If you're a teen who's considering losing weight, know the benefits and avoid the risks. Safe teenage dieting to achieve and maintain a proper weight can improve the quality of your life and health. Improving your appearance raises self-esteem and prevents depression. Greater energy for activity and less stress on your heart, muscles and bones let you do more of the things that you want to do. Avoid crash diets that can harm your body, and make healthy dieting a daily habit instead.
Better Mental Health
A daily diet that gets complete nutrition from all the food groups and adheres to calorie limits will naturally control your weight, putting an end to the teenage cycle of dieting and weight rebound. Eating healthy on a regular basis removes the need for drastic diets that you can't sustain. The safest diets are simply balanced meals with relatively low fat and calories, which allow you to enjoy a variety of foods. Relief from the stress of dieting, plus the ability to lose pounds and maintain a healthy weight can make you feel better about yourself. The National Institutes of Health notes that a nutritious diet that includes breakfast makes you more mentally alert for better school performance.
More Social Opportunities
Overweight teens say they face discrimination, which may be based on appearance or physical limitations, according to the Office of the Surgeon General. Carrying too many pounds can make exercise difficult and even dangerous. Achieving a proper weight can make you more mobile and improve your endurance for sports, hikes, field trips and other fun activities.
Fewer Medical Problems
Maintaining your weight by daily dieting lessens your consumption of unhealthy substances like salt, sugar and fat. This helps you avoid problems such as high-blood pressure, high-blood cholesterol and high-blood sugar, which teenagers are experiencing at an increasing rate. These conditions can become chronic problems if they progress toward incurable heart disease or type 2 diabetes.
Better Adult Health
Dieting to control your weight as a teenager will pay off for a lifetime. Enhanced nutrition reduces your chances of getting osteoporosis or macular degeneration in later years. Lower weight and fewer detrimental nutrients such as fats and sugar leave you less likely to develop heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, reproductive problems and some forms of cancer.
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