Everyone has heard rumors about the dark and so called eminent Freshman 15. It’s become a highly stigmatized part of college life, everyone is worrying about the Freshman 15 and it’s definitely a huge topic of conversation at my dinner table. The Freshman 15, mainly popularized in America and Canada, refers to the average amount of weight gained by a student during their first year of college. Due to the new access of junk food and the opportunity to make ones own decisions students tend to pack on a few extra pounds.

Whether or not the Freshman 15 is fact or faked is what we will be investigating, and mainly why students tend to pack on some pounds once they enter college?

A study has shown that during the first 2 years of college, students tend to gain an average of 3-10 pounds, most of the weight gain occurring within the first semester. The majority weight gain in college can be contributed to factors such as stress, alcohol use, change in diet and lack of sleep.

Being away from home, having a ton of work and trying to have a social life can put a lot of strain on a college student and added stress does not make for a healthy lifestyle. When a person is stressed their body tends to release a mixture of the hormones, adrenaline and cortisol. If you’ve ever been completely stressed out before you may have felt as if you were not hungry, the adrenaline released due to stress causes the blood in your body to redirect from your organs to your muscles causing loss of appetite. Once the adrenaline wears off all that is left behind is cortisol, the stress hormone, which signals your body to replenish your food supply, so you find yourself reaching for the nearest and easiest snack to fill you up which tends to not be the healthiest. Stress eating is one of the largest problems college students are faced with. When your body wants food and the only thing you have is a bag of chips in your dorm, you’re going to reach for those chips to satisfy the body’s needs, which creates a vicious cycle.

Many college students find themselves experimenting with alcohol, they may find themselves at a party or even at a friends house, but it happens. Alcohol is an empty calorie that causes weight gain for many students. It has been noted that, “Students who drank “heavily” (quaffing six or more drinks at least four days each month) were about a pound heftier than their tee-totaling friends.” Most notably students tend to drink the cheapest and easiest to get alcohol, beer. Beer is packed full of carbohydrates that when not worked off build up and build up until it becomes fat and you’re left with a good ole’ fashion beer belly. People tend to forget that alcohol is essentially empty calories, one can of the popular college beer, Natural Light contains 95 calories, drink 4 or 5 of those and you’ve almost had a meal.

Change in diet is self explanatory, student are allowed to make their own choices now regarding what they want to eat, mom isn’t telling them to eat their vegetables anymore, and to a college student the french fries in the dining hall constitute as a vegetable. Students are now free to eat what they want, when they want and can choose how much of it the would like to eat. A diet of french fries, pizza and Pepsi adds up over time.

Lack of sleep is one of the lesser known reasons for weight gain in college freshmen. Losing sleep at night disrupts two chemicals in the body that control appetite, ghrelin and leptin. When these two chemicals are disturbed our bodies beg for carbs to keep it going, this is why college students find themselves eating late at night, the body’s process has been disturbed and wants to be replenished.

There was a study done a few years ago to test the truth behind the Freshman 15. Participants with all relatively similar lifestyle from the same college were recorded to see if students really did gain 15 pounds during their freshman year. The results and conclusion of the study came to suggest that there was “an average weight gain of 2.7 lbs. About half of the students gained weight, and 15% lost weight. Men gained more weight than did women. Freshman weight gain was 5.5 times greater than that experienced by the general population.” Through their test they were able to debunk the Freshman 15 myth. Given that the Freshman 15 is the average weight gained by Freshman we can assume that outliers of incredible weight gain may have dragged up the average while most students don’t gain much at all.

So if it has been debunked by many people, in many different studies, why are we so fixated on it? Well, why are we so fixated on some myths we hear? It’s because it’s so convincing! We have no reason to not believe that we’d gain 15 pounds our Freshman year because it’s true our lives have drastically changed. I used to exercise daily when I was at home, but now that I’m in college I find myself tired often, not wanting to do much after class except sleep or do my work. Everyone will go through weight changes in college, whether you gain 2 pounds, loss 10 or gain the infamous Freshman 15, you’ll be okay! If you’re trying to avoid the Freshman 15 try to eat healthy, keep healthy snacks in your dorm (McLanahan’s Downtown Market is only a 15 minute walk away), try to balance out unhealthy things you eat with healthy options, get an adequate amount of sleep and most importantly remain calm!