News Taffy

So your college student has been at school for about 5 or 6 weeks now and should be settling in to dorm life, working hard at their studies and making new friends. Let’s hope they aren’t also getting ahead on the freshman 15, the extra weight many put on from all the late night pizzas, keggers and cafeteria food. While your child worked hard in school studying calculus, U.S. history and physics, he or she probably learned very little about proper nutrition for their body. None of us learn how to take care of our nutritional needs in school unfortunately. While I can’t provide a complete nutritional primer in a few short paragraphs, I hope this series will provide a little information, prompting them to take an active role in maintaining their health and to seek more information. Perhaps you’d like to send them the link to this series. This week we will focus on the tendency to gain weight after getting to college, next week I will offer some tips on how to avoid gaining unwanted pounds.

For the first time, you are solely responsible for your meals. You decide when, how much and what you will eat. Somewhere in the back of your mind, you may remember someone trying to tell you that you need to eat plenty of fruits, vegetables and lean protein. You may even remember it had something to do with your health, but hey, you feel fine, don’t you? Or do you sometimes feel sluggish or tired for no reason, find that you are constipated or bloated more frequently than you’d like or that you are constantly hungry? These could be due to not eating a healthy diet.

Let me assure you that not taking care of your health and eating a healthy diet today is already starting to wreck your health. Your blood pressure may border on the high side or your blood sugar may be too high, especially for your tender young age, which leads to future heart disease and diabetes. You don’t just wake up one day, and BAM!, you have a disease. The process can take awhile but it can start in your teens.

Back to the freshman 15. There are many factors you can control which contribute to gaining weight in college: eating late at night, drinking too much alcohol, eating cheap fast food, lack of exercise, not getting enough sleep, drinking too many sugary coffee and energy drinks, snacking on too much processed junk food and making poor food choices in the cafeteria. Studies have even shown that the people you are around most often, i.e. your friends and family, can greatly influence your health habits. In other words, if your friends don’t exercise, eat poorly and are overweight, you are likely to do the same. Even if you remain thin, you can still be wrecking your health with a poor diet.

A few changes will make a world of difference in your health now and in the future. Now that you are an adult, it is time to do more than brush your teeth and get your eyes examined regularly. You are in charge of your health so educate yourself and do the best you can. It’s the only body you’ll get.