by Kevin Yeoman
Despite numerous sources that recommend otherwise, many students are rebelling against body type, which could land many of them in the path of a health crisis.
Compelling research from New York Cornell University’s Lori Neighbors, suggests more overweight college students have set an ideal weight for themselves, which still classifies them as overweight. In fact, during the course of the study, one in two students chose an unhealthy body type as their ideal. In the study, Neighbors selected 310 students to view a scale of body shapes, which ranged from thin to overweight and asked them to select the type they most readily associated with themselves.
Afterwards, the students were asked to decide on the most ideal body type that took their current and desired weight into consideration. In the end, the study suggests that larger students, while not overtly wishing to stay that way, had become sensitive to complicated and often unsuccessful weight loss regimens.
As obesity levels in this country rise, and students—admittedly overweight—reconcile themselves with their body image and continue to plunder the cafeteria, instead of the gym, awareness and attitude become the explanation. It seems that college kids just aren’t getting the message of what poor weight management can lead to, in the future. Many overweight persons will die, prematurely, from things like kidney failure, anemia, bone loss, heart conditions and cancer. But the leading cause, overall, is still cardiovascular disease brought on by an unhealthy lifestyle.
This study coincides with another recent bit of research, revealing one’s body image is closely related to the images that others, close to an individual, deem acceptable. Unfortunately, this suggests students are choosing friends and social partners based on a similar physique—healthy or unhealthy—and general acceptance thereof.
Conversely, it is interesting to note that underweight students—mostly women—conscious that their slimness is too, unhealthy, wish to maintain or even reduce their weight further. The thinner women obviously would see several social benefits to their unhealthy, slimmed figure, but it is unclear what the overweight respondents might see as the benefit to maintaining an overweight physique.
What is clear, however, is that two disparate groups of college-aged students are gravitating towards unhealthy extremes instead of discovering a healthy median that produces a positive body image and a healthy body to match. Starting in college is fairly late in the game, but it’s not too late to turn one’s body image around, at least enough to ensure you’ll be around for many years to come.
Kevin Yeoman is an Austin based freelance writer. He has contributed to such magazines as Posh, AAGolf and Draft.
Monday, September 8, 2008
Friday, September 5, 2008
Reeling in the Years: Going Home(coming) Again
by Jeff Zbar
My wife and I graduated from college back in the 1980s. We’ve been back at least once a year since – and sometimes twice, if our football team’s doing well and I can, um, secure tickets at a reasonable cost. We go back so much, it sometimes feels I’m on campus more as an alum than I was as a student.
We’re what some would call chronics. We wear our alma mater’s colors, sport its state-sponsored license plates on both our cars, and have layered our kids in so much orange and blue that they used to think those were the primary colors. They’ve been donning the attire since before they could walk (we bought kids’ apparel before we even had kids, and even videotaped our oldest as I dressed the then-infant one Saturday before a game against our arch-rival).
Thinking back to me as a college student, I would have thought my older self “pathetic.” Frankly, I would have loathed my alumnus self. I hated how those old folks came onto my campus, took all my choicest parking spots every weekend during football season, clogged my favorite restaurants (when I wasn’t feasting on mac-n-cheese or cold, take-out pizza), and generally made the campus a congested mess. It was supposed to be a place all my own. The campus was for me and my partying, I mean, academically-focused school mates.
My weekend at the college, as Steely Dan called it in Reelin’ in the Years more than a generation ago, lasted almost five years. It certainly turned out as I’d planned, with a degree (and a dog, an eventual spouse and even a job post-graduation) – but apparently in retrospect wasn’t quite long enough to satiate my needs. My wife and I go back every year, bringing the kids and taking in all our old haunts.
And although I realize some students still feel as I did 20 some years ago – that the campus is for current students, alumnus and fogies be damned and banned – I long ago learned what “homecoming” is all about. Our school (the University of Florida) is the place of old and new memories. It’s where I met my wife and some of my/our closest friends, formed our fondest recollections (some of which I’m sure I don’t even remember – and I’m sure it’s probably better that way), and celebrate to this day.
Now, we traipse the live oak, palm and pine-lined campus with our kids, telling them about how I used to wait for their mom outside this classroom when I was courting her, and showing them the sidewalk in which I carved my initials and fraternity (BZAR AEPi 84) in the wet cement. Heck, we’ve gone so many times, they now show me the site, and coax me to lie down beside the etching so they can photograph my aging self beside the scribbling.
Time Magazine recently wrote about the popularity of tailgating before football games. Whether it was Yale, Auburn or the annual Florida-Georgia game in Jacksonville, what it called “a multiday bacchanal of feasting and booze-brag that they conceived the ultimate innovation of making the football a mere footnote to the party outside the stadium” (or what we call the “world’s largest outdoor cocktail party”), tailgating is just another trip home for many alums. We’ve gone back in RVs. We’re planning to tailgate – with BBQ and beverages served up from the back of the minivan – next year.
Tailgating, homecoming, buying more school apparel than I can reasonably wear – this is not what I would have expected from Jeff Zbar back when I was in college. Our football and basketball teams were lackluster, as was my pride for them. Sure I was a Gator. But I didn’t bleed orange and blue. But it was my campus, dammit, and I wished those alums would just stay home and leave the choice parking and Burrito Bros. to me.
