“The Freshman 15.”

A term I heard several times in the year before I went to college. Apparently it was some kind of phenomenon in which college students put on several pounds during their first year, mostly due to increased alcohol consumption and the (seemingly) unlimited supply of food, with no parents around to supervise their intake.

I was very aware that this “Freshman 15” could happen to me. But did I think it would? Nah. I come from a very thin family and I, knock on wood, have a pretty amazing metabolism. I’ve been doing gymnastics practically my entire life, and did track all four years of high school. I was still planning on staying athletic in college. Plus, I didn’t have that big an appetite, so I didn’t even eat that much — was that supposed to change?

I still knew it was a possibility. There have been a few times in my life when I’ve suddenly gained weight due to stress eating. But, I’ve been able to lose the weight very fast, and before coming to college, I’ll even admit — I was very thin — actually slightly underweight. Not because I purposefully restricted my eating, but due to genetics, my small appetite, and all the exercise I got from my athletic activities. So, I wasn’t even that scared about the idea of gaining some weight — it would probably be good for me, and I would still be comfortable with my body if I just gained a little bit.

Well, let’s start with the moral of the story: The Freshman 15 is absolutely not a myth. It did happen to me. It happened way faster than I expected. It didn’t kill me — but I let it affect my life way more than I should have.

I’ll start by saying: It doesn’t matter how little you think you eat — if there is more food available to you, you are going to eat it. There were plenty of meals where I wasn’t necessarily hungry, but I would eat at least one dessert just because they were there, and when else in my life would I have access to unlimited sweets? It also didn’t help that my dorm was about a two-minute walk from the convenience store — which really, by the way, is not any more exciting than your average supermarket. But when you’re in complete control of what you can buy, it can seem as exciting as like, Candy Land or something. Especially when you’re up all night trying to finish an assignment and need to motivate yourself with food. And, getting exercise wasn’t nearly as easy as I thought it would be. In high school I got exercise almost every day, where in college I only had organized activities around three days a week and it wasn’t easy with everything going on in my life to find time to work out on my own.

At an appointment at the health center in November, around three months after the semester started, I stepped on a scale for the first time since I had left for college. I had gained six pounds. This didn’t bother me that much — I was surprised that I had eaten that much to have gained the weight, but I didn’t feel uncomfortable with my body. The doctor said I was still very thin for my height, and could definitely afford to gain even more weight. I planned to make my eating habits a bit healthier so I wouldn’t gain more weight, but didn’t worry about trying to lose it.

Fast-forward a few weeks later to after Thanksgiving, when finals started. Another important lesson: Finals and stress eating go together like peanut butter and jelly. I was in the library for several hours at a time, with food often being the only way to motivate myself. I made every effort to spend as much time as I could in the dining hall to take breaks from working, which resulted in lots of food consumption at every sitting. Plus, I barely had any time to exercise.

I started to notice changes in my body. I looked at pictures I had taken with my friends and noticed that my face looked, well, fatter. This made me extremely uncomfortable. I felt differences in how my clothes fit me, too. I one day sat down in a pair of my favorite pants, and the button literally popped off — just like in the movies when someone gains weight. This worried me, but I still wasn’t completely uncomfortable — the pants were pretty small on me anyway, and how much weight could I have possibly gained?

The first night that I was home for winter break, I decided to step on the scale. I was really just curious to see how much weight I had gained, thinking there was no way I could have gained THAT much. Right before stepping on, I told myself everything would be fine. Even if I had gained, say, 10 pounds, I’d still be comfortable.

The numbers flashed on the scale. I had gained 19 pounds since I left for college. NINETEEN. Freshman 15 plus four. I was shocked. Was I dreaming? How was this possible? Just a month ago I had only been six pounds above my pre-college weight — how could I have gained 13 pounds since then?! Just the previous year I had been struggling to gain weight — how?!

I looked at myself in the mirror. I even put on a bathing suit to see if I really looked that different. I then realized that I definitely was not as thin I had been over the summer. I started to cry. What had I done to myself? My body was the one thing I had always been comfortable with, and now I felt like I had completely ruined myself.

I know that this sounds intense, but I’ve taken a lot of pride in my body. Sure, I’ve had a few insecurities like many girls do, but I’ve always felt very lucky to have my figure, being able to look at myself in a bathing suit and see my six-pack abs, and look at myself in the mirror while dancing in ballet class and see my long and lean legs. I’m not saying this to brag at all — I’ve just always been a very anxious and insecure person and my body has always been the one thing that I could always be genuinely comfortable with. No matter what happened, I felt like I could always look at myself and think that I looked great. Now, that was completely gone. What else was I supposed to pride myself in?

