College Students Gaining Weight

I noticed a story on Yahoo! News http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061023/ap_on_he_me/diet_freshman15_4 this morning about college students gaining weight in their first two years. The average weight gain is not 15 pounds, but actually closer to 8. But I personally have seen a friend gain a freshman 30 and reminisce about his lost 6-pack, while I lost 3 pounds last year, and about an additional 5 this year. My friend had this happen due to his poor diet and exercise habits, and I tried to help him by inviting him to work out with me at the Pete on numerous occasions. Fortunately, he lost a good bit of weight. I myself was not able to maintain some of the muscle mass I had gained my senior year of high school through heavy lifting, and I inexplicably lost 4 or 5 pounds so far this fall. Believe me, I'm not trying to lose weight. I eat a lot (although reasonably healthy) and lift weights three times a week. But this goes to illustrate my point that people don't have to gain weight in college if they don't want to. The previously mentioned article said that the primary reason for the weight gain is eating too much. While that is certainly a factor in some cases, I don't think that's the primary cause. Supposedly, we have access to larger amounts of food, I would have to disagree based on my experience in college so far, where food is an incredible ripoff, where a half gallon of milk is over three dollars, fourteen ounces of cereal is five dollars, a dollar a packet for instant oatmeal and a handful of lettuce that they call a salad is four dollars. A small bag of candy or trail mix costs three dollars. Most students I see, including the overweight, don't even eat breakfast. It has to do with the choice of foods probably, and importantly lack of exercise. Often, students come to college and no longer exercise, even with free facilities on campus that are within a ten minute walk for everyone. There is always the good old time excuse, but if you seriously can't set aside about 4% of your waking hours exercising, you can sprint from class to class. You would actually be in good physical condition from that sort of exercise. You could wake up and do pushups and situps. Most people do what they want most of the time, so if your health is important to you, you will do something about it. Nobody has to go to college and gain a lot of weight. Eventually, there comes a time to quit making excuses and take action. Well, enough with that. This may be a fairly softball topic, but I felt it was a good first, and it needed to be discussed. It may not be the last time, either. There is a post in the works right now on the recent Military Commissions Act of 2006, so that should appear here soon. Also, I will bring my attention sometime soon to the condition known as hemihypertrophy, which afflicts me and thousands of others in this country. So, be well, peace on earth and goodwill to men.