Teen Weight Gain is agony
I rarely talk about personal stuff but since you all have stuck with me for a few years now, I feel comfortable to share.
Teen weight gain is agony - and if you're a ballet dancer, cheerleader - or "any" girl - it is horrible. And this is way before social media or every day bullying at school.
I wrote a slightly clinical post about hormone imbalance on my other toe shoes blog today. But this is my own story.
When I was young I was so skinny my mother called me "the skull". But for ballet that's good right? I ate anything that I wanted to and was thin.
When I went to the summer ballet course in Hockley Valley, Ontario Canada, the ballet teachers were all from the National Ballet of Canada and the National Ballet School teacher course. I was in good hands.
We had 3-4 ballet classes a day and we gobbled up our boxed lunches - 2 sandwiches, some raw vegetable snack and a cupcake.
Our ballet teachers were horrified. They picked the sandwich contents out of the bread with a fork and threw away everything else.
And that summer I auditioned for the National Ballet School of Canada and was accepted. All was well for about a year and a half.
Then the teen weight gain began. Nightmare! I was eating what I had always eaten. There were a few other girls who gained weight too. We were lepers, let me assure you.
What I didn't know was hormone imbalance was involved. Nowadays a parent and a family doctor would suspect. But not then.
Here is a video that discusses stress and progesterone deficiency:
If a girl has heavy and had painful periods, that's a sign. Weight gain (while exercising and eating the same) is a sign.
Worry, anxiety, fatigue and social withdrawal are all signs of hormonal imbalance.
No one realized we needed a hormone balance test.
I was impressed by an interview I read with Suzanne Somers today and her new book "Tox-Sick Suzanne Somers".
It covers many causes of ill health. The interview covers the hormone imbalance issues.
All I can say to another dancer, or another woman (including you teen dancers!) be forewarned!
Sadly, Suzanne Somers died of her cancer in 2023. She had achieved some healthy periods during her long fight with this illness.
A key element to long fights with cancers is the prevalence of hormone mimickers everywhere in our food chain, in our house hold cleaners and furnishings, and in our clothes.
How can you get better, or prevent disease when you're surrounded by the causes of said disease?
Common Carcinogens
Consider these:
Popular air sprays, plug-ins and dish and laundry detergents, even unscented
Carpet detergents and powdered scented "refreshers".
Formaldehyde and other caustic chemicals in new clothes, furnishings, paper products and packing material
Most things plastic
Pesticides in everything shipped across the world, or country.
Search the ingredients.
Your favorite brands aren't going to come up on a list of cancer causing products, you know, like cigarettes.
But if you search the ingredients of these, one by one, you will be, at a minimum, concerned.
Don't be fooled by the label NATURAL on products.
Almost everything is natural.
Before it gets altered for shelf life, persistence of scent, wrinkle-freedom, guarded from stains, bacteria-killing capability, and all those other handy things.
As for teen weight gain, it's not as related to carbs as we used to think. There goes the whole keto approach. Yeah, I fell for it too, along with a lot of doctors.
Sadly, nutritional research goes slowly, which I think is why FADS come and go roughly every ten years.
Healthy saturated fats still matter, but a measured amount of carbs ingested at the right times give you energy.
Eat pesticide-free foods as much as you can. Pesticides are hormone mimickers, which means they fill your hormone receptors, blocking the reception of your own natural hormones.
If you're a teen dancer, wanting to be thin, and still grow properly with the muscles and endurance for ballet training, you need to understand how this works.
Find out all you can about hormone imbalance and lead a very healthy and happy life.
UPDATED NOVEMBER 2025
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