Ep. 103 Why "Eat Less, Move More" Does Not Work for Teens With Insulin Resistance

"Just eat less and move more." If I had a dollar for every time a teenager or parent told me they received this advice, I could fund a research study.

It sounds logical. It works for some adults in some situations. But for teenagers dealing with insulin resistance, prediabetes, PCOS, or weight struggles during puberty, this advice is not just unhelpful. It misses the point entirely.

In this episode, I am sharing three specific reasons why the eat less, move more approach fails teenagers, and what actually works instead. And I am being personal about it too, because I was that teenager. I tried the tomato diet at 11 years old. I hated PE. I was always last in line when the teacher asked us to run. So I know this from the inside, not just from the clinic.

I’m Dr. Jenny Gourgari—pediatric endocrinologist, certified in obesity medicine and a health coach. 
After helping hundreds of teens struggling with their weight and hormones, I’ve created a whole new path by doing what most programs miss: balance puberty hormones naturally and create habits that actually last.

Here's what makes this different:
✅ No dieting. No calorie counting. No shame.
✅ No more food fights between parents and teens.
✅ No weight obsession—just healthy habits
✅ Real science behind how puberty hormones affect weight
✅ A safe, supportive approach that prevents eating disorders

Because when teens understand their hormones and get the right support, they don’t just lose weight—they gain strength, energy, confidence, and freedom!

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Transcript

Welcome to another episode of the Lifestyle and Weight Loss For Teens podcast. This is Dr. Jenny Gourgari, and on today's episode, I decided to talk about why eat less, move more is advice that doesn't work for teenagers with insulin resistance, pre-diabetes, teenagers in unhealthy weight that wanna get into a healthy weight. I have personal experience. 

When I was a teenager and I was overweight and I wanted to get into a healthy weight, I was told by my cousin that, "Oh, you should be on a diet." I'm like, "What is diet?" Like, I didn't even know what a diet was. She told me, "Oh, you will just eat tomatoes." tomatoes have no calories, and if you eat a lot of tomatoes, then you will get into a healthy weight. You will lose weight. So I was so naive at that time that I ate tomatoes, but I added feta I added, bread and I was eating tomato and feta all the time while I was watching my favorite movies on TV. I think maybe I was 11 years or 12 years, that was the first time, I became familiar with the dieting word. And soon I realized that that didn't work, but then I thought, "Oh, it's the tomato that doesn't work, and if I try something else, it's gonna work." now I know that the whole concept of dieting is the problem. Now I know that puberty is a biology that is not addressed by tomatoes or by any other restricted diet. 

So I wanted to give you today three main reasons why the eat less, move more approach is not the best approach when we have a teenager that has insulin resistance, PCOS, pre-diabetes. They wanna get healthier. They wanna decrease their cholesterol. They wanna become healthier, and giving them this bland advice is no. 

So reason number one is teenagers are still growing. They're not like adults, that they have a certain height, there's certain amount of calories that they need. No. Teenagers are growing. The more they grow, the more calories they require. The taller they are, the higher the calories that they need. And how much calories does a teenager need? there are general, rules and recommendations published according to age. However They are not the same for every teenager. We have teenagers that are very athletic, they play sports, a lot, and we have teenagers that they spend a lot of their time in front of the TV or doing homework. Those two teenagers do not require the same amount of calories. I hear all the time, "Oh, but he eats, he eats," and then there's no weight gain, because the kid was, playing sport 15 hours every week, right? He was, in soccer team, he was in basketball team, he was, rock climbing. So that teenager that I saw, yeah, he was eating all the time. He was not gaining weight. He was not growing because he was exercising too much. 

So if you wanna know specifically what are the requirements for your teenager, ask your pediatrician. Ask your, endocrinologist or your dietician, So a certain amount of calories is not ideal, because these requirements change in teenagers as they grow. And because they grow, they need more calories. They need carbohydrates, they need protein, they need, fat in order to progress normally into puberty. not giving them the ingredients they need can be harmful. We don't want restrictions. I made another episode, about whether a keto diet is good for teenagers. you can go and listen to that. It's lifestyleforteens.com/um, podcast. There is a list of previous podcast episodes if you're listening on podcast. 