Well, here we are, 20 years hence, and we’re taking all the parking spots, and eating the burritos with our kids, and buying UF-Tennessee tickets from students for, well, enough for them to enjoy some libations thanks to my largesse. I long ago realized what “homecoming” – on any weekend, not just Gator Growl weekend – is all about. It’s about remembering good times with lifelong friends. It’s about memories, old and new. It’s about seeing young coeds walking the same grounds, learning in the same classrooms, living in the same dorms and apartments, as we did a generation ago – and older alums did generations before me.
It’s about growing older with those friends, and my wife, and our kids. It’s about acknowledging the passage of time, reelin’ in the years, and trying to recollect all the good times from our weekend at the college. Because that weekend doesn’t have to end just because we’ve been handed the parchment.
No, the weekend never ends. As long as there are burritos, ample parking and a campus we can walk beneath the live oak, palm and pines, we’ll be going back home again…
Jeff Zbar (www.jeffzbar.com) is a writer and speaker – and 1986 University of Florida graduate.
My wife and I graduated from college back in the 1980s. We’ve been back at least once a year since – and sometimes twice, if our football team’s doing well and I can, um, secure tickets at a reasonable cost. We go back so much, it sometimes feels I’m on campus more as an alum than I was as a student.
We’re what some would call chronics. We wear our alma mater’s colors, sport its state-sponsored license plates on both our cars, and have layered our kids in so much orange and blue that they used to think those were the primary colors. They’ve been donning the attire since before they could walk (we bought kids’ apparel before we even had kids, and even videotaped our oldest as I dressed the then-infant one Saturday before a game against our arch-rival).
Thinking back to me as a college student, I would have thought my older self “pathetic.” Frankly, I would have loathed my alumnus self. I hated how those old folks came onto my campus, took all my choicest parking spots every weekend during football season, clogged my favorite restaurants (when I wasn’t feasting on mac-n-cheese or cold, take-out pizza), and generally made the campus a congested mess. It was supposed to be a place all my own. The campus was for me and my partying, I mean, academically-focused school mates.
My weekend at the college, as Steely Dan called it in Reelin’ in the Years more than a generation ago, lasted almost five years. It certainly turned out as I’d planned, with a degree (and a dog, an eventual spouse and even a job post-graduation) – but apparently in retrospect wasn’t quite long enough to satiate my needs. My wife and I go back every year, bringing the kids and taking in all our old haunts.
And although I realize some students still feel as I did 20 some years ago – that the campus is for current students, alumnus and fogies be damned and banned – I long ago learned what “homecoming” is all about. Our school (the University of Florida) is the place of old and new memories. It’s where I met my wife and some of my/our closest friends, formed our fondest recollections (some of which I’m sure I don’t even remember – and I’m sure it’s probably better that way), and celebrate to this day.
Now, we traipse the live oak, palm and pine-lined campus with our kids, telling them about how I used to wait for their mom outside this classroom when I was courting her, and showing them the sidewalk in which I carved my initials and fraternity (BZAR AEPi 84) in the wet cement. Heck, we’ve gone so many times, they now show me the site, and coax me to lie down beside the etching so they can photograph my aging self beside the scribbling.
Time Magazine recently wrote about the popularity of tailgating before football games. Whether it was Yale, Auburn or the annual Florida-Georgia game in Jacksonville, what it called “a multiday bacchanal of feasting and booze-brag that they conceived the ultimate innovation of making the football a mere footnote to the party outside the stadium” (or what we call the “world’s largest outdoor cocktail party”), tailgating is just another trip home for many alums. We’ve gone back in RVs. We’re planning to tailgate – with BBQ and beverages served up from the back of the minivan – next year.
Tailgating, homecoming, buying more school apparel than I can reasonably wear – this is not what I would have expected from Jeff Zbar back when I was in college. Our football and basketball teams were lackluster, as was my pride for them. Sure I was a Gator. But I didn’t bleed orange and blue. But it was my campus, dammit, and I wished those alums would just stay home and leave the choice parking and Burrito Bros. to me.
Well, here we are, 20 years hence, and we’re taking all the parking spots, and eating the burritos with our kids, and buying UF-Tennessee tickets from students for, well, enough for them to enjoy some libations thanks to my largesse. I long ago realized what “homecoming” – on any weekend, not just Gator Growl weekend – is all about. It’s about remembering good times with lifelong friends. It’s about memories, old and new. It’s about seeing young coeds walking the same grounds, learning in the same classrooms, living in the same dorms and apartments, as we did a generation ago – and older alums did generations before me.
It’s about growing older with those friends, and my wife, and our kids. It’s about acknowledging the passage of time, reelin’ in the years, and trying to recollect all the good times from our weekend at the college. Because that weekend doesn’t have to end just because we’ve been handed the parchment.
No, the weekend never ends. As long as there are burritos, ample parking and a campus we can walk beneath the live oak, palm and pines, we’ll be going back home again…
Jeff Zbar (www.jeffzbar.com) is a writer and speaker – and 1986 University of Florida graduate.
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