I talked to my mom about this the next day. She seemed happy. How? Why was she happy about me gaining almost 20 pounds? She told me that I had been way too thin before coming to college, and that she was honestly hoping for me to put on a few pounds. I didn’t understand what she was talking about, but then she showed me a few pictures from over the summer, right before I went to college. Wow. I hated to admit it, but she was right. I may have been upset about my face looking “fat,” but in these pictures it looked very gaunt. Not in an unhealthy way, but I really didn’t have a very substantial amount of flesh in my face. And my legs! I had prided myself in having lean legs, but I didn’t realize that they were actually too thin — they literally were swimming in the shorts I was wearing, and they didn’t look long and graceful, like I thought they had — they looked like the legs of someone who wasn’t eating enough.

I then realized that maybe I had needed to gain a bit of weight, but still, 19 pounds?! It didn’t change how I felt about my body right then. Regardless of whether or not I was too thin, I then felt like I weighed too much — much more than I was used to weighing, and I was so upset. During the winter break, I constantly complained about how uncomfortable I felt about my body, and how ashamed I was for having eaten so much over the semester. My mom got mad at me — she said I should be thankful about how much I had eaten because it was for a reason I didn’t even realize:

“You have so many friends now,” she said.

I thought about this. In my later years of high school, I wasn’t very social. I had grown apart from many of my old friends, and decided I wanted to focus much more on schoolwork, saving my social life for when I went to college. I almost never ate lunch with friends. During senior year, when we were allowed to go off campus for lunch, I would literally go home every day — drive myself home, eat whatever was in the fridge at my house, and then go back to school. Now, during my first semester of college, I had made tons of friends — many more than I ever had in high school. I made an effort to eat with people at every meal. I don’t remember a time when I ever had enjoyed meals that much — I kid you not when I say that many of my favorite memories from college have happened in the dining hall. I actually had friends to talk to, bond with, and share the experience of eating with. I never wanted to leave the dining hall during meals, and with the countless hours I spent there, I just happened to eat more food. Maybe it was something I should have been thankful for.

However, I still was unhappy with my body. I don’t remember a time in my life when I felt as insecure about myself as I did second semester of freshman year. I felt like an ungraceful walking giant whenever I was walking around, and was worried people were judging me for my body. I couldn’t take pictures of myself because I thought my face looked ugly. The sad thing is, I wasn’t even close to being overweight — I was actually still very thin, and many people told me I didn’t look like I had gained weight at all. It’s just that I had been used to being extremely thin — possibly even too thin — so carrying so much more weight than I was used to made me feel so out of place in my body.

I tried desperately hard to lose the weight. I would go on the elliptical almost every single day and try extremely hard not to snack. I made almost no progress. I didn’t realize that just running on the elliptical, without varying my exercise patterns, wasn’t enough exercise to lose the amount of weight that I wanted to, and by trying to restrict my eating, I only got hungrier, which caused me to eat large amounts of food later. In addition, I was extremely stressed. I took five classes, and I was consistently up until around 4 or 5 a.m. several nights a week. Not getting enough sleep didn’t help my weight as it was, but I would also eat everything in my refrigerator to try to motivate myself to finish work. Needless to say, I didn’t lose weight at all — I even gained a few more pounds before the end of the semester.

When summer came, I decided that I was going to lose the weight if it was the last thing I did. It was significantly easier to eat healthy at home, where there wasn’t unlimited food available to me, so that was a start. I decided to join a gym — something I thought I would never have to do. I never guessed I would need a gym membership, thinking it was for people who weren’t naturally in shape or weren’t blessed with the high metabolism I was. Boy was I wrong — having a gym membership was, dare I say it, fun. There were so many different classes available, and each week I would try a different class, whether it be weightlifting, Zumba, or step-dancing. I never thought working out could actually be that fun, and within a month I could already see differences in my body.

By the end of July, I felt like a new person. I don’t think I’ve ever had a prouder moment than over my vacation in San Diego, when I looked at a picture of myself in a bathing suit that had been taken on that trip, and comparing it to a picture of myself at the Dead Sea in Israel on my birthright trip in May, right after second semester ended. There were differences in every aspect of my body — my abs were more toned, my legs thinner, and for the first time in months I looked at my face in the picture that had just been taken and didn’t think that my face looked fat — in fact, I thought I looked, dare I say it, beautiful. I couldn’t believe that I had made that much difference in just a few months — I’ve always had pride in my body, but there was something even more priding about the fact that I now had a body that I had worked so hard for.

