Transform Your Teen’s Life: The Ultimate Guide to Effective Weight Loss Programs for Teens

Losing weight as a teenager can be tricky. Your body is still growing, and you need the right nutrients to stay healthy. This article provides a detailed overview of weight loss programs designed for teens, incorporating recommendations from medical professionals and highlighting the importance of a holistic approach that includes healthy eating, physical activity, and mental well-being.

Understanding the Need for Teen Weight Loss Programs

During adolescence, bodies undergo significant changes, and it's not always easy to tell if a teen has overweight or obesity. Weight loss is a popular topic, and it's important to approach it safely and effectively. Teens with obesity are at greater risk of various health problems, including asthma, diabetes, sleep apnea, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, liver disease, and bone and joint problems. They may also experience low self-esteem, anxiety, or depression, leading to social withdrawal. Addressing weight issues early in life can have a long-term positive impact on health.

Family Healthy Weight Programs (FHWPs)

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), and the American Psychological Association recommend family healthy weight programs (FHWPs) as a safe and effective treatment for childhood obesity. FHWPs are multi-component behavioral interventions designed to help children with overweight or obesity achieve a healthier weight through positive behavior changes. These programs are comprehensive, family-based lifestyle change programs that involve children, their families, or caregivers. CDC-recognized FHWPs meet AAP's recommendation for dose and intensity to provide 26 or more contact hours over 3 to 12 months. FHWPs can improve parental stress, self-efficacy, and quality of life.

Here are some examples of CDC-recognized FHWPs:

Mind, Exercise, Nutrition…Do It! (MEND): This program is designed for families with children aged 2 to 13 years who have overweight or obesity. MEND combines physical activity, healthy eating, and behavior change to encourage safe, effective weight management and lasting lifestyle changes.
Healthy Weight and Your Child: Adapted from MEND, this program is implemented at participating YMCA locations for families with children aged 7 to 13 years who have obesity. It engages children and adults in nutrition education and physical activity to elicit positive change and help families learn skills for healthier lifestyles.
Smart Moves: This program is for families with children aged 7 to 18 years who have overweight or obesity. Smart Moves combines nutrition education, behavior modification, physical activity, and parental/caregiver support. The goals are to nurture children's self-esteem and healthful behaviors while improving body mass index, body composition, and insulin resistance. The 12-week program includes two 45-minute exercise sessions and one 40-minute nutrition or behavior modification session weekly.
Healthy Weight Clinic: Conducted in the primary care setting, this program is for families with children and young adults aged 2 to 20 years who have overweight or obesity. It focuses on achieving positive behavior change, setting goals, managing obesity-related conditions, and linking families to community resources.
Family-Based Treatment (FBT): This program is for families with children aged 2 to 18 years who have overweight or obesity. FBT emphasizes healthy eating, physical activity, and positive parenting. The goal is to empower families to practice new behaviors in a variety of settings to sustain healthy changes. FBT can occur in person or virtually, in a group setting, and through individual sessions with the child and parent or caregiver.
Building Healthy Families: Tailored for people living in areas with less than 50,000 residents, this program is for families with children aged 6 to 12 years who have obesity. It works with families, especially children, to identify healthier food choices, modify unhealthy behaviors, and increase physical activity.

Dietary Guidelines for Teens

As you get older, you make more choices that affect your body and your health. Choosing healthy foods and drinks, being active, and getting enough sleep are key for your physical and mental health. The calories you get from foods and drinks give you energy. The Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2020-2025, offer the following advice for teens:

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Vegetables: Teens ages 14 to 18 should try to consume about 2 1/2 to 4 cups of vegetables each day. Vegetables contribute many valuable nutrients like fiber, potassium, and vitamin A-which can help you have a healthy heart, kidneys, and eyes, and may protect you from infections.
Fruits: Teens ages 14 to 18 need about 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 cups of fruit a day. A variety of fruits can help you get essential vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients. Apples, bananas, berries, and other fruits are packed with vitamins, minerals, water, and fiber. Although 100% fruit juice with no added sugar can count toward that goal, try to drink no more than 1 cup a day. At least half of your fruit should come from whole fruit, rather than juice.
Grains: At least half, or even more, of the grains you eat each day should be whole grains, rather than refined grains-also called processed grains. Choose whole grains, such as whole-wheat bread, brown rice, oatmeal, and whole-grain cereal. Eating whole grains that are high in fiber may make you feel full sooner during meals or when having snacks. This might help you consume fewer calories and manage your weight.
Protein: Protein is essential for building bones, muscles, cartilage, skin, blood, and hormones. Protein contains nutrients called amino acids that are important for your growth and health. Unsalted nuts and seeds-including almonds, cashews, pumpkin seeds, and nut butters such as peanut butter-are sources of protein. But you may need to avoid certain nuts and seeds if you are allergic to them.
Dairy: Dairy products can help you build strong bones and teeth, especially during your teen years. These foods and beverages provide many nutrients, including calcium, magnesium, potassium, zinc, vitamin A, and vitamin B12. Some plant-based beverages-such as those made with rice, almonds, oats, or coconut-may be good sources of calcium. Calcium can help you build strong bones and teeth. Vitamin D also helps to keep bones healthy. Vitamin D is added to several foods and drinks, such as some dairy products, orange juices, and plant-based beverages and yogurt products.
Added Sugars: Less than 10% of your daily calories should come from added sugars.
Fats: Some types of fat-like liquid olive oil, canola oil, or other vegetable oils-can be healthy in small amounts. However, saturated fats are not healthy. Saturated fat is often solid at room temperature, such as butter and the fat inside or around meat.
Sodium: Teens should try to consume less than 2,300 mg of sodium per day, which is just 1 teaspoon of table salt.

