Prevent the Freshmen Fifteen Without Diets

If you are headed off to college soon, or are a freshman in college, the idea of the freshman fifteen is become very real. With meal plans that allow for an unlimited amount of food and nobody there to tell you to make healthy choices, it soon becomes clear just how hard eating right will be.

Why Diets May Trouble You

Many freshmen find themselves on very odd diets, everything from the single meal diet to the raw foods diet. These crazy diet fads are not only dangerous - in some but not all cases - but are also nearly impossible to stay true to, especially when healthy options at college are few and far between. As a current freshman who has lost fifteen pounds instead of gaining it, I can tell you that there are two big things to keep in mind to ward off the freshmen fifteen.

Portion Control a Real Diet

If you can make it through your first year of college and not gain weight, then you have become successful and managing your caloric intake versus deficit. The best way to do this is to pay attention to what you are eating at your meals, try to make sure that at least half (if not more) of your plate is fruits and vegetables, personally I always have a decent size salad with light dressing on it, that takes up a minimum of half of my plate, it's one of the best ways to avoid the freshmen fifteen. Try filling up on something that is good for you like salad or other low calorie high volume options that will make you feel more full! The rest of your plate should be lean proteins; grilled chicken is one of the best options that most dining halls at universities offer, but there are other options available to you if you take a look around.

Avoid No Certain Food Diet Mentality

I have a few friends that have decided that while they are at college they are not going to have any of the cake that they like here, because it's high calorie high fat. When I told them that I have it from time to time and I still lost weight, they were shocked! If you tell yourself that this year you aren't going to have any of the cake that you love at the dining hall, you are setting yourself up for a failure. When you deny yourself a food that you really love, you are going to succeed for a little while, then the one day when you are feeling weak willed, you will snap, and that will lead to binge eating the food that is bad for you. I have to admit that I snapped one day after I banned Oreos from my house, and three weeks later I had a 3,000 calorie night enough to gain nearly 2 pounds! After the Oreo incident, I never outlawed food again, just learned how to manage the ones that were more tempting.

Maintaining or even losing weight in college is completely possible, I am proof of that; my weight loss journey of over one hundred pounds has taught me a thing or two about healthy eating. As a freshman in college you don't want to go on diets, and you don't want to have to count, for some it's an option for others it's not, but if you can master portion control, you can decide if the freshman fifteen will be fifteen pounds that you gained or the extra fifteen that you are going to lose..