Healthy Teen Eating Habits

Eating healthy allows your body to create the energy it needs to keep you going throughout the day, as well as provide your body with the vitamins and minerals it needs. Because a teenage body is still growing, it's important to eat healthy in order to reach your maximum height as well as maintain a healthy weight. Practicing healthy eating habits also encourages proper nutrition.

Listen to Your Body

• When considering eating habits, it is important to pay attention to your body's signals. When you're hungry, you should eat. When you're full, you should stop eating. If you don't eat when you're hungry or continue eating after you're full, you're ignoring your body's natural signals. In order to begin "listening" to what your body is trying to tell you, slow down while eating. Pace yourself so that you're eating for approximately 20 minutes. Because you're likely to be on the go between school, work and extracurricular activities, you may want to consider waking up earlier to have time breakfast. Be sure to ask yourself, "Am I eating because I'm hungry or am I eating out of habit, boredom or because I'm stressed out or depressed?" Paying attention to your body's signals may prevent you from overeating.

What to Avoid

• Although sweets and sugary foods are okay once in awhile when balanced with healthier foods, consuming too much is bad for your health. Candy and sugary drinks like soda are considered "empty energy." Although the food does contain calories for energy, they have little to none of the vitamins and minerals needed to keep your body healthy. It's understandable that soft drinks and snacks are easy to get your hands on when you're busy all of the time, but it's important to pay attention to these habits. If you feel as though you must drink soda, limit your intake to about eight ounces each day. However, if you want to quit, drink bottled water with a flavor packet, which you can easily carry around in your backpack.

  Another negative about healthy eating is developing a "diet mentality." If you're nit-picking at everything you eat and counting calories down to the gum you're chewing, you're going overboard. You are more important than how much you weigh or the fit of your jeans. Rapid weight loss may hurt you both mentally and physically -- and can also stunt your growth. Instead of aiming for rapid weight loss or rapid lifestyle changes, stick to small changes in your routine and eating habits.

Food Preparation

• Deep-frying is a fast and simple way to cook foods. However, it is not as healthy as other cooking methods. When developing healthy eating habits, learn new, healthier ways to prepare your food. For example, stir-frying, grilling, baking and boiling are all healthy options compared to frying in a pot full of hot oil. Also, you may opt for dried herbs and seasoning powder to add flavor to your food instead of fats like gravy or butter. Cutting the skin off of your meat and trimming fat may also significantly reduce the amount of fat and calories you're taking in.

Healthy Eating Tips

• The worst thing you could do when developing healthy eating habits is to skip meals. Not only does skipping meals make you go hungry throughout the day, but it may also cause you to overeat or make unhealthy choices (fast food, junk food) when you do eat. Try to eat three meals a day including breakfast, lunch and dinner. As a snack, you may eat a half cup of pretzels, celery with peanut butter or even a half cup of lightly buttered popcorn. Portions are very important when changing eating habits. Instead of a large plate of food, start off with a tablespoon of each side. If you're still hungry after 20 minutes, go back for seconds.