no boys allowed in the room!!!!

ditto. I can't believe the "Freshman 15" is still a thing (I don't know what would lead me to believe that it would ever stop being a thing, wishful thinking?). That would have pissed me right off. I did almost exclusively feast on totinos pizza and white cheddar cheezits during my first semester which wasn't too healthy but if someone had said to me "watch out for that freshman 15, girly" I would have eaten 2 boxes of cheez its that night instead of the 1.

Also can I tell you, I hate the Taco Bell ad where the two douchey office drones tell the HILARIOUSLY non-English-speaking Hispanic "sandwich lady" that Taco Bell's chicken something-or-other is one-fifth the price of her home-made sandwich and tastes better, too! And then she gets all ANGRY at them for BREAKING UP WITH HER SANDWICHES like SHE is somehow OPPRESSING these sympathetic young white men in blue shirts and ties.

Oh yeah, god forbid we spend our office drone wages on a home-made sandwich made of actual FOOD ITEMS, that supports a real person who started with nothing and (humor my dramatic tone for a second) could be struggling day-to-day to lift her family out of poverty. No, a mega-corporation that puts seaweed fillers in their "meat", they DEFINITELY have your best interests at heart and besides, it's WAY better for your cool dude image.

How weird, back in the dawn before time when I went to college, the "Freshmen 15" was considered something that boys got, not girls. At least that was my memory of it.

I hate this ad even more because it's on during Family Guy and I HATE Family Guy.

I've never seen that taco bell ad but I'm pretty sure I hate it. I also hate Family Guy.

The Freshman 15 was def a girl thing in Delaware in 1990.

Maybe I misunderstood what it was about. I guess it was more of a unisex thing back then? Or did I just go to too "PC" a school for it to have much impact on my surroundings? I kind of miss how naive I used to be back then, in some ways. With regards to this stuff, or being aware of it. These days the anger over any disproportionate pressure for women with regards to weight makes me so angry it's almost hard to view anything with any degree of objectivity.

actually, I did have a really bad male friend (who I'm still sort of friends with and who still gives terrible advice) who told me one of our female friends from high school was eating only peanut butter and losing a bunch of weight (she had been chubbs in h.s.) and that I could try that. I thought about it.

*should

*should*?!??!?

Christ, that's the kind of friendly suggestion that would end up with me swinging a hammer at someone's head.

Back then, that is. These days I'm a lot more reasonable and a lot less violent and provokable.

It's really amazing the amount of vicious woman-hating that just gets dressed up as concern trolling over weight. Like, if someone is talking about girls "needing" to lose weight, it doesn't matter what actual words are coming out of their actual mouth, all I hear is "I hate women, I really hate women, I despise women and their inconvenient bodies and I want them to be as nothing as humanly possible, in fact, inhumanly possible would be better."

It's amazing how deep an anger it still provokes in me. And actually quite sad, because I'm totally unable to hear any other message, even if the person giving it is actually trying to be helpful or suggesting something that would be healthy. There's just this hammer-swinging teenager inside that gets engaged - and yeah, I know there are a lot of people trying to trigger that kind of irrationality because it makes it easier to upset or control you.

I can swing a good hammer but usually on other people's behalf and not as much for my own benefit or defense.

I think it's a good thing to keep the hammer on the inside, while on the outside, you just smile and nod, with that expression that makes it very clear that hammer swinging is happening on the inside.

I advocate swinging an actual hammer. Okay maybe not but I'm tired of being polite to jerks.

I advocate swinging an actual hammer.

It does build shoulder and upper arm muscles which make you look better in strapless or sleeveless dresses or tops! </semi-sarcasm>

On the other hand, if you develop those muscles, you end up having clothes-fitting issues, and other issues - always issues

Major SMH moment at work - D4vid B4il3y has photographed a lot of men w/clothes on and women w/clothes off plus really crap abstracts which our founder says is 'a meditation on life, death and the ages of man' so why is it necessary to Veruschka-paint one model's tits to be eyes, one open, the other shut?

Answers on a postcard please. Editor and art director are also creped out by this.

i heard that first npr story and it was boring/stupid enough for me to turn off the radio and listen to music on my commute to work. instead i relaxed to the sounds of the incredible string band, and this turns out to have been a wise decision. nothing like being told "hey there ho-chunk, stop eating!"

