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.
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presented only for informational purposes and does not replace medical advice from a practicing
physician.
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