USA Today thinks going through puberty is the same as getting fat
Over on YPulse blog, a fantastic critique of a USA Today story on young girls and weight:
At first I was stunned that girls who had nutritious eating habits and worked out at least once a week gained 5.5 pounds. I was even more surprised that those who ate small portions and worked out at least five times a week still gained three pounds. How could this be? What does this mean for the rest of us who never work out and slurp double-whip mocha lattes five days a week?Teen Girls' Fear Of FatThen I realized that the girls they surveyed were between junior high (14) and college (22) ages. Of course they're gaining weight, they're going through puberty! Their bodies are changing from little girl to grown-up. We should be alarmed if they aren't gaining weight, because that would mean they aren't going through the proper stages of adolescence.
The article says that "most of the older girls had reached their full maturity and their weight gain was more likely to be unhealthy." I'm not a doctor, but even at 18, 19 and 20, it seems like girls could still be growing. That means that maybe 10% were close to full maturity.
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USA Today must be using that BMI thing - which doesn't account for muscle mass. A teenage girl working out 5+ times a week would of course have more muscle or at least denser muscle tissue. At least that's my take on their observations.
And, if any of that working out includes resistance/or weight training, they're adding muscle, which is heavier than fat. [But speeds ups your resting metabolism, increases fat loss, etc, etc...]
Sorry, Tom had it in one.
Not to mention that girls who "limit portion size" and "exercise the most" tend to be the same ones who binge eat, binge drink, and yoyo diet.
Girls who are active without being obsessive about it, and who eat when they're hungry, and what they feel like eating (and I don't mean 20 hohos) on the other hand tend to be slender and healthy (not "skinny" nor "plump").
I didn't do a single thing to purposefully "control" my weight through my early 20s. I was slender, and it's only in the past few years (my late 20s) that I've started getting a little belly fat and exercising for the sake of exercising.
I did however gain about 20 lbs (from 100-120) between the age of 12 and 24. Not much extra height, but I went from being a twig of a pre-teen to having legs, hips and boobs -- most of that was all in the year I was 12 and it was a shock when my pants no longer fit. Such a shock that someone else on the playground had to point out that they were now tight rather than baggy.
Gaining 7 lbs in the late teens is healthy. 7 lbs is barely a pant-size! Exercise is great when it's healthy, but god this is obsessive. The USA Today article might think it's promoting a healthy lifestyle through promoting exercise, but ahem "ur doin it wrong".
(Not to mention that in their early 20's women's hips expand again making them look wider without necessarily gaining any weight.)
Mim, I agree wholeheartedly with your general feeling that obsessing about weight is not at all healthy, but I would add that not every healthy non-obsessed person will be "slim." There are different body types, and some folks will be perfectly healthy, eat/exercise in moderation, and be chubby or even "fat."
Anyway, I'm definitely very pleased to see someone calling out USA Today's weight hysteria. The last thing young women need to hear is that they shouldn't gain any weight after age 14. Jesus Christ.
I grew an inch taller between the ages of 18 and 21... It's possible.
Speaking of eating when and what you want - as a parent, I had a difficult time with my children's eating habits at first. My parents, as many have done, insisted that I clean my plate and limited my meals, other than a snack every so often to the three Required daily meals. They were both born in the mid 1940's so I'm sure this behavior was taught by their parents, who lived through the depression and the rationing that went along with WW2. Of course, I was going to insist that my kids do the same, clean their plate and eat at a specific time, luckily my wife stepped in and told me the facts about children and food.
My wife had learned from her smart mom and from books that children are naturally able to decide how much to eat and when. To enforce an idea that they should eat a certain amount will do nothing but give the children bad habits - just as limiting them to a certain amount of meals per day. Of course you have to provide a balanced diet and watch out for dangerous eating habits - too much, too little, but for the most part, kids are born with the ability to decide how much and when they should eat.
Surveys like this are why my ex-roommate (who, by the way, is spectacularly proportioned, flat belly, large breasts, not overweight in any way) drinks slim-fast regularly, complains about her "pudge" on her belly (which, even if she had, no one would notice because of her chest), religiously counts calories, and goes on crash diets ("I'm going on a yogurt and celery diet to lose 15 pounds").
It makes me sick and I'm always torn between telling her she's fine and just giving up cause she'll never listen.
I like to think I have a positive body image. I don't exercise nearly as much as I should, but I try to eat what my body wants to eat, and I do stay kind of active (at least in warm weather). I'm sure there's things I could work on, but I think I've found my body's correct weight, and I'm fine with it.
