Teens use wrong methods to lose weight

Parents and physicians should follow the strategies of weight loss youth

Researchers at Temple University in the United States, stated that teens who are in high school may try to lose weight with bad habits such as smoking. In the analysis, data from approximately 44 000 young people were used, whose records are in the database Philadelphia Youth Risk Behavioral Survey.

With these data in hand, the authors divided the teens into different types of health behaviors, such as smoking, amount of daily physical activity, daily soda consumption and daily hours playing video games. Within these young people, most said trying to lose weight - approximately 75%. However, this same group reported smoking.

Many girls who were trying to lose weight said to hold at least 60 minutes of physical activity per day. However, the data of these adolescents showed high consumption of soda - regular, not diet. Since most guys said they did not perform physical activities and confessed play more than three hours of video games per day.

For researchers, this can happen due to lack of information from the adolescents themselves. The girls who exercise, for example, may not know that a cup of soda can invalidate a 30 minute walk. Therefore, parents and physicians should be aware, since they are responsible for giving the information of correct habits.

Teens who believe they are overweight suffer from low self-esteem

A survey by the Robert Koch Institute, revealed just how destructive the imposition of the media for the perfect body. The result of all this pressure on the self-esteem of young people and adolescents concluded that feel overweight is more harmful than it actually be and be at peace with the mirror. The psychologist and instructor of the Brazilian Society of NLP, Walkyria Coelho explains that self-esteem, with a simple definition, is related to autocredibilização. Ie, is how you value yourself. Without it clear how people spend belittle situations that previously caused you joy, alert.

The study involved the participation of almost 7000 young people aged between 11 and 17 years were weighed and classified themselves as too fat or too thin, besides answering a test on their daily lives. Of these, only 18% were actually overweight, but almost 55% of girls and 36% of boys considered themselves too fat (a).

The study was classified by Bärbel-Maria Kurth and Ute Ellert who wrote the article for the journal Deutsches Ärzteblatt International, as a distorted picture of reality, the major cause of many eating disorders.

This negative sentiment causes teens to change your entire lifestyle,

being very damaging to relationships of any kind. The experts point out that they do not want to minimize the effects of obesity on physical health. However, it is essential that these young people are oriented and aware about the actual physical condition they have.

To Walkyria Coelho, despite being hard to rebuild this abyss in which the person herself puts it, a few tips can make all the difference:

- When passing in front of a mirror, also note on their strengths. It's natural to be critical because we are trained to devalue us. Then do the opposite: look for the characteristics that draw more attention to you.
- The next step is looking at life less seriously. This is not to lose focus of your goals, but think of the positive aspects of difficult experiences.
- Can you believe, not everything revolves around wishful thinking only. It is important to focus thinking on attitudes that will make you reach your goal. In this case, more specific, if you want to lose weight, for example, do not think I do not want to get fat. Thinking this way, you automatically create a fat self-image. How about thinking I'll stay lean and chase the ideal weight?