What is a good diet plan for a 12-year-old girl who wants to lose weight fast?

The best way to lose weight depends on how overweight you are. First, be warned that anorexia is a condition that is all too common among teenage girls and young women. The condition can lead to dangerous weight loss and can even kill. A person's view of their own body weight can be wildly inaccurate with a feeling of being fat despite being a healthy weight or even underweight. Anorexia is triggered by many things, but weight loss without a firm target is perhaps one of the common ways. The very first step is to work out your ideal weight range. It's worth doing this with a responsible adult - a school nurse or councillor will offer good advice. Choose your target and agree it before you start. Write the target down and keep it handy. Don't be tempted to go past that target. You will notice that there are no weights mentioned here. Everyone is different so any numbers might be misleading. Once you have set a target weight, look at an eating plan. Reducing calorie intake to a set amount each day is a good starting point. A good target is to lose one or two pounds each week. Any more and your food intake is likely to lack important nutrients and the diet will be much harder to stick at. Easy ways to reduce calorie intake are to avoid high fat food - burgers, chips, cream, fried food, rich sauces and butter are all high in fat. Diet Soda rather than regular soda can reduce sugar intake a lot as well. Cutting out some of those foods may well be enough to lose weight fairly quickly. Starvation diets don't work. Don't ever expect to starve for a week or two and retain that weight loss. It will go right back on again because the body thinks there is a food shortage. Any nutrients that the body can spare will be stored away as fat. The result is EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE of your target. The next step is to increase exercise. Not only does exercise burn calories and help with weight loss, it will also develop muscle mass. This is an important point because muscle is denser than fat. Even if weight loss during a week is minimal, the fact that fat is being burned and muscle is developing, you will still be looking slimmer. For some reassurance, take some measurements as you start losing weight. Waist, hips, chest, upper arms and thighs are good ones to take. The exercise is likely to lead to reduced inches. If you haven't lost weight one week, you may well have lost inches instead. It takes some time to reach a goal. Losing twenty pounds may take 4 months but with a sensible diet, the weight will stay off. When you have reached your ideal weight, keep to a sensible diet. If your weight is way over your ideal healthy weight, it's worth talking to a doctor first. A sudden and dramatic change in diet and exercise can cause problems for those who are very overweight. A doctor can offer valuable advice and it's wise not to ignore the advice. Finally, at 12 years old, a girl's body is going through some dramatic changes. Weight may fluctuate and most will be growing taller. If you get taller, you can carry more weight than before and still look good. If several weeks pass without losing weight, don't be disheartened. Water retention is common at periods during the menstrual cycle so there may even be weeks when the weight goes up and not down. Compare your weight with 4 weeks back and that will probably reassure you that the weight is coming off. One last thought: Far too many girls aim to lose weight in the hope that boys will find them more attractive. Make sure you are doing it for you and not for what others think of you. Always remember that most boys don't want to be with a size zero girl. Most boys really don't care. Despite everything that boys say, the girls they find most attractive are the ones with an attractive personality, a smile and a confident attitude. As the weight comes off, show off your personality and you will get your admirers. (Written by one who was a teenage boy many years back)