Dieting For Kids and Teenagers

Dieting is the practice of ingesting food in a regulated fashion for a purpose, like losing weight. To lose weight, a person may try to eat fewer calories than the body uses in order to lose body fat and decrease body weight. Some dieting practices even cut out entire categories of foods or require dieters to just eat specific food, which can deprive the body of necessary nutrients.

Unlike adults, kids and teenagers are still growing and developing. Receiving adequate nutrition through a well-balanced diet is crucial for them. So, dieting is not necessary for most kids and teenagers.

According to the ADA (American Diabetes Association) there has been a 39 percent increase in obese teenagers. Still, dieting is not necessarily what they need. Often time overweight teenagers can improve their health simply by being more active and eating nutritious foods in a balanced diet.

Physical activity is important in securing weight loss. Energy for muscle activity is first derived from the glycogen, then from the fatty acids stored in the body. Exercise may also increase the basal metabolic rate (BMR - resting energy consumption) for some time after exercising, which leads to an additional caloric loss. Joining sports teams, hiking, cycling, or rowing are good choices, as well as more casual activities like shooting hoops at the park, dancing, or helping parents cleaning the house. Even the smallest lifestyle changes like walking to school or jogging up and down the stairs a couple of times before shower can really make a difference.

A balanced diet gives the proper amount of the right nutrients to the body, such as, carbohydrates for producing energy, protein for building body structures, calcium for growing bones, vitamins and minerals for helping maintain body functions, and fiber for healthy digestion. It includes variety of foods from different food groups i.e.:

· fruits and vegetables

· milk and dairy products

· meat, nuts, and other protein-rich foods

· grains, especially whole-grain foods

Based on the body mass index (BMI - weight in kilograms per meters squared of height), doctors may still recommend dieting for some kids and teenagers, usually to slower gaining weight pace, or to maintain current weight. But this should be done with the guidance of an expert, like a dietitian, who can explain how to reduce calories safely while still getting all the necessary nutrients.

Being overweight can cause health problems; however, quick or “crash” dieting with pills, special drinks, and all-liquid diets, to name a few, and extreme dieting that requires skipping meals or eating only lettuce, for instance, may hurt the health even more. These dieting may lead children to consistently overeat later in their life despite adequate nutritional intake, because the brain is unable to learn how to correlate taste with nutritional value. It may also lead to eating disorder, like anorexia nervosa (starving oneself) or bulimia nervosa (eating and then deliberately throwing up).