From the Teen Scene: Should You Go On A Diet?

What do the hula hoop, “high-protein diets,” and wearing your clothes backwards have in common? They are all fads. Fads come and go, but when it comes to fad diets, the health effects can be permanent–especially for teenagers.

Not all teens who go on diets need to lose weight. Pressure from friends, and sometimes parents, to be very slim may create a distorted body image. Having a distorted body image is like looking into a funhouse mirror: You see yourself as fatter than you are.

A national survey of 11,631 high school students conducted by the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that more than a third of the girls considered themselves overweight, compared with fewer than 15 percent of the boys. More than 43 percent of the girls reported that they were on a diet–and a quarter of these dieters didn’t think they were overweight. The survey found that the most common dieting methods used were skipping meals, taking diet pills, and inducing vomiting after eating.

“The teenage years are a period of rapid growth and development,” points out Ronald Kleinman, M.D., chief of the Pediatric Gastrointestinal and Nutrition Unit of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. He explains that fad dieting can keep teenagers from getting the calories and nutrients they need to grow properly and that dieting can retard growth. Stringent dieting may cause girls to stop menstruating, and will prevent boys from developing muscles, he says. If the diet doesn’t provide enough calcium, phosphorus and vitamin D, bones may not lay down enough calcium. This may increase the risk of osteoporosis later in life, although more studies are needed to confirm this.

Instead of dieting because “everyone” is doing it or because you are not as thin as you want to be, first find out from a doctor or nutritionist whether you are carrying too much body fat for your age and height.

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