Ep. 30 Fear Of Eating Disorders And Weight Loss in Teens

Are we inadvertently fostering eating disorders in teenagers striving for a healthy weight?  
I present here a study that followed 97 teenagers aged 14-18 over a year, looking at the impact of a program on their insulin resistance, liver fat percentage, blood pressure, cholesterol levels, and eating behaviors. 

A comprehensive, multidisciplinary approach to teen weight loss—one that promotes overall healthy habits and lifestyle changes instead of solely focusing on weight may be the key to this transformation.

I’m Dr. Jenny Gourgari—pediatric endocrinologist, certified in obesity medicine and a health coach.
After helping hundreds of teens struggling with their weight and hormones, I’ve created a whole new path by doing what most programs miss: balance puberty hormones naturally and create habits that actually last.

Here's what makes this different:
✅ No dieting. No calorie counting. No shame.
✅ No more food fights between parents and teens.
✅ No weight obsession—just healthy habits
✅ Real science behind how puberty hormones affect weight
✅ A safe, supportive approach that prevents eating disorders

Because when teens understand their hormones and get the right support, they don’t just lose weight—they gain strength, energy, confidence, and freedom!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
This is the Lifestyle in Weight Loss for Teens
podcast.
If you are a mom and want tohelp your child who is
struggling to lose weight, youare in the right place.
If you are looking for healthylifestyle tips, dr Gorgary is
here to help you understand thescience around safe weight loss
in teens and children, becausewhat works for adult weight loss
is not always the best forchildren.

(00:29):
This podcast is for educationalpurposes only.
Dr Gorgary does not providemedical, psychological or
nutrition therapy advice.
You should not use thisinformation to diagnose or treat
any health problems withoutconsulting your own medical
practitioner and now your host,dr Jenny Gorgary.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
Hello, welcome to another episode of the Lifestyle
in Weight Loss for Teenspodcast.
This is Dr Jenny Gorgary, andtoday I decided to present to
you a research study that Ithink is going to maybe ease
your mind around the risk forcreating more eating disorders

(01:14):
in teenagers when they try toget to a healthy weight.
The reason I decided to presentthis is because I often hear
from families that they arescared their teenager may
develop an eating disorder.
Oftentimes they don't even wantto touch the topic of doing
anything about it becausefamilies are scared that this

(01:38):
may create more problem thantrying to solve one problem,
which is the way to createanother problem, which is eating
disorder.
So there has been done a lot ofresearch around this topic and
this is just one of the studiesI found and I wanted to present

(01:58):
to you.
So the main idea, of course, isthat we don't want to focus on
just a diet.
I discussed that on previousepisodes, how diets in general
don't work for kids.
I don't think they work foranyone, to be honest.
But if you haven't heardepisode 26, you can go back and

(02:23):
listen to that about the dietingmyths in teenagers,
lifestyle14scom.
But besides not focusing on theweight, we want to approach
this concept by getting intooverall healthy habits and
healthy lifestyle.
That will eventually have theweight as good side effect.

(02:48):
It will be a byproduct of doingall those healthy changes.
Eventually the weight will comeoff, but if nothing is done and
we just keep ignoring theproblem, it's just going to get
worse and worse.
So it is important to choose aprogram that has what we call a

(03:12):
multidisciplinary approach andit's not only focusing on the
weight but looks the teenager asa whole human being and
approaches different aspects,which includes healthy diet,
healthy exercise, sleeping well,learning how to handle emotions

(03:32):
.
So one of the most commoneating problems and abnormal
behaviors in regards to eatingwith same teenager is bulimia,
which means that teenagers canhave regular episodes where
they're overeating a lot, to thepoint that they feel stomach

(03:54):
pain, they feel disgusted andthen they can even induce
vomiting after those episodes ofovereating, because they're
doing this in an effort to getrid of the food that they ate
and save their stems from theircalories.
Or they may start to exercise alot to burn calories to make up

(04:15):
for the food that they ate.
And they are constantlyconcerned about their weight.
Their don't like their bodies,which obviously, all these
behavior create an unhealthyrelationship with food.
So this is a real concern and Ido understand it, and it is a

(04:36):
significant reason to make surewe approach the topic of going
to a healthy weight in a healthyway and use a professionally
guided approach to do that.
So this particular research I'mgoing to present to you today

(04:56):
the actual title of themanuscript is Multidisciplinary
Approach to the Treatment ofObesity Lessons Effects on
Cardiovascular Risk Factors,inflammatory Profile and
Neuro-Andocrine Regulation ofEnergy Balance.
It was published in theInternational Journal of
Endocrinology.

(05:17):
Leading author is Ana RaimundaD'Amaso.
So this research examined a lotof things, but I'm just gonna
choose a few things out of thisresearch that, in my opinion, I
think are most important andmost relevant to what I just

(05:38):
said about trying to maintain ahealthy lifestyle and teaching
teenagers how to maintain ahealthy lifestyle in a way that
will not make the abnormaleating behaviors worse.
So what this group of greatresearchers did is they asked
teenagers that they were betweenthe ages of 14 to 18 years of

(06:04):
age to participate in thisprogram, and it was a long
program it lasted a year and Iwant to say that this is not an
easy study to do becauseoftentimes, while people may
start very enthusiastically toparticipate in a program, they
often forget about it or give upand don't follow the

(06:26):
recommendations on a regularweekly basis.
So they only used at the end oftheir analysis of the results.
They only used results forthose adolescents that actually
participated in 75% of all theprogram, and there were like
about 20 people that drop out ofthis program, which is in some

(06:51):
ways expected because they canhave job or financial problems
or school problems and differentthings that get in the way.
But there was still like 75% ofteenagers that participated and
so it was a total of 97teenagers, 56 girls and 41 boys.

