Freshman 15 Is the freshman 15 a real thing or is it a hype or myth? They say that the average freshman student in college will gain about 15 extra pounds by the end of their first year in college. But, does a person of the same age group who didn’t attend college meet that same average? Now, I am not expert on nutrition, but I do try to maintain a healthy and balanced diet. It is not rocket science to understand that if you over eat there is a very good chance that you will gain weight, despite your age or gender. What other reasons and examples can we explore that will explain the freshman 15 theory or urban myth. What are some of the things that a freshman in college might have to deal with in their first year? Most peoples’ first year in college can be a stressful experience, filled with anxiety of being thrown into a new environment. Stress is one example we may account weight gain in the first year. Many students go to college away from home and my live in a dorm room, where there is no kitchen available. This results in eating out, fast food, takeout, processed meals that are filled with preservatives and high fat, and calorie count. Irregular eating and sleeping schedules can attribute to weight gain, also late night meals and snacks. One example usually seem to be over looked and sometimes forgotten, is the consumption of alcohol, beers and liquors add more calories to your existing diet. Sitting for long periods of time, along with lack of exercise can also be a contributing factor for freshman’s weight gain. Remember everyone is different, and so is the way the human body responds to things from one person to another. With that in mind I can argue almost every direct absolute, this is because there is an exception to almost everything when it comes to the human body. For that reason I will not be arguing too heavily for both sides, mainly because it would take far too long. In my conclusion I will state my opinion on the matter of the freshman 15, and whether or not I believe in it. Coming out of high school is sometimes a fairly stress free event. You have spent four year developing friendships, and social circles and the fact that you have gotten through those four years feels great. For others it is not so stress free, looking ahead to college may change the way you might have felt your second or third year in high school. The pressures of getting into the college of your choice and the anxiety of your first year in college can be difficult. Many students leave home to go off to college, and find themselves stressed about their new environment, making new friends, and the added workload of a college curriculum. Stress can be a factor for some college freshman as to why they gain weight. The “stress hormone” cortisol is dispersed into the body during stressful events, along with other hormones such as epinephrine and norepinephrine in response to the fight or flight reflex in all humans during times of stress. After stressful events the hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine return to normal levels, while cortisol levels remain elevated in some people. People who suffer from chronic stress are more affected by this chemical reaction in the body. Although, cortisol has multiple functions, one of the functions is to provide energy for the body by stimulating fat and carbohydrate to metabolize for quick delivery of energy. High levels of cortisol in the body will result in an increased appetite (Melissa Conrad Stöppler, 2006). This increased appetite can easily contribute to weight gain. Many college students live in dorm room where a kitchen is not available, and lots of students might bring a mini-refrigerator or a microwave oven or sometimes both, stocking their refrigerator with cheap and easy to make meals and snacks. These cheap meals and snacks are usually high in fat, trans fat, and calories none of which would consist of a healthy diet. College cafeteria food, eating out at fast food venues, takeout food is not a good meal replacement for a well balanced home cooked meal. This may also attribute to weight gain especially in the first year where your body hasn’t made the adjustment to the new environment, and added stress of college life. Frequently eating fast food causes increased weight gain in teens and young adults, along with other complications, according to the (NHLBI) National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (Cornforth, 2009). It is difficult to eat healthy at a fast food venue, even with some of the healthier items on the menu. One good reason for the weight gain and unwanted gut is attributed mostly because a person’s caloric daily intake requirements is met with just one single meal from one of these venues (Cornforth, 2009). Normally people eat 2-3 full meals a day, which means that they are receiving 2-3 times the daily required calories in just one day. This combination of poor diet choices and over eating make the argument that the freshman 15 theory could hold some truth to it, I really don’t need to draw a picture to illustrate how unhealthy that is. I am sure that many students can relate to me when it comes to long hours studying, and the countless nights spent sat hunched over a book and writing papers. Not to mention the late night meals and snacks. It is really hard to maintain a healthy and well balanced eating and sleeping habits when you’re trying to cram for an exam. You tend to stay up late hours and next thing you know you’re hungry again, but you also seem to have lost count of how many meals you have already eaten. It is not necessarily bad to eat late at night. A long standing myth is that if you eat late at night it is more likely you will gain weight. However, this just isn’t true. It has very little to do with the time that you eat, and everything to do with the amount of calories you have consumed in relations to the amount of calories you use in the span of a day. Your body doesn’t process food differently at night. Although, usually the food and snack choices late at night are normally not healthy ones, this does contribute to weight gain (Rudis, 2008). If you start to look at the overall picture you will notice that any one of these examples by themselves is only a small piece of the larger puzzle. The stress and anxiety from jumping into a new environment, and the fact that we tend to eat more junk food then our bodies can handle, lack of a regular schedule for eating and sleeping, and insufficient amount of exercise which I will be discussing later in this paper all increase the chances of gaining weight. A largely over looked reason for weight gain in college is consumption of alcohol, such as beers and liquors, and the sodas and juices that we mix them with. I believe that a large portion on college students especially freshman partake in late night parties and binge drinking, despite the legal informalities of underage drinking. Your new found freedom into a relatively unsupervised environment, have given you the ability to socialize with less fear of punishment. Although alcohol will not make you gain weight all by itself, it does contribute in the overall picture of things. Everyone’s body has a number, what do I mean about a number? The number of calories your body requires to maintain its current weight, anything under that number and you will lose weight, anything over and you’re gaining weight. This means you have to add all the calories throughout the day, plus all the alcoholic beverages you have consumed. If you drink five regular beers, you have just added about 750 calories to your daily intake. I know, it doesn’t sound like much but that is easily more calories than a healthy meal you have just drank. If you are drinking liquor you’re likely to mix it with a juice or a carbonated beverage which adds to the overall calories you have consumed (Medicinenet). Now we are running into the same old problems. One you’re over supplying your body with unneeded extra calories which contributes to weight gain, and two usually after a long night of drinking you end up eating another meal to help combat the hangover for the next day, yet another meal and more calories than your body needs. Because you are consuming more calories than needed your body ends up storing them into fat, usually around the abdominal area. As I have mentioned in the examples above the large increase in calories will have a predictable result to your body and the weight you can gain. One important part of nutrition is exercise. If you burn off more calories than you intake then you will lose weight and stay healthy. But as many college students know you end up spending a lot of time sitting down, whether it is in class or at the library, and even sitting in front of the television screen. Aside from other medical complications that can develop due to lack of exercise, one of them is gaining weight. This is why it is important to stay active, because you will burn more calories than sitting down (James A. Levine, 2012). It defiantly is hard to maintain a healthy diet while in college. It seems that we take certain things for granted like a healthy home cooked meal, sat with your parents. The stress and anxiety felt by many freshman students’ forces our bodies into overdrive when it comes to calorie intake. Furthermore, the food available to students especially those who are far from home is not always the healthiest choice. Extra calories consumed due to irregular sleeping and eating habits cause us to further the damage to our bodies, multiplied by the extra calories students drink at parties and late night festivities. And the obvious lack of extended periods of exercise. Although it is very possible for a person to gain 15 pounds in his or her freshman year of college, it seems to be more of an exaggeration. For all the examples I have shown “the average student gains between 2.5 and 3.5 pounds during the first year of college” (Grabmeier, 2011). Despite the worst case scenarios of college life, studies reveal that the typical freshman only gains a half-pound more than a similar person who did not attend college. The studies bring me to the conclusion that the freshman 15 is nothing more than a myth.

Bibliography
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