Dieting is unhealthy for children and adolescents

bigfatscience:

There is no ambiguity in the research literature on this topic: Dieting and intentional weight-loss efforts are harmful for young people’s health.

When children and adolescents diet to lose weight they experience higher rates of depression, negative body image, disordered eating, and end up weighing more as adults than they would have weighed had they never dieted at all:

This five-year longitudinal study shows that adolescents who diet experience worse health outcomes that their non-dieting peers, and also gain more weight than non-dieters.

Another study demonstrates that dieting causes lower body satisfaction, and lower body satisfaction predicts the use of behaviors that place adolescents at risk for weight gain and poorer overall health. 

And parents’ dieting behavior can also harm their kids: Mothers’ negative body image and dieting behavior predicts their adolescent daughter’s disordered eating and negative body image.

Instead of dieting and intentional weight-loss, researchers recommend lots of fun physical activity, family meals, increasing fruit and vegetable intake, and promoting a positive body image as the best means of supporting adolescents’ long-term health and well-being.

– Mod D