Somehow you ended up with four 9am classes this semester. WTF? You can barely get up for your kickboxing class at noon on Fridays, and someone expects you to make it to class (ready to learn!?) by 8:50am the rest of the week?

Oh hell no.

You hope your professor doesn’t expect you to look presentable. Hell, he should just be happy you left yourself enough time to brush your teeth. Your morning routine is always the same: you roll out of bed at 8:30, grab the first pair of sweats you can find on the floor, throw your hair into a ponytail and run out of the house. You pop into the campus coffee shop en route to lecture and grab a coffee (“Giant, please!”) and something to munch on (“Give me the butteriest bagel you’ve got back there”).

What? It’s early and you need comfort.

You slide into your seat just as the Power Point appears on the wall in front of you. If it weren’t for the food, you’d probably fall right back to sleep – you’re just so comfortable. When class is over, you go to your next class, or to the library, or home for a nap. Whichever you choose, you sport the sweats for the rest of the day: through the classes, the breaks, the meals…

You spend so much time in your sweatpants during the week, in fact, that when the weekend comes and it is time to wear something that doesn’t say “Pink” across the ass you have trouble getting into them. No, not motivating yourself to get dressed; actually getting into them. After the first few weeks of classes your clothes feel a bit snug but you can still make em work (“I must have shrunk these a bit in the dryer….”). As the semester wears on, however, putting on your going-out-jeans has become a sweaty workout.

When the pants stop moving at your thighs, you begin to pull harder. You grab the belt loops and yank, squeezing your thighs, butt and belly into the denim sausage casing. Then you jump around a bit. Then you lay on the bed and see if that helps. If you finally do get those suckers closed, you start lunging around your room, doing squats, and sitting down to see if the denim gives a little bit.

It does not, but you’ve already tried on every other pair in your closet and these fit the best. You decide they will have to do. You throw on a loose shirt on top (to camoflauge the muffin top), throw back a few more drinks and head out.

Your legs and feet begin to fall asleep at some point in the night due to decreased circulation. You have trouble bending your knees to get up the stairs to exit the bar. Your jeans nearly tear as you sit in the cab. When you finally get home and peel those things off  – and notice the deep red line across your belly – you know you’ve got to do something.

It is then that you vow never to wear sweats to class again; those elastic waistbands are far more forgiving of the donuts, the bagels and the sugary Fraps you fill yourself with on a daily basis. (Note: when sober you also realize that cutting those things out of your diet may be a good idea, too.)

We know how you feel. We’ve all had the sweat pant weight gain before. Just get up for that kickboxing class and you’ll be OK.

This post provided by college nutritionist, author, and all around excellent source of healthful info, Melanie Jatsek.

It’s the start of the new school year.  For some of you this will be your first time away from home and you may be feeling a little nervous about meeting your new roommate and dorm life in general.  For others it’s like coming home again, only this time you are moving into your own apartment.

Let’s face it, there are many things in college you can’t control, but what you eat isn’t one of them!  Because certain foods improve your focus and brain health (while others destroy it), your food choices will have an impact on your grades.  What about the so called “Freshman Fifteen”?  You don’t have to fall victim to it or poor eating habits if you play it smart from day one.  In fact, your eating habits can actually improve in college (yes, I did just say that)!

Eating healthy doesn’t have to be hard if you keep it simple.  All you really have to do is remember the 5 basics and build your meals and snacks around them:  fruits, vegetables, grains, dairy products and meats/meat substitutes.  Whether you are a first year college student and only have a tiny dorm room refrigerator (and an even tinier cupboard to store your food) or you are a returning student living in an apartment with a kitchen, here are the 13 foods you must stock up on to stay on track:

Fruits:

Apples
Unsweetened applesauce
Dried fruit (plums, apricots, raisins, mangos)

Sure fresh and frozen fruits are always best, but if you don’t have the means to go grocery shopping on a regular basis, you need to be prepared and have shelf stable fruits on hand to snack on.  If you are a freshman, chances are you will be eating most of your meals in a dining hall anyways, so it should be pretty easy to find fresh fruit.  Just like fresh and frozen fruits, dried fruits are also rich in disease fighting antioxidants, but try to keep portion sizes in mind because they are higher in sugar and calories.  A small handful is plenty!

