More about Fit BYU

More about Fit BYU

I traveled to Dallas today for a medical school interview with UT-Southwestern.  Always looking to cut costs, I flew America West and stopped over for one hour in Phoenix.  While there, I had the opportunity to read the September issue of Men’s Fitness.  Unfortunately, the magazine is little more than ads for nutritional supplements.  The article on the fittest and fattest colleges in the United States took up a total of four pages, counting graphics.  Ads in the magazine easily quintupled that.  

The spot reserved to talk about BYU was one paragraph long.  There was another paragraph for the fattest college, University of Louisiana-Lafayette.  The article did not discuss specific results, or methodology, except for the broad categories.  It measured amount of exercise (on average) the students participate in per week, the amounts of fast food, alcohol, and smoking consumed per week, average weight gained or lost over four years, and I don’t know what else.  

I guess the bummer is that Men’s Fitness is a FITNESS magazine, and hoped—no, expected—to read in more detail about the study, what BYU’s strengths and weaknesses are, and how other universities fared.  Oh well.

However, it is worth noting that besides being the nation’s fittest university, BYU also took home the prize for “Biggest Loser,” because the average graduating senior lost 8.6 lbs from his or her original weight upon entering college.