Practical Tips for Healthy Eating

Plan Ahead: Plan ahead before the conversation about weight comes up. Look for an opening.
Ask Questions: When you do talk about weight with your teen or adolescent, lead with questions: What are your goals? What do you love doing? How does weight keep you from those goals? Do you know someone whose weight has caused them illness? What was it like for them? Did you hear about them having diabetes, heart disease, liver disease or anything else?
Eat a healthy breakfast every day at home or school: Breakfast helps your body get going.
Pack healthy snacks or lunches on school days:
Eat dinner with your family members or other loved ones:
Get involved in grocery shopping, meal planning, and cooking your meals at home:
Watch out for large portion sizes: Just one super-sized fast-food meal may have more calories than you need in a whole day.
Notice how some advertising tries to get you to choose high-fat foods and sugary beverages: Ads may use sports stars, celebrities, or social media influencers to endorse these products, and they may link the products to attractive teens doing exciting activities.
Be Mindful of Sweetness: Some foods, like fruits, are naturally sweet. Other foods and drinks are sweet because sugar is added to them.
Before making any changes to your eating plan, check with your parents, guardian, or health care professional to make sure these options are right for you.
Choose foods and beverages low in added sugars.

The Importance of Physical Activity

Physical activity should be part of your daily life, whether you play sports, take physical education (P.E.) classes in school, do chores, or get around by biking or public transportation. Teens spend much of their day sitting down in classes or doing homework. Spending time on your smartphone, on the couch watching TV, or playing video games can add even more hours of inactivity to your day. It’s recommended for teens to have one hour (60 min) of moderate-to-vigorous activity daily.

Take a walk: Taking a walk can be great for your health, if you are able to do so safely.
Be active with friends in P.E.: At school, try being active with friends in P.E.
Challenge your friends and family members to be healthy with you.
Join a sports team: If you are interested in joining a sports team, ask your school guidance counselor or a P.E. teacher or coach about costs.
Look for dance and other fitness and exercise videos: Look for dance and other fitness and exercise videos at your local library, online, on social media, or on some TV channels.
Routine chores: Routine chores, like cleaning your room or taking out the trash, may not get your heart rate up the way biking and running do, but they keep you moving.

The Role of Sleep

Like healthy eating and getting enough physical activity, getting enough sleep is essential to your physical and mental health. Teens should aim for 8 to 10 hours of sleep each night. Developing healthy sleeping habits can help.

Addressing Weight Loss with Your Teen

As a parent, you know your child best, and know their personal triggers and sore spots. When you do talk about weight with your teen or adolescent:

Lead with questions: What are your goals? What do you love doing? How does weight keep you from those goals? Do you know someone whose weight has caused them illness? What was it like for them? Did you hear about them having diabetes, heart disease, liver disease or anything else?
Let them know there is hope! Many people give up after trying a few things, or treat a temporary setback as a total failure.
Avoid offering simple solutions: It’s important for both parents and children to understand that there are many factors that contribute to obesity, such as: Genetics, Diet, Lack of physical activity, Hormones, Certain medications, Emotional factors.

Medical Weight Loss Strategies

The proven, most effective weight loss treatment is through a multidisciplinary medical weight management center, like the one Connecticut Children’s offers. Here, patients are evaluated thoroughly by multiple different specialists that:

Treat root causes of weight gain or obesity like endocrine disorders or certain tumors.
Identify opportunities to adjust or change medications that cause weight gain in collaboration with your prescribing doctors.
Evaluate your child’s psychological relationships with food and weight.
Discuss the pros and cons of different weight management strategies tailored to individual needs

A reasonable and healthy goal involves:

A slow and steady approach to lifestyle change-aim to lose on average one to three pounds a month.
Making gradual changes-then, when they get to their goal, maintain it.
Understanding it’s not all on them-saying to someone with obesity, “You need to diet and exercise more,” will not work or be enough because obesity is incredibly complex.

Weight Loss Medications

The decision to use weight loss medications can be complex. Families and their medical teams need to take into account every medication and supplement your child is already taking for any conditions they already have. Blood tests before starting these medications are absolutely necessary to help avoid any negative side effects. Medications are never prescribed at the first visit, to help ensure safe use. These medications can be effective in the short term, but they are just one tool in the toolbox. Without the lifestyle changes to go along with the weight loss, the effect won’t last. Typically, medications must be taken long term or even for life to maintain weight loss (for example: like blood pressure medication). Stopping them often leads to weight regain. The most durable long-term treatment is still surgical.

