The Vicissitudes of Freedom: The Freshman Fifteen

About author / Josh Gunn

Bachelor chef; southern cooking; mixologist; university professor. Josh's recipes will delight (and sometimes terrify) you.

For many young bachelors, the month of August is spent procuring the basic necessities for college. For the very freshest of bachelors---that is, for Freshmen---August is also the time to plan ahead: what will do you with all the freedom you will soon have?

If you're like most new college students, you'll be eating crap and drinking too much. And if you're eating crap and drinking too much, you're going to gain weight and throw up a lot---both of which can do some serious damage to your dormitory toilets. So, first things first: if there's anything that you absolutely must procure this August, it’s a good toilet brush and anti-bacterial toilet cleaner.

What comes out, of course, must first go in, and that's our topic for this week. Studies have shown that the average weight gain for new college students is about five pounds, or anywhere from two to ten if you extend the trial period to the sophomore year as well.

This means the dreaded "Freshman fifteen" is something of a myth, but like all myths, there's a nugget of truth at the nougaty center. For this and next week's column, the executives at CDKitchen.com thought it would be nice to offer some advice for our college-bound bachelors, and today, of course, we're going to tackle the number one risk of newfound freedom: extra poundage.

It's been a very long time since I had my girlish figure, and owing to my family's genetic gifts, those days are long gone for me. In college, however, I did manage to maintain my slight 150-pound hot body by smoking: about a pack a day, in fact, before I finally quit at 27. So that's the first recommendation I can offer: smoke.

Okay, okay, I really am just joshing. Please don't smoke. It's bad for you, the environment, and it makes you smell terrible. Besides, you may have a susceptibility of emphysema, like your aunt who died from it many years ago. And if you smoke you might be haunted in your dreams by your own monstrous wheezes, which would then force you to quit over some many agonizing weeks, lose your girlfriend, and put you perilously close to fits of rage over nothing in particular. So, here are some better alternatives to smoking and freebasing crystal meth:

1. Be suspicious of cafeteria food; choose your poison carefully. I know a bunch of you bachelors are forced to purchase meal plans (I remember that I was) and had to eat in school slop buckets. Understand these nascent Golden Corrals help protect the bottom line by producing vat after vat of cheap-to-make food, and that said food is more or less starch: mashed potatoes, breaded-this-and-that-mystery-meat, gravy, "corndogs," and so on. This stuff may be filling, but it's not good for you. Go easy on the starches, head for the leaner, baked meats, and hangout at the salad bar. Go easy on the salad dressing too, ya hear?

2. Easy on the boozing, padre! Fortunately, when I was in high school I did a lot---probably too much---of experimenting with drugs and alcohol. By the time I got to college I had "been there, done that," and so I found myself not as interested in drinking excessively and then barfing all over the place.

I'll never forget my Catholic schoolboy roommates from Boston, who were so enamored with their freedom to drink that they were always barfing . . . had to pee out the window one night because I couldn't get near the bathroom. Now, college may be the first time you have the opportunity to "experiment" too, so: Please don't over-do it (people die from alcohol poisoning, and EVERY YEAR we hear reports of this on college campuses around the country!). But also remember this: your body converts alcohol to burn as energy before everything else. So if you're drinking a lot of booze, your body is using that instead of burning more healthy sources of fuel. Hence, you gain weight.

3. Hurried life decreases inhibitions: when you are trying to hurry to your fourth class of the day, it's easy to swing by that fast foot joint to cram something in your mouth. Why not carry with you one of those nutritious grain bars or something similar and eat that instead? As with everything, a little fast food every now and again is not going to kill you. But if you make it a habit, you will pack on the pounds. Don't believe me? Go watch the film Supersize Me. In fact, watching this film is probably a very good idea before you ship off to the dormitory (and regarding number one above, I betcha we'd see similar results!).

4. Choose bottled water and diet soda over sugary crap. This rule doesn't need much of an explanation, but if you stroll down any college campus in a town near you, you'll quickly see few are following it.

5. Exercise. This tip would also seem like common sense, but I remember it was very, very hard to follow in college. Why? Because after many classes in a day, meetings and other obligations (I worked for two radio stations and a television studio), there's just no time to hit the gym or pool.

One thing you can do is basic exercises in the morning for twenty minutes (you know, push-ups, crunches, lunges, that sort of thing) before you hit class. Then, instead of taking a cab, shuttle, or subway to various places, walk. I went to college in an urban area, so walking was easy to do and I made it a major part of daily routine. Of course, I often smoked as I walked, so, you know: do as I say, not as I did!

These five, easy-to-remember tips will seem obvious to most of you, but like I've said twice and will round out again with a third: when you're super busy, it's difficult to think about what goes in your mouth. Try to battle the "just this once" rationalizations and stick to a more healthy, moderate plan. Don't deprive yourself of crap, as doing so will make you crave it even more. Have TWO drinks, not SEVEN. Have ONE Big Mac every other month. Just don't make eating crap a habit. If you keep that in mind and regularly exercise, you'll be able to avoid extra poundage!