8 1GT Wednesday November 18 2020 | the times

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“naughty curves”, leaving the poor girl

weak and wan. Yet for the most part

dieting has been seen as the domain

of adult women.

By contrast, the research by Solmi

and her colleagues shows that in 2015,

44 per cent of 14-year-olds had dieted,

a figure that has grown steadily over

the decades, despite the evidence

showing that at least a third of people

on diets regain more weight than they

lost within four or five years. An even

more startling finding was that in 1986

only 7 per cent of teenagers exercised

for weight loss, compared with more

than 60 per cent two decades later.

This is even though exercise has been

repeatedly proven to be a poor

strategy for slimming (although it

is useful to prevent weight gain).

In short, Solmi says, teenagers are

ever more learning and practising a

thing that will defeat their goal. And

if that is sad or silly, we are certainly

complicit if not responsible.

In addition, the many hundreds of

well-meaning interventions that adults

have inflicted on overweight children

haven’t cracked it. Most meta reviews

of projects such as “fat camps”, parent-

education programmes or exercise

regimens in school just didn’t deliver,

or if they did, they changed weight by

a negligible amount — a few pounds,

say. When followed up after a year, the

effect is negligible.

“All the randomised controlled trials

show that after dieting and exercise

programmes for adolescents there is a

very small change if any to BMI [body

mass index], and we don’t know what

happens next,” Solmi says.

By “what happens next” Solmi is

referring to research that shows that

recurrent dieting increases the risk of

an eating disorder 18-fold. My first

reaction to the diet boom in teenagers

was to suspect that they were

responding to what they saw on the

scales; a study just this month by

Imperial College London showed that

UK teenage girls are the most

overweight in Europe.

Yet the level of overweight or obese

children in the UK has remained quite

stable in recent years. Levels were

highest in the mid-2000s, and since

then they have hovered around a third

(Solmi’s research adjusted for this).

Meanwhile, the data on eating

Krause says that it is hard for

parents to understand the pressures

of friendship groups as well as social

media, which may be obsessed with

food and restriction. In the case of an

overweight child, she advises not to

dive in directly. “Don’t start talking

about food. Talk about the person,

what they are enjoying and not.

Especially if a young person is really

embarrassed about this, it will take a

long time to open up. Bide your time.”

Ian Williamson, a specialist

adolescent psychotherapist and the

author of We Need to Talk: A Straight-

Talking Guide to Raising Resilient

Teens, says that “parents are dealing

with this blind because the effects of

social media are lost on them”.

Adolescents have always had body

anxiety, but now this is turbo-charged

by a daily barrage of “idealised” and

filtered images of the six-packs of the

famous and their friends online. Again,

Williamson advises the parents to deal

with the anxieties and not the weight,

unless of course the child appeals

explicitly to parents for their help.

Patrolling then discussing their child’s

social media trails is a good first step.

“Going at it directly just leads

to problems with self-esteem,”

Williamson says. If I remember

anything about being a teenager, I

know that this much at least is true.

Teenage dieting:

how to talk to

your child about

their weight

Young people are dieting more than ever, according

to new research. Yet a third of them are overweight.

What’s the solution, asks Helen Rumbelow

I

f you knew that nearly half of

teenagers — perhaps even yours,

behind your back or on your

watch — were doing something

that would probably make them

unhealthier in the long run, you

might wonder why there isn’t

a national outcry against it.

That’s the case, though, with dieting,

a pastime that is a very popular

teenage pursuit, even while the

evidence for its benefit remains thin to

slim to nonexistent. Yesterday it was

reported that research by Francesca

Solmi, an expert in food and

adolescence based at University

College London, had found that

dieting is on the rise among teenage

boys and girls. Should we add diets to

the long list of risky self-destructive

things that youngsters do? And if so,

what on earth do we know about how

to help our children to live healthily in

a culture dominated by cheap junk

food, The Great British Bake Off and

Instagram “thinspiration” memes?

That last question, by the way, is on

behalf of the “don’t do as I do, do as I

say” school of parenting, because two

thirds of adults are overweight or

obese compared with one third of

teenagers, who may not want to “grow

up” quite like us.

Being concerned about a child who

is suffering because they are too thin is

just as hard as being concerned about

a child who is suffering because they

are too fat. Both situations require

levels of sensitivity that I’m sure I do

not possess. In fact, they only make

me recall my trauma at being forced

to take PE, aged 13, in a pair of

mortifyingly too small gym knickers.

Instead I have gathered suggestions

from a range of experts, who all agree

that we are far from easy solutions.

“We have been lied to all this time

that dieting works,” Solmi says. “What

we are doing now is not showing any

improvement. Instead, we can see

that at the moment we are doing

something wrong.”

Children have been put on diets for

years; you only have to look at Judy

Garland’s regimen of coffee and pills

during the making of The Wizard of

Oz. I recall my horror at reading Noel

Streatfeild’s White Boots in which the

young ice-skating heroine Lalla is put

on a strict diet to get rid of her

disorders shows a mixed picture: NHS

hospital admissions have gone up, but

diagnoses by GPs remain stable.

Solmi says that “it is important to

think of health as opposed to weight”.

A teenager is not a failure because

they fail to lose weight — “that

reinforces the shame and guilt”.

Mary Fewtrell, a professor of

paediatric nutrition at University

College London, was in favour of

initiatives such as a sugar tax and

strategies to make active life easier.

“I can’t help thinking that it’s really

the obesogenic environment we need

to address,” she says. If we taught

children about how modern life made

it hard for them to move and eat

vegetables, it might counterintuitively

make it easier for them to navigate

without feeling like failures.

Nihara Krause is a consultant

clinical psychologist who has set up

an NHS unit and a charity specialising

in eating disorders in adolescents.

“We know that dieting doesn’t work,”

she says. “It is also the nature of the

teenage brain to want quick results, as

opposed to long-term, slow change, so

it’s even more important they are not

encouraged to go on quick-fix diets.

Also, if there is an element of comfort

eating, you have to address that; you

can’t take away a coping strategy

without an alternative.”

It is the

nature

of the

teenage

brain to

want quick

results