For people that exercise regularly and are still a little overweight - it's much more healthy to keep a little extra fat while keeping good cardiovascular health, than to starve yourself or to go on fad/unproven diets. My mother in law finally figured this out after years of eating very little and losing, then gaining weight - while always feeling bad. Now, she exercises every morning, watches her fat intake and eats 4-5 small meals a day - a little meat, whole grain foods, and vegetables. She eats very few fruits, even though she loves them - I think this is a habit left over from the Atkins diet. She takes a multi vitamin in case she's missing out on any vitamins/minerals she may be missing. She's hovering at 25 lbs more than she would like, but she feels much better and has much more energy.
Wait, you mean the extra mass isn't filtering in from the Fourth Dimension? (Or would that be Heaven? That's what the "Intelligent Growing" proponents might say.)
At age 15, at a height of 5'6" or 5'7" at the time, weighing about 130, my track coach pulled me aside to tell me he noticed that I'd put on weight. I was in amazing shape (particularly compared to my current 35-year-old body!), mostly muscle, but he was right that my body had changed. What had happened was that I was going through puberty and had added fat in all the appropriate places. I'm lucky that didn't trigger an eating disorder.
"I'm not a doctor, but even at 18, 19 and 20, it seems like girls could still be growing."
Well I'm not a doctor either, but it seems like the author here has a serious mental impairment. I recommend amputation.
In the words of Mr. Sturgeon: "Now mind you, this is only one man's opinion."
I was so embarrassed of the weight I gained through puberty. Then I discovered boys like boobs and hips.
Fear of this, fear of that, culture of fear...
Very old song lyric:
"It starts when you're always afraid..."
Girls are not going through puberty from 14 to 22. That is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.
Girls are, biologically speaking, women the moment they have their first period. Period.
Boys come a year or two later, but there is no normal human on earth who isn't totally done with puberty by about 15. That doesn't mean their bodies don't change; I can't fit into my pants from when I was 19, even though I'm not fat at 35, but to mix this up with puberty?
Basic health class fail.
Maybe the article was poorly worded, but I didn't interpret it as puberty = getting fat, like the headline of this blog post does. Getting older = getting bigger = gaining weight. I think most kids probably gain weight (and height) during the ages in the study. But that doesn't mean they're getting fat. They're just growing up. I think the original author's sentiment is accurate and not really what the post title indicates.
Well, yes.
Contrary to the received wisdom about human growth, it's pretty darn obvious that we do not reach our full adult maturity until much later in life.
I'm sure many of us who are older than 35 will remember that sometime between 25 and 32 we "filled out" and became more robust (as anthropologists use the word). Seems pretty obvious to me.
I mean, I work in a college town, and we all refer to the university "kids", who medical science claims are fully mature, as puppies still growing into their paws. There is a more subtle filling out and solidifying that goes on with both men and women all through their twenties.
This is the time when skinny "bois" will actually gain some real adult weight and get true male definition. Likewise for women, maybe with the addition of more pronounced secondary sexual characteristics (i.e., they may get bigger boobs).
Humans are not just another ape. We are highly advanced apes. I'm not an evolutionary biologists, but I suspect there is is a certain amount of neoteny at play here. Selective juvenilization is a very successful part of the evolutionary process.
I'm just hand-waving here, but delaying full maturity may just be a side-effect of a related evolutionary process at work.
We certainly shouldn't conflate sexual maturity (i.e., the completion of puberty) as meaning that other morphological changes have stopped.
@15
Girls don’t magically become women when they have their first period. Puberty doesn’t just consist of getting a period, either, or boys wouldn’t experience it. It’s a process that takes an average of 4-6 years and it’s different very every child. It is perfectly normal still be in puberty past the age of 15.
You may want to get educated on a subject before spouting off nonsense.
The chicken-little weight debates annoy me most. There seems to be a sentiment that people are getting fatter than they did in previous generations. Look at photos of women from the 30s and the 40s and guess what? They look exactly the same. Same faces, same bodies, same everything. People are people, nothing has changed. I don't know what statistical data they've been using to back up these sky-is-falling arguments but it's probably all bad science. Meanwhile women are being pressure more and more about their weight. I have better things to worry about.
From 14 to 21, girls should be gaining height and weight. Why all the fuss
Cory, this is anything but a fantastic critique. This study was conducted by a Harvard epidemiologist who specializes in adolescent weight gain. The USA Today article specifically says:
Some of the younger girls were gaining weight because they were still growing and maturing. However, most of the older girls had reached their full maturity and their weight gain was more likely to be unhealthy.
The study (which does not appear to be published yet, but was presented at a conference) certainly took into account the puberty issue. I know this because it took less than five minutes to look at other studies conducted by the author.
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Yes, a good thing to keep in mind for our kids...I grew an inch or more from 17-19 after starting to drink my dad's protein powder shakes. I had been living on popcorn before that. Keep in mind kids tend to chub up before a growth spurt too, especially right before puberty.