Some weight loss (anti-obesity) medications can be used to treat obesity in teens:

Liraglutide and semaglutide are both injection medications that work like natural hormones by slowing down the process of digestion in the stomach. They also increase the release of insulin which impacts the nutrition center of the brain.
Orlistat, which is approved for use in teens 12 and older, has been available for many years. It is essentially a fat blocker-instead of absorbing the fat, it exits the body through waste.
A medication combining phentermine and topiramate has also been approved for teens 16 years and older.

Bariatric Surgery

Although surgery sounds extreme, it is a well-tested, consistent, effective, and safe method to lose a substantial amount of weight and keep it off for many years. The surgery is safest at younger ages and before multiple medical problems develop. It is also more effective at lower weights. If your child has a BMI >40, I strongly recommend at least having a conversation with one of our surgeons about the pros and cons. It is important to consider that the weight loss effect from surgery can last for decades, and can seriously reduce and even eliminate risks of later liver disease, heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, joint pains/injuries, and many cancers. Many of the children we see already have signs of liver damage or even scarring of the liver, which can be reversed by significant weight loss at early stages. The procedure takes about 1.5-2 hours, and requires an overnight stay in the hospital after. Most patients go home the following afternoon requiring no narcotic pain medications for home.

General Weight Loss Tips for Teens

Make it a family affair: Ask your mom or dad to lend help and support. The goal is to be healthy and make lifestyle changes that will benefit the whole family. Teens who have the support of their families tend to do better.
Watch your drinks: It's amazing how many calories are in the sodas, juices, coffee drinks, and other sugary beverages. Simply cutting out a bottle of soda or sports drink a day could save 150 calories or more. Drink water or other sugar-free drinks to quench your thirst. Choosing nonfat or low-fat milk is also a good idea.
Start small: Small changes are a lot easier to stick with than drastic ones. For example, give up regular soda or reduce the size of the portions you eat. When you have that down, you can make other changes, like eating vegetables with dinner or walking 10 minutes after school.
Stop eating when you're full: Pay attention as you eat and stop when you're comfortably full. Eating more slowly can help because it takes about 20 minutes for your brain to get the message that you are full. Sometimes taking a break before going for seconds can keep you from eating another serving.
Notice if you are hungry before reaching for a snack: If you eat when you feel upset or bored, try to find something else to do instead, like taking a walk around the block or checking in with a friend.
Schedule regular meals and snacks: You can better manage your hunger when you have a predictable meal schedule. Skipping meals can lead to eating more throughout the day. Adding 1 or 2 healthy snacks to your 3 regular meals can help curb hunger.
Eat more fruit and vegetables: Ditch the junk food and dig out the fruits and veggies! Fruits and veggies can help you feel full and keep your heart and the rest of your body healthy. Include a fruit or vegetable with each meal.
Avoid fad diets: Fad diets promise quick weight loss. They often involve giving up certain foods or ingredients or eating only particular foods. They don’t work in the long run and can be dangerous to your health.
Don’t use diet pills or weight loss supplements: Most of the claims these products make are not proven. They often contain hidden ingredients and may cause unwanted side effects, like bloating and diarrhea, or more serious health problems. If you are thinking of trying supplements for weight loss, talk to your doctor first.
Don't give up favorite foods: Don't tell yourself you'll never again eat your absolutely favorite peanut butter chocolate ice cream. Making all treats forbidden is sure to make you want them even more. The key to long-term success is making healthy choices most of the time.
Get moving: Don't get stuck thinking you have to play a team sport or take an aerobics class to get exercise. Try a variety of activities from hiking to cycling to dancing until you find ones you like. Everyone has to begin somewhere. It's fine to start out by simply taking a few turns around the block after school and building up your fitness gradually. Find other ways to fit activity into your day. Walk to school, jog up and down the stairs a couple of times before your morning shower, help your parents in the garden, or dance like nobody is watching - anything that gets you moving. It all adds up to reach your goal of at least 60 minutes of exercise every day.
Build muscle: Adding strength training to your exercise routine can help you reach your weight loss goals as well as give you a toned bod. Try weights, kettlebells, resistance bands, pilates, or push-ups to get strong.
Forgive yourself: So, you were going to have one cracker with spray cheese on it and the next thing you know the can's pumping air and the box is empty! Drink some water, brush your teeth, and move on. Everyone who's ever tried to lose weight has found it challenging. When you slip up, the best idea is to get right back on track and don't look back. Weight management is about long-term success.

Seeking Professional Support

If you are worried about your weight, talk with a health care professional. If your health care professional advises you to lose weight, work together to develop a plan for reaching and staying at a healthy weight. Depending on your age and how fast you are growing, you may not need to lose weight-only gain weight more slowly. Your health care professional or a specialist in weight loss or healthy eating-such as a registered dietitian-can help you develop a healthy eating plan tailored to your needs and preferences.

When addressing obesity with your teen, it’s vital to emphasize supporting healthy, balanced eating and exercise. If negative self-image is significantly impacting a teen’s mental health, consider seeking professional help. Discuss media literacy and help teens critically evaluate the images and messages they encounter on social media.

Read also: Inspiring Health Transformation

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