As soccer season has come to a close, it is inevitable that I want to spend my freedom someplace other than the gym. I want to spend hours that I never had in the dining hall and in my dorm room occupied with candy, chips, and a (somewhat) nice bed that lays right in front of a nice television. But as I was binge watching my shows, Dr. Nolan popped into my head with his brilliant lectures over the topics of obesity and weight loss. I know I am already fighting a historically poor gene pool when it comes to health, so it would be delusional to think that I could sit on the couch and watch television with some chips and salsa and not be the victim of the (mythical, but very possible) ‘freshman 15’. I told myself that I had already come this far, and I already had hope because weight is not determined by just genetics, but there is a gene-environment interaction. I just had to keep my discretionary metabolism up, which would keep my resting metabolism in check.

I am okay with the idea of maintaining my current weight, which is successfully done through exercise, but I feared that with my new sedentary lifestyle, I was probably going to gain weight I have never had before. And if that would happen, then my body would defend the new weight gained because my set point would readjust. So, heartbreakingly, I said goodbye to the everyday trips to the dessert table, and I restricted the useless excessive calories in order to not just maintain my current weight, but make sure I could lose any weight that I had gained already, because Dr. Nolan taught us that weight loss is more successful from caloric restriction than from exercise.

Even though I have been doing well with this new and improved lifestyle of independent exercise and dieting, my motivation is empowered by the scary possibility of my metabolism slowing down and my set weight readjusting. Without this information from the lectures in psychology class, I probably would’ve stuck to my nice break of no exercise and endless eating. I would not have understood the science behind why it is so hard to get back in the shape you were once in, and for that, I am grateful!