Weight loss for Teenagers - a modern time problem

As sad as it may be, but "weight loss for teenagers" is a term which has to be used more and more frequently, because more and more teenagers are nowadays overweight, even obese.

Actually this should not be much of a surprise, if you take a serious look at the lives of our "youngsters". The favourite pastime is playing video- or computer games. Sitting in front of the screen and using the joy-stick or the mouse is definitely not burning a lot of calories. Compared to former years, the teenagers nowadays are using their body considerably less than the teenagers then. Not much of a surprise there that in the 60ies and 70ies almost nobody talked about "weight loss for teenagers".

Physical Activity - Less Overweight

In these years it was common, absolutely normal for children and teenagers, to be in a sports-club, to play football, handball or any other sports. This was the main pastime for the youth. Back home from school, doing the homework and then out of the house. And it is easy to understand that with a lot of physical activity, the problem of overweight teenagers was almost non-existent. No need therefore, to even look for programmes for "weight loss for teenagers".

Also, in these years, the diet the people were living on was a lot healthier and reasonable. 99 % of the meals were eaten at home, cooked by the mother or grandmother. Eating out, eating in restaurants was the exception, fast-food restaurants were almost non existent. So, we had a situation, where the youth did a lot of sports and ate healthy home-made food. And then the sporting activities got less, due to the rise of computers, TV and video-games.

Unfortunately for food and calories, we find the opposite. Although the teenagers are less involved in sports or other activities, the caloric intake is a lot higher. Mostly thanks to junk-food supplied by "restaurants" which invest a lot of money in advertising and very little in the quality of their food. Just living on grease, white bread and fries is for sure not the diet to avoid at a later stage the handling of "weight loss for teenagers".

Fresh Food - Good Diet

Now, what can we do, to not even encounter the problem? We have to start already at an early stage. If you feed your children at a young age already the wrong food, clearly, they will keep on eating the wrong stuff. Do you raise them on fresh food, vegetables, fruits and wholegrain products, they will be used to it in their teenage years and stay away from junk food. Staying away from this kind of diet, gives us a much bigger chance, to stay away from the "weight loss for teenagers" problem.

But probably the most important factor in preventing a confrontation with the "weight loss for teenagers" problem is certainly, to raise the children in a way that they get used to sport and sporting activities. Get them to join a sports club, get them used to walk short distances. It is almost impossible nowadays, to get a teenager interested in sports or similar activities, if he is already overweight. But if you manage to get your child into the teenage age without getting overweight, then you have a very good chance that your child makes through the teenage years, without even thinking about "weight loss for teenagers".