothing you can do in some cases. I ate utter, utter garbage for the majority of my student days - not because I was short of cash, or didn't know how to prepare food, but because I had not yet acquired a sense of my own mortality and being young suffered no particular ill-effects from my bad diet.

Encouraging more colleges and universities to go zero-car might also help, like the University of Miami. Helping promote more activity would surely help, since college students often suffer through poorer eating but also more sitting and cramming or just sitting and visiting.

I was lucky enough to have a single room so I equipped with the medium-sized small fridge, a microwave, a blender and a hot pot. I had a lot more free time then so I could experiment with food. My room became the popular hang-out for gossip and good food. What I could cook there was so much better than the junk that was available in the cafeteria. I lived on an all-girl floor so I became Mom--doling out food and advice.

My best meal was a veggie-loaded pasta salad that could feed about 10 people (and often did!!) :) The year after I left, the University decreed no more cooking in the rooms but it was fun while it lasted.

The problem with being a freshman is that you often don't have a kitchen to cook in. So you are limited to a microwave and some schools don't even allow that. Most have outlawed hot pots and hot plates in dorms due to fires. It is really difficult to cook and eat healthy as a freshman. Luckily for me my school had terrible food so I mostly lived on salad and was able to move after freshman year into a place with a kitchen. This isn't always the case.

I think if you equip your kid with a blender and some great smoothie recipes, he/she will be more likely to get in more fruits and veg simply because it takes no time at all to whip up a great smoothie.

And they taste awesome! Better than Kraft dinner.

Like Nicole said, the majority of freshman living in dorms can't follow most of your advice. My daughter has been away at school for a little over a month and she said sticking to salads at the cafeteria and doing her best not to raid her rommie's massive stash of Oreos and other junk has kept the weight off. Plus, she said she's never walked so much. Like the University of Miami, her college discourages students to have cars. So far so good.

I think out of all of those things teaching them to cook is the most important. Students eat Pizza, burgers...etc, because it is convenient and they are lazy. If you show them how to make many simple quick meals, they are more likely to eat healthier.

Teaching them to cook is all well and good, but many universities don't allow cooking. The cooking facilities were sub-par in my dorms, and goodness forbid you were caught with a hot plate! Teaching kids to make healthy choices before they leave home is much more important.

I agree it's important to teach them to cook. I remember not knowing a thing about cooking at college and ended up eating endless junk food.

I did my best when I was a freshman. Really I think gaining some weight in my first semester of freshman year had to do more with being away from home for the first time. Cooking is a hard task in college dorm rooms. Most colleges however do have a gym or rec center. And going to the rec my second semester with a friend helped me get on track! Even though you walk a lot, working out helps curb weight gain and alleviate stress. And who wouldn't be stressed when you have to use the communal bathroom everyday? ha.

I did gain the freshman 15 all those years ago and eventually took it off. I knew how to cook (not that I could in my dorm room) and I knew about healthy eating. My problem was being on my own for the first time. There are a lot of emotions and stress that go with leaving home and starting freshman year that often aren't discussed. For me that became, "oh, I'm on my own, no rules, I can do anything I want". Like eat late night pizza with my friends.

I write a blog aimed at weight-conscious college students. Click my name for the link!

For me and my student friends there are only three problems: equipment, money and time. Any kind of cooking (even blenders for some reason) are band in rooms because of the fire hazard (can anyone please tell me how a blender can start a fire?). Some halls have communal kitchens, but they are so crowded that if you don't get in first then you don't cook tonight.

Most students I know have a food budget of about $35AU a week. Unless you have the solid capital to buy in bulk and the space to keep it, (which most students don't) trash food is cheaper.

Between classes, study and work there generally isn't much time for cooking and eating, especially if you want to have a social life. Things that can be prepared quickly while keeping one eye on a text book are the order of the day.

Eating healthy at university can be done, but it's bloody hard. When I go visit my parents for a weekend I use their kitchen to bulk make soap and stews that I can freeze and heat up in the communal kitchens at 1am when there's hardly anyone in there.

