I gained weight my freshman year at college. Phew! There, I said it.

But so does just about everyone.

I wasn’t used to being surrounded by pizza, pasta and all-around-not-good-for-you food. At home, my mom made dinner every night: one protein, a veggie, and a salad. To find a meal like that at school? Impossible.

I wasn’t a workout machine at school, either. I’d have the all-too-common mentality leaving the gym that, because I ran on the treadmill for 20 minutes, I was at liberty to eat anything I wanted after. But what I’ve realized being home for the summer is it’s not how much you work out; it all comes down to what you eat.

All it took was one glance from my mom that I knew I wasn’t looking too good when I came home for the summer. You look at yourself every day in the mirror and never see that subtle bulge popping from your hip. It’s like I was wearing blinders at school—blind to what I was doing to myself and what I was putting into my body. Thankfully, nothing slips past your mom, especially your appearance.

She sat me down and said, “Olivia, let’s lose weight together. I need to. You need to. We can do this.” So we started on a diet, a “healthy lifestyle choice” of cutting out sugar and carbs, and made our portions smaller. If I knew it’d work so fast and so well, I would’ve done it at school.

I still got to eat everything I liked (to my surprise). Eggs and bacon for breakfast, a chicken Caesar salad for lunch, string cheese for a snack, then chicken or pork chops with veggies for dinner. Um, YUM. With this diet, I lost the weight I had gained at school, and then some.

It was easy at home when I didn’t have anything to distract me from my new eating habits, however. School? There are a ton of distractions. I wasn’t staying out late and craving Papa John’s at home. I wasn’t staying up studying all night. I didn’t have group dinners with my sorority sisters or binge-eat while I watched Netflix all summer. At home it was easy to bring salads to work, come home to a stocked, healthy pantry, and then go to bed at a reasonable time.

That’s why I am scared to be back at school.

I’m scared I’m going to fall back into eating pizza every night or devouring a whole bag of Cheetos Puffs while I binge-watch "Grey’s" (true story).

But after this summer, I have a new outlook on my health and body. I know the things I shouldn’t eat and the things I can eat sparingly. I brought my own salad dressing, salad mix, my own healthy snacks like deli meat (because how real is the meat in Harris anyways?) and cheese sticks. I know how to control my portion sizes. Now it all comes down to how well I can follow the concepts of the diet at school, how I can discipline myself to not gain the Freshman 15. Sure, I’ll still indulge myself with a Chipotle burrito bowl or Graeter’s ice cream (I mean, now that it’s right in town how couldn’t I?) here and there, because no diet is worth missing out completely on the foods you love.

So here are some quick tips to help you stay on track at school:

When you know you’ve eaten badly one day, make sure to eat really well the next day. That’s easy.

Try to avoid carbs and sugars. Now that’s hard. At school, it seems everything is made of carbs (sandwiches, pizza, burritos, burgers, chicken fingers—everything at Armstrong basically). Try to allow yourself one meal of carby food, then eat a salad or protein for the rest.

That said, try eating a salad once a day. The roughage of the veggies is everything you need to clear out the crap you ate before.

Don’t eat after dinner. Even when the thought of Papa John’s is the only thing getting you through the night, just think of how great you’ll feel the next morning without it.

Finally, it all comes down to smaller portions. Why do you think Chipotle has so many calories? When you’re eating something the size of your face, that’s a lot of food.

I am no nutritionist or dietician. Nor am I your mother. I’m just a sophomore girl who fell victim to the Freshman 15 and then managed to somehow get it off and is now trying to keep it off. If it can work for me, it can work for you.

Here's to a healthy new school year!