by Michelle Wilkinson

Created on: July 01, 2009

When you move away from home you no longer have your parents constantly keeping an eye on you or making your meals, and you are basically free to do as you please. The routine that you have become accustomed to is disrupted and you may have other priorities when you start college so that your health and fitness takes a backseat. However, if you don't prioritise your health and fitness you may end up gaining weight, and it will be much better for you to get into a new routine that enables you to maintain a healthy weight, rather than gaining lots of weight and having to lose it all.

When you're a student, away from home, you find all the local restaurants trying to get you to spend money there with various meal-deals and special offers. Students can be very lazy creatures and the temptation may be to simply eat out all the time rather than cooking your own meals. However, despite all the seemingly great offers available it still works out cheaper to eat at home, as long as you pick the right kinds of food. If you want to avoid weight gain you should focus on getting your calories from fruits and vegetables, complex carbohydrates such as those found in wholegrain pasta, and protein from fish and meat, as well as some fat from items such as nuts.

If you want to avoid weight gain when starting college you need to get into good eating habits, or try to retain the eating habits you had before leaving home. If you gain weight it is largely due to the fact that you have consumed more calories than you have burned. It is not surprising that so many people gain weight when they start college as they want to make friends and thus they tend to do a lot of socialising. Usually this involves drinking too much alcohol and eating lots of food. You often don't think about the possibility of weight gain until it is too late and you've put on a few pounds. Students are besieged by offers on alcohol and junk food and clearly too many succumb to the temptation.

It is still possible to socialise without necessarily gaining weight, though. You need to watch what you eat and drink, but even more importantly you need to exercise. Regular exercise is a practical way of helping you to avoid weight gain, helping to speed up your metabolism and thus burn more calories. At college there are plenty of sporting societies and exercise classes, and usually a gym, which you can join, offering you the chance to socialise as well as get fitter and maintain a healthy weight.

Clearly, it is not inevitable that you will gain weight when you start college, but if you completely ignore the bad habits you tend to pick up the likelihood of putting on a few pounds certainly increases. It is therefore up to you to make changes before this happens.

Learn more about this author, Michelle Wilkinson.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.