Fed Up With Teens & Weight!

I am a little disturbed by the number of healthy teens who e-mail me because they are obsessed with being thin. I'm not talking about teens who have legit weight problems. I'm talking about the ones who are in a normal weight range, but are obsessed with looking like celebrities and even going to the extremes of copying their diet plans.

Many are dieting and damaging their body's metabolism before they reach the age of 13. And what they don't realize is they are making adulthood even more difficult when it comes to weight management.

It is sad. Parents, please wake up! Your already-healthy children are reading magazines and are aspire to look as thin as some of these unhealthy celebrities.

They are getting teased at school for their size and e-mailing me for help. I'm sorry but I won't give them dieting advice. Not to be mean, but it's too difficult for me to determine via e-mail if the weight loss desires are truly necessary or stem from low self esteem.

Plus, young people should seek advice from a licensed professional when it comes to weight loss and dieting and I am not a physician.

We live in a weight-obsessed society. And while my site, flat-stomach-exercises.com does discuss tips for flattening the stomach and lose weight, I want to point out that it's for people who really need it. It's not for already-healthy or too thin teenagers who think something's wrong with their bodies.

It's time to start teaching our young people to love themselves and to stop believing they have to have a super thin body to fit in and be accepted.

I was teased as a child for being too thin and I remember thinking I had to gain weight to fit in. When I look back on those days, it wasn't that I was that unhappy with my body, but I was comparing myself to my peers instead of loving myself enough the way I was.

Even though I had the opposite problem of many teens today, the point is that I still wanted to fit in. I felt something was wrong with me if I didn't look like everyone else, and that's the same thing many of these teens who want to lose weight are feeling. Society glamorizes being thin so children grow up thinking that's the only way to be.

We've got to stop the war on weight and start teaching young people to love themselves. And if you are a teen, please read this article.