Snack idea:  4 dried plums with a small handful of lightly salted peanuts

Breakfast idea:  1 chopped apple mixed in a bowl of cooked oatmeal (for extra fiber, leave the skin on the apple)

Vegetables:

Baby carrots
Low sodium V8 Juice

Baby carrots are ready to eat, fiber-rich and low in calories.  If you are short on refrigerator space, individual cans of low sodium V8 Juice count as a vegetable serving too!  They come in packs of 6 4-ounce cans and don’t require refrigeration.

Snack idea:  14 baby carrots with 2 tablespoons of peanut butter for dipping

Grains:

Quaker Oatmeal
Kashi cereal bars
Triscuit crackers

The American Heart Association recommends 3 servings of whole grains every day for good health.  Quaker Oatmeal is one of the quickest and most affordable whole grains you could stock in your cupboard.  If you want to save money, forget the instant oatmeal in individual packets and go for the large 42 ounce cylinder instead.  Even though it isn’t instant oatmeal, it can still be cooked in the microwave.

Kashi cereal bars are one of the most nutritious whole grain cereal bars on the market today.  They make a perfect snack for in between classes.  My personal favorite is the “Honey Almond Flax” bar.

Trisuit crackers are considered whole grain and make a great substitute for greasy potato chips when you are in the mood for something on the salty side, but with some nutritional value.  They come in a variety of flavors too, from “Garden Herb” to “Fire-Roasted Tomato.”

Snack idea:  6 Triscuit crackers with 1 string cheese

Breakfast idea:  Oatmeal with a handful of walnuts and a touch of brown sugar

Dairy Products:

Yogurt
String cheese

Calcium is so important for your health.  I’m sure you know it is essential for strong bones and teeth, but did you also know that it can help to ease the symptoms of PMS (premenstrual syndrome)?  Really!

Just like with oatmeal, yogurt can be purchased in the larger containers to save money.  Low fat yogurt is a balanced source of protein and carbohydrates.  Be careful because they can be pretty high in sugar too, especially those with fruit on the bottom!  Low fat Greek yogurt tends to be a little pricier but is also higher in protein than traditional yogurt.

Snack idea:  8 ounces of yogurt with a small handful of lightly salted peanuts mixed in (a deliciously salty and sweet combination!)

Meats/Meat Substitutes:

Peanut butter
Nuts
Tuna fish

All three are easy to store, do not require refrigeration and are packed with nutrients.  No need to worry about the fat and calorie content of peanut butter and nuts if you keep the portion sizes small:  2 tablespoons of peanut butter, a small handful of nuts.  Studies have shown that people who eat a small portion of nuts every day have an easier time managing their weight.  Why?  Because they fill you up and curb your appetite!

If you like tuna fish, go for it!  It is loaded with omega 3 fatty acids, which are important for your brain health.  Fish really is brain food!  Choose Low Sodium Light Tuna Fish by StarKist for the best nutritional buy.  It comes in convenient, portion controlled packages of 3 3-ounce containers.

Snack idea:  6 Triscuit crackers topped with 3 ounces of tuna fish

Well there you have it – 13 cheap, quick and nutritious foods to have on hand at the start of the 2010 school year.  Don’t wait until the pounds start packing on; be proactive and start building healthy habits now!  Remember, you have 100% control over what you eat.  Choose a balance of nutrient-rich foods everyday to stay healthy, fit and focused this year.  You can do it!

Melanie Jatsek is a speaker, author and registered dietitian who teaches college students how to eat to look better, feel better, think better and stress less!  Send her an email at melanie@melaniejatsek.com or connect with her on her new Facebook page for college students: “The Healthy Campus Project”

Through my long and trying journey, I’ve come to learn that both losing weight and gaining weight can be fantastic feelings, so long as you are changing your body for yourself.

For me, it started my senior year of high school. As a graduation requirement, we were forced to watch videos released by the USDA that talked about balanced eating. It was here that I realized just how bad all of the junk food I ate was and what I had to do to fix it. A great, eye-opening experience, right? Except that I’m a perfectionist. I took my eating and exercising to the extreme.

