How to Avoid the Freshman 15 in College
As a freshman, there are a lot of new lifestyle changes that you have to get used to, unless of course you are earning USC’s mph online or any other online degree. But for the rest of us, it can be difficult to take on all of these new changes and not gain a little bit of weight. If you want to avoid that weight gain, then leading a healthy lifestyle is another change that you may need to adapt to. Here is how to avoid the freshman 15 in college.
Eat Balanced Meals
If you want to stay healthy and prevent weight gain, or even if you want to lose weight, the last thing you want to do is try some fad diet. Fad diets never work out, and most people end up gaining more weight once they stop the diet anyway. That’s why it’s important to just start planning healthy, balanced meals. When you go to the market each week, think about what kinds of meals you want for breakfast, lunch and dinner. If you have a good list of healthy meals you can make, then you will be able to keep your weight down.
Avoid Carbo-loading at the School Cafeteria
There are going to be plenty of places where you can find food on campus, and the cafeteria or commons is probably the last place you want to go for food. Of course, there are some schools that serve exceptionally healthy food on campus, but most of them serve a lot of carb-heavy junk food. It may be easy to start craving sweets in the middle of a hard day, but if you keep healthy snacks on you then it will be much easier to resist.
Take a Morning Run
If you’re not sleeping well, or if you’ve been staying up late a lot, then it will probably be pretty hard to get up in the morning and run. However, if you do, then you will feel much more energized throughout the rest of the day, and when you get home at night you will fall asleep much faster. Plus, you will definitely be able to keep the pounds off because the beginning of the morning is the best time to exercise to speed up your metabolism.
Install a Pull-up Bar in Your Dorm
If you want to really increase your upper body strength and lose weight, then you should definitely get a pull up bar. All you have to do is screw it into your doorframe, and you can do pull-ups whenever you like. Getting tired of studying? Do a few pull-ups. Been reading for far too long? Get up and do some more pull-ups. This is a great way to break up all the time you spend sitting down and get some juices flowing.
Get Your Blood Pumping
It is important to split up the time you spend sitting down and studying with time running in place, or doing jumping jacks. You can also do yoga, or just give yourself a quick set of stretches and conditioning exercises that can be done regularly. You should set your number of repetitions for everything, and increase that number as you start to get better and stronger. You’ll be surprised by how quickly you will be able to build muscle and flexibility.
