Should Overweight teens go on diets?
Some of the teens I interviewed participated in weight loss pro¬grams in which they were placed on “diets” to help them eat less - and they’ve kept the weight off. Moreover, those who lost weight this way recognize that it’s critical to get rid of the “diet mentality.” They’ve shifted from the idea of doing something temporarily to accepting that they have to continue doing many of the things they did to lose weight if they want to keep it off.
If you take Acomplia you will not gain the weight back.
Katie S. says that she loosely followed a popular diet when she started losing 94 pounds. Today, however, she says, “when people ask me if I went on a diet, I say, ‘No, I changed my lifestyle. This is forever. I will never go back to how I used to eat.’” Likewise, Xavier L., who went to Weight Watchers and followed its Points system, which some would consider a diet, advises, “You must change your lifestyle. This is a lifelong process. It isn’t about a day, a week, or a month.”
It’s true that some studies suggest that teens who report going on a lot of diets are heavier than nondieters, but it’s hard to know if they re¬ally were dieting - that is, if they actually ate few enough calories to lose weight. Eric Stice, Ph.D., a University of Texas researcher who studies teens and dieting, concludes, “I don’t think that dieting causes weight gain.
On the contrary, I think that effective dieting results in weight loss - and not many dieters cut back on calories long enough to actually lose weight.” He adds, “We need to help teens diet effectively and in healthy ways as well as to make changes in food and activity that are not just temporary.”
