Obesity among higher education students has increased by 2 percentage points since 2021; 14% of students now have a body mass index (BMI) of over 30. These numbers come from the 2024 Finnish Student Health and Wellbeing Survey (KOTT) conducted by the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL). But starting higher education and transitioning into this new life stage of living alone and gaining independence also provides an opportunity to make lifestyle changes and to create new eating habits. Healthy lifestyle habits are key to weight management, and support for creating them is available for students.
Eating habits and other daily choices form the basis of weight management
Young people entering higher education are also entering a new stage in their life where they’re going to be responsible for themselves in a way they’ve never been before. Possibly for the first time in their lives, they’re now in charge of their lifestyle choices, eating habits and health. This new situation provides an opportunity to create new habits or to cherish old ones. However, at this stage managing the household money also becomes the student’s responsibility. Busy with managing their daily life, students may not be able to pay enough attention to making healthy lifestyle choices.
“Everyone has a general idea of what eating healthy and getting enough exercise and rest mean. But students may struggle with identifying the lifestyle changes and daily habits that would be the most important ones in their particular situation”, says FSHS dietitian Reetta Kinnunen. “Answers to our HealthStart questionnaire indicate that many students would benefit from eating a more varied diet and more regularly. At the FSHS, we help students to find the most suitable options for them.”
Dieting can cause problems
Population-wise, the BMI acts as an index of public health. For individual people, however, focusing on creating lasting healthy habits is more beneficial than attaching too much importance to one single number.
“Losing weight by following a temporary diet focused only on dropping kilos doesn’t lead to any lasting change in lifestyle habits or weight. In the worst-case scenario, such diets may even negatively affect overall health,” says Kinnunen. “When the diet you adopt to lose weight is highly restrictive with endless rules to follow, it’s more likely to cause problems with your relationship with food and to make managing your weight more difficult in the future. Strict weight-loss diets can also cause behaviours of disordered eating, whereas weight management interventions focused on lasting, moderate changes don’t increase the risk of eating disorders.”
Weight management theme week for students
This year, the theme of the FSHS’s student well-being week Small Changes for Good Health will be healthy weight management. The theme week’s main event is at 2 October, a webinar called Lupa syödä! Terveen ruoka- ja kehosuhteen tukeminen painonhallinnassa (‘Permission to eat!Supporting a healthy relationship with food and your body while managing your weight’). In the webinar, licensed dietitian Anette Palssa will share weight management approaches that not only work better than strict, restrictive diets or self-blame, but also promote physical and mental health. The event is primarily targeted to students in higher education, but will also be beneficial for professionals working with them.
More information
Liikkuminen, uni ja lihavuus: KOTT 2024 -verkkoraportti [in Finnish]
Program for the Small Changes for Good Health week 29 Sept – 3 Oct 2025 [in Finnish]
FSHS’s Lupa syödä! webinar 2 Oct 2025, 2 p.m. [in Finnish]
Interview requests: viestinta(at)yths.fi