Girls Just Want to Not Diet - Brief Article

And who's to blame them? A study which appeared in the International Journal of Eating Disorders by Australia-based researchers, Suzanne Abraham and Jennifer O'Dea, looked at perceptions about dieting in a group of 51 female students with a mean age of 12.6 years. Abraham and O'Dea asked the girls about "general health, eating and weight control behaviors and menstrual status." Girls who had tried to lose weight but who had not yet begun menstruating were more likely to associate dieting with "healthy eating" and not weight loss.

The authors say that "Educators must be sure that premenarchial students--who are likely to have no real experience of dieting or weight loss behaviors-- are not" mistakenly introduced to the concept of weight control at a time when important growth and body changes are taking place, including an increase in body fat. Pushing dieting in young girls, is, the authors caution, "inappropriate, ineffective and potentially dangerous."