<p>I'm an incoming freshmen for this fall for the U of I, and I was just wondering how's the food there - is it healthy? tasty? lot of fatty foods?</p>
<p>And any experiences with gaining the infamous freshmen 15?</p>
<p>Healthy - That is a definite no. If you want avoid eating a lot of meat/greasy food, I heard LAR serves a lot of vegetarian stuff because they have a vegetarian specialty restaurant. For other dorms, every main course meal does have dietary information that indicates calories and ingredients.<br>
Tasty - I would say some of the food served are quite descent. The vegan/vegetarian food I mentioned for the main course meals (not the LAR specialty restaurant) are not that great though; they are usually flavorless, water boiled veggies. There are several specialty restaurants which take place in dorms on different days of the week (which tastes better IMO). Like Mexican food can be found at ISR. Asian food can be found at FAR.
Lots of fatty foods - 
yes.</p>
<p>Freshman 15 experience: I didn’t have any, in fact I lost quite a bit of weight. The big campus pretty much forces you to walk a lot which burn a lot of calories. Just keep a healthy eating/sleeping habit and you’ll be fine.</p>
<p>The best advice I can give anyone regarding the freshman 15 is to just stop drinking soda. Limit yourself to one or two a month when you go out. That is what I did and it worked. To this day I still haven’t put on any weight since high school after 5 years, and I don’t eat THAT healthy and I am not THAT active.</p>
<p>^Agreed. Soda is one of the worst things you can put in your body.</p>
<p>a tip i received is just walk everywhere. the campus is big, yet manageable. you often hear about the bus system, and it’s quite good, but just give a little more time in your schedule and walk everywhere.</p>
<p>If you walk for an hour, you burn maybe 100-120 calories. A snickers bar contains twice that. Exercise is maybe 10% of weight control. 90% is calorie control. If you metabolically burn more than you take in, you lose weight, and vice-versa. Portion control is where it’s at. Eat anywhere you want, just don’t eat it all. Costs the same as far as the meal plan is concerned…</p>
<p>Exercise for muscle tone by the way. That’s very important when your actually on a diet.</p>
<p>Avoid drinking too much alcohol. That’s a big factor of weight gain. Although it may be hard to do seeing that U of I is big on partying.</p>
<p>By the way, avoid eating as ISR especially during lunch time. You’ll smell like greasy food all day!!</p>