In my mother’s day, girls gained the “freshman five” in their first year of college. Now, instead of just going up one jean size, ladies seem to be piling on the dreaded “freshman 15.” In the United Kingdom, the notorious phrase means that most students’ grades drop 15 percent. Here it means a 15-pound weight gain, which amounts to nearly 10 percent of many girls’ healthy body weight. At Georgetown, though, more first-year girls seem to lose the 15 pounds than gain them.
It wasn’t until my first high school party during Christmas break of my first year that reality set in: no one was the same weight as they were when they left. While every guy looked exactly the same, I could cut glass with formerly voluptuous friends’ collar bones, and those who hadn’t lost weight seemed to have eaten the anorexic chicks’ leftovers.
No matter which extreme they represented, they were usually still unsatisfied with their bodies and their diets. In the name of slimness, women put up with some flavorless foods: Snackwell cookies, skim milk, fat-free soft serve and baked potato chips, just to name a few. It doesn’t take a spoon of grainy, cloyingly sweet, reduced-fat peanut butter to realize that low-fat foods just aren’t satisfying and, judging by the nutrition label, most have more sugar and chemicals than their tastier counterparts. Living with five skinny girls, I have seen my share of fat-free Kraft singles (a food that, I might point out, resembles Cheese Whiz-flavored plastic). There shouldn’t have to be a choice between T. Sweets and Yates-there is a happy medium.
I’ve found two reasonably appetizing, low-fat foods, however, that, if unnatural, are not horribly unhealthy: single servings of No Pudge Brownies and “Splenda Biscuits.” Just take two tablespoons of No Pudge, found at Trader Joes or Whole Foods, and one tablespoon of applesauce if you like your brownies cakey or yogurt if you like fudge, mix them in a sturdy bowl and nuke it in the microwave for a minute. You get a hefty 110 calorie portion of super chocolaty, if not rich or buttery, brownie. Adding some nuts or dried fruit makes them a little more satisfying; I love mixing dried cherries into the raspberry batter or throwing a slivered Andes mint into the mix. Even a boy would eat those.
Splenda biscuits are nothing more than low-fat Bisquick, a few Splenda packets, and enough water to make a stiff dough. They are light as air and mildly sweet and melt in your mouth. The biscuits are gratifying enough to stop at one, and the brownies make a reasonably-sized quick fix for chocolate cravings. Neither super healthy nor artery clogging, they won’t keep you up at night thinking about how you need to go to Yates.
