Free Essay Example on Adolescence Eating Habits

For most youths in the adolescence stage, social life is most important since it forms their pyramid of growth. This influences their self-esteem and moral behavior, body structure, and eating habits. Most youths tend to value change in their body structure due to peer influence and mostly media personalities. It is at this adolescent stage that they get their role models, and they tend to act and dress like their role models, most of them being musicians. Boys will always want to broaden their shoulders and girls will like to reduce their weight, their eating habits do change due to this factor as they will like to impress their peers more than they themselves. Most boys will have to endure the greater pressure of becoming muscular and low parental love. While girls will display high risky eating habits as they will tend to watch their weight since they dont want to fall out of their friends cluster. When it comes to family this is another critical area where it will determine the eating habit of the youths, most parents will behave in a particular manner that will enable their children to learn from them, Most adolescents body structure shows how they feel, and this is affected mostly by their psychological factors, physiology, and social factors, hence most youths tend to fall into bad eating habits. Siblings will listen to each other or will copy each other more since they tend to have a cliche that they are not old models or old school like their parents. If the eldest child has bad eating habits or poor eating habit, it is highly likely that their fellow siblings will have those eating habits. Unfortunately, most teenagers or adolescents like eating junk food, since they consider junk food to be tasty.(Rheanna N 2007).

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The development of eating disorders is believed to be associated with personal factors, family and peer influences and pressures, and social group pressures. Family, peer, and media pressures to be skinny additionally increase or sustain body discontentment by repeatedly reminding ladies how far they are from the best form and weight (Archibald, Graber and Brooks-Gunn 395-415). The mass media are believed to encourage ladies to create unrealistically skinny body ideals, (Carlson Jones 823-835) that are unachievable for many females; however their impact on boys has not been investigated. Many cross-sectional studies have determined a positive association between exposure to beauty and fashion magazines and higher levels of weight issues or eating disorder symptoms in ladies.16.

According to the theory of Stice et al, (Stice, Nemeroff and Shaw 340-363) one ought to expect overweight females to be more disgruntled with their weight because they are far from the best weight and form glorified by fashionable Western civilization. Thus, it is not shocking that many population-based studies have discovered a positive linkage between weight and engaging in bulimic behaviors (Shisslak et al. 301-313). The media is not the sole source of pressure to be skinny. Levine (Levine et al. 11-20) suggested that weight management behaviors among young ladies are modeled partly on their mothers' behavior. Though there is a scarceness of information, many studies have determined that ladies whose mothers diet and are concerned with their weight and form are more likely than their peers to develop unhealthy weight management practices (Hill and Franklin 3-13).

Most girls do tend to suffer from eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa, which is characterised by dramatic weight loss, and fear to increase weight, self-starvation is one of the key signs of anorexia nervosa, which is entirely blamed on hormonal growth as most teenagers tend to think they will gain curves or good body structure and weight, anorexia nervosa has the highest number of deaths than all mental illnesses. Due to this fact, most, adolescent girls suffering from this disorder are likely to be guided through this stage. There are some cases where adolescents induced themselves to vomit and others into binge eating, this behaviour is characterised as a mental disorder since one may think he or she is doing the right thing. Unfortunately, anorexia nervosa has claimed more life than it should have due to lack of awareness, most of these deaths occur in adolescents who are either in mid level or lower level of the stage. Anorexia nervosa is mainly caused by peer influence and the role model gig. Factors such as menstruation and other pubertal growth largely affect data collection for this disorder, hence, great care should be taken into consideration before concluding that one is suffering from this disorder. Anorexia nervosa may lead long-term health complications, which may be severe, or life-threatening situations. Treatment of anorexia nervosa is often prolonged and patients may be symptomatic for years. The rate at which bones can gain mass is also uncertain since bones carry the mass or the weight of a normal human being.(Journal of adolescents 1995)

Bulimia nervosa is slightly different from anorexia nervosa, in fact, the main distinguisher is that large consumption of food is witnessed in this disorder. In most cases after repeated binges eating it is usually followed by self-induced vomiting, laxative misuse, purging or fasting . The adverse effect of this is exactly opposite to the anorexia nervosa. Most patients who suffer from bulimia nervosa are affected mostly by shame in their lack of control when it comes to eating. In this case, there is a sub-group who engage in self-injury activities and substance abuse. In most cases, symptoms such as anxiety and depression are prominent in patients suffering from Bulimia nervosa. This sub-group is often over-represented in specialist treatment centres. Most patients who suffer from this disorder tend not to seek any medical help. Patients with bulimia nervosa need in-hospital treatment. Hospitalization tends to break the binge cycle whereby, patients with this disorder are hospitalized for a shorter period of time than those with anorexia nervosa since they do not require any weight gain. The patients should be treated in facilities where the staff is specialised in treating adolescents so as to achieve the required goals of the treatment. The goals of the treatment are to help the patient attain both emotional and physical health. Also to sustain a normal nutritional intake without fasting, binging or purging.(Christopher G Fairburn, Paul J Harrison)

References

Rheanna N. Ata Alison Bryant Ludden The Effects of Gender and Family, Friend, and Media Influences on Eating Behaviors and Body Image During Adolescence J.Youth adolescent (2007)

Martin Fisher, M.D., Neville H. Golden, M.D., Debra K. Katzman, M.D., Richard E. Kreipe, M.D., Jane Rees, M.S., R.D., Janet Schebendach, M.A., R.D., Garry Sigman, M.D., Seth Ammerman, M.D., And Harry M. Hoberman. Eating Disorders in Adolescents: JOURNAL OF ADOLESCENT HEALTH (1995)

Christopher G Fairburn, Paul J Harrison Eating Disorders

www.nationaleatingdisorders.org Anorexia Nervosa