On Gaining Weight:

Coming home from college is tough. The transition from your new exciting life with new friends, roommates, classes, random adventures, late nights, and complete independence back to your old pre-college life is confusing and a little depressing. You have to revert back to chores, rules, and family responsibilities. It almost like you live two lives: your life at school and your life at home. You see different people, you go to different places, you do different things. The two worlds are separate spheres of existence; the one doesn't know the other. However, the hardest thing is food. Going away to school makes you appreciate food. It becomes precious. You savor the times when you actually have a real meal. A meal that isn't toast, cereal, or rice-a-roni. Life becomes so busy that food becomes a chore. And when you move back home, it is like finding a buried pirate's treasure. A gold mine of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. You mean, you can open the fridge and eat anything in it? You don't have to worry about only buying food that you can carry back to your apartment? There is a whole pantry full of food that you didn't have to carefully budget and skimp for? And food magically appears every evening for dinner without any effort? And then, if you're like me, you eat too much. And you gain weight. And you look at your butt in the mirror and you see that it has gotten bigger. And your jeans are little tighter around your hips. But you don't want to stop. Oh no. You don't want to stop because you know that you will just have to go back to starvation mode in a few more months. The transition from home to school and from school to home is hard on the mind... and the body.