The Dangerous World of Teen Weight Loss
By: Valerie Tay
Tags: Health, Life, Life Lessons, Teens, Teen Health

The Dangerous World of Teen Weight Loss

A member of my family, let’s call her Mary, is 14 years old. She is a normal teenage girl. She goes to high school, watches movies, reads, does her schoolwork, and spends a lot of her time on social media. There is just one problem. She’s on a diet.

It’s not one of those “get your health up” diets. It’s an “I have to lose weight because I feel fat” diet. Which, even though she’s only 14, should technically be okay if she was doing it right. But she’s doing it wrong. Very, very wrong.

Mary is basically starving herself.

Every day, she lives off of a tiny breakfast, maybe a yoghurt. Then for lunch, she has a very small salad. For dinner, she has another very small salad. That’s it. That is all she eats on a regular day. Sometimes, she even skips meals. By her logic, if she eats less, there will be less food in her, therefore she will be losing weight.

I’m 16 now, but I had a phase like this myself. When I was Mary’s age, I was very self-conscious and I always thought my body was ugly. I was too fat, my thighs were too big and my face was too round. I was constantly in tears about how terribly ugly I felt. So I decided to do something about it. I stopped eating normal-sized meals. I would eat very small portions of only what I thought were the healthiest foods. Like salads. And I lost weight, sure. But I became moody. My immune system was weak, and I would frequently get sick. My family didn’t like being around me because of how down I was.

Thankfully, I grew out of this phase. I am now comfortable in my own body. If I start to feel uncomfortable, I know that the right thing to do is eat healthier and exercise, which I do regularly. I am happier than I ever was before.

But now, Mary is in the same boat as I was. As a teen, not an expert, I think two main factors contributed to my, and now her, “weight loss journey”.

Social media. You hear this a lot. Social media negatively impacts the brain. It’s an addiction. As a social media user myself, I can tell you that it’s definitely an addiction, but that’s for another day. But how does social media usage cause someone to put themselves on this kind of terrible diet? Social media is constantly shoving the idea of weight loss and the perfect body down the throats of already vulnerable teens. First, they encourage a teen’s self-consciousness by showing videos and images of people and celebs with “perfect” bodies and, like, zero per cent body fat. This is essentially telling them “your body is not perfect. Look at this one. This is the one you want.” When teens see this kind of content, it reinforces the idea that they are not beautiful. Their own body is ugly and imperfect. They become uncomfortable in their body even though there is no reason to be, especially since so much of that content is faked and edited. Second, social media apps start to show you how you can make yourself thinner. There are things like detox teas, which are basically just laxatives. These kinds of things are often promoted by celebrities and influencers, and following them could result in you feeling fat and ugly compared to them, then going out and buying this to become thin, like them. The only way many teens seem to think they should lose weight is by starving themselves. Weight loss can only be achieved, as many dieticians and doctors have already said, through a healthy diet and exercise. Simply not eating does not constitute a healthy diet. It’s unhealthy. When you skip meals and barely eat anything every day, you become negatively impacted, physically and emotionally. It will turn into a deficiency of essential nutrients, which will result in feelings of weakness and tiredness. From there, things in your external life can get much worse. Consequences you don’t expect. You’ll get sick more often. You might not be able to focus at school. This isn’t the diet that will do good things for you.

Teens are an extremely vulnerable group, which is why social media content and ads that promote unhealthy or fake forms of weight loss and only one “perfect body” are targeted at us. We need encouragement from the people around us to help us realize that we are ALL perfect. We need to take care of ourselves, but we can’t do that without the support of our family and our friends. We need to learn to love our bodies without the strain of social media BS.

Mary, I don’t know what to tell you except that there are other things you could be doing to make yourself be comfortable in your skin. I don’t want you to experience all the bad things that come with this kind of eating behaviour. I’m truly sorry that you think you need to do this to yourself. I wish you could talk to me about this, either for my advice or just someone to listen. Your body is beautiful. But if you can’t seem to feel comfortable in it and you want to make a change, do so in a way that is healthy. You will be all the happier for it.