While weekends full of binge drinking, late night Whataburger, and energy drink-fueled cram sessions at the library may seem like the components of an average semester at college, they do not come without their downsides, especially when regularly practiced. We have all heard of the “freshman 15" but gaining extra weight doesn't reveal the total impact of the typical college lifestyle. The real problem with perpetual indulgences is the development of bad habits that will impact life in the long term.
Most students played sports in high school but now find themselves replacing their daily practices with the drinking and junk food that the highly social college environment often promotes. Our bodies can handle this for a few years when we are young and resilient, but it turns into a real problem if these habits follow students after graduation. The sad truth is, a lot of them do. Habits, by their nature, are often hard to shake, especially when the serious consequences are years away. Most students wouldn't think of replacing a weekend of partying with exercising and eating healthy because they may get heart disease later on down the road.
So the question becomes, how can students fight off the development of bad habits without abstinence damaging their college experience? The answer is found in a little bit of discipline and extra work on the side, to keep bad habits from fully forming. Find something small that can be done daily that keeps the idea of health present in your life. This could be as simple as keeping a bag of salad greens in your mini fridge to snack on once a day instead of turning to that extra candy bar from the vending machine. It could also be going on a run a few times a week. You can even turn exercise into a social event! Go take group workout classes with friends or even just walk up the stairs instead of taking the elevator to your dorm room.
The key is that you don't have to do something drastic, just something that serves as a reminder of moderation. After graduation, when life stabilizes and healthy eating and exercise can more easily become part of a routine, good habits will not seem like completely foreign concepts.
Additionally, it's very important to find something that is easy and enjoyable to add to your physical life to make sure that you can ease into your new custom. Just like people who go on crash diets, those who make drastic lifestyle changes commonly relapse into old habits. Students who try and force themselves to change everything about what they've been doing in one day probably aren't going to sustain the changes. It's a much better idea to slowly make more and more healthy choices because this is the key to maintaining those choices.
The small health changes that come with the lifestyle changes such as the loss of that freshman 15 can serve as motivation to continue down a path of health. At the very least, small adjustments will keep you from getting fully removed from the idea of being health conscious, which makes it much easier to revert back to a healthy lifestyle down the road when it really becomes important.
