youth myfitnesspal?

dfinkenberg6
dfinkenberg6 Posts: 3
in Food and Nutrition
My daughters would love to track their fitness and diet goals, but their ages don't allow them to build their own profile. Is there a reason why it is for 18 and up only? Would it be possible to include preteens and younger?

Replies

  • Ready2Rock206
    Ready2Rock206 Posts: 9,487 Member
    Sparkteens.com --- not MFP but made for teens.
  • PamShebamm
    PamShebamm Posts: 54
    I mean, kids lie about their age online all the time. Just sayin'.
  • lauren3101
    lauren3101 Posts: 1,853 Member
    Forums aren't a place for easily influenced children, that's why.

    Plus, I don't believe children should track calories. They are still growing and it's far too young to be worrying about things like calories. Teach them how to eat healthily, encourage them to exercise in ways they enjoy and steer them into a healthy, balanced lifestyle.
  • Frood42
    Frood42 Posts: 245 Member
    Forums aren't a place for easily influenced children, that's why.

    Plus, I don't believe children should track calories. They are still growing and it's far too young to be worrying about things like calories. Teach them how to eat healthily, encourage them to exercise in ways they enjoy and steer them into a healthy, balanced lifestyle.

    +1
  • Qskim
    Qskim Posts: 1,145 Member
    Forums aren't a place for easily influenced children, that's why.

    Plus, I don't believe children should track calories. They are still growing and it's far too young to be worrying about things like calories. Teach them how to eat healthily, encourage them to exercise in ways they enjoy and steer them into a healthy, balanced lifestyle.

    +1

    +2
  • ironanimal
    ironanimal Posts: 5,922 Member
    Growing children have much higher caloric needs than what they would be given here, stating they are older than they actually are.

    Personally I think that at that age, the objective should be to move more and not eat less.
  • coliema
    coliema Posts: 7,646 Member
    Forums aren't a place for easily influenced children, that's why.

    Plus, I don't believe children should track calories. They are still growing and it's far too young to be worrying about things like calories. Teach them how to eat healthily, encourage them to exercise in ways they enjoy and steer them into a healthy, balanced lifestyle.

    +1

    +2
    +3
  • deeohcee
    deeohcee Posts: 15 Member
    Forums aren't a place for easily influenced children, that's why.

    Plus, I don't believe children should track calories. They are still growing and it's far too young to be worrying about things like calories. Teach them how to eat healthily, encourage them to exercise in ways they enjoy and steer them into a healthy, balanced lifestyle.

    +1

    +2
    +3
    +4
  • oddyogi
    oddyogi Posts: 1,816 Member
    Forums aren't a place for easily influenced children, that's why.

    Plus, I don't believe children should track calories. They are still growing and it's far too young to be worrying about things like calories. Teach them how to eat healthily, encourage them to exercise in ways they enjoy and steer them into a healthy, balanced lifestyle.

    +1

    +2

    +infinity
  • ncmedic201
    ncmedic201 Posts: 540 Member
    You're right about teens not eating on a deficit and moving more, but first they need to track the calories to see how much they should be eating. My 15 year old son wants to get in shape for baseball tryouts. He has about 30 lbs to lose. His TDEE is in the neighborhood of 2800. I sent him the link for sparkteens yesterday. He needs to at least learn what a normal day should look like (same with his dad and stepmom who think his calories are supposed to be much lower than that)

    I do think tracking is a good learning tool...especially for overweight teens.
  • zenalasca
    zenalasca Posts: 563 Member
    My sister is 17, nearly 18, and wants to lose weight and get fit. She can't fake her age cause she wants to link her FB account and would have to change her age on that as well. But oh well, least she can join at the end of this month :happy:
  • zenalasca
    zenalasca Posts: 563 Member
    Also, my best friend (who was 17 last year) was on a diet. She told me what she was eating each day and I figured it out to be 400 calories per day. If she had been on MFP it wouldn't have made a difference to her starving herself, in fact, she would probably have been eating at a more sensible 1200 calories per day.
  • OllyReeves
    OllyReeves Posts: 579 Member
    i'm no expert, but you seriously want pre teens logging calories and exercise?

    God this society is sad.
  • Capt_Apollo
    Capt_Apollo Posts: 9,026 Member
    Forums aren't a place for easily influenced children, that's why.

