Is your teenager always hungry? Learn why teens need more food, how to manage snack times, and how to support healthy eating habits while giving your child more control.
If you are a mom who has been careful about following a feeding schedule or routine with your child since they were a baby, the insatiable need for food in your teen might come as a shock to you.
Your child’s whole life, you have been careful about having regular feedings and not getting overly full on snacks. You have prioritized meals and have been careful to not let a snack “ruin dinner.” You have had one or two snacks a day that have been carefully spaced in the day to make sure your child will eat meals.
Then your child grows into a preteen and teenager and seems to always be starving. How do you handle your snack policies at home once you have a teenager?
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Why Are Teenagers So Hungry?
Teens and tweens are legitimately hungry a lot of the day. During the tween years, your child will start to grow more. You get some growth spurts going on. This typically peaks around 13-14 years old. During this time of growth, your child has higher metabolic needs. This means your child needs more calories, which means more food.
Teenagers are often also involved in more intense activities that use up more calories. If your tween or teen is playing a sport, for example, they will need more food because of the calories burned in that activity.
Should You Let Teens Eat All the Time?
Your teen will probably need to eat more often than they have for many, many years. Most teens will need two snacks each day.
This is a point in life when you really want to make sure your child is getting the nutrients, vitamins, and minerals they need. You want to encourage healthy eating habits without turning food into a psychological issue. Provide snack options that are healthy and sustaining. Limit sugary and processed treats. When you are hungry, you reach for whatever is the easiest to eat quickly. Have options that can be eaten quickly that will be healthy. Learn more about recommended nutrition here.
What Time Should Teen Snacks Be?
My tweens and teens are always very hungry when they get home from school. This make sense since they have been at school where there are no snacks. They always have a snack after school.
They also tend to have a snack close to bedtime. We eat dinner very early at our house (around 5 PM), so going from 5 PM until breakfast the next day would be far too long for a teenager.
Your teen’s snack times will be similar, but vary a bit based on when you have dinner.
You will probably also find that your tween or teen will desperately need a snack after getting home from a sports practice or a game/race/competition.
Be Aware of Meals
You want to pay attention to meal times. If your tween or teen is not really hungry for breakfast, lunch, or dinner, the snack policy and practices need to be addressed. If your teen eats their meals as usual, the snacks are fine.
Focus on Fruits, Vegetables, and Healthy Options
Whenever my kids are super hungry close to a meal time and just can’t wait, I tell them to find fruits or vegetables to eat. If they aren’t interested, they aren’t that hungry. If they are interested, they are just helping to make sure they get enough servings of produce in their day.
We are very fortunate in our modern day to have countless recipes at our fingertips on the internet. You can find so many filling, healthy, and delicious snacks online. My daughter Kaitlyn (18 as I write this) is always trying a new recipe that she found on Instagram that features cottage cheese or Greek yogurt, and they are really good! As she has done this over the years, she has grown to be able to concoct her own delicious, healthy snacks.
Work to Turn Over Control
Remember you are raising future adults. You want your children to grow up to be able to make healthy choices and take care of their bodies once they move out of the house. You really don’t want to be fully monitoring and controlling your 17 year old’s food intake. As you work backward from there to the age your child is now, think about what steps you can take to turn the decision-making of when to eat snacks and what to eat over to your child.
You will clearly have a lot of control over WHAT they eat at home if you do the grocery shopping. You can also have policies on how close people can eat to dinner time. But always be working toward giving your child that control.
Conclusion
As your child grows from child to tween to teen, they will need a lot more food each day to sustain their growing bodies, changing metabolisms, and shifting hormones. You need to change your policies with their change. Work to teach healthy habits, provide healthy options, and hand over control.
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