Healthy Teen Diets

Article by Diet Bites

The 3 Main Elements of a Healthy Dieting for Teens

There are three basic elements of dieting. They are necessary to every successful diet plan. Without one, the plan is more likely to fail.

Diet Element #1. Diet Motivation

Motivation is the first key to a healthy, fit and trim body. It's the factor that makes us want to feel and look better. If we didn't have this element, most of us would never attempt to go on a reduction plan to lose any gained excess body fat.

As the weight loss plan progresses, motivation often wanes. In the beginning, it was very strong - and encouraged us to choose a diet plan, to exercise and to follow the plan through until our set goals were achieved.

But as time goes by, we begin to miss our favorite foods - those which contain a plethora of calories and we miss not being able to eat as much of them as we want.

Loss of motivation is the number one reason why diets fail.

Diet Element #2. A safe, effective, healthy diet plan.

Think of this element as a map which leads you towards your goals. It's much like a road map which is used for planning extended trips. Some times the trip will be a short distance - and other times, a long distance. If we have only a few excess pounds to lose, the journey will be short. If we have a lot of pounds to lose, we'll have to have patience because the excess fat didn't accumulate overnight. It got onto our hips and thighs a little at a time. We should pair our motivation with a dose of patience in this circumstance.

And if the plan isn't healthy, we're going to end up in poorer health than when we started. At Diet Bites, we've often said that about 100% of diet plans end in a binge. And when that happens, generally all of the fat that was lost is regained - in addition to even more pounds. And this is so frustrating.

As to our healthy plan, we want one that contains the five basic food groups - and we want to consume at minimum, the lowest recommended daily servings.

These groups and their recommended daily servings are: Grain Group with 6-11 daily servings - so we'll want to consume no less than 6. And we may need more than 5 to support our body as we are all created differently. We need 3-5 servings from the Vegetable Group, 2-4 servings from the Fruit Group, 2-3 servings from both the Protein and Dairy Groups.

Diet Element #3. A moderate activity plan.

We need to add activity to our weight loss plan because it will assist in burning calories as well as in toning and muscle building. It will also strengthen our bones.

And when more calories are burned, we will experience a faster rate of weight loss.

Will the dieter achieve Diet Success if all the Diet Elements aren't present in their overall Diet Plan?  

They sure can, but it will be much more challenging. And as we said, without motivation, fat reduction plans almost-always fail. Here are a few examples where one of the three elements is missing, yet success is achieved.

1. If motivation is lacking, incorporating moderate activity (such as walking x-amount of minutes straight each day) will work in melting excess pounds. However, the daily eating plan should contain the current amounts of energy values because if these are increased, the activity will simply balance [burn] the excess calories and weight will remain stable.

2. If a dieter is missing moderate activity, yet is motivated to lose weight by watching what they eat, then yes, they can achieve success.

The above two scenarios would occur much swifter however, if the dieter used all the Dieting Elements.

One more note about Element #3. Working the heart aerobically, such as in walking, strengthens both the heart and body. We need that for overall fitness.