The
“Freshman 15” isn’t just a college urban legend, it’s real, and
for all of you just starting your first year away from home, it is
right around the corner waiting to wrap its fat little arms around
you.
The “Freshman 15” isn’t just a college urban legend, it’s real, and for all of you just starting your first year away from home, it is right around the corner waiting to wrap its fat little arms around you.
When I first started visiting colleges, I would hear references to the Freshman 15 but didn’t give it a lot of thought – it sounded more like a joke or something that couldn’t concern me. After one year of school I can tell you that the “Freshman 15” is real and it didn’t just find me; it attacked me and threw on 10 more of its pudgy little friends just for good measure. Yep, I gained 25 pounds in less than one year! Yikes!
And for all of you people who have experienced this kind of rapid weight gain, you know how hard it is to make it go away. Like an insidious disease, you don’t realize you’ve been plagued with the pounds until your pants don’t fit.
It is so easy to gain weight at college. Your meals are all paid for in advance and it is all you can eat in a cafeteria that is loaded with all the foods people love from pizza to fresh-baked cookies.
And aside from easy access to food, there are plenty of reasons a college student will overeat. Did you know that independence is a tremendous appetite stimulant? You can eat all you want of anything you want, anytime you want and there is no one, no parent, around to tell you to stop.
Also, first timers away from home might be lonely, bored, sad or scared and all of these emotions can be temporarily calmed with a cookie or two or in my case, three – with every meal. Going out with friends is another diet disaster. One of the worst things I did was after eating a big, fattening dinner (and please insert my three cookie minimum here), my friends and I would go for a night out and later include eating another big meal after midnight as part of our plans.
Yes, it is embarrassing to share this with my readers, but the only way to truly share my experiences and share my lessons with you is to tell you the whole story. That is how I discovered the Atkins Diet. Counting carbohydrates didn’t seem too hard, so I bought the book and together with my mom on the phone, we had the motivation and support to make it work. I want to pause right here for those readers who are already crafting e – mails to me to say, “Lacey, that is a terrible diet! It is so bad for you!” Please, I’ve heard it before, I’ve been doing the diet for more than five months and it works, it isn’t unhealthy and I’m going to tell you why.
You can read this technical stuff in the book, but as long as I have your attention: First, there are three different kinds of food: proteins, fats and carbohydrates.
Protein – complex chains of amino acids – is essential to almost every chemical reaction in the human body. Foods rich in protein include meat, fish, fowl, eggs, cheese, nuts and seeds.
Fat provides glycerol and essential fatty acids, which the body cannot make. Fat is found in meat, fish, fowl, dairy products, nuts, seeds and a few vegetables.
Carbohydrates include sugars and starches and contain almost nothing that our body needs. It is true that carbohydrates provide the quickest source of energy but we eat much more of it than our body needs. So our bodies store these extra sugars and starches as fat for a future time (that will never come) when we need the energy, but are without a food source. Although vegetables contain carbohydrates, they also provide us with beneficial nutrients and including non – starchy veggies in our meal plans allows us to keep our carb count down.
A common misconception about this diet is that it is a “diet”. Atkins isn’t something that you do for a few months, and then stop once you’ve dropped the pounds. It’s a way of life. Here are a few reasons why Atkins works: One, it mobilizes more fat for use as energy than any other diet. By reducing the number of carbohydrates you intake, you force your body to use existing fat as energy rather than what you are consuming. Second, this controlled carbohydrate approach is not one that leaves you hungry.
Most diets leave us wanting more and craving what we know we can’t have. By abandoning sugar and other refined carbohydrates such as white flour, you enable yourself to shake the sugar addiction. This revolution allows a vast variety of meat, fish, salads and vegetables, and never leaves you hungry.
Third, the diet leaves you feeing both good and healthy. This diet has been proven to improve blood cholesterol and triglyceride levels as well as a reduction of blood pressure. (My mother’s cholesterol went from nearly 300 to 225 on Atkins even eating up to six eggs a day) Most people ask me how I handle not eating bread, candy, milk etc. I simply say that after a few weeks without them, I don’t have a taste for it anymore.
Besides, Atkins and other companies have all jumped on the low carb bandwagon making low carbohydrate products that I can substitute for catsup, muffins (my favorite), cookies, cereal and even chocolate candy bars.
I think the best part about this experience was coming home for the summer and doing Atkins with my mom. We’d be creative with our meals, weigh ourselves in the morning: congratulate each other when our goals were met and support each other when the scale was in a bad mood.
I’m back at school now and it is harder to stay on any type of healthy meal plan when the people around you aren’t. Neither of my roommates exercises or eats healthy foods. They practically live on high doses of carbohydrates, while I limit my daily intake to 15 grams and go the gym for two hours everyday.
I can do this. Here is an example of what I eat on an average day: Breakfast: 3-egg omelet with cheese, 3 pieces of bacon, and an Atkins banana nut muffin (2 carbs.) Lunch: 3 cups of salad (3 carbs) with grilled chicken, cucumbers (1/2 cucumber = 1.5 carbs), cheese and oil and vinegar dressing. Snack: Deli turkey and salami (5 pieces of salami = 1 carb) and strawberries (1/4 cup, or 2 strawberries = 2.7 carbs) Dinner: Baked Salmon w/ lemon, butter and herbs, 1 cup of salad (1 carb) w/ blue cheese dressing (0 carbs, “Marie’s Chunky Blue Cheese Dressing”), and 6 spears of asparagus (3.8 carbs).
You may ask, “What about going out to eat?” It isn’t a struggle if you keep the bread and chips with salsa away from you and look at the menu with an open mind.
Here are some examples:
Mexican (my favorite food): I order the fajitas and substitute large pieces of lettuce leaves for tortillas. I wrap the pieces of grilled meat in the lettuce with sour cream, guacamole and cheese. (no salsa, most are high in sugar and carbs.)
Italian: I avoid the pasta dishes and order a Caesar salad (1 carb for the dressing) with grilled chicken.
Chinese: I order the beef and broccoli (without the sauce.)
Does that sounds like a meal plan you can live with? The best part is that you don’t have to limit yourself to what I have above. You could have a 4-egg omelet or a big piece of steak, five cups of salad or even fruit (amuch higher in carbs).
The Carb-Counter that comes with the “Dr. Atkins’ New Diet Revolution” book is my bible. I live by it everyday. Once you get the hang of it, and start memorizing how many carbs are in what, it becomes second nature. I am eating healthier than I ever have and the pounds are coming off.
The Atkins way of eating seems like the most popular diet today whether you are in Boston or in Morgan Hill, but in Morgan Hill, you carb watchers are lucky. You have the Low Carb Express, a store at Tennant Station that carries all the foods that Atkins followers can enjoy. Check it out – it’s delicious.
For now I have to make due with careful grocery shopping and my mother’s wonderful care packages of low carb goodies from the Low Carb Express! Thanks Mom!
I’ll keep you posted on my disappearing poundage.
Lacey Green is a sophomore at Northeastern University in Boston. Readers may contact her at La********@*ol.com
