The summer before my freshman year of college, I worried about making friends, succeeding academically, and being away from family. But the fear that trumped them all was “the Freshman 15″—the dreaded term describing the number of pounds students supposedly gain during their first year of college.
My fears around weight gain stemmed from my struggles with anorexia nervosa, which I developed when I was just 12-years-old. I spent my early teenage years cycling in and out of treatment centers, where I came to see how much my eating disorder had taken over my body and mind. I eventually got better, and when I left treatment at age 16, I considered myself fully recovered.
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But by the time I started college, my recovery began to feel more feeble than foundational. You cannot gain those 15 pounds, I’d think every time I entered the all-you-can-eat cafeteria. I tried my best to silence this refrain and the disordered thoughts that accompanied it. But the din of my thoughts grew so deafening that it became the soundtrack of my freshman year. Unable to control the volume, I relapsed.
Now, as a professor and a woman in recovery from anorexia, I wish I knew then what I know now: the Freshman 15 is a myth. Studies show the average weight gain for first-year students is actually around two to three pounds. Far more concerning is the fact that the median age of onset for eating disorders in the United States coincides with the typical age of college enrollment.
We hardly hear about this, though, because societal conversations tend to focus far more on obesity than on eating disorders. Many would argue that we need to be having conversations about how to prevent weight gain, given that an estimated 42% of adults and 19% of children are considered obese. But all too often, messages around weight gain completely miss the mark, and they ignore the ills of eating disorders, which are among the deadliest mental health disorders and have been on the rise among teens.
Dr. Allison Chase, who has a practice focused on supporting loved ones of people with eating disorders, said the term “Freshman 15” is “wildly inappropriate” and “really detrimental,” in part because it “doesn’t take into account the changes that are still happening for a body around age 18.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s growth charts show that the median weight of individuals age 17 to 20 generally increases as teens transition into adulthood. In other words, weight gain is normal for teens, who are still growing and developing. To stigmatize or pathologize it is therefore misleading and misguided. Such stigmatization also stifles serious conversations about how weight gain can be indicative of other problems that may go undetected, including eating disorders, anxiety, depression, sexual abuse, food insecurity, and more.
From a mental and public health standpoint, we need to debunk myths that instill unnecessary fears about body weight and size, especially at a time when “thin” appears to be back “in”—partly due to the rise of GLP-1s and social media weight loss trends. A good starting point is retiring the antiquated term “Freshman 15,” which reeks of 1980s dieting lingo.
The history of the term ‘Freshman 15’
The term is believed to have first emerged in the August 1989 issue of Seventeen magazine, which featured a cover story about how to “fight the Freshman 15” and “avoid the first-year fat attack.” The article—written by a first-year Westminster College student “who survived freshman year without putting on a pound,” referred to the Freshman 15 as a “syndrome” and advised readers to skip desserts, exercise, and keep junk food out of their room.
“If you take care of yourself, you’ll look as good as you do now when you go home for vacation,” the article claimed. “Think how great you’ll feel when you find you can still fit into last year’s bikini.”
I was too young to have read this fatphobic article, but I consumed plenty of content like it as an adolescent who subscribed to Seventeen in the late 1990s. I remember first learning about eating disorders in magazines and poring over stories with titles like “How to Stop Obsessing Over Your Body.” In reading such stories as a young teen, I learned that the quest for a perfect body could become a fixation.
Today, this type of content is even more pervasive online. Social media posts about the “Freshman 15” abound, and even well-respected hospital systems have published articles in recent years about how teens can avoid the “Freshman 15”—as if it were a diagnosable condition that requires preventative measures and medical attention.
The medium has changed over time, but the underlying message remains the same: that self care and self worth are predicated on our ability to maintain—or better yet lose—weight.
A better way forward
Interestingly, one of the more comprehensive studies on the “Freshman 15” found that freshmen gained an average of 2.5 to 3.5 pounds, and only 10% gained 15 pounds. However, about 25% actually lost weight—a finding that runs in sharp contrast to the messages we typically hear about freshmen’s changing bodies.
This finding could be reflective of students who lose weight freshman year due to restrictive eating disorders. But it’s also important to note that not everyone with an eating disorder loses weight; some may maintain it or gain it. This was the case for me, as a freshman who was secretly stuck in a cycle of binge eating and restriction but whose outer appearance didn’t change. Because I no longer “looked” like I had an eating disorder in the ways that I did when I was acutely sick with anorexia nervosa, it was easier to hide my struggles and harder to seek help.
I heard similar stories when surveying and interviewing hundreds of people for my book, SLIP: Life in the Middle of Eating Disorder Recovery. Some said their fear of weight gain in college, exacerbated by comments about the “Freshman 15,” led them to get sick—or sicker. Clinicians I spoke with validated these experiences.
“Conversations about weight gain can severely exacerbate the risk of relapse,” said Carol Brown, a therapist for Equip, which offers virtual eating disorder treatment. “For students with undiagnosed eating disorders, these discussions can be a huge barrier to seeking necessary care, as they may reinforce a common disorder thought: Am I sick enough? This isn’t really that serious, which can legitimize harmful eating disorder messages.”
These short-sighted discussions reduce one’s health to the number on a scale. Instead of focusing on weight gain, we can and should engage students in more productive dialogues around what it means to respect their bodies. We can do this by teaching them to consider the many factors that contribute to our overall health, including getting rest, engaging in joyful movement, eating a variety of foods, managing stress, and maintaining healthy relationships.
I wish I had been on the receiving end of these lessons as an insecure teenager—and that I’d known the truth about the “Freshman 15.” All these years later, I can confidently say that college is difficult enough; we don’t need to perpetuate harmful myths that make it even harder.
Having just turned 40, and knowing my body will likely change in the coming years, I find myself wanting to share a new message: that all bodies are worthy of respect, and gaining weight is never a moral failure.
I’ve shared such sentiments with my college students, who are at an impressionable age where they’re building a framework for their identity as adults. Many of them know about my lived experience and have confided in me about their own struggles with eating disorders.
What gives me hope is that I have witnessed students today combating diet culture—a system of societal expectations that would have us believe we could all be better if only our bodies looked better. And I have seen my students (many of whom are aspiring journalists) seek out studies that challenge commonly held beliefs and misperceptions about food, bodies, and weight—such as the so-called “Freshman 15.”