Weight Loss Tips for Teens
Posted by lose weight | Tagged as: weight loss
The whole concept of weight loss tips for teens encompasses many general ideas and methods, although the focus tends to be more on diet than anything else, mainly because many teens have a tendency to opt for junk food over a healthy, home cooked option. This is an original article written for weightlossgo.com and is copyright protected. So lets look at what causes the need for teens to need to lose weight in the first place, as this is a generation that should be far fitter and healthier than the rest of us by dint of the way their bodies are primed for growth on their way to full maturity.
Weight gain in teens is mainly thanks to a poor diet of junk food that is compounded by a more sedentary lifestyle than past generations had. The reason for this must fall fairly and squarely on the shoulders of aggressive advertisers pushing the perceived desire for a wealth of fast food outlets and the junk food they produce. Couple this with the march forward in technology and a lessening of parental control or the respect given to parents from most teens and you have a generation of teens that would rather spend all their free time riveted to a computer, laptop, games console etc than getting out in the fresh air to interact with their friends in sports and energetic games such as cycling, skating etc.
So now we know what the cause is, we need a solution!
Oh boy, this is going to be tough. How can you tell a willful teenage boy that they should spend less time on the Playstation and more time kicking a ball around with their friends in the park? They likely will not see your side of the argument even if you try to instill the fact that they are getting fat and girls don’t go for fat boys! Most will simply shrug it off and tell you they prefer playing Warcraft or whatever to trying to attract a girlfriend.
So what about the girls? Here is less of a problem simply because a huge chunk of the media is obsessed with trying to sell the perfect slim figure and every product under the sun to get it! Teenage girls are under far more pressure from TV and magazines as well as their peers to be super slim and squeeze into the latest fashion clothes while having all the fashion accessories there are. Sure, there are still plenty of overweight teenage girls, but peer pressure and the relentless pounding of media ads is often enough to force them into doing something about it, of at least obsessing over doing something about it.
The answer is easy, of course. When it comes to working with the necessary tips for weight loss, we are talking about a change of diet to good, healthy food, ditching the junk burgers, pizza etc and switching from soda to water, plus doing plenty of daily exercise. Just implementing it is the problem. How do you convince a hormone fueled teen that they should not drink soda or eat pizza? Or that they should get out of the house and go for a daily run?
Ha! Good luck!
Nice blog, I like the ideas you put forward for teenage weight loss and all that goes with it. This must have been a difficult subject to broach as teens tend to think they know it all and us older folks are over the hill even when we’re only in our late 20s! Thanks for an interesting read.
That was an interesting take on weight loss for teens. With two teenage daughters of my own, I can fully appreciate the problems they face being pulled in two directions at once. On the one side is the peer pressure to be thin according to the gospel written by the glossy magazines and TV ads. On the other are the fast food restaurants that male it look so tempting to go eat a burger and fries with a huge milk shake and thousands of empty calories. And all this while they sit around all day either in front of the TV or a laptop. In my day, we used to get together and go out to actually enjoy outdoor pursuits that kept us fit and healthy. What happened?
This is the second time I have visited your Weight Loss Tips blog and found this to be an interesting article perfectly matching what I was searching for. I know how difficult it can be sometimes to convince a teenage daughter that she should look after her weight but to stay within boundaries that include not trying to look like those sick looking catwalk models that are painfully thin. Thanks for your hard work!
Jean
Hi jean, yep teenagers think they know it all and can be pretty single minded at times, but as long as you show them what works best in a way they can understand and make sense of, then you have a pretty good chance of getting them to see your point of view.
This is an informative post on weight loss for teenagers. Many people take regular medicines for their weight problem and this practice is filtering down to teens. There are life-long patients of weight loss, blood pressure, heart diseases, arthritis and other conditions and illnesses. These people get stuck on taking medicines on a daily basis for their entire life and why do they do it? Its really not necessary and if you have teenagers, don’t get them started on this road to misery.
Carl, its true that natural is best – all you have to do is convince your teenagers that you are right and those glossy magazines that promote pills and potions are wrong…
When you are trying to lose weight, the best way to do it is still by proper dieting and exercise. Avoid taking slimming pills at all cost, they do more harm than good.
Good advice Ally, pills are definitely a waste of money and potentially damaging to your health
Hi there, its true that many parents do not like to deal with obesity in children especially their own. Your blog is an eye opener!
Obese teenagers are often that way because of lax parental control, so its no wonder parents don’t like to talk about it in case people view them as failures. That’s not the way it should be and really, education is the way but the tough part is finding a way to get that education through to the teenagers who need it, as they are most often the ones resistant to being told what to do!
Hey, recently discovered this post about teens and weight loss and I have to say that it looks great. I fully agree with you that teens are the toughest to get to do anything you say to them. They are always right and you are always wrong, so maybe some reverse psychology will work there – like telling them to eat more junk food and drink more soda LOL! Have a great day, keep up the great work and I’ll definitely follow it. Lacy
Hi Lacy, your right on the mark there. I remember what a pain in the rear I was when I was a teenager, so why should anything have changed. Only difference is that I didn’t have techno gadgets to play with, so at least I spent a lot of time outdoors playing with friends doing energetic stuff like playing football, climbing trees and generally running around which kept my weight at the right balance. Teens today lead much more sedentary lifestyles because of computers, video games and TV, and that plus a diet of junk is why they’re the fattest generation of teens yet. Of course they won’t agree with that…
Many fat people are happy of being fat!
I understand where you’re coming from with two teen boys of my own who have problems with weight issues. A big part of that comes from too little exercise as they sit around the house watching TV and playing computer games far too much. I try to explain to them the damage they are doing to themselves in their developing years, but they don’t listen cause they think they know everything and I’m just a stupid adult!
Well, I got them to read your article and they actually sat up and took notice! Well, I don’t know what you have that I don’t, but they started going out more and using their skateboards that I bought them last Christmas and never used! They have made some new friends and have even become more interested in things they were never interested in before.
A big thanks to you for planting a good seed in their heads cause they are starting to grow into great young men already!
Dee