Pediatric Nutrition and Dieting: Losing Weight in Adolescence
Written By: Megan Lloren
During adolescence, many teenagers struggle with their body image due to low self-esteem and eventually end up on a diet. Adolescents in these situations suffer from body dissatisfaction, being underweight, overweight, or somewhere in between.
While there are options for teenagers to visit a dietician or a nutrition specialist, many opt for self-dieting or other illicit solutions. These illicit solutions lead to eating disorders, which are detrimental to a growing adolescent body. To lose weight healthily and safely, pediatric dieticians and nutritionists focus on three goals: the food consumed, the amount of time exercising, and eating in moderation.
Even when dieting, other altercations might appear depending on which the youths’ chosen diet is unhealthy. Many choose dietary fads, some extremely harmful to their health. Examples of the more dangerous diets for adolescents include fasting, juice cleanses, and the infamous “yoyo” diet which will make them gain more weight than they started with.
Notably, according to the Canadian Paediatric Society, at a young age, it is in the youth’s best interest to diet with healthy food choices, and eliminate the processed foods out of their daily consumption. It is important to keep carbohydrates and proteins in a growing body, and neglecting it in accordance to many diet fads, will stunt their health and growth. However, as long as the amount of healthy food eaten is well moderated, adolescents will receive the proper nutrients in their bodies that can support them as they grow into adulthood.
Furthermore, along with eating in healthy regulation, adolescents also need exercise. To lose weight healthily in moderation, they must exercise more than what they eat, and they need to burn more calories than the amount they initially consume. Dieting is great to lose weight, but without exercise, the original goal would be useless because not much weight would be lost.
For most adolescents, the most common exercising options are either sports or weight-loss fitness programs. One of the most popular programs nowadays is Chloe Ting’s 30-Day Challenge, which focuses on slimming down. Otherwise, adolescents choose to join their school’s sports teams, where they lose weight through practice and games.
To finalize, pediatric nutrition and dieting has a simple rule: as long as adolescents eat healthy in moderation and exercise, they will live long lives without any medical complications.
Sources
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Banfield, E. C., Liu, Y., Davis, J. S., Chang, S., & Frazier-Wood, A. C. (2016). Poor Adherence to US Dietary Guidelines for Children and Adolescents in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey Population. Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, 116(1), 21–27. doi:10.1016/j.jand.2015.08.010
Kretschmer, B. D., Schelling, P., Beier, N., Liebscher, C., Treutel, S., Krüger, N., . . . Haus, A. (2005). Modulatory role of food, feeding regime and physical exercise on body weight and insulin resistance [Abstract]. Life Sciences, 76(14), 1553–1573. doi:10.1016/j.lfs.2004.08.028
Patton, G. (1988). The spectrum of eating disorders in adolescence [Abstract]. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 32(6), 579–584. doi:10.1016/0022–3999(88)90006–2
