Yes, you can get gym memberships for free or cheap at universities. Yes, it’s true, there are contests that you can get monetary rewards from if you go to the gym so many times or complete certain challenges. It is true that the cafeteria offers healthy selections that you can eat instead of pizza. But this isn’t the whole story.
Even though we can have as much food in the cafeteria as we want— we don’t normally do it. With classes and a weird adjusted schedule, a lot of us eat at weird points in the day that are different than the meal times we eat at when we are home. With some days I can’t even eat lunch, so when I get back to my residence hall, I eat as quick as I can. Then, when I am hungry around— oh let's say 9 o’clock —I try not to eat because I know that I need to watch my weight. Then 11 p.m. rolls around followed by 12 a.m., and I am so hungry I’m starting to get a headache, my stomach is growling and I can feel my brain telling me to eat something. The cafeteria is closed and I don’t want to eat the chocolate that’s in my room, so I go to the market, which at that time of night doesn’t have any fresh stuff, so I’m resort to finding healthy type chips or something. This is a regularly reoccurring thing.
What really sucks about living on campus is that you can’t cook anything in your room, really. Sure you can microwave something, but there is no way that you can cook meals that have the amount of protein and other nutrients that you need to stay full and focused. In this same way, you can go to the gym anytime that you want to at almost any hour. Yet, with days full of classes, working in the library, and having to run across the campus and up and down stairs, by the time you get to your dorm, you are so utterly exhausted you can’t even fathom working out. It's an endless cycle of saying “I’m going to workout tomorrow.” It's hard to be dedicated to working out and staying fit when you have deadlines to reach, projects to be done, clubs to meet at, and getting some decent sleep. Not to mention, no matter how many times you go to the salad bar, salads get really old tasting and sometimes you can’t swallow that first bite.
So, why is it so hard to lose weight, and so easy to gain weight living on campus? Because the average college student has way too many things to worry about, a multitude of classes that can fall anywhere between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m., and an insatiable desire to sleep. So, fellow college students, I implore you to go to the gym at least once a week. I only say this because I have to start doing it myself and I would like others to also be doing it so I have some motivation.
