College Student Saying Hey

[Axzore]

Hey All,

So about myself. I'm a 21 year old college student. I'm 6 feet, and weigh in around 235ish, which puts me at around a 31.5 BMI. Not good. See, I'm also a cadet in Air Force ROTC, which means in 2 years when I graduate I'll commission as an Lt. I'm super pumped, and I love this life style. However, as is the AF way, there are standards regarding weights and such. For me, my standard is about 205 lbs. So as you can see, I'm a good amount over. My issue is that it's incredibly hard to eat healthy on a college student budget, not to mention the inability to find time to cook or grocery shop, as well as find time to exercise. Obviously for ROTC we do have mandatory Physical Training, however those are only twice a week.

So my questions here is how would y'all go about making a change? right now I'm spending a summer at a college, and can really only eat the food they serve at the dining hall. Ideally, even though this isn't healthy, I would want to lose 30 lbs in the next month and a half to meet the standard for weigh in, then switch to am much healthier, not as harmful way to keep losing weight. My end goal is around 180lbs, which that weight being a lot less fat than I have now, and actually adding muscle on to what I have.

Any thoughts you all have would be fantastic.

 

[Steve21]

Firsty welcome! Congratulations on deciding to change!

Now the bad part 30lbs within a month and a half really isn't doable... especially not in a healthy way. The maximum you should be going for is 1-2lbs a week, not 5lbs.

It would help if you gave an idea of what your standard days intake is like in terms of eating etc.

You mention you only having to do the training twice a week, but is there anything that stops you increasing this if you wanted?

Steve

 

[Omega]

Welcome to the forum.

I agree that it is unlikely that you could lose as much weight as you like - but you can certainly make a real start in the right direction. I tend to think that people can hope to lose about 1% per week with maybe an increase at the start as our bodies get used to eating and drinking more healthily (with for example less sodium and processed food in the food plan).

Weight control all boils down to calories in vs calories out and creating a deficit of about 3500 calories for every pound of fat that you lose... You make the task of weight loss much harder by reducing your variables on the calories in side of the equation... You say that you have to eat what is served so have little control over this... In some ways you may find that you have some choice - the choice over portion size and maybe the choice over selection... There may be times when you can choose between for instance french fries or potatoes or rice or when people get the option of several vegetables... If you get this situation - then you should ensure that you choose the healthy option... Maybe they will let you have extra salad or veg if you have no french fries... If they offer dessert - then fruit tends to be a good choice... Things like cake, pies, biscuits give you very little nutritional value so you can refuse them and see if you can have something healthy instead...

Sauces often bring a lot of calories and they may let you have the meal with only a smaller amount of sauce... You can trim visible fat or skin from meat....

While you may be getting your meals in the canteen - you certainly have it within your power to not nibble on extras like sweets or snacks during the rest of the day... You can also make sure that you drink plenty of water - and not waste calories on drinks...

The other side of the calories equation is the calories that you burn by doing exercise... You can do lots of exercise... Maybe you would be allowed access to the gym at your college... If you are not allowed this - it is not the end of the world... There are tons of things that we can do to exercise without spending any money... Walking is a brilliant form of exercise... There are a million and one standard mat exercises that would benefit you... Our parent site fitness.com has a huge area devoted to different exercise suggestions and we have an exercise section here... I dance a lot and it is wonderful because it means that on a sociable night out I do lots of exercise and drink nothing but water (I would be dizzy if I drank alcohol and did a lot of spinning round in my dancing)...

I suggest that you read the following thread - it may help you settle in and make friends
http://weight-loss.fitness.com/threads/57955-My-advice-to-newcomers

Good luck with your project.