Laura Schoenfeld: I have a lot of thoughts about this question, so I’ll just try to go through a few of them because there are a bunch of different things that are somewhat complicated about this particular issue. One thing that I want to question is, do you know why these girls want to lose weight? If they only have five to 15 pounds to lose, what is the reason that these girls want to lose weight? I would be very careful because if you’re trying to help these girls lose weight and they don’t have to lose weight from a health perspective, there are a lot of issues that can come up with their self-esteem, with their focus on their body. I appreciate that you are being careful about creating any disordered eating at this young age, but I do want you to really dig into why these girls even want to lose weight in the first place because if it’s five or 10 pounds, my question is, why is that necessary? If they don’t really know why they want to lose weight and they’re just kind of being teenage girls that are always in the wanting-to-lose-weight category or they just feel like they’re not super-happy with their bodies, but they don’t really know why they want to lose five pounds, they don’t really have a real reason for it, it’s going to be hard to get the buy-in that you’re looking for.
Now, the thing is I don’t actually think that’s a big deal. If they’re not buying into this because they’re not super-motivated to lose five pounds, that’s actually OK. I would actually rather you focus on figuring out why they care about that last five or 10 pounds, what losing that weight would even do for them, if anything, because five pounds usually doesn’t make a huge difference to anybody’s health. It doesn’t sound like they’re overweight, so losing weight is probably not even really necessary for them. There are girls who are really skinny when they’re teenagers and then they gain weight later, there are girls that are a little heavier as teenagers and then they’ll lose weight later, and there are some people that stay the same size throughout their whole lives, and I would be really cautious about focusing too much on weight loss when it’s something that has nothing to do with their health. If you’re trying too hard to get them to want to lose weight because they’re not really motivated, then you may end up triggering something in them that actually causes them to feel body dysmorphia or dissatisfaction with the way they look or develop a more disordered approach to food. It sounds like they’re generally doing pretty well if they’re mostly eating pretty healthy, occasionally having some junk food at the cafeteria.
As far as the team sports pasta dinners are concerned, it depends on what sport they do, but that’s not super-unusual for athletes to have some kind of gathering with food ahead of time, ahead of a game or a meet or whatever sport that they’re doing. I’m not saying that they have to eat a ton of pasta, and if they don’t feel good eating gluten, then maybe not eating the pasta when they’re there is a good idea for them, but I would be really cautious about putting any sort of morality on the pasta dinners because if the girls don’t have any real problems with the pasta, if they’re not feeling ill or having any major symptoms of any health issues from eating that pasta with their teammates, I actually wouldn’t go after that as being such a big deal. If they’re feeling like they’re overdoing it at those dinners, maybe just talk to them about moderation and learning how to eat more reasonable portion sizes. I was an athlete in high school and college, and I know there’s a lot of pressure, like peer pressure, to eat a lot at these events, but if you feel like they’re not having the performance that they want with their sports or if they don’t feel good after overeating at these events, maybe focus on that instead of focusing on the weight. It sounds like there are times when they’re sticking to the recommendations and they’re not losing any weight, and that’s probably because their bodies don’t really need to lose weight. If they’re not overweight and they’re eating healthfully, there’s no reason that five pounds should just come off. Not all women are going to have these super-fit looking bodies just from eating a Paleo diet.
I’m trying to see if I’m actually answering this question just because this topic… just having gone through the body dysmorphia stuff in high school and college and being on a sports team and being around people who maybe eat a ton of food and never gain any weight or, on the other hand, people who have a hard time with their weight and if they don’t eat well, then they will gain weight. There’s just a lot of really bad mindset and self-esteem stuff that can come out of this. I know you’re being cautious, but I would really be treading very carefully around this. Really talk to the girls about what their goals are, and see if you can come up with a goal that is not about their appearance or their weight. I actually really feel like focusing on the weight, in general, is a bad idea, and if they are athletes, then focusing on their performance is probably a much better approach. Now, that doesn’t mean they won’t lose weight if you’re focusing on their performance, and to be honest, performance is something that I tend to focus on with a lot of my recreational athlete clients, and the weight loss can come from that. But focusing on the weight as the outcome goal for a girl this age—or actually, really for anyone, but especially a girl this age—is really not very helpful and could cause problems in the future.
So the main recommendation I have is talk to them about what their goals are, see if you can get them to come up with goals that are a little bit healthier, like a performance goal or if they have any sort of symptoms from eating these foods. Like, say, after they have all this pasta they have IBS-type symptoms, then maybe the goal should be to eliminate any symptoms that they have or to improve their performance at their sport. Focusing on the weight is not appropriate for these particular girls. Really, with teens, focusing on weight is somewhat dangerous, even if the child is overweight. So really try to get them buying into the healthier diet because of the way it makes them feel physically, and also if they do take their sport seriously, they’ll want to do better at it. And if they don’t care about their performance and they don’t care about their symptoms, you can’t force them to care. You’re going to do your best job to help them improve, but ultimately if they don’t have that inner drive to do things the way that you think they should be doing them, it’s not going to happen, and you can’t force them to.
I think I sound a little harsh, answering that question, and like I said, it’s mostly because of my experience being a teenage athlete and the whole diet and weight loss thing being such a ridiculous negative thing that I went through when I was that age, that I would really be very remiss if I didn’t point that out because I don’t think that most teenage girls need to be worrying about five to 10 pounds. Anyway, that was a little bit more personal for me, but hopefully that helps. Those are the kinds of questions that I really enjoy answering, so feel free to ask more like that.