By the summer after I graduated high school, I had become completely obsessed with losing weight. The girl who never ate a vegetable in her life was existing on romaine lettuce and fat-free yogurt. The girl who never exercised was spending 2 hours every day on the elliptical machine. By July, I had lost 80 pounds, but that wasn’t it. My hair was falling out. Despite the summer heat, I needed to wear sweaters as soon as the sun set. I lost my period month after month.

“You should eat something,” everyone was telling me. “You look sick.”
I felt sick, too.

But I didn’t believe that I actually had to gain weight. In my mind, I still had to lose! I was still 118 pounds, after all. I never achieved supermodel thinness. I looked in the mirror and my tummy still wasn’t flat enough, my arms not skinny enough. I still didn’t look like I had walked right out of a magazine, so I didn’t think anyone would consider me beautiful, not even myself. I went away to college still paranoid about how I looked and every little bit I ate.

My first weekend in Boston, I walked 10 blocks to a mall. I jogged up the front steps, sat on a bench, and promptly passed out. That was my wake-up call. Though I had adopted my new diet in an attempt to become healthy, it morphed into something that was quite the opposite. I wasn’t doing it for myself anymore; I was doing it for everyone else. The sad part, as I learned from my friends’ reaction to my weight loss, is that no one else cared about my weight as much as I thought they did. It was understanding that, having that moment of clarity, that woke me up and got me to stop killing myself. I traded in my intense cardio for yoga. I started eating things my body needed and stopped eating things that really weren’t as healthy as I thought. I proudly put 15 pounds back on, for me and for no one else.

I have so many tips and tricks I’ll eventually share, but I wanted to give you my story first, and also 2 pieces of advice. First, there is no such thing as a “diet.” The only way to truly make a difference is to make lifestyle changes. Secondly, and as I’ve already discussed at length, you will never be able to maintain these changes if you aren’t doing this for you. Lose weight because you want to eat healthier, lower your risk for diseases, or finally be able touch your toes. Don’t do it so that someone will pay attention to you, or to one-up your sisters/friends/co-workers. You will never be able to healthily sustain choices you make if you are making them for someone else.

If only they had told me that in those healthy-eating videos . . .

No. A fantasy is stealing Brad Pitt away from Angelina for a night of steamy hot sex. A fantasy is moving to a deserted island with half-naked men fanning you with palm leaves. A fantasy should NOT be holding the world record for World’s Largest Woman, because that translates to poor health and a dramatically shorter life.

There are so many things wrong with this situation. Here are 4:

1. She’s got a daughter
While Simpson actually tries to wolf down enough food to gain another 350 lbs. onto her already obese frame, her three-year-old daughter is still in the picture. Shouldn’t she be less concerned with her goal weight and more concerned with living long enough to see her daughter graduate high school? And the $750 a week eating habit is money that would be better spent on toys, clothes, and outings with her daughter. She might be in the running for a Guinness World Record, but it certainly won’t be for World’s Best Mom.

2. 12,000 calories per day
2,000 calories per day is the way to a naturally healthy weight for most women, and women who want or need to gain weight are usually told to do so in a healthy way, by upping protein intake and what not. 12,000 calories is BEYOND excessive, and would push anyone’s digestive tract into overload. Plus, she’s doing so by eating McDonald’s! She’s literally eating herself to death, exponentially increasing her risk for diabetes, colon cancer, and heart disease.

3. Exhibitionism
In order to pay her weekly food bill that approaches a grand, as mentioned above, Simpson has resorted to the internet where people pay to watch her stuff her face with 70 (seventy!!!!!!) pieces of sushi, among other things. She says, “It makes people happy.” I say, “who are these freaks that would pay to watch someone eat?!”

4. She’s being encouraged
Her boyfriend (who reportedly weighs in at a whopping 150), actually ENCOURAGES her to do this, and said he’d love it if she was bigger. People who love us are supposed to want the best for us, which means being healthy. Cheering someone that you supposedly love on to an early death is not my idea of a healthy relationship!

I’m in no way knocking people who are overweight or obese. I realize that overweight people might be healthy, just as thin people can be unhealthy. But someone who is trying to make herself famous for harming her body doesn’t deserve the spotlight, as far as I’m concerned!

