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During adolescence, the body goes through many physical changes—changes that must be supported by a balanced, healthy diet.
Eating a varied and balanced healthy diet should include essential vitamins and vital elements, among the main nutrients: iron, vitamin D and calcium.
Eating right doesn’t mean giving up your favorite foods. This includes eating a variety of foods and cutting back on foods and drinks that are high in fat and sugar, such as sodas, chips, cakes, and chocolates. These foods should be consumed less frequently and in smaller quantities.
Tips to help you eat right
Don’t skip breakfast
Skipping meals will not help you lose weight, because it is in the morning that the body must be charged with energy and a full supply of macro- and microelements. Not having received the necessary portion of useful substances, the body will begin to work according to the “camel” mode, putting any food that enters the body into fat deposits. As a result, skipping breakfast can lead to obesity.
Five servings of fruits and vegetables
Fruits and vegetables are good sources of many vitamins and minerals that the body needs during adolescence. Aim to eat at least five servings of a variety of fruits and vegetables a day.
Limitation
Cut down on foods and drinks that are high in fat, sugar, and salt, such as sweets, chocolate bars, cakes, cookies, sodas, and chips, which are high in calories. Eating too many calories can lead to weight gain and being overweight.
Water balance
Aim to drink six to eight glasses of fluids a day – water and skim milk.
Even unsweetened fruit juice is not suitable, as it contains fructose and sucrose. The daily dosage of drinks from fruit or vegetable juice and smoothies should not exceed 150 ml per day – this is a small glass.
Feeling tired
If in adolescence there is a feeling of fatigue, sleep disturbance (mainly observed in girls), then the body needs iron. It is important to saturate the diet with foods fortified with iron.
Vitamin D
Vitamin D helps maintain healthy bones and teeth. We get most of our vitamin D from sun exposure as a provitamin, but it is also available in some foods.
Calcium
Calcium helps maintain strong bones and teeth. Good sources of calcium are milk and other dairy products, and leafy green vegetables.
Foodstuffs | Serving size | Calcium content (mg) |
---|---|---|
Almonds | 50 ml | 75 |
Chinese cabbage (bok choy), after cooking | 125 ml | 85 |
Broccoli, after cooking | 125 ml | 50 |
fresh figs | 6 fruit | 150 |
Fruit yogurt low fat | 175 ml | 215 |
Sour-milk yogurt | 175 ml | 300 |
Hard cheese | 50 grams | 360 |
Fresh skimmed milk | 250 ml | 300 |
orange juice | 125 ml | 150 |
rice | 250 ml | 300 |
boiled soy | 125 ml | 90 |
Boiled beans | 125 ml | 100 |
Salmon boiled or canned | 300 grams | 180 |
Boiled white fish or canned sardines | 400 grams | 180 |
Fascination with diets
Diets that promise rapid weight loss are often not nutritionally balanced, meaning the body won’t get the vitamins and minerals it needs. Also, diets, as a rule, are characterized by short-term results. And for adolescence, such stresses with sudden changes in weight can adversely affect the state of health and hormonal levels.
Diet rules for weight loss for teenagers
It should be noted that a healthy diet for teenagers should be prescribed exclusively by a dietitian. If you develop a healthy diet for weight loss on your own, you can provoke the development of irreversible negative processes in a growing body.
There are some very important rules to follow when losing weight teenagers:
- you can reduce the calorie content of the diet up to twenty percent of the norm (for girls, the norm is 2500 kilocalories, and for boys the norm is 2700 kilocalories);
- the diet should contain fifty percent of healthy carbohydrates, twenty-five percent of fats and proteins;
- four or five meals a day (meals should be without skipping and at the same time);
- for breakfast you need to eat carbohydrate and protein foods;
- for lunch you need to eat hot liquid food (first courses);
- for afternoon tea and dinner you need to eat low-calorie foods: vegetables, boiled meat, fish;
- maximum rejection of fried and fatty foods;
- physical activity at least three times a week.
If you take into account all these rules, it will be easier to lose weight, and the process will be as effective as possible.
Exceptions and recommendations
A healthy diet should exclude the following foods: candies, nutrition bars, soda, chips, mayonnaise, ketchup, sausages, sausage, fast food and sugary baked goods, fried burgers and fried potatoes. The diet should include whole grain cereals, soups, rye bread, seafood, boiled meat (chicken, pork, beef), dairy products.
Potatoes are allowed to be eaten twice a week only in boiled or baked form. Pasta can only be made from durum wheat, cooked al dente (soft on the outside and slightly hard on the inside). For bowel problems, it is recommended to stop eating legumes or reduce their consumption to a minimum. In no case should you refuse bread, you just need to get into the habit of eating bread in a slightly stale form or in the form of crackers.
It is important to arrange a fasting day for yourself once a week, during this period you can drink fat-free kefir, eat buckwheat boiled in water, and eat apples (green or yellow). Fasting day involves the use of a maximum of 1000 kilocalories per day. It is absolutely impossible to abuse such days.
Consider a healthy diet menu for the week.
Day one: breakfast – two toasts with cheese and butter, one soft-boiled egg, a medium-sized tomato and tea without sugar; second breakfast – an apple and one hundred grams of fat-free cottage cheese; lunch – two hundred grams of spaghetti with vegetable salad; afternoon snack – boiled cauliflower with carrots + a glass of fat-free kefir; dinner – fish baked with herbs and a glass of tomato juice.
Second day: breakfast – three egg whites, green tea with honey and one toast; lunch – lean borscht, mashed potatoes and a steamed cutlet; afternoon snack – any three fruits (bananas and grapes are not allowed); dinner – vegetable salad, feta cheese and baked chicken breast.
Third day: breakfast – oatmeal with milk, tea with crackers; lunch – pumpkin-carrot soup puree, cottage cheese casserole; afternoon snack – fruit and yogurt; dinner – vegetable salad with tuna and a glass of tomato juice.
Fourth day: breakfast – milk rice porridge and tea without sugar with crackers; lunch – mushroom soup with three baked potatoes and a glass of berry compote; afternoon snack – apple charlotte – one serving, a glass of warmed milk; dinner – vegetable salad with baked fish.
Fifth day: breakfast – oatmeal porridge on the water, hard-boiled egg, toast; lunch – a handful of dried fruits; afternoon snack – baked green apple with cottage cheese; dinner – ratatouille.
Sixth day: breakfast – pancakes with green tea; lunch – vegetable soup, pasta with chicken breast; afternoon snack – unsweetened yogurt with a bun; dinner – salad with crab sticks and avocado.
Seventh day: breakfast – two toasts with cheese and butter, green tea without sugar; lunch – soup with pumpkin, cream and broccoli; afternoon snack – fruit; dinner – vegetable salad and chicken with cheese (baked).
Contraindications to a healthy diet
A healthy diet has no contraindications, since its principle is a balanced diet with wholesome and healthy foods. This method of nutrition is also suitable for women during pregnancy and lactation, and even for older people.
For maximum effect, it is recommended for teenagers to take up any kind of sport: running, swimming, athletics, basketball, etc. Sports will not only affect the figure, but also improve the entire body, and will positively affect the posture of adolescents.
Healthy nutrition for teenagers should be compiled by a specialist. Diets for teenagers are dangerous. Lose weight properly and harmlessly to the body.
- Sources of
- Mikheeva D. F., Mikheev E. R. – Proper nutrition for adolescents. – 2018
- Basic principles of nutrition for children and adolescents. – Moscow: Medicine, 2015 – 248 p.