Winter Weight on Spring Break

Students of all kind from all over the country flock to the beaches and lakes during spring break to sever from textbooks and have some well-deserved fun in the sun. Except many young adults are more stressed out over shedding their extra winter pounds, than they are about thier midterms before break. Those treating eating disorders say that this time of year is most trying for many patients.

"This is a trigger time for youth to start to obsess about weight and body image," said Margo Maine in The New York Times. Dr. Maine is a clinical psychologist who specializes in eating disorders. She said she tends to see an increase in weight anxiety every year among her younger patients before spring break. "By the beginning of February people are starting to talk about their bodies and getting ready for spring break. Even girls who are simply around that talk can't get away from it."

The dream of having the perfect "bikini-ready" body on a deadline is an intoxicating incentive, some people will basically starve themselves. And in a school setting, where tightly knit groups of young women are all vacationing together, diets easily become competitive or, as Dr. Maine put it, contagious.