Weight Matters for Young People

A Complete Guide to Weight, Eating and Fitness

Rachel Pryke

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781138431393
• eBook ISBN:
  9781315345017
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Service Industry
• Index: Business

Official publication of Obesity Awareness Week 2006

If only weight didn't matter to young people! But it does - and, in reality, it should. So how can today's youngsters overcome the relentless hype to look like a cool stick insect and combat the enormous pressure from the food industry to eat vast quantities of junk? What can families do to help a teenager that has low self esteem or may even be struggling with an eating disorder? Weight Matters for Young People takes an in depth look at how young people can assume responsibility for their own health, ranging from the various factors that influence teenage decisions right through to practical nutrition. The TOP teen Health Plan assesses the strengths and weaknesses of current lifestyle, whilst the Food Frequency Framework solves family meal dilemmas. Common dieting regimes are assessed to see which are safe or worthwhile, there is a chapter on eating disorders and finally an A to Z of common weight-related conditions. Weight Matters for Young People is a complete reference book that will put young people confidently in charge of their own health. Health workers will find safe, evidence-based nutritional information plus answers to common weight-related queries and plenty of further resources.

Section 1Looking at things from a young person's viewpoint

The first section takes a look at issues from a young person’s viewpoint to see what factors influence their choices, interests and emotions, because these all contribute to whether young people choose a healthy lifestyle or not. Exploring risk taking is a normal part of growing up and this will often have a big effect on lifestyle. Parents gradually lose some of their influence whilst young people look to other role models and sources of information to guide their views.

Chapter 1 Does weight really matter to young people?

DOI: 10.1201/9781315377285-1

This chapter looks at barriers that prevent young people from eating healthily and making good lifestyle choices. It outlines the basic concept of a healthy diet that is suitable for young people, using The Balance of Good Health eating plan (seep. 5), and explains the decision-making process, particularly in relation to food and exercise, so that young people can take charge over creating a healthy lifestyle.

Does weight really matter?

It should and it does. Most young people are highly sensitive to body image, selfesteem and fitting in, which means trying to keep weight in line with other young people in order not to stand out from the crowd. But far from being merely a cosmetic detail, lifestyle trends that are established during the teenage years are very likely to set the scene for adult life too. Fitness and weight have a huge effect on health throughout life, affecting the types of illness people are prone to and their sense of self-esteem and body satisfaction. This in turn affects how people feel on a daily basis, colouring the choices they make and the reactions they get from other people. In short, a healthy weight is one of life’s fundamentals - get it right and it can be put on the back burner. Get it wrong and the repercussions run and run.

Healthy habits that begin in adolescence are likely to persist into later years, but unhealthy trends are also likely to persist. Hence finding ways to help young people put health higher up their own priority list is a great investment for their short- and long-term futures.

This book shows how to put weight into perspective with lifestyle overall, so that a person’s weight is not the focus of life but becomes a simple indicator of how a person values him or herself. By getting this perspective right - which means valuing all aspects of ourselves so that we feel able to make good choices whatever the issue - young people can look at lifestyle improvements without the need for short-term diets or forays into risk-taking behaviour.

Achieving this involves making sense of practical nutrition and improving ordinary meals, but also understanding about eating tendencies and how people make food choices, because these are affected by so many different things. Whilst young people need to learn to make their own choices - and mistakes - parents can still help to improve their lifestyles, without argument and conflict.

Why do young people need a different approach from both children and adults?

Adolescence is a time when emotions take on huge importance and colour everything, in particular the decision-making process. Young people have specific needs in terms of their diet because they are still growing, and in terms of lifestyle because this is a time when most young people experiment to some degree with taking risks. The specific nutritional needs of young people are discussed in Chapter 5.

Young people are no longer children who can be simply told what to do, but neither do they have the experience and maturity that are acquired during adulthood. In order to engage young people in thinking about their health it is important to provide information that feels both relevant and achievable, otherwise many will continue to give their health no thought at all.

