When I was nineteen I would go a week eating about 3 apples and maybe a plate of spaghetti. I loved feeling empty. I felt high all the time, powerful and controlled but at the same time, I also felt like I was so bad I didnt deserve to eat food.
At 20 I had graduated to drinking three cartons of chocolate milk a day.
Now I got more than three hours without a snack and I get narky! I am classified as (just) overweight, and I care a little bit about it, but hey, my tits are gigantic and fabulous and that helps, it really does.
I remember almost fainting in 8th grade at a yearbook meeting. I'd hardly eaten anything in the past 2 weeks (saltines, super-tiny portions, skipping meals) and was barely hanging on.
The school nurse pumped me full of saltines and beef jerky and had my mom come get me. That incident apparently scared the crap out of her and we had a long chat about body image and whatnot. She made me promise to never take a pill to lose weight.
I remember my high school eating schedule so well. It was no breakfast, a Diet Coke and 1 bean and cheese tostada for lunch, and then a really light dinner. If I tried to do that now, I don't think I'd make it. There would be binging at some point, not to mention a severe case of the bitchy. Severe.
@dj_chick: I had two pieces of toast for breakfast, either an orange or an AirHead for lunch, and dinner would be a happy meal if i had band or speech afterschool, or mainly vegetable sidedish if i was home.
I, too, would not be able to survive on that now. But I only weigh ten pounds more, so its very weird.
I'm a teenager and I have several friends, all perfectly healthy, who think that they are overweight. It is extremely frustrating to try and fail to convince them otherwise. I wish I could make them realize that they are beautiful on the outside as well as on the inside.
Skipping meals is a surefire way to make sure you overeat at the meals you do consume. I remember lots of poor nutrition in my high school - I once had a guy faint on me at play practice because he was trying to make weight for wrestling. At lunch, everyone ate unbalanced meals, like bagels with liquid cheese, or a pack of Pop-Tarts. Unfortunately, I think a lot of the people who are thin in high school are thin IN SPITE of their eating habits, rather than because of them.
My mom and I were just talking about this yesterday. I lost 15 lbs my freshman year of college because I'd always been a little heavier and knew I had to pay attention to what I was eating, and on top of that, I was walking everywhere. My mom is now struggling with her weight as an older woman, because (in her words) she never had to worry about it when she was younger - she was just always thin. I think that kind of thinking afflicts a lot of people. Kids who are in sports eat whatever they want because they think they're invincible - only to gain weight when they're older because they never learned what function foods serves in your body.
If I could say one thing to high school girls, it would be: It's what you eat, not what you don't eat, that makes you healthy and beautiful.
it seems like a lot of commenters are like, "i don't eat breakfast, either!" but isn't the larger issue WHY someone is skipping breakfast? most nutritionists will tell you it's best for your body to eat something in the morning, as it does get your metabolism started, but i think the issue is not to eat or not to eat breakfast depending on if you're hungry, but rather that there are ten- and eleven-year-old girls who are skipping breakfast SPECIFICALLY because they think they need to lose weight. the article states particularly that "Even among younger girls, those aged 10 and 11, 40 per cent thought they needed to lose weight." i think this is really the larger issue at hand, not the fact that some people don't eat breakfast because they don't want to - the full article definitely points out a link between this specific group of girls skipping breakfast and weight and body issues.
@this_mad_woman: I get what you're saying. But I do think that it's important to note that the school scheduling definitely does not encourage healthy eating habits. Kids are already in an environment where they are constantly compared to each other, in terms of smarts, sports, looks, everything. And setting up the system in which you have to get there that early, study all day, and do a million extracurricular activities to succeed, with no scheduled time to eat a nice breakfast and lunch - well, it basically sends the message that eating is not important. Which definitely does not reinforce good, healthy habits for kids who also struggle with peer pressure and body issues (or for any kids in general).
@sampagita: and I think that's important to talk about. But I just think it's equally important to talk about both of these issues, and how they work in tandem. For example, as a super-type-A high schooler, I'd happily take the time to put makeup on before arriving at school to start my 7:30 class, but I didn't have time to eat (I also had some pretty severe body-image issues). I just think all these issues are connected in deeper ways that need to be discussed. Like, how are young girls prioritizing their time and why? And how can their multiple reasons for say, skipping breakfast, interact, rather than talking about them as completely separate issues? I just think that intense concerns about appearances inform much of what these girls do, maybe sometimes in less direct ways than at other times, but that there are multiple health and appearance issues to discuss here.
