5 Tips to Trick Yourself into Drinking More Water Why is Water Important? Water is the foundation of virtually every process in your body. That means that if you aren’t hydrated, every other healthful activity you are doing won’t be as effective. For instance: Vitamins won’t be absorbed as effectively. Exercise, chiropractic and…
Kick Your Butt, Legs, And Thighs With Week 2 of This Total Gym Workout: Whether you want to firm up your glutes, tone your thighs, gain strength or sculpt defined muscles, it comes down to developing a set goal to accomplish - and follow it though with a plan…
How Sleep Impacts Your Weight: We all need a good night’s sleep but we may not fully know how truly ESSENTIAL good sleep is for our overall health and well being. When we sleep well, we feel refreshed, energized, and ready to take on the world. When we don’t, we feel…
According to the National Institute of Health, about two-thirds of adults over the age of 20, and one-third of children 6-9 years of age, are overweight. Worse yet, the trend seems to be increasing, and there doesn’t seem to be one simple cause, but many. A lack of exercise built into our daily routines is…
It’s Not That Older Folks Need Less Sleep. It’s That We Get Less Sleep! Many older adults enjoy, like younger people do, about 20% of mind-restoring sleep. But deep sleep occurs less than 5% of the time as we grow older If you are in the group I’ll refer to as “active aging,” you…
Nutritious Brain Foods Healthy foods not only make your body healthier, they make your brain healthier and help it to work smarter too. If you put garbage in your body, you will reap the repercussions both physically, with poor muscle mass and weight gain, but also mentally, often with a depressed mood and a…
Why Is There So Much Hate For Potatoes It’s really unfortunate that potato myths are so prevalent. The lowly white potato has been given a bad rap by many nutritionists. Because of this, people tend to think that this low-cost staple is nothing more than a source of cheap carbohydrates.…
In prehistoric times when I went to college, the weight gain characterized by freshman year was called the freshmen ton; meaning that if you added up all the weight the freshman gained by throughout the school year, it would equal a ton. The Freshman 15 is close enough and is defined as the amount of weight an average freshman will gain by the end of freshman year. Some folks are spared but unfortunately many freshmen end up with the extra pounds. This type of weight gain is likely to follow us throughout life, as we encounter similar life stresses. The gain is blamed on a variety of issues, including:
How can young, vibrant 18 year olds be gaining that much weight? Is it a myth or urban legend? Aren’t they walking to class, meeting with friends, dancing, and partying? They’re too busy to gain weight right? Unfortunately, researchers followed 131 students over four years of college and found that a whopping 70% of them packed on pounds by graduation (average of 12 pounds). The overall percentage of students found to be overweight increased from 18% to 31%. The researchers noted gains in body fat composition and waist circumference as well.
A new study, published in Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism, flies in the face of previous studies, which found that the average student gains merely 2.5 to 3.5 pounds and accused the media of fomenting the Freshman 15 myth.
But the researchers in the Auburn study observed that the “growth” they found in the college students consisted primarily of fat mass (meaning natural growth patterns could not account for it). And all the above factors were significant contributors to the gain.
Carol Holland, D.Ph., an associate professor and a psychologist in the counseling center at Slippery Rock State College in Pennsylvania, says that the stress of adapting to a new situation and academic and social challenges can be a problem. Students may miss the support system of friends, family, and activities that they had in high school, so they use what’s available. Food becomes a pacifier, and this coping skill can follow after college leading to adulthood obesity, if it’s not recognized early.