Lifestyle tips

just started college recently and i was wondering if anyone had any tips and advice on ways to gain here on campus. thanks!

It's a little hard to answer, since I can't know for sure if you live the stereotypical, "traditional college student" lifestyle in a dorm, or the lower middle class apartment living lifestyle that seems more common.

If the latter, I think general advice you see on here will be very helpful, since it assumes you go to a grocery store to purchase and prepare your own food.

Regardless of which lifestyle you have, college is probably an unprecedented opportunity to fatten up and gain weight, which will likely never occur again. This isn't to say you can't gain weight outside of college; in fact that would be most users on this web site. But it's more challenging, since you will have far fewer opportunities to eat yourself into a food coma. While college can potentially need as much time as a full-time job, you will have much more flexibility regarding when you do your work. Most will never have this kind of flexibility ever again.

Even if you do live the former lifestyle (i.e. in a dorm) there's a lot of details that are unknown. How does your meal plan work? Do you have a buffet? What kind of food options do you have? Any dessert?

What small appliances can you have in your living quarters? I heard of one university that prohibited coffee makers in the dorm rooms; I don't know why... potential sudden surge in electrical load in the morning? If so, I don't know how *anyone* got their asses into gear in the morning.. maybe they drank caffeinated soda. But, I digress. Either way, I think you need to provide us some more information.

I would expect there to be some sort of late-night/nearly all night pizza joint or diner or something, that folks may go to on the way back after house parties. I've heard that food you eat after drinking heavy is more likely to turn into additional weight.

I may also want to add that when it comes to making new friends or discovering new activities, you may want to seek out activities that don't focus as much on aerobic activity, then perhaps try to become friends with the heavier students there, ideally ones who also like eating or like activities that are more likely to include eating, or could.

Going bowling? You can probably get pizza or hotdogs there, for example. Maybe give the running and jogging activity a pass, but maybe there's one about cooking. I think you get the general idea.

Ever noticed how volleyball players, at least the women often look a little chunky?

If you're going to a regular university, try to take advantage of opportunities to meet new folks. I looked at your profile, and you'll be the same age as most of the other students, at least ones who may take day classes. This is something that folks who attend college late (if at all), or attend a 2 year community college first will miss out on.

sorry for not giving enough info. im living in a dorm & i have a meal plan for every weekday (since im going back home almost every weekend). theres also a pretty big mall with all sorts of restaurants and fast food places (like Chick Fil A, In n Out, Asian, American, and Mediterranean restaurants). ive got a kitchen in my common room too but im not going to use it all too often.

Do you have a buffet or any chain restaurants in the dining hall? Or on campus? Ideally a buffet with no limit.

I heard of one university that had a Baskin-Robbins and Subway locations. My alma-mater had a Starbucks, a Pizza Hut, a Chick-Fil-A, and a Taco Bell. That was in addition to the regular dining hall and a white table-cloth sit down restaurant. One requirement of the lease for the chain restaurants at my alma-mater was for on-campus students with meal plans to be able to use them as payment. So at least at my alma-mater, you could use the meal plan to get Pizza Hut and Starbucks. Not sure about your university, but this is something to look into.

This is a somewhat more recent trend, and chain restaurants love this so students will get in the habit of going to that chain.

im not entirely sure on the difference, but my ideal body is to be thick all around with primarily a fat ass and big, soft belly

Every major college is surrounded by countless late night greasy restaurants & bars. Nothing piles on the Freshman 50 faster than pounding beers or sugary alcoholic drinks, pigging out and immediately going to sleep.

College tends to have a fair bit of walking, which is honestly good for you but it does burn a certain amount of energy.

Against that you have two sources of calories: food from your meal plan and what you eat outside your meal plan.

With your meal plan you do want to make sure to get a healthy mix of foods (including fruits and vegetables), but beyond that you can look to maximise calories. Higher fat is generally going to be higher calorie than lower fat. The web is full of articles about cutting out fat, so I'd suggest reading some of those to make note of the higher fat things (basically reverse their advice). Sometimes this is obvious: choose whole fat milk instead of half-fat or no-fat, for example, or adding salad dressing onto a salad. Sometimes it is less obvious, but just choose things that you will eat all of and which are filling and you won't go too far wrong.

The real difference maker will be what you eat outside of your meal plan. Of course this means money out of pocket, and only you know what your budget is like. One nice thing about college is you are often moving between places and groups so there is no one person who is watching you most of the day, so you can snack a lot more without it being so obvious. Choosing convenient, quick to eat, high calorie, cheap snacks can really let you add a lot of calories to your day. Ideally you go shopping at a grocery store (or somewhere like Walmart), and look at prices and look at the nutrition information and figure out how many calories per dollar, and stock up on some of the better options. For example pop-tarts are around 200 calories per tart, and say you can get them for something like $4 for a box of 8, that is about 25 cents per 100 calories, and they are pretty easy to carry around in a back-pack or to eat neatly in your dorm. Peanut butter (if you have a spoon) can make a good dorm snack. Take a look around, and figure out what would work for you in terms of snacks. It can be pretty easy to add a lot of calories in snacks during the day and then still have full meals because the meal plan kind of defines what the meals are.

Good luck with this all!