Yeah, I would have had to wake up at 5 in the morning to get to get to school on time and eat breakfast. Plus, is it just me, or are most American breakfast foods gross? I eat cereal sometimes but get very sick of it too many days in a row. I like oatmeal for the first few bites but feel slightly ill toward the end of the bowl. I was on a plain yogurt/berries/granola kick all summer but am sick of it now. I do love brunch and big breakfasts, pancakes/eggs/bacon etc, but there's no time for it most days and I just can't handle excessive sweetness/greasiness that early in the morning (and the artery clogging that would come with doing that every day).
@katie.scarlett.o'hara: Plus, if I had eaten breakfast, I would have been ravenous an hour or two later, with lunch still hours away. The school schedule plus my metabolism just does not mix.
I liked my schedule better when I studied in Spain. My host mom gave me hot chocolate and a little cookie in the morning, I would get coffee and a little something at the school cafe as a merienda, then come home for a glorious lunch or pick up a sandwich out somewhere (Spanish tortilla or cured ham and cheese, delicious!). More light snacking later and then a late, light dinner. Perfect!
I don't know about teens in the UK, but I skipped breakfast as a teenager because I had to be at school by 7am. My eating habits were pretty messed up because of the insane schedule I was expected to keep as a high schooler. I think that sleeping habits and nutrition are pretty closely related, and I think it's crazy to expect teenagers to keep healthy diets and eating habits when they need to wake up at the crack of dawn, have a randomly assigned half hour to eat lunch, and then with work/sports/afterschool activities and incredible amounts of homework, have to squeeze in dinner at some point late at night.
@EarlyGrey: Sing it. My school bus came to pick me up at 6.15 am! I just could not eat at five something in the morning. I would try, but it made me feel sick. I resorted in the end to drinking Carnation instant breakfast, it was the only thing I could manage.
@EarlyGrey: Same here. I would down Maalox instead of meals during late high school/early college, because the times I was hungry and the times I was able to actually get food that I was willing to eat (vegetarian, not containing celery) did not often coincide.
There was a little bit of disordered thinking about food as well, which is why I think I failed to prioritize it. But the schedule and demands of life definitely pushed it from the realm of thought into the physical plane.
@EarlyGrey: I don't know any school in the UK that requires people to be in that early, unless they board (and then they get fed breakfast). In Ireland I started school at 9am. The whole before-and-after-school-activities... thing really isn't as big a deal here.
@rah29: I don't know who the hell decided that all American kids are morning people, but someone sure as hell did. My high school began promptly at 7:15am. Elementary schools began at 8:15am. I was late ALL THE TIME.
@dj_chick: Especially because now the research seems to say that teenagers specifically have trouble waking up early due to developmental changes in circadian rhythms.
@dj_chick: That's so ridiculously early! In Scotland everyone I know started high school at 8.50-9am, and finished 3.30-3.45 each day, with an hour for lunch usually around 1-2. That isn't counting things like free periods, of which there are many on the last 2 years, and "early days" - my school finished an hour earlier on a Wednesday for some reason.
Extra-curricular activities, as rah29 said, aren't that big a deal here. I stayed an extra hour for orchestra rehearsals once a week.
@sakura_latte: I grew up in the US, and as I said, my bus picked us up at 6.15. We got to school about 6.30-6.35 and the bell rang for homeroom at 6.45. 6.45 am! I always said it was totally insane. I usually felt like I could barely stay awake until about 10am. Oh, and one year my lunch was at 10.30! 10.30!!! I just thought of it as breakfast.
I now live in the Scotland and I LOVE how my kids start school at 9.00! It is fantastic. It is only primary school but even elementary school was like 8.15 for me. I see the local high school kids walking by at about 8.30, I think they start at like 8.45.
(I think they only had one set of buses in our town, so they staggered it so high school was 6.45, middle school was 7.30 and elementary schools started at 8.15. Meant they could use the same buses for all of them.)
