What do you eat in a normal day? A lot of teens might eat junk food after school or at night time. It's really easy to munch on chips while watching a movie, or grab a twinkie after school.
There have been a few studies that indicated that teens should not go on "diets" but should just make a few changes and see if that helps. I think the reason is that dieting becomes a habit, and many teens that go on diets actually increase their chances of becoming obese adults, especially if they cut back too much. That's not exactly the goal
In my personal and completely unprofessional
opinion, your best bet may be to just focus on the little things and then see what happens. Write down everything you eat, and share it with us if you want. Then try to make each meal just a little bit healthier. Eat smaller portions of pasta, use less butter, don't drink sugary cokes or snack cakes, that sort of thing. There are probably a lot of small changes you can make that will be virtually painless. The salad with chicken sounds lovely
Maybe you could even help shop and cook with your Mom. Though admittedly, that's the last thing I wanted to do when I was 15
And of course try to become more active. I was a skinny teenager, despite all of the fried fish dinners and gravy and biscuit breakfasts that we grew up on. But I took a brisk one hour walk every afternoon, back and forth to my best friends house. Plus we walked to school. Our family had a large garden to tend, so I spent a good deal of time outside weeding or raking. It helped that we didn't have cable tv to distract us, lol, and our only video game was Pong
So I guess my point is that it's not just what we eat, but also how we live.
If you'd like to share a little more about the kinds of foods you like and what you eat, and the things you like to do, we'd love to help out any way we can
CheeseBurger&Thighs , 03-08-2006 04:35 PM
Suzanne 3FC , 03-08-2006 05:20 PM
