No food before booze

It’s 7 a.m. on a Tuesday, and I’ve come to the realization that I can’t hide it anymore. I’ve dreaded this moment since summer, and it’s finally here. It’s pants weather.

I put my pants on and begin to pull them up — so far so good. Then come the thighs. Oh, lord, not the thighs. A summer of enjoying the spacious comfort of athletic shorts could never have prepared me for this struggle.

I pull them up all the way — they fit, but just barely — and just like I thought...I’m getting fat.  I always prided myself on my physical fitness and my ability to do more pushups than the average opinion writer. Maybe I wasn’t quite a gym rat, but I was definitely a gym rodent of some sort.

But I haven’t been to a weight room since July, and I refuse to exercise outdoors because it’s unnatural. Exercising without staring at myself in the mirrors seems like a waste of time.

I suppose it’s natural to gain weight during your senior year. Finding time for exercise while balancing school, finding a job and maintaining a social life is challenging.

Unfortunately, it isn’t going to get any easier, so I decided to get creative. After a few failed Google searches for minimal-effort weight loss strategies, I found one that hit close to home.

It’s called drunkorexia, and it’s sweeping across college campuses. The strategy is to sacrifice eating before binge drinking in an attempt to limit the amount of calories one is taking in. Not only that, but some try to limit how much they eat to achieve their desired level of shwaste with fewer drinks.

As any college student will tell you, this so-called trend isn’t new at all. Kids have been doing this for years, and now that it has a catchy name, it is getting more formal recognition.

For many, it isn’t as much a disorder as it is being a poor college student that values partying more than eating well. I could never purposefully do this to myself, and I love eating far too much, so I guess I’ll have to find another shortcut to weight loss.

Stupid college kids, don’t you know that looking good has more to do with drunkenness than how much you didn’t eat before going out? In reality, the kids abstaining from food before booze are the ones missing out on their college years the most. They don’t see that now is the time to be eating anything they want without regard for nutritional facts.

Soon enough, I will be 30-something and won’t care what people think of my belly. Baggy shirts that were meant to hide the bulge of the belly will soon be tucked in to show it off with pride as if to say, “Screw light beer.” 

So, with the future in mind, I’ll go out and eat whatever I like and exercise if I feel like it.

­— agreiner@indiana.edu