It’s all about YOU. This is your time to be selfish. Before age 18, it was all about your family. From age 22 on, it’ll be about finding Ms. Right and making lots of babies. However, from the age of 18 until 22 (assuming you take the normal college route), you get to make everything about you. Earning your degree. Finding your calling in life. Finding yourself.

The decisions you make during this 4-year span will decide where you spend 40 work hours per week for the next 30 years, who your colleagues and friends will be, and the person the world sees you as. These choices will also determine the physical foundation you possess as you enter your late twenties, thirties, and beyond.

If you drink (alcohol) like a fish and party like it’s 1999, you’re going to leave college with a nice sore liver, undisciplined diet and training patterns, and a slight paunch creeping up on that waistline, which you can nurse into a full blown pot belly as your metabolism slows starting at age 25.

Or, you can skip the kegger and choose the salad fork in the road. Establish a strong baseline of disciplined eating, consistent training, and healthy sleeping patterns. When you leave school and start a family and enter the workforce, it’ll be second nature to take care of yourself. As the stressors of life begin to accumulate – marriage, children, career, and more – you’ll be better prepared to face them. You’ll automatically start each day with a healthy breakfast, which will give you mental and physical strength most folks neglect. You’ll automatically make time to get some form of exercise four or more times a week- which means you’ll think clearer, feel better, and very likely, live longer.

Need more reasons? Your testosterone is at the highest levels it will ever be. Take advantage. Most 40-something men would KILL to have the naturally occurring high levels of testosterone you squander playing HALO and surfing MySpace. And look around you. Most universities have top-of-the-line weight training facilities, as well as buffet-style cafeterias chock full of all the protein and clean carb sources you could dream of. And don’t forget TIME. You have time to train, time to eat, time to sleep – enjoy it. Time is a resource that becomes scarcer as you enter adulthood.

So give it a shot, college kids. If you have to read four chapters of a book, do it on the treadmill. Pass on those potato chips and grab an apple instead. Instead of a movie, choose the squat rack. In twenty years, you’ll be very glad you did it. Remember – you’re in college to improve your mind AND your body. Use the resources at hand, make the most of your time, and enter adulthood with a set of advantages over your fellow college graduates.