I know eating problems are an overwhelming presence at this college because I see evidence of them every day in Valentine. Usually, I recognize some girl because she had been in the gym for five hours that day. Then, I see her plate-the ugly truth. There's nothing there except for a piece of meat and a salad. Now I wouldn't call this a full-fledged eating disorder, but she is on the wrong path. This just isn't right. I used a girl for the example, but I see the same patterns in plenty of guys, too.
What's causing this kind of eating? Vogue magazine, for one. The models found in it and other magazines are giving girls and guys distorted standards of what is beautiful. This is ironic, because frankly, most of these models look like aliens. This is just my personal preference, but I would feel uncomfortable if one of these models approached me at a party. Their faces seem to be stretched by unknown forces, their eyes are usually of a color that probably doesn't even occur in nature and they have the blank, tell-tale look of a sociopath. Why don't you see people of this special breed at the grocery store? Because these people exist only inside the perfumed pages of magazines. They are the product of make-up, clever lighting and electronic photo-editing. Sure, the average lady portrayed in these magazines is much thinner than that of our national average, but they don't even have to be thin to send girls everywhere the message that they simply don't measure up.
To go off on a tangent, my original game-plan on addressing negative body image had been to study Cosmopolitan magazine. I was surprised to see that they used healthy-looking women for models. The written content, however, was dangerous to the mind of any woman or man, for that matter. I'm a guy, and after reading the damn magazine for 10 minutes even I felt like I would look ugly if I didn't use all sorts of make-up, chemicals, tweezers, sparkles and dyes on my body. Magazines such as these are based on the underlying principle that a person is ugly by default. They tell us that we only become desirable after hiding our ugliness by putting lotions all over ourselves, acting in 99 ways to turn everybody on and following 84 tips to make your cellulite explode. It comes as no surprise that so many people hate the way they look. Ads, TV shows, magazines, movies and the Internet are bombarding them with excuses to feel this way. This self-image problem that comes from popular culture is only magnified by the intense atmosphere at Amherst. People here are used to making sacrifices in order to become the best they can be-reading "Crime and Punishment" in one week makes self-starvation seem easy by comparison.
Of course, the sword of appreciation for healthy bodies is a double-edged one. Bodies are all different and special. We often forget that there actually are people who naturally have the body-type that Vogue would want to use in its pictures. These thin people have feelings too, and to criticize their body-type can be just as hurtful to them as it would be to criticize a fat person for the opposite reason.
Now that I've addressed some of the causes of bad eating habits, I will offer my personal advice on healthly eating. Please realize that I am no nutritionist, and that I get most of my nutritional information from "dead-reckoning."
A report by the National Academy of Sciences indicates that one should get 45 to 65 percent of their daily calories from carbohydrates, 20 to 35 percent from fat and 10 to 35 percent from protein. Now, recall the popular Atkins Diet, under which one's carbohydrate intake is significantly reduced. From the first sentence of this paragraph alone, we can deduce that the Atkins diet is a real no-no, especially for anyone who habitually burns calories (this means you). I recall reading about a study in Runner's World magazine, in which one group of runners ate a high-protein/low-carbohydrate diet and the other group had a medium-protein/high-carbohydrate diet. The high-carbohydrate group performed better, and the low-carbohydrate group was more susceptible to injuries. To make a long story short, protein is better suited for maintaining or building muscle than it is for being an energy-source for the body. Carbohydrates and fats provide energy. Depriving yourself of them will not only hurt your athletic performance, but will also leave you feeling fatigued during the day. Conversely, one should not leave out protein in his diet, even if he is not a bodybuilder or a member of a hunter/gatherer tribe. Did you know that there is protein in your brain?
If you properly nourish yourself, you'll feel better in general. Don't think that you're sacrificing your looks to be healthy, either. As guys, most of my friends and I prefer women with voluptuous curves. I encourage you, the reader, to take the Vogue magazine out from under your pillow and to put it to its most appropriate use, which my editor has not allowed for me to mention in print.