Avoiding the Freshman Fifteen: How To Keep The Pounds Off

by Shereen Jegtvig

We’re still in the first weeks of fall semester at most colleges, which is an interesting, exciting and possibly bewildering time for a lot of college freshmen.  For most, it’s their first home away from home, there’s classes, homework, new social groups – it’s really a stressful time of adjustment.  And along that stress and excitement can be accompanied by the dreaded “freshman fifteen” which is  the extra pounds that young people often gain when they go off to college for the first time.

Why does it happen?  Maybe there are more choices and less supervision.  Without Mom or Dad to provide the healthy snacks, college kids may succumb to the temptation of a junk food diet.  Now it’s easy to keep junk foods in the dorm room as snacks.  Or maybe some students use comfort foods to cope with the added stress of school and living away from home for the first time.

There’s also the dining hall to deal with every day.  So much food and so little time – it’s easy to devour  large amounts of food when there are so many choices.  There’s probably a salad bar, and a sandwich bar and the hot foods and a few more choices.  Plus the soda machines.  And dessert.  Make that plural – desserts.  You can probably grab a couple of cookies on your way to the ice cream machine.

So what to do?  How do you avoid the freshman fifteen?  As college students realize their waistline is growing, it’s time to clean up the eating and maybe get more exercise.  If you eat in the dining hall, choose your foods wisely.  Choose more vegetables and salads –and less pizza and greasy burgers.  Watch your portion sizes too.  It’s way to easy to load up a plate – and then go back for a second one and then maybe a third.  Check out all the food choices before you pick anything out.  Make a salad, choose an entrée, add a couple of healthy vegetables and choose water, juice or milk instead of sugary soda.  And finally, cut back on dessert – just one little scoop of ice cream is enough.

In the dorm room, keep healthy snacks on hand.  Foods such as whole grain snacks, dried fruit, and low fat snacks (think micowave popcorn) store well and are nutritious.  Greasy chips, cookies, snack cakes, and candy are high in calories and not so good for you, so avoid them.  Having healthy snacks on hand is better than high fat, sugary junk food snacks.  Fresh fruit and vegetables are great too, if you have a refrigerator handy.

So how do you find healthy snacks that you can keep in a dorm room?  Look for snacks that are nutritious and easy to store.  One of my favorites is microwave popcorn because it’s easy to make, tastes great, is low in calories and high in fiber.  Use our FoodEssentials tool to find brands of microwave popcorn that are low in fat:

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