Fast Teen Weight Loss

Your teenage years are had enough without having to worry about something like fast teen weight loss . Unfortunately, today's society pushes on the youth of today harder than ever to fit a specific body image that may not always be the best for us or our bodies. Fast teen weight loss therefore has sometimes taken a nasty turn to unhealthy weight loss and our goal should be to maintain healthy and happy lives.

A great place to start looking at a diet for a teenager is with the food pyramid that the FDA and USDA have been using to demonstrate what an average health diet should look like. You will need a certain amount of lean meats, whole grains, vegetables and fruits. The goal of any diet should be for balance and overall health - even if it's a diet designed to help you lose some weight.

The USDA food pyramid suggests that to maintain a healthy diet and weight to eat foods in the following serving amounts daily. From most to least - Grains/Cereal/Breads - 6-11 servings. Vegetables come in at 3-5 servings while fruits are in for 2-4 servings a day. Next come dairy and meats with 2-3 servings a day each. Last are oils and fats which should be consumed only as needed.

There is a factor that the food pyramid does not account for and it's truly important. In fact, it's importance can not be emphasized enough. What is it? It's water! You have to make sure that you are taking in at least 8 glass of water a day, more isn't a bad idea either. Of course, there is only so much of anything that is good for you and that's true with water as well. Oddly enough, too much water can kill you - but it's such an enormous amount of water that you have to consume that you really don't have to be overly concerned with it if you are just trying to maintain a healthy eating plan that will allow you to lose some weight.

Your goal with any diet designed for weight loss will be to take in fewer calories than your body burns throughout the day. This can be calculated by looking at the nutritional information on the label of the food products you purchase. These labels are easy to read, but if you feel a bit overwhelmed by them at first, the FDA's and USDA's website has excellent reference material on reading and understanding the standard nutrition information label.

Keeping your meals squarely planned out will enable you to more accurately control what may be the most important aspect of any dieting plan. That important aspect: Portion control. You have to keep control of just how much of a certain kind of food you are taking in and by doing so you will really give yourself a significant advantage when it comes to controlling your total caloric intake. When these important facts are combined with a solid and effective teenage weight loss program, you can expect a rewarding outcome.

Most American's have only a very vague idea of what a proper "Portion" or serving size is. Normally speaking you can ask 100 people on the street how large a single serving of green beans is and they will have no idea. You probably won't get a single correct answer either. To give you an idea of how far off most people are, let's test you and see how you do. If you wanted to eat a single serving of cereal, how much cereal should you eat? A bowl? A cup? A handful? Do you know? The answer is 1 ounce of ready-to-eat cereal or a half cup of cooked cereal.