Stress and change struggles
By Julia Kramer · News Editor
Here’s a little-known fact: freshmen gain weight at rates 5.5 times higher than the average person in the general population. As the semester begins, a word or two on this weighty subject is warranted.
Known colloquially as the “freshman 15,” the phenomenon has been impacting first-year students ever since people thought an extra four years of homework was imperative for worldly success.
While closer to seven or eight pounds, according to a Mayo Clinic article, the weight gain (or fear of it) can cause significant distress for many students hoping to hold onto any remnant of “normal.” This is, of course, excluding the lanky male population who seem impervious, despite their best efforts, to exceeding a BMI higher than their 14-year-old selves.
But back to the point.
Any frequenter of social media or current pop culture can tell you that “skinny culture” is back. From Ozempic downsizing favorite celebrities to the popular “heroin chic” aesthetic cluttering runways, now is not the socially acceptable moment to put on a few pounds.
So what to do?
Current discussion around the issue primarily blames the vast amount of change involved in a student’s first year. Straight off the boat of a high school education, freshmen are told they are adults, and the habits and guidelines that higher powers used to decide are now up to them. Seemingly overnight, freshmen become the sole decision-makers when it comes to bedtime policy, pantry composition, video game allotment and club or sports involvement.
It can be a lot, and healthy habits sustained with a parent’s accountability or a former lifestyle structure can easily crumble when those things are no longer present.
However, doctors encourage anyone worrying about gaining the extra 15 to not worry about it. Worry, or stress, is another primary cause behind weight gain.
Cortisol, the body’s stress hormone, often slows one’s metabolism to conserve energy. It also frequently increases a person’s appetite for things that are sweeter and fattier. While it is an ingenious survival response that would keep one going for longer in the wild, most freshmen are not, in fact, being chased by a bear or foraging berries for sustenance.
Instead, they are wandering Hicks, enjoying chocolate milk on tap, hiding cookies in their backpacks and trying to meet their protein goals with a hamburger gelatinizing in pools of its own grease.
Freshmen may not know how to make the best decisions for their health immediately, but it’s unfair to put the full weight of responsibility on them. College life, from less sleep to more stress to 24/7 buffet-style consumption, seems designed to make sure first-year students gain weight.
But is that so much of a bad thing?
Freshman year is all about growth: growth in academics, social skills, faith. Why should it bother a person if their waistband joins the bandwagon a little?
Complete disregard for bodily health aside, a student’s first year of college is so much more than maintaining the extent to which gravity acts upon. Rather than holding on and trying to control, freshman year is about opening up and letting go. Who you were in high school and what type of friends you had or type of grades you got are apt to change, and that’s OK.
If Beyoncé can sing country music, and your grandmother can manage Instagram, you can allow yourself to change.
And if by the end of your first 15 weeks at college the scale says you’ve gained 15 more pounds, don’t freak out.
Chances are, you’ve grown in so many more ways than 15.
