Healthy Living for Teens

In Healthy Living for Teens, young writers demonstrate that it’s possible to overcome bad habits and lead healthy lives in a time when substance abuse, junk food, and low self-esteem are major social problems. Inspire teen and preteen readers to take responsibility for and make wiser decisions about their lives with the essays in this book—each written by a teenager. Within these pages, Edwin Mercado, Evelyn Gofman, Antwaun Garcia, and many others describe how they got on the right path toward healthy habits, breaking unhealthy ones like smoking, taking drugs, abusing alcohol, or seeking comfort in foods they know are unhealthy.

Essays include:

• Tales of a 17-Year-Old Smoker
• How I Quit Fast Food
• Clean and Kind of Sober
• What Drugs Do to You
• Starving for Acceptance
• Shapin' Up!
• Dear Food Diary
• Guttony Getaway
• I Desperately Needed Cooking 101
• What is Bad Food so Good?
• Why Should Teens Care About Nutrition?
• My Hood is Bad for My Health
• Male on the Scale
• Scaling Back
• The Would-Be Vegetarian
• Breathing Easier
• How Exercise Relieves Stress
• Poetry Keeps Me Calm
• Do for You
• Nature is My Salvation
• My Life with OCD
• Arthritis at Thirteen
• Addled on Adderall
• and more

Through these essays, teen readers—as well as their parents, teachers, and caregivers—will pick up new tricks to beating bad habits and gain a much-needed glimpse into how the world looks to our younger generations.