Carolina Alumni Review - January/February 2008

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The First Years Out

Youth is Not a Fitness Program

Keeping fit after college is a challenge of diet and exercise

Here’s some incentive to keep those resolutions you just made to get or stay lean and healthy this year: While about two-thirds of American adults are overweight or obese, being overweight takes a bigger toll on the lifespans of adults who are between the ages of about 20 and 30 than on those between 60 and 70, no matter how overweight an individual is. According to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2003, severe obesity can take up to 20 years off a young man’s life and up to eight years off a young woman’s.

There’s an up side, though. Younger men and women generally have an easier time reducing their weight than older adults do — good news for young alumni who have discovered that the “Freshman 15” was only the beginning. Leaving campus often means losing access to free, readily available sports and workout facilities. Recent graduates also often find their hours taken up with new jobs and new living situations, and maybe also with a new family. But many young alumni find ways to meet these challenges and keep themselves fit and lean.

Rita Cromartie ’00 didn’t have to pay much attention to her weight until after she had two children. At Carolina, she says, she “didn’t work out or anything like that.” Though she majored in health behavior and education, she credits her ability to maintain a healthy weight in college to the luck of the genetic draw. “I’m a small-frame person. I didn’t watch what I ate either. I think it was just activity level or metabolism or a combination of both that kept me within the normal weight for my height.”

During her first job after college,

SARAH MCCART Y ARNESON ’ 96

Staying on the path of a healthy lifestyle after college means including regular exercise to keep weight under control. Finding time and access to fitness facilities can be challenging.

Cromartie kept the weight off. “I worked a lot of hours, and with getting my first apartment, I just stayed busy. Actually, friends would tell me I was losing weight, probably from the stress of the job. When I left there and went to another job, [the weight loss] went away.”

But once she had children — she’s now a stay-at-home mom — everything changed. “My metabolism changed, so the weight came on and just wouldn’t leave, especially after that second child,” she says.

Now she works out three times a week at the YMCA in her town of Sugarland, Texas, a suburb of Houston. “I just do aerobics,” she says, “a step aerobics class twice a week, and one day a week another aero-bics-type class. I do try to stay at a certain weight, and when I see I’m going out of that — which is now — I try to add some

bicycling or walking.” A one-mile trail around a lake in her community gives her a place to walk when she wants to supplement her gym routine.

She also pays more attention to her diet than she did in college. “I’m trying to eat less red meat and more vegetables to stay full, more fruits. I try to work that in. More water. That’s one thing I wasn’t doing very well, but I’m trying to do more. I still don’t eat as healthy as I would like. I can’t stop the pasta or the rice, the carbs, so I try to balance that. What I’m working on now is proportions, trying to be able to look at it on sight and know exactly how much rice I can have. I’m trying to get that down.”