That “freshman 15” thing is no joke. It really happens.
JANICE O., AGE 20
If you don’t already know it, we’ve got news for you: You aren’t going to live forever. Well, at least your body isn’t. Your soul—the spiritual part of you—is going to live forever (more about that in chapter 11). But your body is an entirely different matter.
Everything about your body is finite. There are limitations. If you take care of your body, it should serve you well for 70, 80, even 90 years (and if you make it to your 100th birthday, you might get mentioned on the local news, but you’ll probably be sleeping through the broadcast).
There are no guarantees, of course, that you won’t contract a life-threatening disease or get hit by a train. Sometimes things happen, and we don’t know the reason. But there is plenty you can do to care for the amazing physical body God has given you.
Up until now you’ve been blessed with a young and strong body. You’ve been able to eat junk food, dive into mosh pits and basically sit around without any serious damage to your system. When you participate in a strenuous outdoor activity, such as hiking, water-skiing or bowling, you wake up the next morning without feeling stiff (believe us, that won’t always be the case).
It’s a remarkable machine, your body. About the only downside it has experienced is the presence of acne—and that’s fading quickly. So you’d better enjoy your strong and healthy body while you still can. And while you’re at it, why not start planning for the rest of your life right now?
Choose to steer clear of risky behavior and destructive habits. That doesn’t mean you have to settle for a boring, low-key life. We’re not asking you to play it safe. We’re asking you to play it smart. All the dreams and desires in the world won’t mean a thing if you abuse your body. What good is standing on top of the world if you’re on your last leg? “Don’t you realize that all of you together are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God lives in you?” (1 Corinthians 3:16).
Take care of yourself. From the standpoint of wear and tear, these are the best days your body will ever have. There will never be a better time to begin the habits of healthy living.
It’s like starting a savings account. If you put 20 bucks a week into savings now, you’ll have a comfortable retirement. If you wait until you retire to start saving, it won’t help you a bit. The same goes for your body. If you begin now to establish a lifetime of health, you’ll enjoy the dividends of health for a lifetime.
Why deal with health issues now? Can’t it wait until after you’re through school and in the routine of a job and eventually a family? No, this can’t wait. Here are two reasons:
1. The bad habits you start now will hinder you for the rest of your life.
2. The good habits you start now will help you for the rest of your life.
You more or less fall into bad habits without realizing it. They sneak up on you in small ways and become a part of your routine over time. Some bad habits are annoying but harmless:
• Uncle Charlie’s habit of sucking through his teeth in a futile attempt to dislodge particles of food that have been there since last Christmas
• Cousin Billy’s habit of hocking up lugies and then swallowing them
• Your habit of never making your bed (unlike Uncle Charlie’s and Cousin Billy’s bad habits, your habit annoys only one person—your mom)
Other habits are harmless most of the time but have the potential to get you into trouble:
• Grandpa’s habit of backing up in traffic without looking
• Your neighbor’s habit of letting his dog poop on your lawn
• Your habit of always being 10 minutes late
Then there are those habits that seem harmless enough at first and don’t seem to have any immediate consequences. However, over time, there is an absolute certainty that any one of these habits will lead to serious consequences and negative health issues.
Eating
Research has proven that if you ingest too much fat, too many calories and too much cholesterol into your system, you will do damage to your body in the long haul. One of the advantages you have now is a resilient body. You can eat all the burgers you want and still maintain your weight and healthy glow.
Here are some of the ways your eating habits will get you in the end (sorry) unless you develop betters ones now.
Eating the Wrong Things. There’s an old saying that goes, “You are what you eat.” If that were true, many Americans would look like a pizza or a French fry (come to think of it, many of them do). Actually, the truth in that statement is that your health—and to a large extent your appearance—is directly related to the foods you eat.
Hear us now, believe us later. If you continue to eat with abandon through your prime years, we guarantee that your waistline (if you’re a guy) or hips (if you’re a girl) will have a larger circumference than they do now. And that’s just on the outside. Only God (and eventually your doctor) knows what’s going on in the inside.
Gluttony—literally excess eating—is listed in classical literature as one of the Seven Deadly Sins. The Bible pretty much puts it in the same category as drunkenness (see Proverbs 23:20-21).
Eating Too Much. The biggest eating problem most Americans have—and this includes most people your age—is that they eat too much. Unless you’re an athlete in serious training, or you are blessed with the metabolism of a hummingbird, you probably don’t need to eat as much as you do. Here are some guidelines for those who overachieve in the eating arena:
• Don’t eat until you’re stuffed; eat until you’re full.
• Don’t go back for seconds—or thirds.
• Skip dessert unless it’s your birthday.
• Don’t eat snacks before you go to bed.
• Keep healthy snacks in your room to munch on when you’re hungry during the day.
Not Eating Enough. Skipping meals because you’re too busy or starving yourself because you suddenly think you’re overweight is really dumb—and destructive. Eating disorders among kids have been well publicized, and they are serious matters that require professional help. But you don’t have to be suffering from anorexia or bulimia to do damage to your body. Going on crash diets is never a good idea, and besides, you always gain back the weight.
Smoking
According to the United States Department of Health and Human Services, smoking is the leading preventable cause of death in the United States.1 That’s the good news—that the health problems caused by smoking are preventable. The other bit of good news is that the number of students who smoke is declining.2
Still, the number of young people who smoke ranges between 9 percent of eighth-grade students and 25 percent of twelfth-grade students.3 That’s a shame, mainly because of those special physical qualities and mysterious allure that smoking produces:
• Yellow teeth and fingers
• Bad breath
• Pale, crinkly skin
• A delightful cough
• Reduced lung capacity
• Reduced life expectancy
What do you do if someone in your family smokes, especially one or both of your parents? Treat them with love and respect, but definitely voice your concerns for their health (not to mention yours). Tell them that no matter how long they’ve smoked, it’s never too late to quit. The health benefits of quitting abound, regardless of age.
