Fit for September: Must Haves

FitSugar — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 05:30:00 PDT

Now that Labor Day has passed us by, it's time to kiss the dog days of Summer good-bye. Just because you're putting away your bathing suit does not mean that you should also put away your motivation to stay fit. Being healthy is much more than looking good on the beach. Use my September Must Haves to welcome the first day of Fall, and of the rest of your life.

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How I Gained 30 Pounds in College (and Then Lost It)

Jenny Sugar — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 03:08:40 PST

In college, I was no stranger to the "Freshman 15." In fact, all that newfound freedom to eat whatever and whenever combined with the all-you-can-eat dining hall and late-night pizza runs made it the "Freshman 30." Now that I've been at a healthy weight for a while, I can look back on all the mistakes I made. I'm sharing these mistakes now in the hopes that I can help someone else avoid the sadness and insecurity that comes with weight gain.

Good-bye, Home-Cooked Meals
With no one to cook me healthy, balanced meals, or tell me to eat my broccoli and not a brownie sundae for dinner, I quickly made my own - unhealthy - meal decisions. This included ordering take-out, devouring junk food, and eating way more food than I did when home.

Is That Cookie Vegan?
My school population was 90 percent hippie, and I was already a vegetarian, so it's no surprise that becoming vegan was my next move. I didn't miss milk or eggs at all. Why miss it when there's decadent vegan ice cream, dairy-free cheese, and even a pizza place downtown serving vegan pizza? I was a total junk-food vegan and must have gained 10 pounds on vegan cookies alone. The late-night candy runs for Swedish fish didn't help either.

No, I Don't Need a Bowl - I'll Eat Out of the Bag
Chips, cookies, crackers, cereal; I ate a lot of my snacks with no plates or bowls because I was too lazy to do the dishes, which often meant polishing the entire package in one sitting.

Carrot Cake Counts as a Vegetable
I may have been vegan, but I hardly ate vegetables, unless you count tomato sauce on pizza, carrot cake, and greasy french fries. My diet was based around these four food groups: pasta, bagels, cereal, and cookies. Come to think of it, I hardly ate fruit either since it wasn't that easy to find on campus (or rather, not that appealing).

Continue reading to see the other reasons I gained weight, and more importantly, how I lost it.