It’s not easy being a woman. We only earn $.78 for every dollar dudes earn, we have to put up with things like periods and high heels, and—maybe worst of all—we’re constantly being bombarded with advice from lady mags, lady sites, and lady-oriented talk shows that purport to know what we should be doing to get thinner, sexier, and happier. Too often their tips are questionable at best and downright moronic at worst.

So every week I’m taking a look at the advice that falls into the “moronic” end of that spectrum. If I can convince even one girl to reconsider whatever’s being professed in her glossy of choice, I’ll sleep a little better at night.

In the relatively small pool of article templates that women’s magazines turn to month after month (find the best jeans for your body type! Learn how to make a smoky eye! Consider swinging—wait, whaaa?) there are two perennial models that will never go out of style: tips on how to lose weight and tips on how to snag a man. Knowing this, the editors at Women’s Health have come up with a genius idea for an article that combines both topics. It’s called “Prevent Love Chub,” and it’s about how your S.O. is making you fat.

Yes, even though ladymags believe any female who isn’t constantly attached to or trying to become attached to a man is kind of sad at best and totally pathetic at worst, now Women’s Health is also saying that boyfriends are any body-conscious chica’s worst enemy.

See, men sabotage our toned limbs and flat bellies in five distinct ways—they love eating out (… at restaurants! Get your mind out of the gutter!), they prevent us from being physically active, they encourage us to eat more in order to keep up with them, they buy unhealthy food, and, worst of all, they make us happy. And as author Jill Waldbieser says, “Research shows that what’s good for your heart may be bad for your hips.” More specifically: “A study published last year in the journal BioPsychoSocial Medicine found that happy people were less likely to succeed at losing weight than those with a ‘slightly negative and cautious outlook.’”

Uh-oh! Somebody better call the diet police, stat! There’s got to be a way for women to be both perfect girlfriends and perfect stick figures at the same time. What say you, Women’s Health?

Well, to begin, the magazine suggests that fatties like you should eat “a healthy snack that contains protein and fiber a few hours before your meal,” if you and the boyf are planning on grabbing dinner out. Yup—eating in secret before you eat in public with your boyfriend. That sounds healthy.

It also advises women to eat “about three-quarters of what he’s eating”—but not if he’s eating something fatty. In that case, Waldbieser suggests having “portion-controlled, lower-calorie alternative[s] on hand to munch while he takes down that bag of chips or pint of ice cream.” Because a guy certainly wouldn’t think there was anything odd about you breaking out a plate of celery stalks while he’s chowing on Doritos—and that low-cal alternative snack will definitely be as satisfying as whatever he’s snarfing. Relying on “popchips” or Skinny Cow ice cream sandwiches, as Waldbieser suggests, seems like it’d just encourage women to eat more of those supposedly healthier options—which makes this whole thing a zero-sum game.

Finally, to make sure that you don’t balloon up just because you’re feeling confident and loved—the horror!—the article makes its craziest proposal yet: “regular weigh-ins.” It’s unclear whether Waldbieser means that you and the boyfriend should weigh each other regularly or whether you should just be obsessively monitoring your poundage on your own. Either way… come on!

Maybe women who are in relationships do tend to gain a few extra ounces in comparison to their single friends. Even so, “Prevent Love Chub” creates a mountain out of a molehill. It acts as if gaining weight is equivalent to murdering puppies, something any sane girl must prevent from happening at all costs—no matter how crazy it makes her look to that boyfriend she worked so hard to find.

It seems that according to Women’s Health, we just can’t win—you’re either skinny and lonely or happy and chunky. And if you’re in the latter camp, and you take this advice in order to try to get thinner, chances are your hard-won BF is going to think you’re completely bonkers and dump you in favor of a girl who isn’t so insecure. Ugh. Stay classy, Women’s Health.

Mmmm holiday cookies.

I could eat my own weight in Grandma’s “Won’t Fail Fudge,” but do I really want to carry around an extra me in 2010? Not exactly. Spring comes quick here in Santa Barbara, so bikinis and spring runs are just around the corner. If you’re located somewhere where you’ll be wearing large sweaters for the next four months – lucky you! (I guess?) But even if you will be bundled up for a few more months, that doesn’t mean you want to have to trade your skinny jeans for your dad’s sweatpants thanks to a few weeks of indulging.

