Putting on fat is one of the normal developments of puberty for girls. Many teenage girls worry that they’re becoming too fat. Surveys tell us that around half of all Australian girls (and a quarter of the boys) in the senior years of high school have tried to reduce their weight by dieting.

How much fat is too much? There’s a difference between being overweight and being obese. Obesity is an unhealthy excess of fat storage that makes it harder for your body to function well. Being overweight doesn’t usually interfere with teenage health, but if you stay overweight it could contribute to all sorts of health problems when you’re older.

We still don’t know all the things that control weight gain. Some people can eat heaps and never gain a gram: others swear that just the thought of a chocolate bar makes them gain a kilogram. There’s certainly a strong inherited tendency in the amount of tissue available for fat storage, but perhaps fatness and thinness also run in families because of family eating habits.

Then there’s the balance of how much you eat against how much exercise you’re having. That huge appetite you developed to cope with your growth spurt at the beginning of puberty often persists as a habit after you’ve stopped tearing around and growing as you did aged 11-12 years. If you eat the same amount when you start spending most of your time reading, studying or sitting around chatting to your friends (and these activities often go with nibbles and soft drinks), you’ll probably put on more fat than you want.

There’s also the question of why you’re eating more than you need. Some children and adolescents become overweight when they’re unhappy, depressed or under stress. Food is used to comfort a troubled soul. This sort of overeating will only stop when the psychological problems are worked out.

Overweight in children and teenagers who are otherwise growing normally is almost never due to glandular problems or other medical disorders.

What is the best way to get rid of that puppy fat of the mid-teens? Sometimes it goes away without much effort in the late teens or early twenties, but most overweight girls have to put some effort into losing it. The only way is to eat less or exercise more, preferably both.

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