Not eating right can screw you up bad
 

A friend of mine has a 15 year old daughter. She is one of those girls that is about 5'4" tall and weighs about 95 lbs and she sometimes thinks she is fat, but she plays basketball and so she said she wants to stay in shape. Last week she was walking through the living room when she suddenly just blacked out and feinted. She came around when she hit the floor and said she felt strange and her leg felt heavy. They call 911 and end up getting her to the hospital.

After many tests and a cat scan and all kinds of stuff they find nothing. The doctor talks to her about some other things and they find out that she is bulimic. She doesn't vomit after she eats, but she will have days where she binges and eats a lot (or in many cases just a normal amount) then she will feel fat and guilty so she will eat almost nothing for the next three or four days. It screwed with her enough that it caused her to have a mild seizure which caused her to black out.

Everyone is happy it isn't something terrible like a tumor, but still pretty crazy when it is someone you know and didn't think had that kind of problem.

Girls in that age group are at their eating disorder prime, turn on MTV, read their magazines, youll see why

Hopefully some professional help will straighten her out

my 14 yo (15 in Nov.) is going through something similiar. Not bulemic but wasn't taking in enough calories and nearly blacking out during PE last school year. It's all about body image and it sucks that she has to go through it as we all have. I took her in for a physical and her Dr. said she needed more calories but mostly more protein. She is 5'51/2 and at that time weighed 119 lbs. She was used to weighing 110 eating whatever she wanted but after she started her period that all changed within months. You get curvy and your body adds a little fat so it can reproduce. She crash dieted without much notice because she would share her food with the dog on the downlow. She now weighs 115 and is happy about the way she looks (she is a size 3). After the Dr. visit things leveled out and she was eating more and we stuffed her with protein until all the symptoms were gone.

Enter the new problem: she made highschool cross country team and is required to eat 2,400 calories min. per day plus an additional 900 to replace those she burns at daily practice. She was refusing to eat even more out of a fear of "getting fat" and the dizziness returned. I had to take her aside with one of the coaches after orientation that is an excercise physiologist and have a big pow-wow. He has been able to convince her with facts and logic that her body must have a lot of carbs and the right balance of proteins and other foods in order for her body to sustain this amount of running and be healthy. She is willing to do what he says because we all know that our parents word was never the right one until someone else said it.

I hate that she and all of her friends feel this same way about their bodies right now. Always worried about fitting in and looking/feeling attractive. I have been careful not to let her hear me talk of cutting calories or needing to lose weight at the various times i "felt fat" but no matter it still found it's own way into her head, it's all around her all the time. I spilled this out just to let people with teenage daughters and relatives know that you really have to watch and be aware of what's going on with these girls at this age. Lifelong bad habits/bad health can take hold if these issues are not addressed and resolved.

Thank you for the post.

Good post. Thanks for the info.

My friend's daughter plays basketball and during the season she seems to eat normally and does well. Her problems come in the off-season. That is when she starves herself to stay thin. They are going to take her first to a nutritionist who is going to show her that when she crash diets she is losing muscle and won't be as good at basketball and then to a counselor to help her get it under control. Hopefully they caught this before it became too serious.

Tell her to eat in small portions of healthy foods

:2 cents::thumbsup

Much more sad when it involves kids.

sometimes having eating disorder is more harmful than a disease or tumor :(

You have to make them understand that not eating does not help you stay skinny. In fact, doing what she does may make her even fatter. It's eating the right proportions of healthy food and doing exercise that will help her stay in shape. It may be hard for her to comprehend, but if you can get that through her head perhaps it will help.