    Plus, I don't believe children should track calories. They are still growing and it's far too young to be worrying about things like calories. Teach them how to eat healthily, encourage them to exercise in ways they enjoy and steer them into a healthy, balanced lifestyle.

    +1

    +2
    +3
    +4

    1310794862_Fif.jpg
  • Absonthebrain
    Absonthebrain Posts: 587 Member
    Sparkteens.com --- not MFP but made for teens.


    ^^^This....My son uses it and he loves it!
  • determinedbutlazy
    determinedbutlazy Posts: 1,941 Member
    http://www.sparkteens.com/
  • trogalicious
    trogalicious Posts: 4,584 Member
    these forums are bad enough for a lot of adults.

    sparkteens is certainly the way to go.
  • alishacupcake
    alishacupcake Posts: 419 Member
    I don't have a teenager, so I don't really have any information on if a teen should be tracking calories BUT I was an overweight teen and tracking my calories would probably have kept me from being the *obese* adult I am now. I also had no idea how many calories I should have been eating as a teenager or how many I should have been burning. So something like Spark Teen would have greatly helped me.
  • zenchild
    zenchild Posts: 680 Member
    i'm no expert, but you seriously want pre teens logging calories and exercise?

    God this society is sad.

    My cousin had a food diary as a preteen. She'd been serious about dance and gymnastics since a very young age. When she was 3 or 4 her tumbling teachers wanted to put her on track to train for the Olympics. Her parents decided they'd rather have a daughter than a professional athlete so they declined. They let her take it as far as she wanted without ever pushing her for more. When she was 11 or 12, the coaches had the team keep food diaries. I know the first thing that comes to mind is that they were teaching young girls to be anorexic. Nothing could be further from the truth. They taught the girls about nutrition. They were burning massive amounts of calories and growing and the coaches wanted to teach them how to feed themselves well. She was the only one of my aunt's kids who would ask to have broccoli with dinner because she needed more green vegetables. She was making sure she got the nutrients she needed to keep working hard in gymnastics (she had an 8-pack at 10 years old) and to grow.
    It's not necessarily a bad thing. It just needs to be done correctly. It's probably not something that can be done on a website, but kids do need to learn about nutrition. Schools don't seem to do much. Parents don't always do it. It's hard to say what the solution is.
  • jofjltncb6
    jofjltncb6 Posts: 34,415 Member
    Forums aren't a place for easily influenced children, that's why.

    Plus, I don't believe children should track calories. They are still growing and it's far too young to be worrying about things like calories. Teach them how to eat healthily, encourage them to exercise in ways they enjoy and steer them into a healthy, balanced lifestyle.

    Completely agree about the forums. They aren't even a place for easily influenced adults.

    But I'm not as certain about the calorie tracking part (although will acknowledge that it is a potentially dangerous avenue). What if my 12 yo daughter, who is incredibly active in dance and gymnastics, starts gaining more weight/fat than is healthy? Why wouldn't she track her food intake to track her macros, *and her calories*, to help her make more healthy decisions? If it's healthy for adults to *track* and be aware of these things, why wouldn't it be for teens?*


    *with proper guidance, of course...which I am 99.44% certain that the collective guidance of MFP would *not* be that proper guidance.
  • bokodasu
    bokodasu Posts: 629 Member
    I let my daughter use MFP as a tool to learn about nutrition, but not for daily logging. And mostly no browsing the forums, except for that one "This is a Photoshop" thread that I made her read the whole billion pages of. (Well, I didn't make her but I suggested it and she did.)

    But I definitely think it would be a bad choice for unsupervised preteens. My kid's 10 and she already has clueless friends who spout whatever grapefruit diet or cottonball-soaked-in-vinegar pro-ana trick is popular at the moment. I work really hard to give my daughter a solid scientific foundation for everything, but without that - I mean, how many "I eat 700 calories and run on the treadmill for six hours a day but can't lose a pound!" threads are started by theoretically mature adults here, can you imagine what it would be like if you put a bunch of 12-year-olds together and let them give each other advice?
  • MizTerry
    MizTerry Posts: 3,763 Member
    Forums aren't a place for easily influenced children, that's why.

    Plus, I don't believe children should track calories. They are still growing and it's far too young to be worrying about things like calories. Teach them how to eat healthily, encourage them to exercise in ways they enjoy and steer them into a healthy, balanced lifestyle.

    ^^^Words of wisdom!

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