In addition to the stress of meeting new friends, finding classrooms and doing well in school, many incoming MSU freshmen have anxiety about their eating habits in a changing environment.
Health Education Services nutritionist Ronda Bokram has been employed at the Olin Heath Center for 18 years and understands the "freshman 15" myth to be harmful to many freshmen.
"It's a media thing and people are afraid of it before they come, and the more afraid you are of it, the more you do things with your eating that aren't normal," Bokram said.
Instead of dieting or skipping meals during the transitional phrase into college, the key to a healthy lifestyle is to try and keep your diet consistent. In many cases, freshmen attempt to make major changes to their nutritional intake and end up unnaturally gaining or losing weight.
"Focus a lot on how you ate when you were in high school and be consistent: eating three to five times a day, eating every three to five hours, eating when you're hungry, stopping when you're not and eating everything from carrots to Oreos," Bokram said.
Most of the studies that support the idea of freshmen gaining 15 pounds only track the first eight to 12 weeks of school. Conversely, the more accurate studies show that after freshmen settle into a normal routine, they often lose the weight that they may have gained at the beginning of classes.
"People often forget that perhaps you were meant to gain weight. I mean you're still in a period of growth and development, and you're increasing in bone density, maybe even increasing in height," Bokram said.
It may sound simple to keep a steady diet, but with the allure of smoking or drinking, without parental supervision, some students' eating habits can be affected. Bokram believes cases in which students allow drinking or smoking to affect their diet should be handled on an individual basis.
"I think that some people eat more when they do those activities. I think that some people decide not to eat because they're going to do those activities and sort of save the calories for those activities," Bokram said.
Not only can the issue of gaining weight be a problem, but Bokram stressed that the issue of losing weight can be an increasingly dangerous health problem because it's not publicized that often.
"I do see students who lose weight, but those people don't really get talked about because it's always the freshman 15 people," Bokram said. "I think it's a serious problem when people can't eat because they're dealing with a lot of stress."
Separating freshmen by their gender, Bokram said that when she first started her job at Olin, men seemed to care less about their weight, but recently she has seen more men concerned about body mass.
"When you think about advertising saturation — media — while we've been focused on women in body image and weight, you see a lot more media focused on men now. I've seen in the last five, six, seven years a lot of incidents of eating disorders in men," Bokram said.
While the cafeterias can cause a challenge for many freshmen attempting to remain on a steady diet because of the recycled menu choices and the buffet style, it's not impossible to personalize your diet.
"They try very hard to give you a wide variety of foods, and if you're having issues with the cafeteria that you live at, or eat at routinely, we have a wide variety of cafeterias to choose from and they are all different," Bokram said.
The campus cafeterias also offer suggestion boxes for students to make changes to the menu so that the food can increasingly coincide with a healthier, steadier diet.
If you have questions about more health-related issues, call Olin's Phone Information Nurse at (517) 353-5557 between 9 a.m. and noon, and 2 p.m. and 5 p.m., Monday through Friday. For general information about Olin, call (517) 355-4510 or visit www.olin.msu.edu. To set up an appointment call (517) 353-4660.
