How to Avoid the Freshman 15

It's almost that time of year again when students have to say goodbye to their summer memories and mentally prepare themselves for another year of school. This means that many high school graduates are excitedly and probably anxiously waiting for the beginning of a brand new chapter in their lives: college.

At first, you'll hear a lot of stories about the horrible experiences that you can have at college. You'll be told about messy roommates or the subpar quality of food in the dining halls. You'll hear things about binge drinking and awkward walk-ins, and you'll be warned about the classes or professors you should avoid. One very popular scare tactic is the legendary Freshman Fifteen.

The Freshman Fifteen is a sudden spike in weight during the first year of college experienced by a pretty significant portion of students. Now, this weight gain has been attributed to quite a few causes. For one, there's that sense of freedom that comes with being away at college. You're not tied to house rules anymore, so your mom doesn't pack you perfectly balanced bagged lunches every day. You have the choice and the right to have pizza and ice cream for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

The same way that college students go nuts their freshman year and experiment with drugs and excessive drinking, they tend to eat a whole lot of junk simply because they can. The far more interesting cause being proposed is stress. It's no secret that college is stressful. Hours and hours of studying on minimal sleep and wired on caffeine is pretty much the prototypical picture of the college student's life.

All that time spent studying makes it hard to make time to eat at all, much less eat well and exercise too. Cortisol is a hormone that's released when your body senses danger. When you're stressed, it thinks your body is in danger and therefore increases your appetite, especially for foods high in sugar and fat.

These days, however, the danger causing cortisol to act up isn't a bear or tiger. The dangers are exams and deadlines. Those stressful events typically require lots of sitting and concentrating, not high-energy expenditure. So, we're consuming the calories needed to sprint away from danger when in reality, all we're doing is sitting still for long periods of time.

You can reduce the effects of stress by learning how to manage it. Everyone experiences stress in his or her life, but how you deal with it is the key to avoiding negative results such as weight gain. Stress management might include taking some time off to relax or picking up a new hobby.

Luckily, exercise and physical activity reduce the circulation of stress hormones while also maintaining weight. So, working out occasionally is actually twice as beneficial. At the end of the day, college is stressful, weight gain is stressful, and just thinking about it is kind of stressful. The good news is that there's something to be done about it, and it's all in your hands.

Simply put, here are the rules to live by your freshman year: Don't eat junk 100% of the time, try to fit in a few workouts a week, and remember to chill out every once in a while.

For incoming college students, do you have plans to avoid the freshman 15? For those of you who have already been through this, how did you deal with it? Comment your answers down below.