Actually, according to my kid's pediatrician (who is head of pediatrics at our hospital), height and weight under the age of two are determined by nutritional factors. After 2y/o its about genetics (assuming diet is average). He cited as an example a fellow Dr in his clinic who is very short and rotund and married to a woman of similar stature. Their baby between 0-2 was in the 95% percentile for height but once she reached 2 the genetics kicked in and she ended up being a short kid. Beats was sort of the same. PP and I come from families of average to short heights. Beats between 0-2 was literally off the chart with regards to height and weight (v tall) but once she hit two she stopped growing at the same rate. I think in the last 1 1/2 years she's put on no weight at all and has grown a few inches. Her diet hasn't changed except maybe she eats more at night time now and she actually seems to get hungry, which she didn't ever do as recently as 6 months ago. She also about the same activity-wise. She is now in the 65 percentile for both which genetically makes a lot more sense. Anyway, I haven't bothered to look for any studies supporting this.

Also freshman 15 has always been about girls.

i wonder how much of it (this freshman 15 thing) is based on students that live in dorms on a central campus - vs. students that live at home and go to a commuter school, or go to commuter schools in general

a lot i think. in australia none lives in dorms and most college freshmen still live with their parents. i think its a moving out of home thing more than a college thing

none = noone

yeah, that is 100% all it is

lol all-nighters, pizza, nonstop stress eating at the caf, watching romcoms with yr nasty girlfriends after a mighty pillowfight

(i lived at home during my freshman year)

It's about having a dining hall that serves a multitudes of foods, all the time, with no limits on how much a student eats once he/she has checked in at the door. Not sure how many schools have exactly that kind of set-up anymore, where every dining hall item is basically bottomless? Anyway. No one makes you eat your vegetables, and Mom isn't there to say, "Dear, don't you think you should skip breakfast today?" if you retain a little water.

Kind of outdated I'd say, but not likely to go out of the general lexicon anytime soon when we can still imply that girls, left to their own devices, are all naturally secret porkers.

i didn't eat very much, got plenty of sleep, and walked around a lot because it was a new place, and going for long walks is a thing to do when you don't have friends.

xp - oh yeah, the dining hall thing - i think a lot of people just ate huge amounts of pasta, cereal, cheese, snacky/treaty stuff, because everything that was remotely healthy was also kinda gross from being under heat lamps.

Uh it's also often a sudden increase in calories due to alcohol and the subsequent pizzas ordered at 2:00 am.

oh yeah, forgot about the alcohol!

I didn't gain any weight in college, but crucially I have never been a beer-drinker.

I know my eating habits definitely changed because of the things listed above but I'm pretty sure the single biggest reason I gained weight my freshman years was going from drinking 0 alcohol ever really to drinking at least a few beers most nights. Those calories are going to add up eventually. See also smoking pot and getting the munchies.

my (first time round) college days were my skinniest. it's been downhill ever since.

did you have friends/others to get you beer? i put on the weight sophomore year when i was conveniently dating a 21 year old. i just remember starting college at 17, my first freshman roommate was also 17 - and we had to figure out how to buy cigarettes.

I've dropped out of college three times and been kicked out of nursing school once. All four times were at commuter schools. I've gone from 130 to 180 in 15 years.

No, wait, 1990-2010, 20 years.

Sarahel - I was only 17 when I started college too but we'd go to a lot of parties at upperclassmen's houses and I also got a fake ID that was accepted at the 3 bars that were within walking distance from campus. It was actually my learner's permit that I'd just written over the date with colored pencils. SO BAD and yet they just didn't care.

wow! i was such a goody-two-shoes! i didn't even think of/conceive of getting a fake ID

i have never been a beer-drinker - strictly wine or vodka when i was younger.

I was just isolated and depressed so I hid in my room watching adult swim and posting to a certain other message board. and duh, eating cheezits. I don't think I gained any weight though because I'd go to the gym every day and watch felicity reruns on the eliptical machine. I DID gain weight during my junior year when I was taking 16 credits and working.

Never have been a big drinker, so that wasn't a problem. My first boyfriend that was over 21 would kind of babysit me and trained me to know my limit I think. Looking back I guess that was controlling behavior but eh, now I know when I've had enough. I also just have never cared about drinking or getting drunk.

