The cool people in magazines and on TV – are ALWAYS super skinny. And when you’re a mere mortal, i.e. perfectly normal, it is hard to attain this “level of perfection”.

Reality bites, Mother Nature is working on setting things up so that your body is robust enough to get the “baby making business” sorted. And for the record, this requires adequate levels of FAT.

So she provides you with some helpful curves…………

Curving distress

Despising THESE curves can lead to trouble…..

Most people assume, the trouble manifests as a waif like body, created through systematic starvation. For what it’s worth, Mother Nature’s response to this “SKINNY” situation, is to shut down the baby making machinery.

But for many – curve despising produces the opposite effect. It ironically adds layers of fat around the middle, ultimately obscuring those bountiful curves, this is the finding of a group of researchers from Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

It seems teens fixated with the size of their curves, ultimately smooth them out, but more often than not, they achieve this outcome, by adding more padding.

Curve delusions

The team analyzed data from an ongoing healthy study.

In the late nineties (1995-1997), the Young-HUNT1 survey gathered data from 1196 NORMAL weight teenagers, both girls and boys were part of the study.

Approx 10 years later, from 2006-2008, the participants, who were now all grown up, were once more interviewed, in the Young-HUNT3 study.

10 years had seen approx half of the participants transition from NORMAL weight, to overweight.

Measuring up the curves

So who made the transition ? The teens who FELT fat.

Analysis showed that of the teens who FELT fat, 78 % had become FAT. FELT fat, remember none of them were actually overweight as teens.

There were some overweight people in the group who had not been curve conscious as teens, in this group, the overweight rate was a mere 31 %.

The phenomenon was largely a GIRL THING. Few of the teenage boys had spent time worrying about their weight…. so as a consequence they never FELT FAT.

Curving your head around it

What happened ?

The girls who FELT FAT probably indulged in a little, a lot of dieting. Pandering to standard dieting practises…

• Cutting calories by eating low fat twinkies
• Sipping low fat milk
• Skipping breakfast
• Tucking into “salads”

And on the odd occasion, participating in a little diet pill roulette.

Standard dieting advice tends to create the bad body chemistry, that accumulates more and more fat, which ultimately leads to a whole lot of costly health problems.

Curve envy only part of the problem

Now much has been written about the evils of anorexic supermodels being lauded as role models. Yeh…. they’re too skinny and not healthy.

Weight norms are definitely distorted in modern society – we aspire to be waif like beauties, while in reality exactly the opposite is happening. Each year, more people join the overweight, obese club.

But……….. I can’t see “the media” changing anytime soon, so how can you protect your teenager from going from transitioning from FEELING FAT to BEING FAT.

First off, don’t nag ! It can back fire….

Simple – help them create Better Body Chemistry….. so they avoid the yo-yo dieting cycle.

Interested in learning more about the chemistry behind those extra fat layers ?

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Further reading

Stop worrying about fat and start worrying about timing	Milk has a magic ingredient which helps you burn fat	A high fat diet will shed pounds faster without jeopardizing your heart

Did you learn something new or do you have a different perspective ? I’d love to hear from you so post me a comment below