Drinking
Drinking is a pretty controversial subject. Social drinking is acceptable in most circles, including some religious ones (frankly, the Bible doesn’t prohibit drinking; it just instructs us not to get drunk—see Ephesians 5:18). On the other hand, some people believe that it’s never right to drink because of where it can lead you.
We want to strike a little balance by suggesting two things:
1. If you’re underage, never drink. Don’t even try.
2. Just because you’re able to drink, don’t think you have to. Don’t buckle under peer pressure (there’s plenty of it, no matter how old you are).
Even if you think you can handle alcohol, you need to be aware that everyone who ends up with a drinking problem once thought he or she could handle it. And it doesn’t take a long time to go from having no problem to having a serious one.
The fact of the matter is that drinking is a real problem among college-aged people. Here’s some sobering information from College Clues for the Clueless:
• Student drinking is the number one health problem on college campuses today.
• Alcohol is a “factor” in 41 percent of all academic problems.
• Ninety percent of rapes occur while either the rapist or the victim is under the influence of alcohol.
• If there’s a crime on campus, alcohol is usually involved.4
Taking Drugs
Unfortunately, drugs and college students seem to go together. Ever since Professor Timothy Leary (ask your parents about him, right after you ask them about Euell Gibbons) suggested that America’s youth “tune in, turn on, drop out” through mind-altering drugs, an alarming number of students have done just that.
Why do students turn to drugs? Conventional wisdom suggests that any one of the following anxieties can contribute to drug use: personal pressure, insecurity, loneliness and the need to belong.
We’ve talked enough about bad habits. Now it’s time to focus on good habits. But before we get to our list of the Top 3 constructive health habits, we want to make sure you understand something. Let’s put it in the form of a Bruce & Stan Truism:
We’re not saying that you need to get rid of every bad habit before you can start good habits (if that were the case, we’d all be in trouble). What we are saying is that where your body is concerned, the good stuff you put in will be much more effective if you stop putting bad stuff in.
Let’s go through some basic good health habits. These aren’t so difficult.
Health Habit 1: Eating Right
Earlier in this chapter we encouraged you to play it smart. This is especially true when it comes to eating for healthy results. We aren’t experts in this field, but there are plenty of people who are. We found Cheryl Townsley and her book Food Smart! Cheryl recommends that you avoid these foods: caffeine, alcohol, foods with preservatives or additives, high-sodium products, MSG, refined sugar, white flour, margarine, white rice, carbonated beverages and smoked foods.5
The famous “freshman 15” describes what happens when students leave home for college and start eating like Homer Simpson and, before they know it, they begin to look like Homer Simpson.
It’s easy to avoid gaining those 15 extra pounds. Most college dining commons have improved their selections tremendously, adding healthy foods and juices to the menu. All you have to do is eat smart, avoiding such waistline expanders as junk-food snacks and late-night burger binges. Stock your own healthy snacks for those times when you do get the munchies.
Health Habit 2: Exercising
In her excellent book Greater Health God’s Way, Stormie Omartian says that “exercise is just as important in weight loss as proper diet.”6 Eating healthily will help you, but when you combine your good eating habits with a regular exercise routine, you’ll maintain or even lose weight while keeping a fit appearance.
When we say “exercise,” we don’t mean fanatical, endorphin-popping, budget-breaking exercise that takes hours of time and hundreds of dollars. We’re talking about
• Bicycling
• Sensible weight training
• Team sports (such as basketball, volleyball and tennis)
The important thing is to choose something you enjoy and then follow Nike’s advice: Just do it!
Health Habit 3: Sleeping
Sleep is very underrated as a factor in health. The truth is that your body—including your brain—repairs and rebuilds itself during sleep. And the truth is also that when you get on out your own, you feel like you never want to sleep! There are so many new experiences, so many things to do, so many new people to meet. And then when you think you’ve done everything you possibly can in a 24-hour period, you realize that you have to study. So you pull an allnighter. And after several weeks of this crazy routine, you wonder why you’re feeling lousy or even downright sick.
Now we’re not going to suggest that you get eight hours of sleep every night. That’s too much to ask. But you can do better than the four or five hours that you might be getting now.
Too many commitments cause stress, and stress causes your body to do strange things. Your heart races, your blood pressure rises, your muscles tighten, your appetite increases or decreases, and often your mood changes. Not good. You need a way to manage stress.
Just like everything else in this chapter, managing stress is a matter of bringing balance to your life and using your head. You don’t need to make an appointment with a medical doctor or a psychologist (unless you’re demonstrating some serious symptoms) in order to reduce your stress. Just use some common sense. Hey, if you’d have thought about it long enough, you could have come up with these seven stress-busters yourself:
• Eat healthy foods
• Exercise regularly
• Get enough sleep
• Get organized
• Learn to say no
• Talk it out
• Pray
While you won’t be able to eliminate your stress—no one ever has—you can successfully manage it. And the result will be a healthier, happier life.
In this and the preceding chapters, we have been talking about the new you: new address, new friends, new experiences, new adventures.
But there is a part of the old you that still lingers behind and shouldn’t be forgotten. We’re talking about your family. You remember them—those parents and siblings with whom you have been living for 18 years. Even though you will be off to bigger and better things, they will still play a big part in your life after high school. The dynamics of those relationships, however, will never be the same.
In chapter 9, we’ll give you a little insight about how those relationships will change so that you can be prepared for it before it happens.