I’m an Omnivore

Now that you know the 10 Reasons the Freshman Fifteen Gets You, it’s time to step up and do something about it. College students are at the age where they have high metabolism and they should be at their physical peak. Do you really want to suffer through college overweight and under energized when you could be in the best shape of your life? The worst thing you can do is develop bad habits like eating terribly, going on no sleep, and avoiding exercise and think, “This is college. This is just the way it is.” Wrong. I had this attitude for too long. Your lifestyle in college is completely up to you.

1. Experimentation in College

Haven’t you ever heard of college experimentation? With a little imagination, you can even take it past experimenting with sex and recreational drugs! It’s not easy to do when you’re living with your parents. But on your own, at the most open minded institution you’ve ever witnesed, it’s the perfect time to experiment. And since you’ve likely been eating whatever other people set in front of you for your whole life, you might want to experiment with a new diet. It doesn’t have to be something boring either. Go all out. Vegan. Fruitarian. Liquid Protein. Whatever you want! You know that I’d recommend a Paleolithic Diet, but seriously, try something you’ve always been intruigued by. I have a friend that once told me, “You either have good times or good stories.” I think this fits perfectly with self-experimentation. You’re either going to discover something amazing or you’ll be able to convince people that you’re fearless. If you haven’t been to college yet, you might be worried about what other people are going to think. Trust me though, you’ll be around so many new people with widely varying political leanings, religions, sexual orientations, and quirky hobbies, that you will probably begin to get bored with yourself.

2. Mindless Habits Aren’t Necessarily Bad

I mentioned in my previous post that bad habits and even inside jokes sometimes dictated my eating. Thankfully, you can knock out bad habits and put some good habits on autopilot. The best example I have is “Naked” juice. I was in a position to buy a lot of this stuff when I was a Resident Assistant. Part of our compensation as RAs was an abundance of “board bucks,” a currency that could only be spent at on campus locations. One of my friends and I realized that we had enough to buy Naked everyday, so we did. In case you aren’t familiar with it, a bottle of Naked contains an entire pound of fruit. We tried every flavor, which sometimes required bravery (I’m referring to you Green Machine). Naked made an excellent replacement for energy drinks during all nighters too. We even contemplated holding a Naked “gallon challenge”: spoofing the milk “gallon challenge,” we were each planning on drinking eight bottles of this juice and seeing what devastation subsequently occured to our bowels.

I’m not trying to promote this specific product, even though I think it’s great. I just want you to know that it is entirely possible to implement habits that are both very fun and very healthy. Pick a habit you want to implement and start doing it everyday. If you can hold the habit for a couple weeks or if you can just get your friends to adopt the habit, you’ll be good to go.

3. Physical Education Classes

You usually have to take these anyways, so it’s a good opportunity to a) add in some extra exercise and b) learn a new sport. It really can be a great opportunity to find a sport you like and friends that you can play that sport with. We were even allowed to “audit” PE classes, which consisted of attending the class but not doing any coursework. I took archery and I liked it so much that I audited it the next semester. Admittedly, archery isn’t the best form of exercise, but I could have done the same with any number of classes. It’s nothing like highschool were the facilities are subpar and the options are limited. Just looking over the course list, I can see several classes I find highly interesting: bowling, orienteering, mountain biking, and mountaineering.

4. The Gym

Don’t avoid the gym. It’s there for you to use and you’ve paid for it. When you get out of college, you’ll have to pay a considerable amount to join a gym, it probably won’t be close, it probably won’t be as nice, and all your friends won’t already have memeberships. One of my first trips to the gym was to play racquetball, which I had never even tried before. I highly recommend it. It’s much more fun than tennis in my opinion and you don’t have to go running after a ball if you have terrible aim. When I found out that my dad used to play, I got him a gym membership. It was a great way to see him because I didn’t go home that much as an RA. Your gym will probably let you rent equipment for free (which is surprisingly hassle free). Even with all these benefits, you might not want to go by yourself. That’s why you’ll want to enlist a friend.

5. Get a Partner

Getting up and heading to the gym every morning is nearly impossible by yourself. It can be a lot easier to workout or just go play a game if you have a partner. Preferably this person will live close to you. The best person to workout with is your roommate, since they are never hard to track down. They are also easy to wake up. You might have trouble convincing your friends to join you, so here’s an easy solution: subtly or not so subtly suggest that your friend is putting on some extra poundage. Honestly though, you shouldn’t have too many problems getting people to go. Once you start going without them, your friends are probably going to feel left out.

