What do you see when you look in the mirror? What you see may have little to do with any numbers on the scale and much more to do with how you’ve been conditioned by a society obsessed with thinness. We’re surrounded by images of models and actresses who seem impossibly slim, and by ads for diets and weight loss products that promise quick and easy results. But what you’re seeing, both in the mirror and in the media, can be deceiving. Here are some important things to remember the next time you start tallying the meager calories you ate during lunch yet feel ashamed about.

Comparing yourself to models and actresses is hazardous to your self-esteem. People have genetically determined body types, and your favorite model or actress is likely an ectomorph whose body is naturally thin and angular. Many of the rest of us are mesomorphs with broad shoulders and a muscular build or endomorphs with soft, round curves and a higher percentage of body fat. If you’re an endomorph, you may be at your ideal weight but look heavier than a friend of the same weight who happens to have the ectomorph body type. Due to your genetic programming, you may never ever be a size 4. Rather, you can be beautiful as you are by taking good care of yourself. Good physical self-care means healthy eating and regular exercising. Caring for yourself emotionally can mean celebrating your own health, wellness and body instead of feeling like a failure because you don’t look like a model or movie star.

Dieting can be dangerous (as well as frustrating). I’m not even talking about eating disorders like anorexia nervosa and bulimia, which can be life-threatening. I’m talking about regular, strict weight-loss diets. While many teens do, in fact, need to lose weight for optimal health, following a diet too low in calories can interfere with adolescent growth and development. It can also set you up for a lifetime of yo-yo dieting and weight fluctuations.

Focusing intensely on body weight and dieting can make you feel worse about yourself. Right now when your body and your life are changing, it’s common to feel insecure— a lot! However, trying to look like someone whose looks are, at least in part, genetically determined, means setting up standards that may not be attainable for you. When you obsess about what you aren’t or can’t be, it can significantly harm you emotionally as well as physically. Even if your doctor tells you that you need to lose weight, there are better ways to do it than starving yourself, and feeling bad about your body as you deprive yourself.

What can you do?
1. Make a decision to eat in a healthier way. This can mean making wiser food choices and also eating a little less of the foods you like. Start small. Cut down on fast food at first and then phase out the unhealthy items over time. You can still go out with your friends. Eating a yogurt parfait, a grilled chicken sandwich or a salad at McDonald’s still lets you spend time with your friends. It just cuts calories, too! Start learning to like fruit as a snack or dessert by phasing it in. Make vegetables and salads a regular part of your meals. If you make new food choices gradually, your tastes will change over time and you’ll actually come to prefer healthy food. Honestly.

2. Change old habits. Are you a breakfast skipper? Big mistake! Even if you’re not hungry, have a piece of fruit or a smoothie in the morning. You’ll eat less during the course of the day. Do you snack when you’re bored and watching TV? Try something a little less boring, like taking a walk or calling a friend— anything that makes you feel more involved with life and less likely to reach for that next chip. If you eat too much when you’re stressed out, try some other ways to deal with stress like deep breathing and meditation, writing your feelings in a journal or chatting with someone you trust. You can’t completely overhaul a lifetime of habits in a week. But you’ll be surprised how firmly new habits become part of your life.

3. Be a smart consumer. There are no miracle diets. Trying to take a short cut to weight loss with a fad diet can be just as harmful and self-defeating as when an athlete takes steroids. You may look good short term, but long term, it’s bad news. Fad diets are hazardous to your health and your waistline: When you lose weight fast with a very low-calorie diet, you’re more likely to gain it all back— and more— when you start eating regular amounts of food again. Old-fashioned diets are so yesterday. And deprivation can trigger binge eating. Smaller changes with gradual but steady weight loss can mean a lasting weight loss.

4. Get active. Want a beautiful, healthy glow? Make exercise a priority. You don’t have to become a super athlete if that’s totally not you. Volunteer to walk the family dog. Tread the mall with your friends. Work out with your sibling who also wants to get and stay fit. Learn a new sport or sign up for a dance or aerobics class. You’ll be amazed how much better you feel by incorporating activity into each day.

5. Don’t wait to live fully. Do it now! Some people have this fantasy that life will be amazing and fun when they’re thin. They put off doing enjoyable things, like going to the beach, until they achieve a likely unreachable standard of thinness. Along the way, these teens miss out on a lot. What do you fantasize about doing if only you were thin? Do it now. Living a happy, healthy life doesn’t have to depend on the shape of your body or that number on the scale.

Kathy McCoy, Ph.D., is a psychotherapist in the Los Angeles area and an author of more than a dozen books, including the award-winning The Teenage Body Book (Hatherleigh Press).