Doug PollardTeenage Girls Starving to Control Weight
I don't know how many of you are aware of a national survey that was done of 8,900 teenage girls between the ages of 12 to 18 has revealed that 1 in 5 either starve or vomit up their food.
The study also cited a dramatic rise in the number of girls resorting to smoking and laxative abuse.
The results of the study, collated from 57 schools, showed that 18% of girls had starved themselves for two days stretches hoping to lose weight, this increased 9.9% from the study done in 2000.
It was revealed that 11% of girls used vomitting for weight loss, up from 3.4% while 8% of girls said that they had delibrately used cigarettes to suppress their appetite and control weight, up from just 2.4%.
University of Sydney research Jenny O'Dea said that the findings represented a depressing new trend. "The constant publicity surrounding Australia's obesity epidemic may be driving more girls to take more drastic measures to slim down" she said "The slim ideal has become slimmer since the year 2000, and I think girls are still under a lot of pressure to get there quickly using these dangerous methods,"
O'Dea also said that the methods girls are using to control their weight don't work as fasting was ineffective and unhealthy but other methods such as vomitting and laxative abuse were life threatening because they could induce a heart attack and smoking was a dreadful weight loss tool as it carried a whole new set of dangers.
"Females have known for decades that smoking gives an `oral fix', but what an awful way to control weight."
Dr O'Dea said the trend was occurring across all social classes, not only in wealthier white girls as was widely believed.
Affected girls also tend to be healthy weight or slightly overweight, but not obese.
Dr O'Dea said the findings showed the need for sensible, balanced weight messages in schools. "We need to be very careful with the weight messages we give our girls because we can't have them going to these extremes," she said
I find these results extremely disturbing, I don't believe it's just from hearing all the news surrounding obesity, I believe it's also pressure from other sources such as boyfriend, friends (ever heard of something called competitive dieting?), multi media (Magazines like Girlfriend and Dolly and also TV constantly showing images of these extremely skinny models walking along catwalks in Milan and Paris and images of skinny celebrities like Nicole Ritchie and Angelina Jolie) and just in general the pressure of society who expects every girl to now look like they've just come out of a photo shoot.
We really do need to start encouraging girls that if they eat healthily and eat 3 decent meals a day (breakfast, lunch and dinner), a healthy and reasonable amount of excerise will help keep the weight off and discouraging these dangerous methods of losing weight.
Also educating people on what an eating disorder is because it is bound to happen to you or one of your friends or guys, it could be YOUR girlfriend.
The media show also shun extremely skinny celebrities because I think it's time that teenage girls realized that just because Lindsay Lohan and Mischa Barton are extremely skinny doesn't mean that they have to be just like them as I believe a lot of celebrities portray having a negative body image as OK.
The study also cited a dramatic rise in the number of girls resorting to smoking and laxative abuse.
The results of the study, collated from 57 schools, showed that 18% of girls had starved themselves for two days stretches hoping to lose weight, this increased 9.9% from the study done in 2000.
It was revealed that 11% of girls used vomitting for weight loss, up from 3.4% while 8% of girls said that they had delibrately used cigarettes to suppress their appetite and control weight, up from just 2.4%.
University of Sydney research Jenny O'Dea said that the findings represented a depressing new trend. "The constant publicity surrounding Australia's obesity epidemic may be driving more girls to take more drastic measures to slim down" she said "The slim ideal has become slimmer since the year 2000, and I think girls are still under a lot of pressure to get there quickly using these dangerous methods,"
O'Dea also said that the methods girls are using to control their weight don't work as fasting was ineffective and unhealthy but other methods such as vomitting and laxative abuse were life threatening because they could induce a heart attack and smoking was a dreadful weight loss tool as it carried a whole new set of dangers.
"Females have known for decades that smoking gives an `oral fix', but what an awful way to control weight."
Dr O'Dea said the trend was occurring across all social classes, not only in wealthier white girls as was widely believed.
Affected girls also tend to be healthy weight or slightly overweight, but not obese.
Dr O'Dea said the findings showed the need for sensible, balanced weight messages in schools. "We need to be very careful with the weight messages we give our girls because we can't have them going to these extremes," she said
I find these results extremely disturbing, I don't believe it's just from hearing all the news surrounding obesity, I believe it's also pressure from other sources such as boyfriend, friends (ever heard of something called competitive dieting?), multi media (Magazines like Girlfriend and Dolly and also TV constantly showing images of these extremely skinny models walking along catwalks in Milan and Paris and images of skinny celebrities like Nicole Ritchie and Angelina Jolie) and just in general the pressure of society who expects every girl to now look like they've just come out of a photo shoot.
We really do need to start encouraging girls that if they eat healthily and eat 3 decent meals a day (breakfast, lunch and dinner), a healthy and reasonable amount of excerise will help keep the weight off and discouraging these dangerous methods of losing weight.
Also educating people on what an eating disorder is because it is bound to happen to you or one of your friends or guys, it could be YOUR girlfriend.
The media show also shun extremely skinny celebrities because I think it's time that teenage girls realized that just because Lindsay Lohan and Mischa Barton are extremely skinny doesn't mean that they have to be just like them as I believe a lot of celebrities portray having a negative body image as OK.
Life Stuff
Eating disorders are more talked about now than ever before. Awareness days, screening days, pamphlets in high schools, books and any other way to reach out and educate people. Some of this is backfiring though, more detailed information is out there and it's giving girls/women ideas.
That said, at my high school competition between friends and on sports teams was really bad, and the coaches fueled it for most of them(this was 10 years ago). I can think of one girl that the gymnastics coaches forced into treatment, and that was only because she was passing out in classes.