So, here ere are some tips for navigating holiday parties and rounds at the bar so you can enjoy yourself and still look damn good in the new year.

Surviving Those Holiday Gatherings
Food can seem like the main event at holiday parties, but isn’t the point to mingle and mix with one another?

1. Don’t Go Hungry! Pretty self-explanatory, but don’t do it! Eat sensibly throughout the day, and maybe skip a snack if you want to bank a few extra hundred calories for later.

2. Choose foods that are “worth” it to you. Choosing to have a little taste of the things that you’re really craving, say Christmas cookies or some mini-quiches, while holding back on the other hors d’oeuvres at the buffet line can save you hundreds of calories without making you feel deprived. Pick to have a small portion of your favorite one or two dishes, and load the rest of your plate up with veggies and low-fat dips. Some great options are salsa, guacamole, and other vegetable-based dips.

3. Protein, protein, protein! Choosing foods that are high in protein will help to keep you fuller for longer, and help you to combat bloat in your party dress because you will be fuller from eating less! Choose items such as cheese, nuts, small sausages, shrimp, or slices of meat. Just don’t go overboard! Stick to recommended serving sizes: 1 oz of cheese is about the size of four dice, 3 oz of meat is about the size of a deck of cards, and one serving of nuts fits in the palm of your cupped hand.

4. Keep a drink handy. Keeping a low-calorie drink or cocktail in your hand while socializing means that you can’t eat at the same time! Also, you won’t have to worry about talking with food in your mouth.

5. When all else fails, wear something slinky. You’ll attract attention and feel good. If you feel more confident, you’re more likely to make good choices about food and less likely to feel like binging on the nearest plate of sugar cookies. Think about it: wearing a big sweater means room for cookies! A slinky dress means one or two, but not the whole plate.

Bring on the Bar!
These days, I’d gladly take my vodka and tonic over a sugar cookie. But can’t I have both? Please?

1. Mix and mingle with something light. Substitute diet soda or diet tonic water when possible in your favorite mixed drinks. Juices are great to mix with, especially if the bar offers lower-sugar or sugar-free versions. Lime or lemon, and even a cherry, can flavor your drink for only a few calories. OR try flavored liquor on the rocks.

2. Choose wisely and lightly. Choose a lower calorie cocktail (especially if you’re having more than one – New Year’s Eve anyone?) Some good options include:

Wine Spritzer – Wine spritzers are half wine and half club soda. With three ounces of wine and three ounces of club soda, wine spritzers top out at about 60 calories and zero grams of fat.

Red wine or white wine (5 ounce serving)
Calories: 120

Champagne (5 ounce serving)
Calories: 120

Vodka tonic
Calories: 200 (or order it with diet tonic and lime for only about 100 calories!)

Regular beer (12-ounce serving)
Calories: 150

Light beer (12 ounce serving)
Calories: 100

Vodka Cranberry with just a splash of cranberry and mostly diet tonic
Calories: Under 150

It’s not like we don’t know what is healthy and what isn’t – we do. And we all vow that the next year will be different – that we’ll stop getting seconds at the caf and drinking 6 nights a week – but then classes start, beer pong ensues and it all goes out the window right to our asses.

To most of us calories are just confusing; who the hell knows how many calories we actually consume on a daily basis. How much work we need to do in order to burn off dollar pitcher night.  How many calories we burn walking to the library? But those things definitely need to be figure out if we want to steer clear of the not-so-attractive muffin top.

So, I thought I’d break it all down in a way everyone could understand: comparing the things we love to eat to our daily activities.

