Avoiding Teen Eating Disorders:
Tips and Tricks for Belly Fat Weight Loss

Where to start for avoiding teen eating disorders?

Here's 3 easy tips about attitude and making small changes for a healthy diet and belly fat weight loss.

The teens in your life need all the support you can give for them to feel good about themselves, and to eat nutritious food.

• How to encourage healthy attitudes? What are healthy attitudes?

Here's help for being pro-active about teen eating disorders with attitudes and tricks that researchers say work:

1. Celebration or Guilt for Teen Eating Disorders?

Food, pleasure and enjoyment go hand in hand. Worry and stress are linked with over eating.  But what about guilt?

Have you ever seen anyone with a "forbidden food" like a piece of cake saying, "I should not eat this..." and then go ahead and eat it anyways?

• Researchers set out to find out whether feeling guilty is helpful or not for staying slim. 

In a study called "Chocolate cake. Guilt or celebration?" researchers checked which attitudes were helpful for losing weight when presented with a treat: feeling guilty or feeling like celebrating.

• They discovered that those who associate chocolate cake with celebration did better at losing weight than those who felt guilty. 

In fact, the researchers said that guilt did not have any motivational value at all, but instead went hand in hand with feelings of having less control over one's eating behavior.

Over a period of three months, those experiencing guilt lost less weight than those who associated chocolate cake with celebrating.

(Kuijer RG1, Boyce JA, Appetite.) 

2. Simple Nutrition and Teen Eating Disorders

Here's tested ideas for improving teen eating.

Kathleen E. Leahy, a researcher at Penn State University, found that it is best to begin by using a few new tricks. What are some of these?

• They made pasta dishes healthier, with fewer calories by adding "hidden"  vegetables.

• They were able to "sneak" veggies into pasta sauce without being noticed, or at least, not being rejected.

In the study, the nutritionists made two different pasta dishes — one had broccoli and cauliflower blended into the sauce, and less calories, and the other, with no vegetables but with higher calories.

• The children and teens did not notice that one was a vegetable-blended pasta, and the other not.

The difference was that the vegetable one was packed with high amounts of fiber, vitamins and antioxidants, as compared to the other.

• "The kids and teens could not really tell the difference and ate a consistent weight of pasta," said lead researcher Kathleen E. Leahy about the study at Penn State University.

Leahy also discovered that the teens who ate the pasta with blended vegetables ate 17 per cent fewer calories than those who ate the pasta with a higher calorie count.

• TIP: Adding grated zucchini and carrots to spaghetti sauce works even better.
  

3. Why Milk Beats Pop for Belly Fat Weight Loss

Sugar drinks are among the biggest causes of weight gain. Even diet pop!

Researchers say it's important to have your teen grasp the fact that sugar-laden drinks and soda pop can make them fat – even the diet stuff.

Here's why drinking milk is better for staying slim and avoiding teen eating disorders:

• A large, comprehensive study of the beverages people drink in the U.S. involving 10,000 adults, teens and children, concluded that the trend of drinking sugar-laden drinks instead of milk, is contributing to people gaining weight. (Environ International Corporation)

Does drinking milk really keep you slim?

The pre-teen, teenage girls and women ages 19 to 49 in the study, who drank more milk and fewer sweetened beverages of all types, had a significantly lower body mass indexes than those who drank little milk and more sweetened drinks.

Milk for Losing Weight & Teen Eating Disorders?

Teens, both boys and girls, have a better chance of less belly fat if they ditch soft drinks in favor of milk, according to a U.S. study presented at an obesity conference.

• A study of Hawaiian teenage girls found that they lost both weight and belly fat by eating only half of the three daily dairy servings recommended  in the U.S. Food Guide.

"It suggests that consuming more dairy would help you have a slimmer middle and that it can also help you with maintaining weight," Rachel Novotny, chairwoman of the nutrition department at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, reported. "But you need to watch the soda intake."

• Researchers found that an increase of one cup of milk or a small piece of cheese resulted in loss of belly fat and a loss of up to 2 pounds in body weight.

The benefits, however, were offset by drinking soft drinks!

This might sound like a dairy ad, but Ms. Novotny said her research was not funded by the dairy industry.

Belly Fat Weight Loss and Drinking Milk

Here's more for avoiding teen eating disorders:

Canadian researchers also found that girls and women who avoid calcium have bigger waist sizes than those who eat either moderate or large amounts of dairy with calcium.

• Teens and women who ate 600 milligrams of calcium had a significantly different body mass, fat percentage and waist size than those who consumed less.

Can dairy fat also be part of healthy teen eating?

Yes. Robert Gibson, director of the Child Nutrition Research Center in Adelaide, Australia, said his studies suggest that dairy consumption is a good source of omega-3 fatty acids.

They are among the requirements for helping young girls build bone mass needed to ward off osteoporosis in later life.

• "The big message is don't be frightened of dairy fat because along with dairy fat comes the other good things that come with dairy food."

Ideal Protein Supplements for Teens

Dr. Harry Elwardt, Health Guardian

We hope that we have inspired you to use new tricks and attitudes against teen eating disorders.

Low fat diary has been in fashion for so long that it is difficult to think that a healthy eating teen would eat cheese and yogurt and drink milk for belly fat weight loss!

For guaranteed nutrition, you may want your teen to add a tasty protein - fruit and veggie shake.

Meet Dr. Harry Elwardt, who has a PhD in nutrition:

• With Dr. Harry's protein shake, you are getting the best in nutrition, and getting set up to be SLIM FOR LIFE.

• With added vitamins and minerals, this tasty shake may be easier and nutritious than feeding your teen vitamin pills or a sweet for breakfast!

SLIM FOR LIFE: A Greens drink & protein powder for weight loss

Add an attitude of celebration, and your kids can be set up for a healthy life without the hurdles of teen eating disorders.