If there is one aspect of college I have been anticipating the longest, it is the oft-talked about, heavily feared and obsessively documented Freshman 15. It is possibly one of the most over-hyped aspects of the college experience, unnecessarily overshadowing the monumental importance of leaving home for the first time, navigating adult relationships alone and studying harder than you ever have before.
Not that it matters, but research has shown that the “Freshman 15” weight gain is, in reality, only 2.7 pounds on average. To put this in perspective: your body weight is not constant—it is usually in the same five-pound range at any one time, due to changes in sodium levels, amount of water intake, and the like. Thus, for most people, the Freshman 15 does not cause any measurable changes in the body outside of normal, expected fluctuations, and the concern far outweighs the reality. Still, that dreaded 15-pound weight gain that is said to occur in the first semester of your freshman year is always at the back of everyone’s mind. From parents and older siblings who jokingly warn of the seemingly earth-shattering gain to the plethora of articles written on how to avoid it, it seems almost impossible to go into college feeling totally secure about body weight and food—even for those who have had a healthy and intuitive relationship with these things their whole life.
However, for the multitude of college freshman who have, do or will struggle with disordered eating or eating disorders, talk of the Freshman 15 can quickly stretch beyond just a passing concern, and exacerbate deep-seated and long-held insecurities with food and weight. In 2018, there are approximately 497,500 college freshmen enrolled in school. If we look at the statistic that approximately 2.5 percent of the population has or will develop an eating disorder, that means that nearly 12,500 freshman are more susceptible than most to be deeply triggered or influenced by talk of dieting or weight gain.
While the issue of diet talk and the reality of being intimately aware of others’ eating habits in college dining halls can raise urgent and unexamined anxieties about food for those who are prone to, but have not developed, an eating disorder, it is just as damaging, if not more, to those who have struggled with eating issues in the past and are currently in recovery from Anorexia, Bulimia, Binge Eating Disorder or EDNOS. The rhetoric surrounding the Freshman 15 goes against everything we are taught in recovery: that if we just eat what we are craving and stop eating when we are full, include all food groups and allow ourselves to indulge when we want to, we will be okay. While the Freshman 15 can really just be seen as a symptom of this country’s rampant and damaging diet culture, the negative effects it can have on one’s psyche are particularly potent. Combine the inexorable talk of weight gain, the lack of parental supervision and the pressure to fit in with a new group of people, and colleges seem to be a breeding ground in which nascent problems can bubble back up to the surface.
The dangers of the Freshman 15 go woefully undocumented. When I attempted to research the impact of college diet culture on those in recovery from eating disorders, the first two pages of Internet search results consisted solely of articles on how to prevent the Freshman 15. The dearth of resources on how to combat this talk and the plethora of fear-inducing pieces about the seemingly disastrous, earth-shattering accumulation of fat on the body fuel a deeply damaging, fear-filled rhetoric surrounding eating in college.
Coming at it from the perspective of someone in remission from Anorexia, who has undergone years of intensive treatment and done hundreds of hours of therapy, talk of the Freshman 15 goes against everything that my support system has tried to instill in me. Part of recovery is the reconceptualizing of food from something to be feared and avoided to something to be enjoyed. The reality is, a tiny bit of weight gain will probably go unnoticed by those around you. The reality is, your body knows what the fuck it’s doing. It will let you know when you’ve eaten too much or not enough, and the absolute best thing you can do is listen to it. You crave things for a reason. Don’t suppress that. The reality is, food is inherently communal, and attempting to restrict that is painfully isolating. The Freshman 15 is often indicative of a semester spent meeting new people, trying new things and having new experiences. The benefits of enjoying a late night greasy meal with friends or eating your way through a new city far outweighs the potential, insignificant effects on the body. This one trivial thing is over-hyped so much that it causes deep psychological distress, distress that does not need to exist on top of the already overwhelming changes that one’s freshman year of college entails. It makes me wonder: if our society put as much effort into promoting healthy, intuitive eating as they do into instilling fear into us about our trivial, unlikely 15-pound weight gain, how different would our world be?