(07:15):
So researchers asked them tomeasure blood tests.
So they measured, they wantedinsulin levels and they did some
fancy calculations to reallyestimate what is their risk for
future diabetes.
So we call this insulinresistant, so they calculated

(07:36):
their insulin resistance.
They also looked at thepercentage of their fat around
their liver, because that is oneanother complication of having
a healthy weight is that you canhave fat around your liver and
that can cause fatty liver andfuture problems with the liver.
So they looked at that.

(07:57):
They also looked at their bloodpressure.
They look at their cholesterollevels and they also asked them
questions that had to do withevaluating what is their eating
behavior at the beginning of theprogram.
So they are validatedquestionnaires that they use.
So they were looking to seewhat's the percentage of kids

(08:20):
that had bulimia disorder.
They also asked them toparticipate in regular physical
activity.
That physical activity wasconstituted of 60 minute
sessions, 30 minute aerobicexercise and 30 minute
resistance exercise, for a totalof 180 minutes per week.

(08:43):
This is a total of three hoursper week and I'm going to say,
I'm going to say here this islower than the recommended
amount, right?
Like the American Academy ofPediatrics recommends getting at
least one hour of physicalactivity, which I understand may
not always be feasible, in thisstudy, the physical component

(09:08):
of the physical activity wasactually three hours, which
tells you that you don'tnecessarily need to do from the
beginning all therecommendations.
But even a smaller amount, likethey did in this study, is
maybe helpful.
Now, in terms of theirnutritional advice, what they
asked them to do was to followthe recommended levels of

(09:31):
dietary approach based on theirheight, their weight and their
age, and they calculated basedon a macronutrient component of
about 45 to 65% carbohydrates,25 to 35% of fat and 10 to 30%
of protein.
Once a week, the adolescentswere going to classes where they

(09:55):
were taught on different topicsthat were related to how they
could improve on their foodchoices and they were all
receiving consultations abouttheir food and what they should
eat better, what they should dobetter so they can improve their
eating habits.

(10:15):
So the researchers also lookfor different psychological
issues, potentially likeproblems with low self-esteem,
with body image, with moodiness,and they were meeting weekly in
a one year therapy supportgroup to discuss different

(10:36):
issues around those topics, sothe teenagers would feel
supported in their journey.
So this is the main structureof this program.
I would say it was very wellorganized and structure and it
lasted about a year, as Imentioned.
And, of course, what are theresults?

(10:57):
Which is the exciting part?
I am happy to say that, afterputting all this effort and
remember this is the resultsonly on the teenagers that
attend at least 75% of theprogram, which means they were
the ones who were actuallydedicated to the program and

(11:18):
were going to the classes, weregoing to the meetings, were
doing what they were supposed todo for the most part, even
though they probably were notperfect, they found that the
different variables in terms oftheir insulin resistance, their
cholesterol, their bloodpressure, their weight

(11:39):
circumference they improved.
So the waist circumferenceimproved from 62% that was
initially abnormal to 14%.
The insulin resistance was highin 83% of teenagers and then

(12:02):
after the therapy it went downto 40%.
And also the same thing for, asI mentioned, the blood pressure
.
Their sugar abnormal sugar washigh in 13% of the teenagers
went down to 5% after theintervention.
And the one thing I wanted alsoto bring up is the binge eating

(12:28):
problem, which was identified in6% at the beginning of the
program and at the end of theprogram a binge eating was down
to 2%.
So not only it did not increasethis abnormal behavior, but it
improved significantly.

(12:50):
So I guess the take homemessage I would like to give,
based on this study, is thatvery well carefully designed
multi-disciplinary team thatapproaches healthy lifestyle in
teenagers in a well organizedway, that targets healthy habits

(13:12):
and not just focus on weightbut targets healthy nutrition,
exercise and psychologicalaspects and relationship with
food, can have beneficialeffects without creating more
eating disorders problems.
So don't be scared to actuallyintervene and do something.

(13:38):
Just be careful on what programyou want to choose.
So that's all I had for youtoday.
I hope this was helpful to youand I will be with you next week
.
If you find this episodehelpful, feel free to share it
with someone you know, if youenjoyed listening to this

(13:59):
podcast.

Speaker 1 (14:00):
I invite you to come check out the Lift program.
It's Dr Gorgary's 12 weekcoaching program for teens and
their moms, where we take allthis information, we apply it to
your daily life and we worktogether so your teenager learns
how to create a healthylifestyle so they can feel
happier, more confident, lessstressed and love their body
again.
Visit the website atlifestyleforteanscom and click

(14:22):
on the work with me and freeresources to learn more about
this program and get free healthto start this journey right
away.
Thanks for tuning in and we'llcatch you in the next episode of
Lifestyle and Weight Loss forTeens.