The Freshman 15

The Freshman Fifteen
We’re closing in on the end of Fall Semester, and many college freshman will have been anxious or experienced the dreaded Freshman Fifteen (I’ll just refer to this as “F15” from now on). The F15 is usually blamed on things like cafeteria eating and no longer remaining in high-school athletics (eating more and exercising less). These surely have something to do with it, but not how you likely assume. Rather, the F15 is a manifestation of complete upheaval to a student’s life—not necessarily at all related to the amount they eat or exercise. Furthermore, the F15 is only a single example of what can happen to many of us during a sudden change in our lives: new baby, moving, new job, etc.

With this post, I want to explore exactly what these disruptions, why they can cause sudden fat-gain, and how to prevent them.

The Pyramid Model of Health
For those unfamiliar with this concept, I’ll refer you to this article (http://preliminaryhealthcare.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-pyramid-model-of-health.html) but briefly:

Sleep is the absolute foundation of your Health for several reasons, including its necessity in controlling Stress. Stress causes several changes to your body, including preventing productive sleep, and also drives Behavior. Too much Stress causes unhealthy Behaviors, especially regarding Nutrition and Exercise. If all other levels of the pyramid are not fulfilled, Exercise can actually be a negative Stressor, further damaging your chances of success.

Let’s look at how this pyramid crumbles during turbulent times in our lives.

Sleep & Stress
Just the imposition of a new environment is stressful. Suddenly, being able to attain even the simplest things you need to live healthily becomes challenging—just finding a grocery store in a new location can turn into an hour long field-trip into new territory. Then factor in that certain emotional and social needs can become neglected or impoverished, and that creating new support systems can itself be a long-term difficulty. And we haven’t even mentioned the reason for which you have thrust yourself into this brand new world. A new job or beginning school necessarily imposes a largely novel set of expectations and responsibilities.

You’ll also be facing more than your fair share of sleep deprivation, for several reasons:
1. For much deserved leisure, and establishing/nurturing a social structure
2. Having to push responsibilities later and later into the night
3. Because the experience of stress makes falling asleep, sleeping well, and staying asleep difficult

This is very troubling because restful sleep is critical to managing stress. You can understand how poor sleep and high stress create a downward spiral. This is even more vexing because countless rejuvenatory processes rely on sleep, and chronic stress becomes systemically devastating to these same processes. Furthermore, high stress and poor sleep create a metabolic environment which strongly favors fat-gain. Lastly, stress plays a fundamental role in determining behavior.

Stress, Behavior, and Nutrition
Sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll…and food—all can be a source of pleasure. We tend to think about pleasure as though it were, at best, non-essential to a healthy life—but this simply is not so. Pleasure resuscitates us from the rigors of stress. In fact, the drive to seek and attain pleasure is proportional to the amount of stress you experience. Maybe you can already intuit the problem: the stress of your new environment necessarily creates unhealthy behaviors to help cope with that stress.

In fact, count yourself lucky if you find pleasure in food rather than hardcore drugs. But that doesn’t change the fact that the foods you crave in response to stress are the same foods which favor increased body-fat—sugary, floury, unhealthy junk-foods. In a very real way, getting fatter becomes the price of having to cope with a stressful life.

Physical Activity & Exercise
Another likely change which occurs is an increase in being sedentary. Notice, I didn’t say a reduction in physical activity/exercise; you can become more sedentary while still exercising as much or more than ever. What am I talking about?

Understand that exercise definitely has health-bestowing effects, and not exercising denies you these effects…obviously. But being sedentary—sitting still in class, at work, doing homework, studying, etc.— has negative consequences that are different than simply being denied the benefits of exercise. Even if you exercise an hour or 2 each day, it doesn’t alleviate the consequences of being sedentary. One of these consequences are a few metabolic changes that favor body-fat gain. It’s important to take frequent (every hour or so) breaks from sitting. This may be just standing, stretching, or walking around for a few minutes. Don’t expect an exercise regimen to fix this.

And speaking of exercise: exercise is great! But it’s only positive if you have taken care of the other levels of the pyramid. Exercise when you are already stress, sleep deprived, and not able to make healthful nutritional decisions only adds to the stress which is keeping you up at night and causing undesirable eating-behaviors.

Conclusion
When you’re making a drastic change to your life, it’s important to enter your new world as prepared as possible, and to find ways of reducing the burdens of that transition. This often includes relaxing the rigors of a current program (such as an exercise program), and postponing any unnecessary changes (such as dietary changes) until you feel more comfortable and can take on additional stressors.

I sincerely encourage you to download our free Strong Start Tool Kit at the top of the page, where’ll you find self-assessments on these various topics to which you can continuously refer as you make your transition, and quick-tips to help improve.

Thank you so much for reading. Be well,
Nicklaus Millican