The Freshman 15 is a common phrase aimed toward first-year college students, but is it a real phenomenon?

This article is published as part of a collaborative effort by students in the School of Journalism and Strategic Communication at Ball State University and the Ball State Daily News. Produced in a classroom setting under faculty guidance, the initiative aims to provide hands-on experience while informing the public through responsible, student-driven journalism.

Similar to many other college students, Tegan Heswall’s transition as a freshman at Ball State University in the fall of 2021 came with the usual challenges.  

The now-senior criminal justice and criminology major remembers being relatively comfortable with the early academic asks on campus but saw struggles when it came to adjusting to life in Muncie, Indiana, being social and, most of all, maintaining her physical health. 

“The expectation of needing to be in a friend group (was hard),” Heswall said. “I went through some stuff with my roommate, and I was (in a) long distance (relationship) with my boyfriend so I would leave every weekend to go to Chicago. … I just found myself not wanting to be on campus.” 

During this time, Heswall said she saw noticeable weight and physical fitness-related changes and believed it to be related to her social and emotional challenges. What she was experiencing — a noticeable decline in physical activity and weight gain — is colloquially referred to on and around college campuses as the “Freshman 15.” 

The term refers to the assumption that all college students will gain at least 15 pounds during their first year on campus as a result of major changes in their diet, physical activity and lifestyle.  

Gracie Fuchs, a senior communications major at Eastern Michigan University, experienced a similar struggle when it came to her physical activity. She was a multi-sport athlete in high school and chose to pursue her education with the support of a Reserve Officer Training Program (ROTC) scholarship with the U.S. Army. 

Fuchs said her high school teams were low-pressure environments where she had a lot of fun and could enjoy playing the sports. However, in college and ROTC, the stakes became higher. 

“The funding I am getting for school is based off my physical fitness,” she said. “So it’s no longer like ‘Oh, this is a fun team thing.’ It doesn’t matter if working out is fun or not; I have to do it or I’m not going to have this career that I was promised by the army.” 

The change in pressure fed into a growing negative relationship with fitness for Fuchs and a substantial impact on her mental health. 

While both Heswall and Fuchs called their transition part of the Freshman 15, it’s a term that Sarah Shore-Beck, a teaching professor of exercise science at Ball State, said people should hesitate to use regularly — if at all. 

“The term Freshman 15 is kind of misleading in my opinion,” Shore-Beck said. “Most studies have shown that average weight gain is about 3-to-7 pounds, not 15, with an average freshman. Weight can fluctuate in college, just to normal lifestyle changes, not necessarily unhealthy habits.” 

Shore-Beck mentioned “movement drop off” as a key contributor to any student gaining weight during their first year of college or throughout their time on campus. 

“You think, ‘Oh, well, I’m going to be walking to all these classes; my physical activity will be just fine,’ but, in reality, the physical activity that you have after school of playing sports, (that) movement drop off is pretty significant when you transition to college,” she said. 

Heswall said that gaining weight during her first six months on campus had a heavier and heavier influence on her self-esteem. 

“It was just hard to do anything because I wouldn’t want to go out,” she said. “Summer was always really hard or the beginning of the school year because it was so hot outside and (you’re) carrying that extra weight with clothes you don’t feel great in.” 

In 2019, a study by Eric J. Bailey, Melani Duffrin, Robert Carels and Kevin O’Brien was published in the “Journal of Community Medicine and Public Health Care” that explored a variety of topics related to the Freshman 15. Researchers surveyed 232 freshman and sophomore students at East Carolina University and found that 50% of the sampled students believed the concept affected their time as college students a “great deal” and “a lot.” 

The study also found that 28% of those surveyed experienced symptoms of depression, 40% had issues with their sleeping habits and 26% felt as if they were not good enough.  

Both Heswall and Fuchs said the weight gain and lack of physical activity did contribute negatively to their mental health and eating habits. Fuchs said she remembers using unhealthy food as a reward for completing a workout, while Heswall said her negative eating habits stemmed from access to poor options at dining halls. 

Despite the Freshman 15 having a notable presence in the lexicon of college students, a 2015 meta-analysis by Claudia Vadeboncoeur, Nicholas Townsend and Charlie Foster found that gaining weight early in college was an issue for almost two-thirds of students in the 32 studies analyzed.  

Published in “BioMed Central Obesity,” which has since been combined into “BioMed Central Endocrine Disorders” and “BioMed Central Nutrition,” the research article conducted a systematic search in six databases to “retrieve relevant peer-reviewed publications of empirical studies” for analysis. Despite the large amount of students who gained weight, only 1-in-10 of them gained at least 15 pounds, with the average being closer to 7.5 pounds. 

As a professor who teaches freshman students on Ball State’s campus, Shore-Beck believes the conversations around the Freshman 15 can be detrimental to students, no matter how wide of the mark the actual number may be. 

“It gives them the pressure of unnecessary stress and restrictive dieting and negative relations with student exercise,” she said.  

Shore-Beck also said the impact students can feel in their physical health during their first year of college is very real and should not be dismissed. She highlighted finding a fitness routine or community as one of the most important things early college students could do to benefit their physical health and avoid unhealthy outcomes.  

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