Healthy In College

Maintaining a healthy lifestyle in college is one of the hardest parts of a freshman’s adjustment to their new lifestyle. College is usually the most exciting time of a person’s life, and along with new friends and a new home, comes an immense change of pace. A person typically moves away from home, and beings a new life, alone. This can become extremely stressful on the mind, and on the body. Balancing a healthy lifestyle is extremely important on the road to mental and physical health while in college. One of the biggest changes a person faces in college is the chance of schedule, and lack of time to sleep. Being in college, the student no longer has a parent at home reminding them to get a good night’s rest, because they have a huge …show more content…
Fast food is one of the biggest temptations that destroy college students. After a long day of classes and walking a minimum of one mile, the last thing a student wants to do is go home and cook a healthy meal. Grabbing a pizza or a sandwich on the way home seems like the only logical option. However, fast food is the industry that will break a student down during their first year of college. Most students have never had to provide food for themselves, and not having mama’s cooking is a real culture shock, and fast food is the next best thing. This is one of the reasons why the “freshman fifteen” is a relevant phrase. It becomes so much more convenient to grab something to eat before going home, without even thinking about how much it affects their body mentally and physically. As I interviewed a student at UGA, I asked her how often she ate fast food, and she sighed and admitted that she ate unhealthy fast food on average two times a week. She said that she knows she should not eat like that, but she expressed how hard it was to eat healthy and eat on her own time. She said that admitting to how often she eats unhealthy food makes her feel bad, because she knows she is capable of maintaining her body better. Carrying out an unhealthy lifestyle by not eating right and running off of no sleep, she notices how much it affects her performance, and it puts her in a very depressed stage. However, she claims that she has made significant changes to her lifestyle and she has begun to get more sleep and she is starting to cook healthy for herself, and her roommates. These are the simplest ways to improve a student’s physical health, which in turn, will improve the student’s mental health. She has managed a balance of mental and physical health, and it makes her feel proud to know that she is bettering