Fighting on the waistline frontline

University is the time to find yourself, meet people from all over the world, just about scrape a 2:1 – oh, and get a muffin top and thunder thighs. Yes, the student lifestyle is infamous for the kaleidoscopic shooters, the post-club kebabs and spending all day watching TV in your pyjamas. But not all students resign themselves to this stereotype, and find that university can offer you endless opportunities to avoid the student bulge.

University sport is a great way to keep fit. Not only will it enhance your social life, but you also have a team coach to bully you into turning up to that 7am training session on a Sunday morning. Sarah Pelham, member of Edinburgh University Ladies Rugby Football Club, believes that team sport is what kept her trim at university. "I was exercising at least twice a week," she explains, "which was physically good but at the same time my liver certainly suffered!"

So, livers may suffer and you may have to do some risqué initiation games involving dirty pints. However, before you sign your soul away to the sports team, simply eating healthily is another option. Now there are many ways that one should not eat; the archetypal student diet being cheese on toast, cheese on pasta and cheese on chips. However, Glasgow University student, Tom Bonnick, believes himself to be a connoisseur of cheap and healthy meals. "I have enjoyed an excellent and varied diet for the last three years as the ability to cook is one of my only real talents," he boasts. However, when essay deadlines loom "my elaborate meal plans seem to disappear, and I tend to subsist on a liquid diet alternating between gin and pinot noir, depending on my mood and the time of day."

What can we learn from this? Well, you don't have to get a beer belly to make friends; you can puke together during the-morning-after-the-night-before training session. And that if you are willing to experiment and invest a bit of time in the kitchen, you don't have to spend your whole university career relying on Tesco value microwave meals. So turn off the daytime TV and get healthy!