By the end of the summer, when I went back to school for my sophomore year, I could honestly say that I felt almost as comfortable with my body as I was before gaining the Freshman 15. I have no idea how much weight I’ve actually lost — why? Because I decided to stop weighing myself. I had focused too much on the numbers flashing on the scale, when they seriously didn’t matter at all. I didn’t need to know a specific number of pounds I lost — my goal was to look at myself in the mirror and feel comfortable with myself, not to define myself by a specific number. I know that I’ve probably gained lots of muscle mass from all the working out I’ve been doing, so if I continue to exercise, the number on the scale will always be a bit higher than it was before college, when I never did any strength training. I will say, though, that I am back to the waist size that I was before I gained weight, and I fit back into the pair of pants that I broke. I haven’t weighed myself since before I joined the gym in June, and I don’t plan to anytime soon. Why should I? I’m not going to let a number define me, so there’s no point in stressing out over it.

I don’t think I’ve ever felt healthier than I have this semester. I’ve made an effort to go to the gym almost every day, even if it’s just for a short bit. Not just because it helps to keep weight off, but because it feels great! I try to do a different workout every time I go, and I feel a satisfaction afterward — not because of the calories I burned, but just from this amazing feeling of being fit and healthy. In addition, my eating habits are so much better. I still try to eat healthy, but I don’t try too hard to restrict what I eat, and accept that I’m going to have cravings every now and then. The problem last year was that I would try too hard to eat ultra-healthy, which ultimately just caused me to be more hungry. If I ate one dessert I would basically think I failed on eating healthy, then give up and eat every dessert in the dining hall. Now, if I want ice cream, I’ll get some — but I won’t let myself have five cookies in addition, unless I’m actually hungry for them, which I’m usually not. I still enjoy meal times — but I genuinely enjoy being with my friends, and I can spend hours in the dining hall just talking with them — I’ve realized I don’t need to eat food to have fun at meals.

Now, I’m actually a bit happy that I gained weight. Am I glad I gained almost 20 pounds? Not really. And I’m upset how much I let it affect my emotional health. But, I think I needed the experience. I used to take my body and my metabolism for granted, and I tended to live through how comfortable I was with my looks. I failed to realize many of the other traits I have that people appreciated, so when I gained all that weight I felt like there was nothing else to appreciate about me. Through the experience of living with all the extra weight on me, I was able to focus more on what people like about my personality, and I actually think it made me work harder—I realized that if I wasn’t comfortable with my looks, I had to try and discover other great traits about myself that I didn’t know I had. Now, I’m both comfortable with my body, and I feel like I’ve become a much better person.

Here’s some advice about the Freshman 15 — it absolutely is not a myth. No matter how thin you are or how high your metabolism is, it can happen to everyone. Want some tips for keeping it off? Well, the tips I have are pretty basic: get a little bit of exercise each day, eat what you’re hungry for but don’t overindulge, and don’t keep too much food in your room. It still may happen anyway — that’s life, and studies have shown that even if you don’t go to college, students around that age will most likely gain weight anyway. But you know what? It doesn’t matter. For one thing, people don’t even notice. Many people told me that they had not noticed that I gained weight, and I thought that they were just being nice, but really, I didn’t notice weight gain on anyone else, either — it’s really only something you can see. No one else really notices, or cares. Nothing — and I mean nothing — can replace your self-worth. I spent absolutely way too much time obsessing over my weight last year, and failed to appreciate the other traits I have in myself that people are far more likely to notice than the size of my waist. There is so much to experience in college, and you absolutely should not let what your body looks like prevent you from trying anything.

Now, I just finished my first semester of sophomore year, and it’s about a year after I found out about the dreaded Freshman 15 (cough, 19) that I had gained. How do I feel about myself now? Well, I’m definitely thinner than I was about a year ago, but much healthier than I was before going to college. I can fit into all of my clothes again, but they don’t look two sizes too big on me. I can see my six-pack, but not due to having too little fat on my stomach — because I’ve done lots of strength training and actually look fit. Oh, and I can confidently take selfies again without thinking that my face looks fat — but instead of seeing an emaciated face in my iPhone’s camera looking back at me, I see a smiling face that’s happy, healthy, and full of life.