@dancebymoon: I always got the variety pack too. I actually wish I could get it now! It would be handy when I am in a rush in the morning. I live in the UK though and it does not exist here. Do they still sell it in the US?
@sakura_latte: My school hours were the same as yours. 9-3.45, with a ten minute break at 11 and an hour from 1-2. We also had a lot of frees in our last two years, though we had to stay in the school library (except for we art students who always managed to find an excuse to be in the art room instead). Half days on Fridays. I stayed behind once a week for basketball, on Mondays. When I went to college in the US I was shocked by how early my frends had been made to get up, and just how much of their school time was taken up by non-academic crap like extra-curriculars, sports, yearbooks, bands, and whatnot. I can't IMAGINE getting up that early. I had to drive to school in traffic so I got up at 7.30 which was considered outrageously early by my friends who rolled out of bed at 8.45 and walked in.
This makes me sad. I also am convinced that I am fat altho intellectually I know that I am nowhere near fat. I have body dysmorphia i think. I look at myself in the mirror or in photos and probably 75% of the time I do negative self-talk about what I see. I was in a wedding this weekend and was shocked when the bride told me I was the smallest bridesmaid, in my mind I was way bigger than at least one of them. I am a healthy weight and size and I do not have anorexia or bulimia but I do have feelings of guilt and shame associated with overeating and I think about food in an often unhealthy way (I never restrict but I do binge and then shame myself over it). And I am a pretty self aware, smart feminist who is aware of the societal pressures that are on me and I know the arguments against all of that---and I STILL internalize it. What chance does a 15 year old have if I can’t battle these things down?
Edited by lucystrawberry: Tier 2 is the new black at 10/13/09 10:43 AM
lucystrawberry: Tier 2 is the new black was starred
lucystrawberry: Tier 2 is the new black was unstarred
@lucystrawberry: Tier 2 is the new black: I am a bit similar to this. Sometimes I will go for awhile without looking at myself critically in the mirror, and then I will go thru a short streak where I am wondering how the hell I got so chunky. And intellectually, I know I am not chunky or overweight. I guess I am just seeing what society has told me to see, which is frustrating for someone like me who tends to buck societies pressure in almost every other way. It's a battle of the brain-- I know I am "smarter" than that, but the insecurity still remains. And I can't figure out why I wont let it go.
this is totally not the point of the blurb.... but i started eating breakfast a few years ago. it used to be coffee on my way out the door, but now at the very least i have some cereal. turns out, it made me lose weight.
this may be a strange concept to young girls raised and nurtured on photoshop and body lies, but the best way to have an attractive body is to have a healthy body and own it. instant beauty.
on another note there was an article in Science recently about diet and temperament. they did a double blind study of two hundred thirty one prisoners and gave half vitamin supplement and the other half placebo. those receiving the proper nutrients were less prone to violence. while this says something entirely different about how we normally feed our prisoners, it is notable that if these girls would eat properly they probably wouldn't have such a poor self image simply because it would improve their temperament.
it's a slippery slope, vicious cycle, etc. etc. so sad.
@amoeba formerly hippichx: If I remember correctly (I think I learned this in high school), breakfast is just that - breaking a fast. It gets your body burning calories at a higher level than when you're sleeping/not eating for extended periods.
i think all jezebel readers need to breed daughters! at least we'll be certain that in 12 or so years there will be enough well-adjusted teenage girls to balance out and aid those girls less secure.
I don't know many adults who eat breakfast every day and even fewer teenagers. Is it a little worrisome, maybe. But in the grand scheme of things, I don't think you're ever going to convince a young adult to wake up for a bowl of cereal when the prospect of another 5 minutes of sleep is on the horizon. It's not about weight, it's about sleep. Precious, precious sleep.
@schweppes: Yeah, I'm actually pretty rarely hungry in the morning, personally. I down coffee until lunchtime. But if I do get hungry, well, that's why the good lord saw fit to provide us with bananas.
@schweppes: I wake up hungry every damn day; skipping breakfast feels like torture. And skip lunch? Forget it. By noon, my stomach is screaming at me for some eatin'.
Am I in the minority? Is something wrong with my stomach?
ETA: I've been this way since adolescence, if not earlier. In high school, most of my friends skipped at least breakfast, if not more, and I could not fathom it. So I guess I knew then that I was a hungrier hippo than most.
