Healthy Teen Living
Healthy Teen Living
One third of teenagers in the United States are considered obese. Seventy-eight percent of obese teenagers have a high risk of weight related illnesses and early death in adulthood. Majority of teenagers eat more ‘extra’ food than the recommended fruits and vegetables servings. Extras meaning chips, soda, energy drinks, and fat foods. Only twenty percent of tenagers do the recommended sixty minutes of exercise a day. Ninety-two percent of teens go online daily and twenty-four percent are online constantly.
Teenagers need to take care of their bodies for their future. Health in early life is a huge component to health in later life. Teenagers need to be more active and eat better. Even depression in caused by unhealthy habits. Twenty percent of teens have depression. Depression is also, most commonly, caused by negativity.
How could you fix your lifestyle?
- Diet
Everyday you should have 5 servings of vegetables, two servings of fruit, seven servings of grain, two and a half servings of meat, three and a half servings of dairy products, and none to two and a half servings of extra food. Everyday you should have a large breakfast, then a snack, then a smaller lunch, then another snack, then dinner, and finally a desert. A sample of a day’s food would be; breakfast- one piece of toast an egg and a cup of coffee/juice. A snack- something like pretzels, a fruit, or a granola bar. At lunch maybe you would have some protein(meat) on a sandwich or with rice or a salad. Then another snack. Dinner- Protein(meat), a vegetable, a starch and glass of milk. Then for dessert maybe a scoop of vanilla ice cream with strawberries and dark chocolate chips.
- Exercise
Exercise is something that almost all teenagers hate. When you think exercice you think running. But it’s not. Throughout the day all you need is one hour of exercise. Maybe swim for thirty minutes and do yoga. Or join the gym or do a sport or a non-sport that’s still active, like cheerleading. It doesn’t take much to be active to stay healthy. On the other hand, if you’re trying to lose weight then you need to work out harder and do scheduled workouts and have a goal.
- Sleep
Teens are supposed to get eight hours of sleep in a night. But most of us, probably all of us, don’t. We should start going to sleep earlier and i’m sure we all know that but why don’t we? Is it cause we are always on our phone? Is it because we don’t do enough physical activity that we aren’t tired? Or, is it the homework? Honestly, it is everything i just said. Some of us stay up all night just messing around on our phones and some is cause we don’t do enough that day so we have too much energy. And for the smart kids (or anyone) it’s because the homework load. We need to find away to do our homework at other times and do more physical activity and to just stop playing with our phones. Get better rest and you will feel better. It takes a toll on you and half the time its because you are being lazy all day or obsessed with your phone. So try to stop. More sleep will solve so many of your problems.
- Emotions
Take care of yourself. Your mind is just as important as your physical health. High school is hard, a lot of us have so much drama that we can’t handle. Try to remove the toxic relationships from your life and try to do things that make you happy. Once a week you should do something for you. Learn to learn from your mistakes and not hold on to the dumb drama and don’t waste your time hating people and putting all your energy and time into hating and drama. You can’t be happy when you’re always negative. Is it really worth it?
Depression is caused by those negative thoughts. Depression affects so many of us, it makes our life hard. By taking care of yourself and letting go of the negativity can help avoid the depression. Positive thoughts lead to positive outcomes.
- Social Media
Social Media is our lives. Like what’s the point in doing anything without posting about it, right? Social Media is where we learn about trends, current events, and everyone’s lives. Drama and rumors start a lot of the time from the media. You can’t trust the media. Why say something when you have no proof of it happening? If people didn’t start stuff on media we could save so much stress. So many teens are bullied over media and it causes many teenagers depression. Keep the rumors off social media and save yourself some stress.
- Relationships
Fake people are everywhere. Fake friends are the worst. I’d rather four quarters then one hundred pennies. Toxic relationships are so bad for you. If it’s a friend, best friend, or boyfriend/girlfriend, if they are toxic to your life then that’s bad for your health. So many of our struggles are toxic relationships, once you find the toxic relationships and remove them from your life you will be so much happier.It may be hard in the begging to lose those people but if they arnt your true friends and dont care about you they wont come backinto your life. People always leave, but the people that are supposed to be in your life will surely come back. Remember everything happens for a reason. It will be ok.
Why I care.
A lot of this is research, but a lot is from personal experience. I see so many teenagers depressed or have so many bad living habits that they are so unhealthy and unhappy. I’ve been there, these are some things i’ve realized and took a step in my life towards this direction and found myself happier and healthier. We need to take care of ourselves for our future. We don’t want regrets.
“Sedentary Behaviour.” Healthy Kids :. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Sept. 2016.
“Overweight and Obesity Statistics.” U.S National Library of Medicine. U.S. National Library of Medicine, n.d. Web. 14 Sept. 2016.