Depending on age, young people may find themselves unable to make choices either at home or in a legal sense, despite feeling quite sure of their own opinions. Equally, some young people find themselves dealing with situations that even grown adults may struggle with, but with no adult experience to fall back on for guidance. They may be hindered from taking advice because of:

• a lack of information as to why the advice is relevant to them
• a desire to find out things for themselves
• a need to make choices that reflect who they are, which sometimes leads young people to rebel
• practical barriers that prevent young people from carrying out intentions. For example, despite a desire to eat healthily, a young person may not be in charge of shopping and cooking at home and so have difficulty in changing eating habits
• poor communication. If communication is strained and awkward between young people and adults then opportunities to discuss problems are limited.

It is normal for young people to pass through difficult times when mistakes are made. The approaches in this book aim to help young people move on into adulthood, taking with them positive messages about healthy eating and exercise and valuing themselves, so that even if success is limited initially, they will have a clear idea about the basics of a healthy lifestyle ready for when they want to make it a priority.

With so much information available, how do young people know which advice to follow?

Information overload can be almost as problematic as no information at all. As far as health is concerned information is everywhere, from advertising and aggressive marketing, health campaigns, rumours, myths and government edicts. It is enough to make some people switch off altogether, meaning that health is ignored, whilst others fall for bizarre lifestyles and fad diets because of clever marketing, misleading claims or conflicting views about whether they are worth trying.

In essence, a healthy diet is very simple - plenty of fresh, simple ingredients and not too much of all those tempting, rich, sugary and fatty foods. However, many people find that achieving a healthy diet on a regular basis can take initial effort and understanding, because hectic lives in combination with a powerful food industry make convenience foods highly attractive. By gradually changing the approach to meals and eating habits, using the varied approaches outlined in this book, a healthy diet can become the most enjoyable way to eat, and once people learn to enjoy healthy food then that is what they will continue to choose.

This book uses the United Kingdom (UK) national food guide, a system called The Balance of Good Health, to explain how to get the basics of the diet right so that occasional rich treats will not be a problem. The Balance of Good Health is easy to follow and uses a great deal of common sense too. The system is suitable for all people from the age of five upwards because it contains plenty of the essential building blocks that everyone needs, particularly when actively growing (although the under-fives may benefit from making the diet a little more energy-dense).

Two other eating plans are outlined later in the book: the Food Frequency Framework shows how to adjust family meals to fit with The Balance of Good Health (see Chapter 7) and the Top Teen Health Plan, towards the end of the book (seep. 173), explores ways for young people to tweak an existing diet of junk and convenience meals so that nutrition is improved. A family guide to help young people adopt this plan is outlined in Chapter 6.

Introducing The Balance of Good Health: the perfect diet for young people

The Balance of Good Health shows the proportions of each of the five different food groups that a healthy diet should contain. Obviously there is no single meal plan that would suit everyone, but certain principles apply:

• the diet should be well balanced, and that means varied
• individual preferences should be taken into account
• the diet should be practical, bearing in mind lifestyle and the rest of the family.

What is meant by a ‘well-balanced’ diet? Too much of some things are just as bad as not enough of others. Without having to read labels or calculate recommended daily allowances (RDAs), it is possible to eat a well-balanced diet by choosing as wide a variety of foods as possible. This will give a hotchpotch of all the necessary ingredients whilst avoiding dietary deficiencies that a more restrictive diet may lead to.

The Balance of Good Health is extremely flexible and so can easily take individual preferences into account, such as vegetarian or halal eating. The Food Frequency Framework and the Top Teen Health Plan both demonstrate ways of making a healthy diet as practical as possible.The Balance of Good Health

Figure 1.1UK national food guide: The Balance of Good Health. Reproduced by kind permission of the Foods Standard Agency.