@schweppes: I agree, my desire to sleep in has conditioned me to routinely skip breakfast. I just don't seem to be that hungry in the morning. However I am usually pounding coffee all morning. But as somebody else said, if I don't eat by 2 I'm totally cranky and unpleasant to be around.
@schweppes: I don't usually eat breakfast (it's not about sleep, it's about my stomach just not being ready to deal with food until it's been awake for a while), but in high school my parents sure did make me get up in time to eat something. It wasn't about being "convinced" it was about the fact that I still was a child living with my parents and they had the means and ability to wake me up at a certain time and make sure I ate something. Teenagers aren't just hyperactive adults, they can't just suddenly be left to their own devices and expected to make healthy decisions for themselves.
@schweppes: I am usually hungry from the moment I wake up. I have never skipped breakfast. Sometimes I want to keep sleeping but my tum growls and I can't ignore it.
@schweppes: When I was in middle school, I actively dreaded the school day, and I'd get so nervous/upset that eating would make me sick. Eventually I just got used to not eating in the morning, especially when I realized that I could get an extra 10-15 minutes of sleep.
Now I'll have a cup of milk or something, and I eat breakfast on the weekend, but during the week? SLEEP! SLEEP!
@jigglyball: The thought of not eating within 45 minutes of waking sends me into a panic. I don't know how people do it (nor do I want to). I need to eat like every 2 hours or so or else I start to break down.
@schweppes: I was never much of a breakfast eater since traditional American breakfast dishes are loaded with so much cholesterol and sugar that they tend to make me drowsy for the rest of the day. If I ever eat breakfast it's usually dinner leftovers (cold pizza and curry are where it's at, yo).
@SarahMC: Me too! My boss keeps almonds in her desk in case our twice-weekly meetings run over into my "feeding time." And I suddenly feel like a pre-schooler.
@schweppes: Yeah, I don't regularly eat breakfast because I like to sleep in...mainly it's coffee for breakfast. I'm not good in the mornings so I have to wait a bit to eat anyway. I need to keep stuff like Kashi bars around so I have something easy to eat.
@SarahMC: I'm the same way. If I am not fed every 3 hours I get hysterical and cranky. If I don't have breakfast within a couple hours of getting up I'm heading for a meltdown.
@jigglyball: No, I'm the same. I can skip dinner if I want to, but breakfast? An hour after waking up I'm ferociously hungry, and two hours after that I'm dying for some lunch. Some of us just need to eat in the morning!
@SarahMC: Same. My stomach will start aching and I get dizzy if I don't eat really soon after waking up. It's all about greek-style yoghurt with bananas and honey, mmmmm.
@jigglyball: I'm big on intuitive eating so I will skip breakfast if I'm not hungry first thing, but that happens about once every 3 months. Normally, in the morning I go into the kitchen to start breakfast before I even pee.
isn't it odd how the truth comes out after the fact?
i remember meeting friends - mostly women - in college and afterwards and the majority of them confessed to me that they had an ED, and it was usually bulimia. it was shocking to me, and it made me re-evaluate all the popular girls i knew in high school...the stuck up, snotty, skinny bitches who piled their lunch plates high with pizza or whatever. i wonder how many of them had ED's.
furthermore, when i tell my male friends that they probably have no idea how many of the 'hot girls' in high school had bulimia, they are always more than a little stunned.
Honestly, I never ate breakfast as a teenager. Same goes for 99% of my friends. It wasn't a weight thing, but a "sleep until you're almost late for class" thing.
Of course teenage girls have weight issues, but I wonder if that's always the reason for skipping meals. Some are probably too busy to bother.
@victoriasauce: I had a weird meal schedule in high school too but that's because I had to be in calculus class at freaking 7:30 in the morning and my "lunch" was schedule at 10 AM.
@victoriasauce: See even with sometimes 6:00AM starts in high school, breakfast was always my first priority. Did you find it difficult to concentrate without eating? I could never be like some of my classmates who could just skip a meal without paying for it later. The consequences of me not eating were lightheaded-ness and delirium so it was not conducive to my learning, nor my reputation as a sane person.
