21 Mindless Eating Habits Common to College Students When you get to college, you have so much freedom, it can be overwhelming. This is probably why so many college freshmen gain weight during their first year of undergraduate school. There are no rules! At least, that 's how it seems. Stress, lack of time, boredom, and peer pressure can all lead to mindless eating. In other words, eating regardless of hunger and not really tasting or enjoying the food. Do you recognize any of these habits in yourself? 1. Eating Under the Influence Eating under the influence of alcohol or drugs can cause you to consume more food than you realize. If you 're at a party where there 's dancing, drinking, and eating, you won 't be paying any attention …show more content…
Eating Out of Boredom Eating out of boredom is a common habit among college students. After all, you don 't have anyone nagging you to do chores or help your little brother with his homework anymore. When you have some free time, you may polish off a hot-fudge sundae just for something to do. 15. Eating as a Reward Some parents use food to reward their children for good behavior or bribe them into it. This habit can be carried on by the young adult who now uses food as a reward. Perhaps you 've exercised every day for a week, or you 've finally aced a chemistry test. You deserve a treat, right? Sure. But that treat doesn 't have to be food. In my books 50 Ways to Soothe Yourself Without Food and 50 More Ways to Soothe Yourself Without Food, I offer practical and fun tips on how to comfort, pamper, and reward yourself without eating a thing! 16. Eating Due to Peer Pressure A friend invites you over and has cooked enough food to feed an army. When she piles it onto your plate, you eat because you don 't want to be rude. Or a friend drops by your apartment with a pizza and some beers. You weren 't in the mood for either, but you let him in and munch …show more content…
Eating Too Quickly Another type of mindless eating behavior is eating too quickly. Your brain needs at least 20 minutes to register that your stomach is full. If you plow through a meal in 10 minutes, you won 't realize you 're stuffed until dessert. 18. Eating Directly Out of the Package This is one that gets people a lot. According to the Centers for Disease Control, it is very easy to overeat when you snack right out of the package. Granted, a bag of chips is 50 percent air, but if you just dig in, that other half will be gone pretty fast. Then, what was meant to be a light snack fills you up to the point where you bypass the nutritious chicken salad you made for lunch. 19. Eating Based on Food Labels This can be a tricky one, as well. If you 're eating a low-fat diet, you may mistakenly believe that you can eat as much of these foods as you want, and it 's no big deal. In fact, the opposite is true. Most low-fat foods are junk foods that offer very little nutrients. This means even if you eat an entire box of snack cakes, you 'll still be hungry an hour later. The quality of the food you eat is just as, if not more important, than the
In the book, Low-Fat Lies High-Fat Frauds by Kevin Vigilante and Mary Flynn it discusses the low and high-fat diet controversy and the false promises that it brings. The book also mentions how High-Fat diets can be dangerous to your health and it explains how to distinguish the good and the bad fat in your diet. Many people don’t understand how importance it is to take control of their own nutrition and health. Instead, they turn to what the media, doctors, government or other health organizations say about low and high fat diets. Many of these diets such as the Atkins diet and the Zone and sugar diets have misleading flaws. It does not mean the government or doctors are trying to kill us. Misleading media is mostly propaganda and big fancy
The debate has been going on for years. Is it normal or should you be concerned about the freshman 15. The freshman 15 is a term known for the around fifteen or plus pounds a typical college student gains during their first year of college. The usual argument is that college students are unprepared for life on their own and that once they have control they make eating healthy their last priority. However, an article from the Huffington Post suggests otherwise; that in fact it is not the students fault but the schools and their overwhelming smorgasbord of unhealthy food choices.
The basic idea behind this is eat when you’re hungry and stop when you’re satisfied. Seems easy right? Well for those of us who have struggled with our relationship to food it’s not. Typically we lose touch with what it truly feels like to be hungry or satisfied because we are eating for every reason other than physical
The first and most obvious reason for weight gain is food. College cafeterias are smorgasbords of hot, greasy, fatty, empty calorie foods. At Seton Hall University, all freshmen are required to purchase a meal plan that comes with various amounts of Pirate dollars that can only be used on food. These Pirate Dollars are equal to one dollar and students are given an overage each semester. In order to avoid losing money, many students use these dollars to buy snacks in between all three meals. At the end of the year, the money is not refundable, so students must splurge once again in order to avoid throwing away their money. Whether students’ classes are far apart or back to back, they are likely to stuff themselves because they need to prepare to sit through about 3 or more hours of lecture, or their next class isn’t for another two or three hours and they plan to eat and “take a quick catnap.
Starting college life is far from difficult; in fact it is fun starting a new way of life. Life without the constant objections from your parents and annoyance from your little sibling is one of the many advantages you gain from college. Cancelled classes, late night parties and deleterious amounts of food make college enjoyable; however, this can lead to weight gain. “Freshman 15” is not a myth and although you may not be unfortunate enough to gain 15 pounds, you might gain some weight. To avoid gaining weight, freshmen should eat healthy, avoid alcohol, and maintain a positive moral.
