"As soon as you eat, you feel nauseous, vomiting, anxious, and tend to be depressed. You don't defecate for many days, and your stomach hurts."

  This is the symptoms that 12-year-old Li Tong (pseudonym) showed when he came to Zhengzhou University's First Affiliated Hospital for treatment a month ago. After examination, Huo Yufeng, deputy chief physician of pediatrics, found that these symptoms were due to his crazy weight loss for two consecutive months - not eating staple food, and even if he was unwell, he insisted on high-intensity exercise every day. Although he lost about 60 pounds, he not only has frequent physical conditions, but also has become a problem for normal schooling.

  Data from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention shows that the current overweight and obesity rate among children aged 6 to 17 in my country is about 19%; the "Guiding Principles of Weight Management (2024 Edition)" issued by the National Health Commission predicts that if there is no intervention, the overweight and obesity rate of children in my country will reach 31.8% in 2030.

  "Little Fatty" weight loss has become the top priority for many families. However, an interview with a reporter from the Law Daily found that many teenagers lack scientific guidance when losing weight. There are many teenagers like Li Tong who believe in online weight loss blogger tutorials and blindly lose weight through extreme dieting, paranoid exercise, etc., which leads to a series of problems with "loss".

  Get sick by extreme ways to lose weight

  Li Tong is a first-year junior high school student in a city in Henan Province. He is about 1.7 meters tall and weighs about 90 kilograms. Because of his obesity, he always feels that people around him always pay attention to his figure. In January this year, with the support of his parents, he made up his mind to lose weight.

  Li Tong's weight loss method is simple and crude - he does not eat carbohydrate food and only eats vegetables, and does high-intensity plank support and open and close jumps every day. Two months later, Li Tong reduced to about 60 kilograms, losing an average of 30 kilograms of meat in one month.

  "Why does he lose weight so quickly? The main reason is that the child's metabolism is particularly strong, and he does not eat or drink and exercises at high intensity." Huo Yufeng explained.

  What followed was that Li Tong's health began to have frequent problems. When he tried to return to his normal diet, he found that he felt nauseous and vomited as soon as he ate, accompanied by symptoms such as nausea, stomachache, and constipation. He had good grades, but at this time he gradually became physically exhausted and dizzy, and even going to school normally became a problem.

  In mid-March this year, his family took him to Zhengzhou City, Henan Province to find Huo Yufeng for help. After a preliminary understanding of the situation and conducting examinations, Huo Yufeng directly took him into the ICU (Intensive Care Unit).

  Huo Yufeng clearly remembered the conversation between him and his child at that time—

  "Do you regret losing weight?"

  "I don't regret it."

  "Do you feel pain?"

  "The pain, these problems cannot be solved, I feel like I am going to be depressed."

  Huo Yufeng said that Li Tong suffered from superior mesenteric artery compression syndrome. The main reason for this disease is his unreasonable weight loss method. In severe cases, it will lead to a decrease in the child's physical immunity and a series of life-threatening diseases.

  After 4 days of hospitalization, Li Tong's condition was controlled. Huo Yufeng also formulated a detailed diet plan based on his situation, allowing him to eat less and more meals and eat some easy-to-digestible foods.

  "I told him and his parents that the next task is not to lose weight, but to gain weight, slowly increase your weight, and explain to him what disease he had and what treatment plan was." Huo Yufeng said, "Through our active intervention with our parents, Li Tong is currently recovering. His father told me a few days ago that the child has improved a lot, and he can eat normally and go to school normally."

  Huo Yufeng also treated a 10-year-old boy some time ago. At that time, he was 1.6 meters tall and weighed less than 60 kilograms. He was "severely malnutrition and had lost weight to 'skin and bone' without any subcutaneous fat."

  The child was originally weighing nearly 60 kilograms and was called "Little Fatty". He also thought it was not good to be fat, so he started to lose weight and found a bunch of weight loss plans online. As he lost, he developed psychological disgust for obesity and stopped eating. He eventually suffered from anorexia and lost half of his weight. He could even vomit it out by drinking water. He could only rely on nutritional solution to maintain his life needs.

  After Huo Yufeng received the treatment, he mainly treated the psychologically. He helped the child overcome his psychological disgust, and then put the gastric tube on him and slowly injected the food into the stomach. After half a month of hospitalization, the child gradually overcame the psychological disorder caused by weight loss and was discharged from the hospital and continued to recover.

  There are many teenagers who suffer from unreasonable weight loss, which leads to physical damage. In March this year, in Guangzhou City, Guangdong Province, a teenage boy weighing 130 kilograms pursued rapid weight loss and chose extreme dieting, which led to nutritional imbalance and physical dysfunction. He was sent to the hospital for treatment due to acute renal failure.

  Worry about being ridiculed for losing weight blindly

  Why do these teenagers fall into blind weight loss?