How to use the guide

The plate in Figure 1.1 shows what proportions of the five different food groups should appear in the diet over an average day. Roughly a third of mouthfuls (not calories) should come from fruit and vegetables; another third should come from bread, potatoes and cereals, especially wholegrain. The remaining third of the diet should be made up of protein-containing foods, such as meat and fish, dairy products and milk, plus a small amount of fatty and sugary foods.

• This balance does not need to be achieved at each meal, but should guide eating throughout the day. So, for example, breakfast consisting of cereals and milk is fine if fruit and vegetables feature in meals and snacks later in the day.
• The guide does not require any calorie counting, but guides what proportions should appear on the plate.
• Portion sizes for a particular person tend to be fairly constant - a person who usually has two potatoes is unlikely to suddenly choose five, and so it doesn’t matter that the guide does not specify exactly what a portion size is. Details of suitable fruit and vegetable portion sizes for young people are described in Chapter 5.
• By getting these proportions roughly right throughout each day, there is no need to worry about individual foods because the overall balance will be good. Eating fatty and sugary foods too frequently will upset the balance, and may mean that healthier parts of the diet are ‘pushed off the plate’.
• For foods made up of several ingredients, such as pies, looking at the main listed ingredient will indicate which group it fits best. This will be the first item listed in the ingredients on the packaging. Some foods will fit into two food groups, such as cheesy potato bake. The Food Frequency Framework looks into this in more depth.
• No foods are banned in the guide; if the existing diet contains too much fatty or sugary food, then it can be improved by making those portion sizes smaller or less frequent whilst increasing the number of portions of healthier items.
• The diet will be healthier if there is variety within each food group. For example, eating five portions of carrots each day might provide plenty of vitamin A, but will not supply the full variety of vitamins that a mixture of fruit and vegetables will.
• Although cooking methods are not specified in the guide, it is recommended to use low-fat methods such as grilling rather than frying, and to choose lower-fat meat and dairy products on the whole.
• Fruit and vegetables can be fresh, frozen, chilled, canned, dried or served as juice - all will provide an array of vitamins, minerals and fibre.
• Where possible, choosing wholegrain cereals and breads will maximise the amount of micronutrients and fibre in the diet.
• For celebrations, put The Balance of Good Health to one side and enjoy whatever is on offer!

By aiming to eat healthily at least some of the time and by generating interest and enthusiasm for a good lifestyle, young people will find that they feel happy to miss out some of the junk food and explore how to make their diet work for rather than against them.

What influences the way that young people like to eat?

Despite having an idea about which foods are healthy and which are not, young people don’t always use this knowledge. What governs the choices they make? This question has many answers, which can be divided into three themes:

1. a young person’s upbringing
2. the lure of different foods
3. physical factors such as fullness, hunger and energy requirements.

The next section of this chapter looks at each theme to build up an understanding of why young people eat the way they do and thus find avenues for change.

A young person's upbringing

By the time a person reaches the teenage years they have usually settled into an eating routine with a clear knowledge of what they do and don‘t like. In general, they have already learned to make choices as a result of the following factors:

• copying parents and other role models
• the choice worked last time, i.e. they are choosing something familiar
• the choice might annoy parents, and that can be highly satisfying
• the choice is relevant to them, i.e. they sense it’s good for them
• they couldn’t think of a good alternative, i.e. that’s how the family does things
• the choice was easy rather than an effort
• they had some control over the choice, even if that meant getting it wrong, i.e. it was a choice!

Familiarity is a vital part of a food's popularity

Despite a baby’s tendency to spit out new foods, if the same thing keeps reappearing it becomes familiar so that eventually the baby will accept it. This works more easily if it is cooked or served in a variety of ways, especially in combination with other more familiar ingredients. It usually takes anything from five to ten exposures for a new food to become familiar and this principle continues to apply as childre...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• About the author
• Acknowledgements
• Section 1: Looking at things from a young person’s viewpoint
• Section 2: Nutrition
• Section 3: Weight and eating problems
• The Top Teen Health Plan
• Appendix 1: Height and weight charts showing normal growth
• Appendix 2: Useful resources
• Index