Maintaining Your Physical Well-Being

Your physical health is very important to your total well-being. Annual physical and dental checkups are necessary. A major problem for many teenagers is excessive weight. Nothing does more damage to self-esteem than being over-weight. Fat teenagers are unhappy even if they hide their sadness from their families. If you have a weight problem, find help before it is too overwhelming to tackle. Some teenagers are lucky enough not to have to worry about what they eat, but at some point in our lives almost all of us have to watch our weight.

Anorexia Nervosa

A disorder that mainly affects mid-adolescent girls is anorexia nervosa, a form of self-induced starvation. If untreated, this disorder can be fatal. A girl develops a delusional view of her body, seeing it as grossly over-weight. She then starves herself into a skeleton like figure. Food becomes disgusting to her. Sometimes she gorges herself, then, feeling guilty for having given in to her appetite, throws up the food.

Anorexia nervosa requires immediate psychiatric care. The underlying motivation for self-induced starvation is usually an unconscious fear of growing into womanhood. Recent studies have shown that many girls with this disease also have severe problems with their father.

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