Sarahel - TBH I was a complete goody goody until I got to college and then went a little off the rails. That said, nearly every kid I knew had fake IDs. There was a guy in the dorm who could alter them and charge you $10 to do so. It was sort of weird but I spent two years going to bars regularly from 17-19 and then when I transferred to school in NYC my Junior year was sort of fucked as far as going out was concerned. Learner's permits altered using colored pencils def didn't fly there.

When I was cashiering at a chain hardware store, I got an ID from a young woman that had a small hole punched through the date. I wish I could have overlooked it--she was over 18, it's wasn't her fault that the US has such an unreasonably high drinking age, and she wasn't buying alcohol anyway--but I couldn't take the risk. (I just quietly told her that I couldn't accept it and sent her on her way.)

another thing that never occurred to me as a college student: having a tv in my room. My parents never let me have a tv in my room, and i was kinda anti-tv as a teenager, because - of a lot of things that would just end up derailing the thread.

Oh, freshmen (and sophomores too) had to live on-campus in supervised dorms at my college, and it was a dry campus with strict penalties. So beer intake was not the reason for anyone's weight gain.

OK, I know I come from another planet and all, but the idea that someone's *mum* would actually say "honey why don't you SKIP breakfast" is so completely o_0 to me. Probably just from having it drilled into my head so much as a child that breakfast is the most important meal of the day and if you skip breakfast, like, your brain will develop a giant hole in it where all the information will leak out or something.

I dunno. I never lived on campus and actually when I moved away from home I lost a ton of weight because I no longer had a car and lived in NYC and had to walk everywhere so actually none of it makes any sense. Which is why I guess I assumed that it was talking about boys.

Because I did notice a lot of boys who came home from Uni heavier than they went. Beer, mostly, I guess.

x-postsss to Chistine regarding hole in ID - Yeah well when it came time for me to take my actual driving test I tried to erase the pencil and put a hole right through it. Stupidly I handed it to the guy administering the test that way. He made me do the whole test but confiscated my permit, wouldn't give me my results, and scared the shit out of me by saying I might be charged for falsifying my ID. I had to go to the DMV a week alter to pick up the results and was basically shitting myself the whole time thinking I was going to get arrested. I did not. I'd passed and he ha put a huge smiley face on the paper with a note cautioning me to be more careful next time.

skip breakfast? the beauty of college vs. high school was that i could sleep in until 10am or 11am and only take afternoon and evening classes!

oh yeah, E, and pizza! We had a campus pizza place - i worked there my first semester - it taught me a lot about class and work - like it doesn't matter if the customer knows you are a peer, if you have to wear a stupid hat, it automatically puts you on an inferior level to them.

I don't think anyone's mom DOES suggest skipping breakfast anymore, thank goodness! I sort of meant that to be a relic of bygone and more discriminatory days.

OK, I know I come from another planet and all, but the idea that someone's *mum* would actually say "honey why don't you SKIP breakfast" is so completely o_0 to me. Probably just from having it drilled into my head so much as a child that breakfast is the most important meal of the day and if you skip breakfast, like, your brain will develop a giant hole in it where all the information will leak out or something.

ha yeah i thought that was strange too. my mom to this day quizzes me about my breakfast habits from the other side of the planet saying EVERY SINGLE TIME 'skipping breakfast makes you fat!!' (being thin is much much more important than a functioning brain where im from)

That license was one of the newer ones made of plastic, BTW.

I've met very few women who eat breakfast.

what days were those, Laurel? Like the sacrosanctity of breakfast is pretty old.

i like to eat breakfast at 3pm or 3am

sunny otm

I stayed pretty much underweight during 3 years of Uni, despite completely embracing the student cliche of eating kebabs for lunch, going to Abdul's after a night out, and living off ready meals, vodka, and fried-egg sandwiches. It was when I finished and started eating more healthily that I started putting a bit of weight on. I was a skinny minnie all my life until about 23 so I've always been aware how much an effect age and metabolism can have. Now of course I've been through a period of going to the gym 3x a week, walking 2 miles every day and eating relatively well, and I can't shift any weight unless I really decide to cut out all the bad food I allow myself in moderation.