American teenagers are facing serious issues with their weight.

Social worker Rachel Siegel and nutritionist Carly Weiss at Mount Sinai Adolescent Health Center in New York City formed T.E.E.N. F.I.T. (Teens Empowering and Educating through Nutrition, Fitness & Interactive Team Work), which focuses on helping teens balance their nutritional habits and create a healthy lifestyle. They strive to teach teens that exercise combined with making smart food choices will impact their health for the rest of their lives.

An important lesson they teach about food is to modify recipes, portion control or to completely change your lifestyle to not include sugar filled fat filled foods. With holidays and temptations on the horizon, Siegel and Weiss answer a few questions about creating a healthy lifestyle.

Q: Why is it important to modify your diet to a healthier lifestyle?

Siegel: It is always better to be operating from a prevention strategy than a treatment strategy. Because there are always unwanted side effects with medications and it is never 100 percent effective for a cure. With so many temptations for ‘non-healthy evils,’ it is always best to adopt as many healthy habits as you can into your day-to-day lifestyle.  For example, 30 minutes of aerobic activity per day can increase your energy, decrease fatigue, decrease depression, help maintain a healthy weight, strengthen your heart, reduce cholesterol, keep your immune system strong and leads to longer lifespan. Eating more fruits and vegetables (consuming fiber essentially) could help aid in digestion, can lower blood sugar, it lowers cholesterol levels and helps with weight loss. So what does that mean? Thirty minutes or three servings of fruits of vegetables per day can really help prevent illness and keep your heart healthy.

Weiss: It is important to modify your diet for numerous reasons. First and foremost for your health, a healthy diet can help prevent diabetes, heart disease and a myriad of other diseases. It is also important to eat healthy so that you can feel good about yourself and have energy throughout the day. Physical activity will also help a person with their mood as well as physique and energy level.


Q: What are some ways to make healthy modifications to your diet?

Siegel: Set realistic goals: If you do not exercise at all, set a goal to walk for one day for 30 minutes. When that is comfortable, increase it to two. Don’t plan a marathon in a month if you haven’t run a day in your life, ease into it. Understand that any modification, even small ones are difficult and feel normal overnight. It takes six weeks to make a habit normal but most of us quit after two. Easing into change often has long-term benefits. For example adding ½ cup of chopped veggies into rice to reduce the portions and scaling back from there can be much easier than cutting out one to two cups at a time.  Picking one goal every six weeks will leave you with almost nine new behaviors by the end of the year. That is likely enough for weight loss and tremendous benefit on your body.

Weiss: Many people eat extremely large portions.  To modify this, one can cut down portion sizes at meals and put healthy snacks in between meals to curb hunger and keep the metabolism working.  Increasing fruits, vegetables and whole grains is another modification that most people are lacking these foods in their diets. These foods are filling and provide numerous vitamins and minerals. Reducing foods and beverages high in sugar and reducing foods high in saturated and trans fats are beneficial modifications as well.

Q: How do you suggest finding a healthy balance when it comes to eating nutritiously and working out?  What other healthy ways could you suggest to increase physical activity?

Siegel: Balance comes when you want things to fit. Scheduling exercise into your diet has to be a definitive choice, the same way that you make time to brush your teeth and socialize and go to work. You can split 30-minute sessions into two 15-minute sessions but you need to make it fun so that you make time for it.

Other tips include:

- Make one day of the week prep day. Take one to two hours on a Sunday; prep your meals for the week so that you have a self-serve refrigerator
- Keep food with you in your bag so you do not set up a situation in which you are starving.
- Find quick and easy to grab breakfast items, never start the day in a deficit of energy.

Understand that balance is not perfection. Everyone indulges. It is part of a lifestyle. Live on an 80 percent healthy rule or a 90 percent if you can. If you know that it is just part of the balance, it is not hard to return to balance. Most overindulgences are because of guilt and feelings that the lifestyle was lost by having a treat. 

Start slow, be realistic, don’t quit at a setback, understand that change is gradual and not 100 percent perfect. Be gentle, don’t try to compensate for a setback, just keep moving forward.

Weiss: Moderation is very important to establish a healthy lifestyle with both diet and exercise. There are many simple ways one can increase physical activity daily. For example, getting off the bus or subway a stop or two early and walking, taking a walk on a lunch break, or taking the stairs a few times a day at home or work. A short exercise video is great. It is less expensive and time-consuming rather than going to the gym. Plan ahead. You can do this by going grocery shopping and having a healthy snack readily available.  Plan ahead by carving out time to go to the gym or to do a physical activity.