People (and by people I mean so-called health experts like doctors, psychologists, nutritionists, journalists, my family, my boss, and most of my friends) often claim that binge-drinking on college campuses contributes, or even defines, the unhealthy lifestyle of the average co-ed. Studies often show that drinking at college is at an all-time high and students falling out of windows, doing tequila-keg stands, and mainlining vodka all contribute to the bad name of college drinking.
Personally, I thank God for the drinking I did in college, because it helped me slim down to the lean boy that you see today. At this point, you may be asking yourself (or me) how this could happen. Or maybe you've stopped reading to go grab yourself a beer.
To answer your question, let me give you a rundown of my average daily college schedule:
9:30 am: wake up & shower
10:00 am - 3:00 pm: class
4:00 pm: lunch
7:00 - 10:00 pm: Rehearsal of some sort
10:00 pm - 2:00 am: Party time
2:00 - 2:15 am: Purge induced by too much drinking
2:30 am:late night snack (pizza, calzone, hero)
3:00 am: Pass out
Clearly this didn't happen everday (on Fridays and Saturdays we'd party until six in the morning and some nights there was no rehearsal, so we would start the excitement early).
When I started college I was a 5-foot, 7-inch, 185 pound chubbo (see picture). And by the time I graduated I was about 5-feet, 10-inches and 145 pounds. So much for the "freshman 15," eh? What's even better is that I didn't even try to lose the weight. It just happened, and I think what I cosumed proves that what you eat isn't the problem. Look, while Atkins may like only its diet as THE one, I consumed whatever the hell I wanted: Beer, pasta, pizza, grilled tuna melts, gallons of coca-cola, and every now and then a sandwich that was called the Colby 8 -- it should have been called a heart-attack in between a bun -- the Colby 8 was a bacon cheeseburger topped with a fried egg. Mmmm, just thinking about that loveliness makes me want to hop over to Stu's column and write about the beauty of a good Colby 8. I fantasize about you egg sleeping on burger delight.
OK, sure, I only ate one real meal a day (which later come up with all the beer), and I tended not to to sleep much at all, and then there were all the cigarettes I smoked. So, I guess, much like the South Beach diet, my weight loss was really tied to a lifestyle, not a particular diet, but doctors say a lifestyle is what you should create, instead of fad dieting. My lifestyle involved eating anything I want and just making sure I burned enough calories (or heaved enough) to make it ok. If you look at me today, I think we all agree, it was worth it.
Apparently, for legal reasons, I'm not allowed to advocate the diet/lifestyle outlined above. So, I don't. All I'm saying is that it works. Here are some other things that also work to lose weight:
- Heroin
- Any methamphetamine
- Anorexia
- Weight Watchers
- liposuction
- lobbing off body parts (we all learned in Jerry McGuire that the human head weighs 8 pounds
I hear that last one can be painful, though, so I don't recommend it.
12 beers in three hours, though, every day for three months -- now that's effective. And if you have problems chugging beers alone in your room (I generally didn't drink alone until my senior year), play a lot of drinking games. If you're going to play games like "I never," though, never have any sex or any sort of hook-up encounter, because you'll find yourself drinking less and less. Just a little tidbit of info from me to you.
