Fad Diets and Teenagers Can be Trouble!

With the images our teenagers see in marketing ads in America today, it is no wonder that they find it necessary to engage in fad diets. They want to look like the leading lady in the most recent movies. They want to be as buff as the underwear model in the magazines. Teenagers are impressionable young people, and they are making dangerous decisions about how to get their bodies to look like what they think they see in popular culture.

Because teenagers see the skinniest girls and ripped guys on the covers of magazines and television, they have a warped view of what is real. They set their goals about their body image according to things that are achieved by a relative few, and in very unhealthy ways. Let’s look at the story of my friend who tried to achieve a “supermodel” figure with disastrous results.

My friend Stacy was a beautiful young lady with great potential, but she wrapped her mind up in what she looked like. She was a popular athlete, she got good grades, and everyone liked her. She saw herself as fat because she didn’t fit into a size 2. She continually engaged in unsafe dieting behavior that left her with lasting health issues.

Stacy went on binge diets. She would eat everything she could get her hands on. Sweets were her favorites, and she would eat them like her life depended on them. After eating as much as her stomach could handle, she would purge the contents of her stomach. This behavior only lasted a while because she really began to hate the way this process of bingeing and purging made her feel.

Her teeth began to get rough, and her throat hurt all the time. She got to where nothing tasted good. She finally realized the damage she was doing to her body wasn’t worth it, but that only sent her looking for the next great thing to change her body image.

I was glad she had ditched that diet, but she ultimately went on a trendy diet she found on the internet. This diet was based on a diet of nothing but cabbage soup for days. Of course she lost weight. She went to the bathroom every 20 minutes, and the soup just went through her like water. I could see her body wasting away because she washed every ounce of healthy nutrition out of her system.

She went through fad soup diets, raw vegetable-only diets, low-carb, no-carb diets, and she tried every diet pill known to man. All they did was eat away at the healthy lean muscle she had developed as an athlete, rendering her unable to continue in her active lifestyle.

What is important to know about fad diets is that they remove necessary nutrition from our foods. Our bodies need some fat and a sufficient number of calories to function. If we decrease our fat and calorie intake below a healthy level, the body begins to burn its lean muscle in order to have the energy to continue working. This is where the body can become irreparably damaged.

Damage to lean muscle as the body tries to find enough energy to function can be serious and lead to frailty that cannot be overcome. My friend Stacy, who at one time was a promising athlete, had to give up her athletic career because she had done so much damage as she participated in one fad diet after another. Her bones became frail, and training caused cracks and breaks that could not heal right because she deprived her body of the nutrition it needed. Tears in her muscles that she ignored in favor of working harder rendered her ultimately unable to exert herself at all.

Physical fitness is important. Nutrition is important. Our young people need to know that the images they see on TV and magazine ads are not real. Those people do not look that way when you pass them on the street. Their photos are airbrushed, and a well-placed lighting system can change anyone’s figure for the better.

Instead of pushing fad diets and watching our teens destroy their body image, self image, and future health, we need to be teaching them that proper nutrition, a sensible combination of healthy foods, and a reasonable exercise schedule will enable them to have a healthy, functioning body. We need to get them up off the couch, take a walk once in a while, and talk with them about who they are and what they want to do with their lives. If we as adults will engage with them, teenagers will be less likely to engage in behaviors that focus only on their looks, to the detriment of their health.

Girls who participate in fad diets find themselves dealing with long term health risks. They may find themselves unable to get pregnant later in their lives. They may find the damage done to their muscles and bones leave them unable to exercise and stay healthy later. They may find their organs, having been deprived of essential vitamins and nutrients, do not function well enough to maintain a healthy lifestyle.

Fad diets damage bodies and minds. Teenagers need to be built up for who they are, not for what they look like. They often do not make rational decisions about emotional issues, like body image. They need to be guided about diet and nutrition issues and loved where they are in order to avoid making huge mistakes that could have a lasting impact on the rest of their lives.