@marionette: Gym was my first class of the day so that's how my mind got jump-started. Our coach gave us the most brutal workouts too. Eggs would not have mixed well with it, AT ALL.
@victoriasauce: Gym first seems like a great idea actually, nothing like running laps to wake up the mind AND the heart. Oh, lord, I can just imagine the trouble a heavy breakfast could cause though... sort of OT - all this talk of breakfast is giving me fruit cravings.
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At 20 I had graduated to drinking three cartons of chocolate milk a day.
Now I got more than three hours without a snack and I get narky! I am classified as (just) overweight, and I care a little bit about it, but hey, my tits are gigantic and fabulous and that helps, it really does.
Ha!
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The school nurse pumped me full of saltines and beef jerky and had my mom come get me. That incident apparently scared the crap out of her and we had a long chat about body image and whatnot. She made me promise to never take a pill to lose weight.
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I, too, would not be able to survive on that now. But I only weigh ten pounds more, so its very weird.
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My mom and I were just talking about this yesterday. I lost 15 lbs my freshman year of college because I'd always been a little heavier and knew I had to pay attention to what I was eating, and on top of that, I was walking everywhere. My mom is now struggling with her weight as an older woman, because (in her words) she never had to worry about it when she was younger - she was just always thin. I think that kind of thinking afflicts a lot of people. Kids who are in sports eat whatever they want because they think they're invincible - only to gain weight when they're older because they never learned what function foods serves in your body.
If I could say one thing to high school girls, it would be: It's what you eat, not what you don't eat, that makes you healthy and beautiful.
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I liked my schedule better when I studied in Spain. My host mom gave me hot chocolate and a little cookie in the morning, I would get coffee and a little something at the school cafe as a merienda, then come home for a glorious lunch or pick up a sandwich out somewhere (Spanish tortilla or cured ham and cheese, delicious!). More light snacking later and then a late, light dinner. Perfect!
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There was a little bit of disordered thinking about food as well, which is why I think I failed to prioritize it. But the schedule and demands of life definitely pushed it from the realm of thought into the physical plane.
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Plus the UK is tiny and heavily populated! It's very unusual to have to travel for more than an hour to get to school.
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[www.cehd.umn.edu]
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Extra-curricular activities, as rah29 said, aren't that big a deal here. I stayed an extra hour for orchestra rehearsals once a week.
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I now live in the Scotland and I LOVE how my kids start school at 9.00! It is fantastic. It is only primary school but even elementary school was like 8.15 for me. I see the local high school kids walking by at about 8.30, I think they start at like 8.45.
(I think they only had one set of buses in our town, so they staggered it so high school was 6.45, middle school was 7.30 and elementary schools started at 8.15. Meant they could use the same buses for all of them.)
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this may be a strange concept to young girls raised and nurtured on photoshop and body lies, but the best way to have an attractive body is to have a healthy body and own it. instant beauty.
on another note there was an article in Science recently about diet and temperament. they did a double blind study of two hundred thirty one prisoners and gave half vitamin supplement and the other half placebo. those receiving the proper nutrients were less prone to violence. while this says something entirely different about how we normally feed our prisoners, it is notable that if these girls would eat properly they probably wouldn't have such a poor self image simply because it would improve their temperament.
it's a slippery slope, vicious cycle, etc. etc. so sad.
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Am I in the minority? Is something wrong with my stomach?
ETA: I've been this way since adolescence, if not earlier. In high school, most of my friends skipped at least breakfast, if not more, and I could not fathom it. So I guess I knew then that I was a hungrier hippo than most.
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Dude, my growling stomach woke me up at 3 this morning.
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Now I'll have a cup of milk or something, and I eat breakfast on the weekend, but during the week? SLEEP! SLEEP!
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i remember meeting friends - mostly women - in college and afterwards and the majority of them confessed to me that they had an ED, and it was usually bulimia. it was shocking to me, and it made me re-evaluate all the popular girls i knew in high school...the stuck up, snotty, skinny bitches who piled their lunch plates high with pizza or whatever. i wonder how many of them had ED's.
furthermore, when i tell my male friends that they probably have no idea how many of the 'hot girls' in high school had bulimia, they are always more than a little stunned.
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Of course teenage girls have weight issues, but I wonder if that's always the reason for skipping meals. Some are probably too busy to bother.
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