Even if you do live in a dorm, you can still follow the good advice given to you by well-meaning parents. Keeping healthy snacks on hand (like a bowl of fruit or a box of healthy granola bars or little ziploc baggies full of nuts) and learning to make smart choices at the dorm cafeteria can go a long way towards keeping the freshman 15 off. When I started college, I kind of KNEW what was healthy and what wasn't, but since I had all sorts of new-found freedom, I chose to eat cheeseburgers and pizza and ice cream all the time. I gained 30 lbs in 3 months and then I decided to get serious. I started choosing healthy things (like salads, yogurts, cereal, etc.) at the cafeteria instead of pizza/burgers and I stopped the mindless, continuous snacking (like eating entire boxes of cookies while doing my calc homework). I managed to take off the 30 lbs I'd gained, plus even more.

It's still not a bad idea to teach your kids to cook before they leave for school though. Lots of dorms have a full kitchen that has an oven and everything so you can cook actual food. Sometimes me and my roommate would go to the dorm kitchen and whip up a pan of No Pudge brownies or a veggie casserole or something.

late-night pizza was definitely my undoing during my freshman year. i was never one who loved pizza, but that was the only thing available after the dining halls closed and all my friends would order it for late-night study sessions. when you're surrounded by people eating pizza, breadsticks, and wings, you can't help but have some. of course, i would go straight to sleep afterwards and not have breakfast the next morning. i didn't gain 15 pounds (that would be a catastrophe on my 5'2" frame), but i did gain about 5-7 lbs.

on the flip side, being a student affords one flexibility that others don't have. when i was a senior (all grad school plans set, all course requirements satisfied), i had all the time in the world, so i joined the campus gym. it was a 20-minute walk from my dorm, and i probably spent 2 hours a day there, at least 5 days a week. i lost the weight pretty rapidly, and i developed gym and eating habits that have served me well til this day (i'm 3 years out of college).

Eating healthy at university can be done, but it's bloody hard.

Eating healthily is a challenge at university, not just because it takes up valuable drinking and socialising time :p ... but also because you see others eating pizza, chinese food, pot noodles, cakes etc so you become tempted to eat that kind of stuff too.

I gained 7-9lbs in my final year through, ironically enough, eating lots of homemade sushi and chinese food. It expanded my stomach a lot. It came to such a stage that I never felt full and was feeling hunger pangs every 20 minutes. It was a very scary feeling that I'd never experienced before, but I managed to lose it all and teach myself how to eat sustainably.

If you're determined, you can not only not gain any weight, but also lose weight if you did happen to gain some. It felt kind of rebellious and counter-culture to eat salads and soups when everyone else around me was eating burgers.

Also, cooking food from scratch was one of the simple pleasures of university life and a good break from essays and dissertations.

Man eating in healthy in college is be hard. When you don't have a kitchen I found it almost impossible because all the healthy food I could find was pretty expensive, and the unhealthy food was anything but. Luckily for me, my junior and senior years I had kitchens so I was able to cook for myself which I really enjoyed and it helped me become a pretty good cook.

I've been working on site where people can find and share great health information, www.peoplemd.com. There is tons of information on healthy living, and healthy cooking. Check it out, I think you guys would really enjoy it!

-Mike

If your kids are used to eating healthy at home, I don't think that they will rely too much on junk food while away at College. So try to instill healthy eating habits in your kids at an earlier age.

The Freshman 15 is largely seen as a myth... Here is a link to one study, but there are others. Essentially, it is a phenomenon created/perpetuated by the media.

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2532948

Healthy Regards,
Rebecca

im a freshman too but i live at home, i have seen so many people stocked up on junkfood in college its crazy, true i gained 3 pounds but i started losing them already. but i think the real thing in college that makes everyone gain weight is the sedentary lifestyle. I mean i go to school, sit in class, walk a little, sit my way home, walk a little, and sit again when i study and do homework, and sit again when i eat. ITS CRAZY!!! I think i might get constipation from all this sitting!!! UGH!!! I need a desk were i can stand up and work at the same time!!!!!!1

in my family it is the exact opposit- you go to college and lose 15 lbs- leaving my sisters at 130 and 100 lbs when thay left their freshmen years. Now im much determined to do the same- one thing im now doing to forward this process, and something others might try to help,is walking from campus to the bus stop where i park my car in the morning- it gives me a nice leasurely 30 minute walk and a chance to unwind before having to go and study :-P