By
Jessica Lee
No one needs to kindly remind us that eating fast foods is not the optimum way to gain a healthy lifestyle. We know. It was part of our New Year's resolutions to become healthy. But now that we have found ourselves back in the shoes of being full-time students, yet again, we have discovered that being healthy while being in college is no piece of cake.
Dr. Andrew Weil, director of the UA Program in Interactive Medicine, has criticized student eating habits and has offered us some sensible clues on how to redirect our hungry appetites. He recommends incorporating whole grain breads, fresh vegetables, fish and fruit into our daily meals.
Sure, easy for him to say, as he casually commented on the dramatic changes in college life since he was a student at Harvard University in the early 1960's. Unlike Weil's college days, fast food now dominates the campus scene. While hummus and organic salads might be casually in the back of every student's mind, it is not what is commonly digested in-between classes and for late-night stomach-filling excursions. Unfortunately, it often comes down to what is convenient, quick, and hopefully less than five bucks. It seems that America's youth is backed into the corner between the walls of fast food and movie-star bodies. And it is hard to get out. Even harder when carrying an extra fifteen pounds of purely academic weight.
So, in the vain and desperate attempt to overcompensate for the lack of good health, we flee to the Student Recreation Center to burn off those extra calories. Let's face it. The average male student lifestyle cannot produce the firm and defined body of Tom Cruise, who single-handedly freeclimbs great and impossible cliffs in Mission Impossible II.
In fact, it is reasonable to say that as college kids, we are just hanging on to the rock face wall of an average college week. Dr. Weil warns against young adults who go to the gym just to "get big," although he emphasizes that weight lifting in moderation can be advantageous for developing cardiovascular fitness and developing bone mass. Students in the weight room are engaged in physcial activity, yet it is not the most practical kind. While young adults are obsessed with bulging biceps and petite buns, physically they do not represent the accomplishment of a practical endurance.
Basically, students are working out and getting in shape for a weight room environment, some foreign land where the only task that would need to be done would be to lift fifty-five pound odd-shaped metal objects from one side of the room to the other.
The ladies who gush over the well-built, bright and burly "Ethan Hunt" have unfair expectations from the men they pressure to pump some iron. Muscles and strength are defining of one's daily activities, yet becoming buff from utilizing the gym seems silly. What ever happened to becoming strong from being a construction worker, rock climber, a compulsive hiker, delivery boy, river guide or furniture mover?
College- that's what happened.
American university students are stalked daily by the odd desire to configure their bodies to match the movie stars. But those silver-screen studs have four hours a day specifically dedicated to strenuous exercise in a gym, and at least one personal trainer and no-Snickers-bar-allowed-supervisor, not to mention no inadmissible tests to study for. The new millenium has brought with it the wrath of nutritional and physical supremacy, but no clues on how to achieve it.
Do not worry Dr. Weil, we are listening. But, never in our lives has it been so hard not to be Mr. Cruise.