The second reason why eat less, move, more advice is not adequate for teenagers is because this doesn't talk about the specific hormones that are high in teenagers. they affect insulin resistance. Teenagers have high spikes of growth hormone. Growth hormone creates insulin resistance. There is a 25 to 30% decrease of insulin sensitivity in teenage years because of these hormonal spikes. And the eat less, move more approach does nothing to address this insulin sensitivity problem because of puberty. 

So we don't need to eat less. We need to eat better. We need food that is healthy, that does not exacerbate the insulin resistance of puberty. Teenagers need healthy meals. Ideally, meals that have protein, fiber, vegetables. and it doesn't matter if it is the same amount of calories. If you have 600 calories from a burger, it's not if you have 600 calories from Greek yogurt and strawberries and a piece of grilled chicken and, salad with tomatoes and olive oil. It can still be 600 calories, but they don't have the same effect on teens' metabolism. 

So again, the second reason is they don't, that the eat less, move more plain advice does not work is because it doesn't take into account- The puberty insulin resistance. the other thing I wanna mention is how many times have you tried to exercise more, particularly when it's like New Year's? Everybody exercise in New Year's. I go to my gym, the gym is full. Then after three months, the gym is empty. Like, you go and do something that somebody forced you to do because you have pre-diabetes, or because your mom told you so, or because you're scared for something, right? It will have some effect for some time, and then it will wear off. 

The secret is do something that is fun. Do something that is easy for you to do. Do something that you do with your family, with your friends, with the people that are around you in your school so that the part of movement is not just the exercise. It's not this mundane that you have to do because you must exercise, but it's part of what you do. you move because You play basketball with your friends. You move because you like dancing. You wanna be healthy. So all those things are great things that we want to do to make exercise fun and to make it part of our habits I know it doesn't work because I did it, and I used to hate exercise, and I know kids love exercise. I know most kids like to have a break and PE at school 'cause it's, the easiest. You don't have to study. You don't have to do anything. When I was a teenager, PE was my worst. I didn't like PE at all. Because I was always the last person when a teacher ask us to run, and I was always last in the line, and I felt so embarrassed. I couldn't move. I was out of breath. So that made me hate exercise even more. that made me hate PE even more. Like, little did I know at the time that, first of all, it's not a competition. It's not something that, you know, is who is first, right? That's not about that. Second of all is there are fun ways to be active. There are fun ways to move your body. And, if I was doing the same thing with my friends, I probably wouldn't care. I probably would be fine, and that's why, I loved playing with my friends. I just didn't like this, "Okay, get in line and start running around school, and let's do five rounds of school," right? make the activity fun. Make the food fun. it's not like a diet. It's not a restriction. 

Teenagers that go on diets are more likely to develop eating disorders. And we don't want the focus to be around specific diet. We don't want even the focus to be around a certain weight. We want the focus to be around what keeps us healthy. teenagers love to look better, and they're more confident, I totally get that. everybody wants to look beautiful, But we are really focusing on this for something even more important, which is health, decreased risk to develop diabetes, decreased risk to develop complications. we need to start now. Step by step, before things get worse. 

Oftentimes I hear from families, "I don't know where to start. I don't know if my kid is at risk." You can go, lifestyleforteens.com, check my free resources, download, the three hidden signs of insulin resistance, what you can do right today. It's free. and if you like this episode, click on subscribe, on YouTube, follow my podcast. I would appreciate if you could leave a review. And share this with other friends and family that you think may benefit. And if you know families that have teenagers that they struggle with those constant yo-yo diets, please have them listen to that. There's a better way to do things.

I hope this was helpful. I'll talk to you next week. Take care.