Kyle--
"...there is no normal human on earth who isn't totally done with puberty by about 15." As a high school teacher I can tell you that this is absolutely ridiculous. A significant minority of boys (I would say about 15% in personal experience) have not even begun their puberty growth spurt by 15.
While the majority of women do reach menarche and adult height by 15, there is considerable variation. A friend of mine did not get her period until freshman year of college, even though she was perfectly healthy. Her sister similarly didn't menstruate until she was 16. There is plenty of natural variation.
I have to agree with Mim that full development and growth is not just about adult height or menarche. Increasing muscle mass and therefore weight gain would be expected for both boys and girls during this time as levels of androgens and testosterone of both peak around 20-25 not 14. Peak bone mass is achieved between 18-20 for both sexes.
What visibly differentiates women from young girls is not simply height. Increased body fat especially in the breasts, hips, buttocks, and thighs, for girls during the ages 14 through 22 would be healthy and expected. Body fat is closely tied with fertility; the more fat cells a women has, the more estrogen she produces. Woman do not reach peak fertility until 21-24 years of age. Maybe you won't call this "puberty" because these adolescents are capable of reproduction, but it would certainly count as normal development.
@#15 - Girls most definitely are still developing after their first period. If I hadn't still been developing after the age of 12, I would still be completely flat chested, almost completely hairless on my body, and any number of other things that do not make for a healthy fully post-pubescent woman.
Also, it's not completely strange for some girls to not menstruate until they are 16. (or to start at 8)
This article just hints at a much bigger movement to brand kids, and I mean YOUNG kids, not even teenagers as "obese" and force on them all kinds of strictures in terms of what and how much they can eat/exercise. You think that people have food and weight issues now? Wait another 20-30 years when all the current kids are grown up and suffering from all kinds of issues because of this unhealthy obsession with numbers that have no real basis in science. Sandy Szwarc at Junkfood Science reports on these increasingly ridiculous efforts across the globe in her excellent blog: http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/
One thing: Gaining weight isn't the same as gaining fat. And isn't always bad. There's a regular customer at work that I want to force- feed a sub a day for a month for her own good- she needs to gain like 50 lbs easy to be healthy.
Weight obsession is bad. Buy a bike. Use it instead of a car. Eat less fried foods. Lose 20 lbs in 3 months easy. Assuming you have 20 lbs to lose.
there is no normal human on earth who isn't totally done with puberty by about 15.
Yet, oddly, 16 is the age at which puberty is considered delayed. Girls are now developing breasts at 8. Puberty is more than getting pubic hair and menses. It lasts for quite a while.
there is no normal human on earth who isn't totally done with puberty by about 15.
What? I started puberty at 15.
The biggest thing that I bet a lot of these girls do is drink soda with their meals
Soda: SUGAR
Food: Complex SUGAR
body digest easily accessible sugar first (soda) and stores the rest.
rest gets stored as fat...
In the end (this happens with a lot of people out there in the fat fat world) people don't get much from their "nutritious" diets because they drink soda with them all the time and the rest of it get stored in the body: AS FAT!
I just spent two weeks in spain... far fewer fat people... far smaller sodas... if even any! most people drink a smallish glass of wine with their meal - enough to kick start the digestion- drink wine! stay thin!
Hmm - I may be a little atypical, but I was still gaining height until I was 21 (ending up at a fraction under 6') , and at that point was still way too skinny and needed to gain weight to be anywhere near normal.
To expect girls of 14 to have finished growing is, quite frankly, ridiculous.
@29, while certain high fructose corn syrup in large amounts can cause problems, that one thing isn't the cause of all obesity. You can't point the finger at one food. It's much more complex. In general people eat too much processed crap (soda's but also crackers, chips, cake, cookies, etc.), and not enough whole foods. The "low-fat" foods can be just as bad because they just substitute sugar for fat. We also eat in a different way than other cultures here. Meals are gulped down often in front of the TV, in the car, etc., within a matter of 15 minutes, whereas in other places meals are important social events that last for an hour or more. Ironically that increased amount of time makes people slow down and thus they can actually taste what they eat, and guess what, the processed crap that we eat here in the US, when you actually take the time to really taste it, really DOES taste like crap! :)
In any case, this is kind of irrelevant to the post because the problem is that in the case of childhood obesity, you have lots of people looking for the problem and sounding these alarm bells, but when you actually look at the data, the problem isn't really there. There may be more obesity as a whole in society, but not any dramatic increase in childhood obesity.
Nice. Ms. Hellmich got a whole news story from a 15-minute presentation last weekend. (See page 25 of the Obesity Society's 2008 annual meeting final program: http://www.obesity.org/annualmeeting08/OS_Phoenix08_Final_Program.pdf )