In contrast with the “good fat”, there is also a negative, which is the “bad fat”. Saturated fat, which is considered the “bad fat”, has been linked to high cholesterol and heart disease. It is mostly found in milk and other milk products. Therefore, the low fat diet encourages its participants to reduce saturated fat for it is the main cause of high cholesterol level. On the other hand, even though low carbohydrate diets do not state that carbohydrates are bad; they do state that it causes weight gain; this idea gives most Americans that it is bad because it causes a person to gain weight.
Eating too much is a huge problem for many Americans and some of the reasons for this problem are actually quite straight forward. The video, Chicken Wing Study, presents a few ways including eating food directly from the bag rather than placing it into a serving dish first. Another way to overeat that the video mentions is eating while being distracted by other activities. The video discusses one other way that leads to overeating, being near food. This is a phenomenon that I have experienced directly while living in a studio apartment. I was always a few steps away in direct line of site from the kitchen, I would constantly binge eat because food was always so easily accessible.
“He ticked off a dozen attributes of the Cheetos that make the brain say more. But the one he focused on most was the puff’s uncanny ability to melt in the mouth. “It’s called vanishing caloric density,” Witherly said. “If something melts down quickly, your brain thinks that there’s no calories in it . . . you can just keep eating it
The article Healthy Things to Eat Away at College discusses ways to achieve a healthy dietary routine at school. This article starts off by discussing a statistic that freshman year college students in 2009 gained an average of 3.3 pounds in their first semester. The article was then divided up into five subsections to go into more detail discussing making healthy choices. The first section, “In the Dorm”, said to have peanut butter and whole-wheat bread for quick sandwiches, oatmeal for breakfast, and fruits and vegetables for snacks. The second section, “In the Dining Hall” discusses what food to eat from the cafeteria, such as salad, chicken, and whole-wheat pasta. The third discusses what foods to have “In your
The more you feel full, the less you’ll crave to eat or snack. That alone will help in your diet since your caloric level won’t go overboard due to overeating.
Hunger is one of the most basic things that motivate humans. It is both necessary for survival, but can also be pleasurable. This is where the emotional eating habits can come in. Biological, psychological, and environmental
The set-point and positive-incentive are two theories of hunger and eating. The set-point theory is a view of hunger where people assume that hunger is the result of an energy deficit in their bodies and eating is a way to fix the energy deficit (Pinel, 2014). The set point theory seems to be the most believed theory of hunger, although evidence does not support that the theory is correct. The set-point theory believes that we have an internal control that has a set-point where our body tells us that we need to eat or we need to stop eating (Pinel, 2014). According to Pinel (2014), the set-point works in a similar manner as a thermostat does in a heating or cooling system, where the system hits a specific temperature and then shuts down until
One of the most common stereotypes that comes to mind when one thinks of early college life is the notion of the “Freshman 15.” This expression refers to the commonly held belief that by the end of freshman year in college, each student will have gained fifteen pounds. Though this may not always be the case, the phrase has become so commonplace for a reason: many students do indeed put on some weight during their first year away from home. Freshmen generally consume most of their meals at campus dining halls, and though it is becoming more customary for these eateries to provide a few healthy options, the vast majority of food served is packed with calories and light on nutrition. Additionally, when fa...
It is astonishing how little time is spent by an individual physically looking at the food they are putting in to their body. The act of just sitting there alone and staring at one’s food is not interesting. Actually eating is dull and feels repetitive as all one is doing is biting the food, chewing, swallowing, and then the same actions repeat again. A person wants to be distracted with a restaurants nice view, a conversations with a friend, or even just watching their favorite television show in bed. So not only are you sitting or lying in that comfortable sedentary position, you have a distraction to keep you entertained from the lackluster act of eating, but also if you are not paying attention to what you are eating you can consume more food and at the same time not feel guilty about it. For instance, there is a difference in the way one feels about eating a bag of salty and fattening chips if they are actually physically staring at the chips and watching how many they are consuming compared to having their eyes glued to a television screen while the bag of chips is just next to them and they are consuming as they watch. You are more likely to feel guilty and have the urge to stop eating if you are actually looking with your eyes on what you are eating. Of course eating while watching entertainment is
Previously to taking this class, I had never given much thought to my eating habits. I always thought of the way I chose to eat as one of those things I didn’t need to concern myself with too heavily now because I’m a young broke college student. The way I eat is pretty similar to the way most of my friends eat and when you live away from home, that seems like the norm for people in college. However, after applying what I’ve learned in this class to my life, I’ve realized that the dietary choices I make now affect not only my current health, but my future health as well. So overall, I would say that my eating habits are pretty bad, but I’m working on making them better.