Freshman 15? Bring it on.
I spent the three-day weekend on my feet, walking up and down Commonwealth Avenue after an hour at FitRec and then strolling across Boston to Cambridge with my sister.
Replace the last part with walking back and forth from classes, and it’s a typical Boston University weekday. With a schedule like this, I am totally prepared to lose at least 15 pounds before winter break.
However, determination can get tiring, especially during exam time when I find myself wandering over to the dessert section of the dining hall.
It’s obvious why students gain weight during their first year.
If you’re in a hurry, grab a slice of pizza or two – there’s almost never a line for that!
Feeling homesick? There’s a station composed of home-cooked meals. It’s basically heavy, creamy comfort food.
And what about that piece of meat that claims to be a good source of protein?
Well, it’s also surrounded by a layer of skin and fat.
I was never a breakfast person because all my parents ate every morning were healthy wheat germ and flax seed cereals. But now I can have French toast, sausages, pancakes or bacon every morning.
It sickens me.
Being active during the week is still no excuse for students to eat junk food that they normally would not eat at home.
It’s reasonable for dining halls to have one or two unhealthy food items on their menus, but if every item was Sargent Choice, students might get sick of it, and they would just go out and eat.
Students must have the willpower to resist the ice cream bar and go for the salad bar instead.
A thought that can deceive hungry students’ is that the food spread out in front of them isn’t free. They are paying thousands of dollars each year for it.
And as the months go by, each dollar that left from their parents’ wallets can end up as extra pounds on students’ weight scales.
To make matters worse, I do not know any student who has a weight scale in his or her dorm.
They might not even realize they put on weight until they go home for the holidays.
Not to mention the sweaters and puffy North Face jackets that are usually sizes bigger than what they’re supposed to be and therefore, make it harder to tell if one’s summer clothes still fit!
Well, maybe that is too extreme…
There is no need to limit your dinner plate to just raw vegetables and watery soup, but a limit should be in place.
Freshman year can be full of surprises, but do not let weight gain be one of them.
Rhea Oommen is a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences and a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press. She can be reached at rheao@bu.edu.
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