There’s always going to be that day when you have two tests to study for and an essay to write, which means zero time to cook yourself a healthy meal. But perhaps those days will be a little further in between knowing that you’ll have to wash dishes for five hours the next day to burn it off:

Two Slices of Domino’s Cheese Pizza (540 calories)= 3 hours of vacuuming (which is probably 1,214 laps around that 10X12 box of yours)

One Order of “General Tso’s Chicken” From Your Favorite Chinese Place (844 calories)= 2 hours of running on the treadmill at the gym

One Grande Starbucks Cinnamon Dolce Latte (330 calories)= 3 hours of taking notes in class

One Plain Bagel With Cream Cheese (436 calories)= 1 ½ hours of dancing at a party

One Bowl of Ramen Noodles (296 calories)= Walking around campus for an hour

One Subway 6” Philly Cheese Steak (520 calories)= 4 hours of doing laundry

Happy Hour Anyone? Think twice before ordering another round:

One Corona (148 calories)= standing in line at the bookstore for 2 hours

One Vodka Shot (100 calories)= 1 hour of sexual activity (Okay perhaps the vodka shot isn’t such a bad thing…)

One Long Island Iced Tea (275 calories)= 3 hours of reading/highlighting in a text book

The point is, in most situations, we will come up with any excuse possible for eating badly. I’ve seen it happen too many times to count, and I also definitely admit to coming up with some pretty lame excuses myself. So, I’ve compiled a list of the most commonly heard excuses. Maybe the next time you’re about to say one, you’ll think about this and make a healthier choice.

1. “Finals are coming up. I’m stressed. Chocolate makes me feel better.” Yes, finals and the end of the semester do cause a ridic amount of stress, and eating chocolate might ease the pain, but while you’re scarfing down that king-sized Snickers bar, consider this: you could possibly be causing yourself more stress. When finals are over, and you look in the mirror and see that you’ve gained about 10 pounds, you will definitely start stressing about wearing that cute new bikini. Don’t let the stress get to you – chew some gum instead.

2. “The drunk munchies don’t REALLY count.” – Yes. Yes, they do. You might not really remember it happening, but all of those greasy pizza slices and bags of potato chips do add up, especially because it’s late at night. Eating at night is always worse because your body has no chance of working it off before you go to sleep. I know it’s hard to control those cravings when you’ve had a few drinks, but I promise you’ll feel better when you wake up in the morning.

3. “It’s too hard to eat healthy in college.” – I know on my campus, the cheapest food is always the worst for you – cheeseburgers and fries for only $4 while a salad costs $7.50. In tough economic times, it’s easy to give in to the excuse that all you can afford are these fattening meals. You may have less money, but you should be spending that money on the most important things, and healthier foods are definitely one of those. You could even try running to the grocery store once a week and stocking up on some cheaper and healthier foods instead of relying on the campus cafeteria or, more likely, pizza place for your nightly meals. It may be slightly inconvenient, but it’ll be worth it in the end.

4. “It’s just this ONE time. And I deserve a treat!” – Okay, so sometimes you do deserve a little treat. Everyone knows that denying yourself of every unhealthy craving you have only results in binge eating. But that doesn’t mean you can completely give up and give into EVERY craving. First, you’re letting yourself have a few M&M’s. The next thing you know, you’re having macaroni and cheese for dinner – ‘This isn’t so bad. I ate a good breakfast and lunch’. And a few hours after that you’re chugging beer and eating wings and telling yourself that you worked hard this morning – and you deserve it. Treating yourself is a slippery slope, so you gotta stay focused.

5. “It’s cool, I went to the gym this morning.” – Good job on making it to the gym, but it’s completely counterproductive to eat like a pig just because you burned some calories earlier. In order to lose weight, you have to eat healthy AND work out. A few of my friends are constantly going to the gym in groups, coming back and feeling nice and sweaty, and then ruining everything by going out to dinner and eating disgusting amounts of food. When I point out that they basically just worked out for nothing, they come back with “Exercising makes me hungrier!” Okay, then have a healthy snack! Please don’t work your butt off at the gym only to come home and ruin it all with some junk food. It’s a complete waste of your time and energy and also just doesn’t make any sense.

6. “I’m starting my diet tomorrow.” – I have one friend who says this statement at least three times a week. “I’m starting a diet tomorrow, so I have to eat this stuff while I have the chance,” she says, as she eats anything unhealthy in site. Don’t pretend you haven’t done this before. You plan to start your diet on Wednesday, but then you wake up late and end up eating a bacon-egg-and-cheese for breakfast, so you decide to start Thursday. Thursday comes, and you do pretty good during the day, but then you go out and eat everything in your kitchen that night, so you figure you’ll start Friday. But on Friday you go out to lunch with your friends, and you HAVE to have at least three of those breadsticks. The weekend’s here, and you know it’s going to be hard, so you decide you’ll wait until Monday – a fresh start for a new week. Guess what? Putting it off is doing nothing but helping you gain a few extra pounds.

