About Martin M Expertise Health is in the body, it`s in the mind and it`s in the emotions. About the body you can ask anyone, the other two are not so easy to discuss. Genitals are tricky subjects as well. So, just when sex is new and relationships become complex, who can you talk to? Teens need to grow up healthily in ALL respects. Your sex-life has just started, don`t let it start all knotted up. If you worry about the first time, kissing, virginity, STD`s, love, genital size, masturbation, homosexuality, self-confidence, oral sex or any such matter, ask away. Get it off your chest, don`t worry, be happy.
Experience I?m not a doctor, but I learned much about much. On this site I advised and helped hundreds of people who had problems and questions about their body, sexuality and relationships. I specialize in questions that are SILLY, PRIVATE, EMBARRASSING, DIRTY and STUPID. Somewhere in your teens, you run into puberty and sex gets to be an item. You learn the basics about puberty and sex at school and at home, but where do you get the details? The weird and naughty bits? Who do you ask those private and embarrassing questions? You don?t want to look dirty-minded asking a teacher, you don?t want to look silly and stupid asking a friend. If you don?t ask, you worry and blunder. That?s where I come in. Old enough to know, young enough (at heart) to understand you.
Expert: Martin M Date: 6/13/2005 Subject: weight problem
Question hey, im a 14 yo girl and im 5"7 and weigh 74 - 75kg, im clearly overweight. I can never stick to a diet, i basically starve or over eat when ever i eat something, i try not to eat to much i try and drink mainly and avoid food unless im really hungry. I dont exerise much, because where I live its really not that easy. I try do exerises at home but I've kinda given up becuase after all these months I havent shown any improvment. Im really upset because Im the fattest out of all my friends and it gets me down. I never have a regualar eating pattern either because im always hungry at differnt times of the day or i throw my food away and eat at a later time, and i "try" to eat only when im hungry. What do u suggest? Im not making much sence here, im sorry
thnx
Answer Dear Candy,
Thanks! Brave of you to take up my dare and wise to respect your own feelings of how far to go. Keep it up!
I think you look nice, but you were right and I'm at ease. I worried a bit that you were one of those very many girls who look like death warmed over and still are miserable 24 hours a day because they stress about their imagined obesity. I'm happy to see a healthy teen tummy. Still no hippo there, though, graceful waist-line and no flab. I solemnly judge: slightly heavier than ‘supple early teen'. On the chubby side.
I can see that you may feel ‘fat' standing next to (some of) your peers. Go for the non-diet of active life and regular healthy meals. Lose a few kilos, aim at 70.
Few more pointers?
Team up. Do you know other kids who try to lose some weight? Talk about it and do it together. Exchange ideas and support each other. Or join some club and do gymnastics twice a week, ballet, horse-riding, swimming. Swimming is good exercise. A club or team will stimulate and motivate you to keep it up regularly.
Get awake. Start the day with a good stretching-out. Five minutes of reaching for the ceiling and touching your toes will get you active and going. Flopping out of bed and dozing on sluggishly keeps you rag-dolling through half the morning. Get bounce in your step from hour one and burn off breakfast.
Eat for action. Start eating well in the morning, have a proper lunch but taper down from there. You need energy to get through the day but after dinner most people slow down and if you eat too much late in the day, you spend the night turning all that unused energy into fat. Have a modest dinner and lose the crisps and popcorn just before bedtime. Get up hungry and eat a hearty breakfast instead.
Go raw. See how you like vegetables if they are raw or (slightly) under-cooked. You get more vitamins from them, they help keep the bowel healthy and they cost more energy to digest. ‘Cost energy' means ‘burn fat'. This may involve harassing your mum to get the pots off the stove a minute sooner. Good luck. Or should I say ‘poor woman'?
Get muscle. After the stretching do sit-ups and push-ups. It takes energy (burns fat) but it also makes the muscles more firm. It makes your body look better so that the (normal) fat doesn't show so much.
One last one for the future, when you're big enough to hear about sex and nasty things like that. You don't want to read this now, of course. Save it till you're grown up. You see, I'm in ‘Teen Health' for sex, but only for teens in the 18-19 region. Cross my heart, your honor. So, I trust you'll want to stop reading right here, poor lamb.
But when you turn 18 I will be allowed to tell you that an orgasm takes a lot of energy and that sex (solo as well) is a good slimming-exercise which is good fun too as long as you don't overdo it. I wouldn't dream of telling you this now, you being a pure innocent kid and all, so ask me about that in four years. Until then, do not have naughty thoughts, y'hear?
Yours,
martin
Dear Candy,
I do sexual problems in Teen Health, really, but I never brush problems aside because of a wrong subject. Besides, you write like a mighty smart 14 yo, and I never pass up a chance to converse with high IQ's. Here's what I can say:
You make excellent sense, more than you guess.
I find you unclearly overweight. If I got the math right (I hardly ever do, so check, please) your 5''7 is about 170 cm in metrics. I'm 190 cm and I weigh just short of 80 kg. The 5 kg difference allows for the 20 cm difference nicely enough, which makes us about as overweight. Give or take a kilo or two.
And me they call a badly-disguised skeleton. I need to move about a lot in the shower to catch any drops at all, and when I played the tin whistle in a folk-band I got introduced as ‘the taller of the two'. No prison will hold me, the steel bars are never close enough together. I am the ultimate bean-stalk. So how fat can you be? I dare you to send a picture of yourself (cut off the head if you want and don't wear a fur overcoat) and I'll give you my honest and unbiased opinion of how fat you look to me. I'm perfectly objective: I'm Dutch. Send to ae_cache@doramail.com (note the underscore) within 10 days, after that I stop checking that mailbox. You won't, will you? You don't like the look of your body and the fewer people who see you, the better? That's why the ‘dare' is there.
But that's not an answer to your question.
How to get real skinny:
-1- Keep moving. Avoid cars and buses, walk or use a bike. Avoid elevators and escalators, take the stairs. Dont't have things brought to you, get up and get them. Waiting for something, don't sit but stand or pace. Mow grass, help with the laundry, clean up your room and don't shout at your little brother, chase him. No need to excercise, just stay active.
-2- Eat regularly. There is some logic in eating when you are hungry but not a lot. Like you say: you throw away food and eat at a later time. The food was healthy, the eating-later is likely to be junk-food. More important: regularity in meals gives your body the rhythm of the proper digestion and nourishment that it needs. Hunger is the signal of an empty stomach, not of a starving body. Allow the STOMACH to be empty till noon, then give it what the BODY needs to survive till six. It'll survive, I assure you. Eating when hungry means overfeeding the body. The stomach is SUPPOSED to get empty now and then. Stick to three meals a day: breakfast at early o'clock, lunch noonish and dinner when it gets put before you. Don't whine, eat.
-3- Eat healthy. Eat bread, rice or beans with vegetables and lean meat. Avoid too much fat, sugar and starches. In-between meals, eat stuff with vitamins, proteins and fiber. Have nuts in your pockets and bag, raisins, celery, fruits. Wallow in carrots. No crisps, no burgers, no candy. For crisps: cheese (Dutch, of course), for candy: raisins and carrots, for burgers: uh…
Anyway, that's the magic cure as I know it. Move, eat regularly and eat healthy. After a while you will learn how much to eat at each meal so you can last till the next without fainting. It's usually the irregularities, the in-betweens that do the damage.
So much for the question. That's easy enough. I still don't think it's the problem, though. I keep checking that math and the calculator never says ‘hippo'. I rather think you are too hard on yourself.