6. New Friends & New Hobbies

I almost made one of the biggest mistakes of my life one night during my freshman year: I almost refused to go play broomball. Luckily, my RA told me to blow off my homework and I caved in. I had never played before, but it turned out to be one the coolest things I’ve ever done. For some reason, you’re going to encounter a lot of strange sports when you get to college. My advice is to embrace them. Broomball, ultimate frisbee, and disc golf are a few examples. My guess is that these kinds of sports flourish on campus because people have so much time and it’s so easier to get large groups of people together. In any case, these can be excellent workouts. Broomball is one hell of a workout. You feel sore for days afterwards.

Anything that gets you outside in the sun or even gets you off of a computer and moving around is good. Like I said, there will be new experiences and it’s going to take an open mind for you to benefit from them. Even though I was skeptical and slightly embarassed, I started playing Dance Dance Revolution my first semester. Within a year, I was consistently acing heavy song, which meant a considerably harder workout. It was a good way to meet friends too. And each new friends you make is going to have his or her own hobbies and sports that you have never tried.

The problem most people have with exercising is that they find it boring, so they never exercise. Exercise doesn’t have to boring. You just have to find something interesting, something challenging. I guarantee, if you look hard enough, you will find plenty of interesting ways to exercise in college.

7. Exploit Your RA

I was a Resident Assistant for three semesters, so I have a piece of advice for you if you live in a dorm. Your RA is going to be, at some point, desperate for program ideas. They are probably going to have money to spend, but no indication of what they should spend it on. Typical programs involve pizza and soda, which is not going to help you in the slightest. Most RAs are open to alternatives, however. In fact, most RAs will need to create a health or fitness program to meet certain requirements; their problem is usually lack of interest from residents. This is where you come in. Get your RA to cook. Make smoothies. Get your RA to buy a bunch of expensive fruit you wouldn’t buy. Get them to organize games or tournaments in whatever you want. It’s your money to spend, and you can even take credit for the ideas. And after all that, your RA will thank you.

8. Screw Procrastination

You probably need to read the previous article on the Freshman Fifteen to understand the significance of procrastination on weight loss. I struggle with it still, but I have learned a lot about procrastination. If you have problems with procrastination, I would recommend reading some of Steve Pavlina’s articles. He has some really good material on productivity and avoiding procrastination.

I’m not going to tell you to do all of your work as soon as it assigned, although it would be a damn good rountine to get into. The important thing is this: if you are going to put off work, make a conscious choice to do so. There’s a difference between going to hang out with your friends before working on a project and surfing the web “for a few minutes.” A few minutes turns into a few a hours. After a few hours, you will probably just say “oh well” and do it another night. Making conscious decisions before you begin is the key here. It’s just like deciding how much you are going to eat before you go into the dining hall. Or like deciding the night before when you are going to wake up the next morning. If you try to make the decision in the middle of what you’re deciding on, it will always be “just a few more minutes.”

Instead, make a choice. Either do your work or go do something you really enjoy. With less stress and more time to get outside and exercise, you’ll have a lot less trouble keeping off the pounds.

9. Stock Up

Although the dorm room is typically a stockpile of junk food, you can turn it into something else. Spend ten minutes in the grocery store choosing wisely, and you won’t have to make another smart decision about food for weeks. At least not in your room, which is where you’re most likely to have a snack attack. Some of my favorite snacks are:

• Mixed Nuts
• Grapes
• Raisins
• Strawberries
• Apple Sauce
• Canned Fruit
• Carrots
• Tortilla Chips & Salsa

Load up the fridge with juice, water, and diet soda if you want. You’re much better off having food in your room than not, so that you are always satisfied and you don’t overeat. A lot of people skip breakfast, so overeating at later meals is common.

10. Go With a Plan; Leave With a Banana

I hope I haven’t convinced you otherwise, but the dining hall really isn’t that bad. If you’re already getting a free ride on your parents’s dollar or if you were forced to get a mealplan, you might as well live it up. The most important thing you can do is decide what you are going to eat before you start eating. Creating a generic template for what you are going to eat is really helpful. Just limiting yourself to one plate is a good start. You can also choose to always eat one meat, one grain, one vegetable, and one fruit or something similar. Bad eating usually begins when you decide to sample everything at the dining hall.

One of the best habits I developed when going to the dining hall was grabbing fruit to go. The employees didn’t seem to mind. Grab an apple, orange, or banana on your way out every time, throw it in your fridge (except for the banana), and you’ll thank yourself later. I think you’ll find that fruit is an especially convenient food to bring to class.

Responsibility

Now that you’re out on your own, it’s your responsibility to take care of yourself. Don’t put it off like you would put off a paper and don’t believe for a second that your college experience is out of your control.