Oh hell no.

You hope your professor doesn’t expect you to look presentable. Hell, he should just be happy you left yourself enough time to brush your teeth. Your morning routine is always the same: you roll out of bed at 8:30, grab the first pair of sweats you can find on the floor, throw your hair into a ponytail and run out of the house. You pop into the campus coffee shop en route to lecture and grab a coffee (“Giant, please!”) and something to munch on (“Give me the butteriest bagel you’ve got back there”).

What? It’s early and you need comfort.

You slide into your seat just as the Power Point appears on the wall in front of you. If it weren’t for the food, you’d probably fall right back to sleep; you’re just so comfortable. When class is over, you go to your next class, or to the library, or home for a nap. Whichever you choose, you sport the sweats for the rest of the day: through the classes, the breaks, the meals…

You spend so much time in your sweatpants during the week, in fact, that when the weekend comes and it is time to wear something that doesn’t say “Pink” across the ass you have trouble getting into them. No, not motivating yourself to get dressed; actually getting into them. After the first few weeks of classes your clothes feel a bit snug but you can still make em work (“I must have shrunk these a bit in the dryer….”). As the semester wears on, however, putting on your going-out-jeans has become a sweaty workout.

When the pants stop moving at your thighs, you begin to pull harder. You grab the belt loops and yank, squeezing your thighs, butt and belly into the denim sausage casing. Then you jump around a bit. Then you lay on the bed and see if that helps. If you finally do get those suckers closed, you start lunging around your room, doing squats, and sitting down to see if the denim gives a little bit.

It does not, but you’ve already tried on every other pair in your closet and these fit the best. You decide they will have to do. You throw on a loose shirt on top (to camoflauge the muffin top), throw back a few more drinks and head out.

Your legs and feet begin to fall asleep at some point in the night due to decreased circulation. You have trouble bending your knees to get up the stairs to exit the bar. Your jeans nearly tear as you sit in the cab. When you finally get home and peel those things off  – and notice the deep red line across your belly – you know you’ve got to do something.

It is then that you vow never to wear sweats to class again; those elastic waistbands are far more forgiving of the donuts, the bagels and the sugary Fraps you fill yourself with on a daily basis. (Note: when sober you also realize that cutting those things out of your diet may be a good idea, too.)

We know how you feel. We’ve all had the sweat pant weight gain before. Just get up for that kickboxing class and you’ll be OK.

I know what you are thinking: who needs a study to figure this out? I agree, ladies, and so do my fat jeans.

But while we all know how quickly we turn to ice cream when our BF breaks up with us, I don’t think anyone has really given much thought to the many stages of a college relationship and how they affect our bodies.

Mostly, by making us fat.

The following are typical gains and losses over the course of a rather tumultuous college relationship. Weigh in (haha) on what makes you fluctu-weight. (See what I did there? Yeah, I’m good.):

Lose 5 pounds when we first meet the man – after that one-nighter in the bathroom we want to make sure we are hot enough to keep him from doing that with anyone else.

Gain 5 pounds back when the boy starts sleeping over and we know he’s all ours.

Gain another 5 pounds (in cake) when we find out that man has indeed taken another girl to the bathroom our special place.

Lose 15 pounds due to too-depressed-to-eat syndrome/”Just wait until he sees me now!”

Gain 5 pounds back when we realize how hungry we are from all that “make him jealous” dieting.

Stay the same for awhile as he grovels… and we take him back.

Lose 5 pounds from all that make up sex.

Gain 5 pounds from all the treats he gets for us for Valentine’s Day, Sweetest Day, or just because “I knew these were your favorite.”

Gain another 10 when someone IMs us and tells us that some skank just posted pics making out with our boyfriend and we are forced to mend our broken heart with beer, breadsticks and the cookies our mom sent us in that care package.

Lose 5 pounds when we find a rebound guy and the whole process starts all over again.