  The reporter interviewed 30 children aged 8 to 11 and over 24 in Beijing, Shanghai and other places with a BMI (body mass index, normal range between 18.5 and 23.9kg/㎡). When asked, "Do you think you are inferior to other classmates because of your fatness?", there were 17 children who chose "Yes". When asked, "Do you are unwilling to participate in group activities because of obesity, you are afraid of being ridiculed?", there were 21 children who chose "Yes".

  "Under keen perception, some large-weight teenagers will think that there is a gap between themselves and other peers, and that they are different from others, and this difference is actually a negative psychological state." Chen Jing (pseudonym), who works in child psychological counseling in Beijing, said that teenagers are more sensitive, and actions such as nicknames and ridicule of peers will aggravate the decline of self-identity among obese teenagers, making them think that they are far inferior to others, and even lead to psychological problems such as withdrawn and depression.

  During the investigation, the reporter also found that due to obesity problems in children, family members may complain to each other and blame the other party for their negligence in managing the child's child. "This kind of family conflict is caused by obesity in adolescents and will also react on adolescents, making them think that they have caused disharmony between their parents, which makes obese children at school age bear greater psychological pressure." Chen Jing said.

  Beijing citizen Liu Shuang (pseudonym), is facing such troubles.

  "If you don't give food, you are afraid of affecting the growth of vertically (growth); if you give food, you are afraid of the growth of horizontally (growth of weight)." When the 10-year-old son stood in front of him "poorly", stretched out his hand and said carefully, "Let me eat another bun", Liu Shuang, as a mother, "is about to break his heart."

  Liu Shuang's child is in the fourth grade this year, 1.5 meters tall, but weighs 54 kilograms. According to "Screencing Overweight and Obesity in School-age Children and Adolescents", he has entered the ranks of obesity.

  Because grandma and grandpa believed that "the child is just stronger, not fat, and even fat is not a disease", he firmly opposed going to the hospital, so Liu Shuang could only lose weight by controlling the child's diet. The scene in the previous article is performed almost every day at Liu Shuang's house, and the subsequent plot is still very fixed - the elderly at home all took the initiative to drag the child who was crying and shouting hungry to the dining table and let him have enough food.

  Now, all Liu Shuang can do is to accompany her son to skip rope every night, and then try to accompany her son to perform effective sports on weekends. "But there is no control over the eating process, and it still feels that the results are very little."

  Claiming that nutritionist is not qualified

  It is understood that in order to lose weight quickly, many teenagers and their parents will search for weight loss information online. During the interview, some parents reported that some weight loss methods on the Internet are really unreliable. For example, a post said that in order to make children lose weight quickly, they can exercise too much, but the children recover quickly anyway. Some weight loss bloggers said that only drinking water or eating only vegetables every day, and it would be no problem for children to lose 20 kilograms in a week; some weight loss bloggers also advocate fasting for teenagers and stay hungry for a long time every day.

  "Is this losing weight or life span?" said a parent interviewed.

  The reporter searched on social platforms and found that in order to gain the trust of teenagers and parents, there are many seemingly scientific weight loss plans. For example, there are many accounts on the platform that are under the banner of "focusing on teenagers to lose weight". Some of them sell "Nutritionist and accompanying the whole weight" package in the store. The basic process is roughly divided into three steps: parents first report their children's height and weight to the institution, and then a nutritionist pairs a recipe for three meals a day to reduce calorie intake to a certain extent to help their children lose weight. Finally, the nutritionist will follow the child's weight loss process throughout the process, and make corresponding adjustments according to the changes in the child's body.

  Is it reliable to find a nutritionist to help your child lose weight?

  The reporter noticed that in the weekly recipes of children listed by a nutritionist, the calories marked by 140 grams of fried pork chops are "185 kcal", while the calories of 140 grams of fried pork chops are actually between 250 kcal and 300 kcal. Many businesses failed to provide relevant documents to prove their identity as a nutritionist after reporters asked "whether the nutritionist has relevant qualifications."

  In the weight loss recipe for children prepared by a nutritionist who showed Liu Shuang to reporters, the total daily intake of only 850 kcal, the staple food consumed only 40 grams of rice and 100 grams of coarse grains, and less than 50 grams of meat.

  "Children aged 7 to 10 should consume normal daily calories between 1200 and 1800 kcal, and the daily calories of 850 kcal are far lower than normal demand. This should be a diet and weight loss. The so-called nutritionist is not professional at all." Liu Shuang said.

  Judging from the survey, children's blind weight loss is harmful. It not only hinders growth and development, reduces metabolic rates, and damages physiological functions, but also easily causes psychological problems. At the same time, some so-called nutritionists lack professional knowledge and cannot provide scientific and effective weight loss guidance. They may even lead children to a more dangerous health dilemma due to misguided guidance. In order to protect the physical and mental health of minors, it is urgent to solve this problem. (Reporter Chen Lei and Zhao Li)

[Editor in charge: Wang Qi]