High schoolers who actually care about the food you eat; prepare yourselves. If you are reading this, then you probably take your nutrition seriously. I do as well. Just to let you know, the differences between how you can eat in high school and how you can eat in college are real, and significant. Here are the main differences I have experienced and how you can use them to make the best of your situation.
I want to say this upfront- even though the tone so far has been ominous and rightfully so, it is possible to eat healthy in college. Do not take anything I say here as an excuse to throw away everything you’ve ever learned about nutrition and just eat whatever garbage you feel like eating. This sounds ridiculous but it’s kind of like starting a business. Perfectionists want to bring in 100K a year but they don’t want to start because they will have to start at zero. Don’t be a perfectionist with your nutrition and not even try to eat healthy because you won’t be able to eat perfectly.
To start off, let me give you an idea of what my standards of nutrition were in high school. Number one: only whole foods- nothing with more than one ingredient. I also stored and cooked my food in glass containers. This is (in short) because when you use plastic, chemicals from the plastic can get in your food or water. I say water specifically, and not ‘drink’ because that was the only thing I drank. And I drank a lot of it, too. My goal was a gallon or more. I could keep track of this if I wanted by adding up everything I drank from the glass glasses or steel water bottles.
Another thing I did in high school was pre-make my meals and cook them in the oven. Pre-making them was super convenient and saved time. Cooking them in the oven was required because using a microwave chemically alters your food among a host of other atrocities. The microwave was the devil. Remember that, because we will come back to it later.
Ok. So all of that is fine at home, but what about at school (the high school). I mean, this is what we are comparing after all, right? Here’s what I did: I never actually ate school lunch. I was very fortunate to have a mom who was willing to make my lunch for me. She was on board with what I wanted from my nutrition and she usually packed me an incredibly healthy lunch.
This is how she would do it: She would warm up a meat, a vegetable, and a carb (all whole foods with just one ingredient) in a glass container, in the oven. Then she would put it all in steel canisters that would keep the food hot until lunch. Next was three cups of fruit and one cup of yogurt (these were in plastic containers). If you think I was spoiled in this area, you would be correct. Shout out to mom.
While living at home I would try to eat five meals a day. This was difficult, even during the summer because of the time needed and schedule changes, but it was the goal. During the school year, it changed to four which was really easily doable because of the way my schedule worked. Also, the lunch mom packed worked for two meals so that helped a lot as well.
My nutrition was far from perfect in high school but it was very good. Especially when you consider that the competition doesn’t know what good food is and really doesn't care. This fact doesn’t change when you get to college, but your nutrition does.
When I came on my visit to the college I am currently attending, I mentioned to the coach recruiting me that I was having a hard time gaining weight. He confidently assured me that that would not be a problem here. Wrong. When I first got here, there was one point where I was ten pounds under the weight I was supposed to be. I don’t know how many of you reading this keep track of your weight, but that is a ton. As of writing this, I am still having a hard time gaining weight, but it’s not as bad and I am close to figuring it out.
One thing that helped with this was picking up an extra meal at breakfast. Breakfast is usually the healthiest meal here so after getting what I want for meal number one, I go back and pick out what I want for meal number four. This is one of the good things about college: you can get as much food from the cafeteria that you want, which you couldn’t do at my high school.
A difference between college and high school is that I have to store this extra meal in a styrofoam container, and warm it up in *gasp* the microwave. Like I said, at home I almost never used the microwave at home. Now, I use the microwave in our room everyday.
Now for the actual food itself. It’s not good. It can be ok. Sometimes. But it’s not good. On our campus, there are three places you can eat: the cafeteria, a fast food place, and sandwich/salad place. Anything I say here is talking about the cafeteria unless otherwise stated. The cafeteria is by far the best option because it has the healthiest food and it’s the only place where you can get as much as you want.
The actual food can usually (by usually I mean about 70% of the time) satisfy the whole foods rule and the protein, card, vegetable format. The cafeteria’s main downfall is pasta and bread. We have these nearly everyday. This is a problem because bread and pasta are a huge no-go for a basketball player.
There are two other problems: The college doesn’t serve dinner on Sundays, which means another microwaved meal, and; Saturdays and Sundays, they only serve continental breakfast. This means they only have beagles, cereal, hard boiled eggs, fruit, and yogurt. This is problematic because even though eggs, fruit, and yogurt could make a decent meal, they don’t have a sufficient amount of calories for a college athlete.
A lot of issues stem from this one dilemma: getting calories. A shortage of calories has led me to eat many less than ideal foods, microwave meals, drink stuff that’s not water (milk), and really just lower my nutritional standards overall.
So what can you take from this? If you are in high school, take advantage of the opportunity you have. You have more power over what you eat at home than what you eat after you move away. Eat good while you can. If you are in college, do your best and use your best judgement. Stay disciplined in terms of the food you eat, but at the same time, don’t be a picky eater or a perfectionist. Know that by caring the least about nutrition, you are putting yourself far ahead of most of your competition.
If you take it a step farther and care a lot about nutrition, then with all else being equal, you will be unstoppable. The best book for this would be The Metabolic Typing Diet by William L. Wolcott and Trish Fahey. Also, no matter how old you are, do research on the nutrition tips I mentioned and start applying them to your nutrition protocol. And remember- microwaves are the devil.
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