Being a teenage girl is often difficult enough without having to carry around extra pounds. Dieting often becomes a tedious chore, as you might lose and gain weight in your attempts to attain the ideal figure. If you feel that you need to lose a few pounds to feel more healthy, to participate in sports or to fit into the latest fashions, there are some ways you can be more successful with your weight-loss efforts.
Know Your Body
Accept your shape, and learn to work with what you have. Stand in front of a mirror, and assess your shape. If you are small on top and larger on bottom, you have a pear shape. If you are wider around the middle, you have an apple shape. If you are small in the middle and larger on top and bottom, you have an hourglass shape. Your frame might also be athletic, petite or medium. Athletic and medium shapes tend to be more muscular, whereas petite shaped girls have a slighter build.
Workout Tips
Work with your individual body shape. Pear shapes often need to focus on more aerobic exercise in their bottom half such as running, jogging, elliptical, dance, kickboxing and biking. They will usually lose weight in their lower halves last. Apple shapes also need aerobic exercise but may want to include specific exercises for their abdominal area using crunches and other exercises to target the area. Their middle halves will be the last to decrease in size on an exercise program. Hourglass shapes might want to focus less on the waist, abdominals and upper body so they do not add width to the shoulders. They will generally lose weight all over on a diet and exercise program.
Less Fat
Eat less saturated fat and junk food. Try to make the right choices at vending machines and fast food restaurants. Instead of getting a burger, get a grilled chicken sandwich with no bun or a salad. Use only half the dressing in the package to reduce fat intake. Instead of buying a package of chips at the vending machine, get a bag of peanuts. These usually contain more unsaturated fat, which is much healthier than the saturated form. If you are going to the movies with friends, choose non-buttered popcorn for a healthy snack. Eat ahead of time if you are going to a party or other event where you know there will be no healthy food choices.
Nutrition Labels
Learn to read nutrition labels on your foods at home. Let your parents know you are trying to eat healthier to lose weight, and go with them to the store to purchase food. Look at saturated fat and sugar content on food labels. Fat, both saturated and unsaturated, should be no more than 10 percent of your overall food intake.
Food Cravings
Limit your sugar intake to as little as possible as well. Cake, candy, ice cream and chips all contain high levels of saturated fat and sugar. You might find yourself craving foods at certain times of the month. Allow yourself small portions of sweet and fatty foods to decrease your chance of binging. For instance, if you are craving chocolate cookies, go ahead and have two, but limit yourself to that amount.
Fruits and Vegetables
Get most of your nutrition from raw fruits and vegetables. Eat salad and other vegetables in abundance. These foods are not only low in calories, but they are high in amino acids that contribute to burning fat. In addition, they will help your body to maintain hormonal balance and metabolize food at an optimal level. Consume 64 ounces of water daily as well. This not only will help you to feel full but also will flush your body of fat. If you drink your water ice-cold, it will increase your metabolism slightly, which will naturally contribute to weight loss.
Exercise
Include aerobic exercise in your daily schedule. Get your friends involved in your exercise program in order to stay motivated. Play sports or do activities that you enjoy such as tennis, swimming, basketball, baseball, roller blading, dancing, surfing or biking. Form an all-girls team, and challenge other friends to softball games or basketball games. Get one of your friends to go on a bike ride or play racquetball. You can also use your friends as a support system to keep you on your diet. When you feel like you are going to binge on something you know is not good for you, call a friend to come over and go for a walk, or just chat on the phone or online.
Extreme Diets
Do not starve yourself. Teenage girls need at least 1,500 to 2,000 calories per day, depending on their fitness regimens and heights. Starvation diets that limit calories to significantly lower than the FDA-recommended amount can cause the body to store fat. When you begin eating normally, the weight will usually come back, and sometimes even increase. In addition, diets that limit certain foods can cause nutritional deficiencies in teenagers who are still growing, including bone and muscle loss. Finally, starvation and extreme diets often lead to psychological disorders such as anorexia or bulimia, especially in girls, and can cause long-term damage to the body systems.
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