Teenagers - what is your problem?

What problems?
There are many. However this blog wants to concentrate on healthy eating habits. So if you are not eating healthy, what will happen?
Often, bad eating habits means overeating or undereating (malnutrition) and often this is closely related to not eating a balanced diet.

At our age, we are really concerned about our weight, especially the girls. This is due to influences from our friends (peers) and from the media (magazines, TV, films). The pressure to conform to a certain western view of beauty (a skinny body for girls and muscles for boys)is immense, enough to cause stress and worries.

Lets take overeating. If we overeat we become overweight. This is because we are taking in (consuming) more calories than we burn. Some of us don't like sports and remain rather inactive. The extra calories are turned into fat, and we simply become fat. If this is not taken care of, we will become obese, and that's when our weight problem becomes a health problem. Fats become deposited around our arteries and vital organs like the heart. This will lead to serious health problems later on when we grow older.



How to lose the excess weight?
A lot of us know that the way to lose weight is to go "on a diet". And often we want to lose this weight very quickly. Overnight if possible.

Sudden weight lose is bad for you. You often end up gaining back the weight you have lost. The method of dieting without a doctor's advise and is unhealthy. Some choose drastic measures of using crash dieting - by denying the body food (starvation diet). Others will eat as normal but will voluntarily vomit out the food. Yet others, turn to diet pills. These methods do more harm than good.

This brings us to the other problem of undereating/malnutrition - when you are not eating the way you should.Some just do not eat at all. This is sometimes called eating disorders. The disorders have strange scientific names such as anorexia nervosa, bulimia and compulsive eating.

Anorexia nervosa




Anorexia nervosa or simply anorexia, is actually a mental problem. The problem is often related to girls. The girls have in their head an image that they are fat. Every time they look in the mirror, what they see is a fat reflection of themselves. They become very obsessed with their weight, becoming very stressed, constantly worrying about her image. You can recognise a person is suffering from anorexia if she is excessively thin. Skin and bones. She might exercise excessively and has a fear of food, making excuses to avoid food or sometimes she will hide food and declare they have eaten.

Bulimia

This is an eating disorder where a person eats a large amount of food, due to an urge to do so, then induce vomitting to get rid of the food shortly after. The other characteristics of a bulimic is much like the anorexic.

Compulsive Overeating



This is a disorder too - when you use food to feel good after something bad had happened to you. Food becomes an addiction. Therefore the person then suffers from being overweight. This person becomes stressed when told about his/her weight problem and then he/she turns to food to destress, coming back to the same point that started the problem in the first place, in one big circle. The person hides behind his/her weight using it as an excuse. He/she also has a low self-esteem.


Watch the video on Healthy Eating Tips-Avoid Bad Eating Habits