Struggling with low self-esteem, one young women hopes that a hospital-monitored weight-loss program will help her become "more outgoing, more myself."

01:58 PM EDT on Monday, July 5, 2004

BY JENNIFER D. JORDAN
Journal Staff Writer

Journal photo / Mary Murphy Jaime Brown writes down everything she eats daily as part of the adolescent weight-management program at Miriam Hospital. Losing pounds, she believes, will help her gain self-esteem.

In Jaime Brown's bedroom, girl and teen collide.

Stacks of Seventeen magazine vie for space with Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen videotapes. Maybelline eye shadow sits on the dresser; two teddy bears nestle on the twin bed.

Jaime turns 16 in two weeks.

"I'm a kid at heart," she says, sitting in the den of her Warwick home, half-watching a rerun of her childhood favorite, Full House. She might feel young but she's already saving for a car that will give her the adult freedom she craves -- to see her friends when she wants and run errands on her own, not when her mom can bring her.

JAIME REMEMBERS when she stopped feeling like a carefree kid, when things got complicated. It was when she started seventh grade at Aldrich Junior High School. She was 12.

She felt fat.

"I just snapped," she says, sitting on her bed's purple comforter. "I felt like I didn't know anyone. I was afraid I'd get lost. I saw all these cute guys. I thought of myself as fat. I felt more and more self-conscious."

It got worse over the years. Jaime started staying home more often, writing in her journal, spending many nights alone.

"By ninth grade, it was really intense," Jaime says. "Just getting dressed was hard."

She is close to her parents and 26-year-old brother and a small group of friends who often tell her she is beautiful. Don't be so hard on yourself, they say.

But Jaime doesn't want to develop diabetes or high blood pressure, both of which run in her family. She wants to shop in American Eagle, the Gap, the junior's department in Filene's, where she can buy cute camisole tops and low-cut flare pants as her friends do.

She can't. The clothes don't look right. They don't fit. A couple of years ago, her mother began directing her to the ladies' department, where they carry Jaime's size.

She sticks mainly to baggy T-shirts, big sweatshirts, long shorts, jean skirts down to the knee. Anything to cover up.

"That was painful for me, to see the tears," says Jaime's mother, Debbie Brown, of their shopping trips. Debbie Brown is a nurse who has also struggled with her weight over the years. "I'd say, Jaime, I know you are upset. I've been there, I know how it feels."

SUMMERS STRETCH long for teenagers. They get jobs, go to the beach, hang out with friends, take vacation with their families. A lot can happen in 12 weeks.

Jaime is counting on that.

In mid-June, Jaime started an adolescent weight-management program at Miriam Hospital. It's not the first time she has tried to lose weight, but it is the first time she has joined a program.

"I feel better that I'm doing something about it," Jaime says in her gentle voice. She's lost a few pounds already, but knows she has to lose much more. Jaime wants to drop about five sizes on her 5-foot 4-inch frame, but will do it gradually. She plans to be thinner when she starts her junior year this fall.

"I'm trying to prove myself to them in a way," she says of her peers. "So I can go back in September and say 'See, I told you.' I just want to look different."

JAIME HASN'T gone to the beach with her friends in two or three summers.

"That's a big no-no," she says. She goes to pool parties only with close friends. If a larger group is there, or a group with boys, she skips it.

Jamie didn't go to her school's homecoming dance in her freshman or sophomore year and she doesn't have a boyfriend.

"The whole dating scene used to be real important to me," she says. "Now it's more about feeling good about my weight and trying to be more outgoing, more myself."

There are a lot of things Jaime says she won't do because her self-esteem is low.

"I feel like I am not living my life as fully as I should," she says. "How I feel inside is so different from what I'm showing on the outside."

Jaime loves to dance and cranks up the music in her bedroom every night.

"I wanted to take a dance class, but I didn't want to wear a leotard and dance in front of everyone," she says. She decided not to sign up for an acting class -- for similar reasons.

"I just don't feel comfortable with myself," she says. "I know if I lost more weight, my confidence would shoot up."

Journal photo / Mary Murphy Jaime Brown pulls off the the crust from her peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich before taking a bite. Under her food management program, Jaime must measure everything she eats, including liquids, and write it down.

JAIME LIKES to swim in her backyard pool and enjoys taking walks with friends in her Governor Francis Farms neighborhood. But she doesn't play sports and hasn't been very physically active.

She was born with flat feet and it hurt her to run, play or stand for too long when she was a child. At age 8, she had surgery to build an arch in one foot, using part of her hip bone. She wore casts for many weeks afterward. When Jaime was 9, she had the same surgery on the other foot. Now her feet don't hurt, but she says she dislikes running.

Teenagers who are overweight often feel self-conscious about working out, says Elizabeth Lloyd-Richardson, an adolescent psychologist who runs the weight-loss program.

"You'd think they just want to strap on their headphones and head out there," Lloyd-Richardson says. "But as a teenager, you really feel like everyone is watching every move that you make. You hate to draw attention to yourself, even if it's for making healthy choices."

MIRIAM'S WEIGHT-loss program promotes three concepts: good nutrition, an active lifestyle and realistic expectations. Participants generally lose one to two pounds a week and learn eating, exercise and emotional coping skills that will last for a lifetime, Lloyd-Richardson says.

Parents must commit to the program with their teens, so either Jaime's mom or dad, Steven Brown, goes with her each Tuesday.

"What we don't want to see is families targeting the teen and saying 'you deal with this,' " Lloyd-Richardson says. "It's a family approach."

It is hard.

Jaime measures everything she eats and writes it down. One half-cup of cereal with fat-free Smart Milk for breakfast. Frosted flakes. Her favorite. She can't give that up.

Low-calorie bread for her peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich for lunch. Pears instead of French fries. The kitchen counter is full of diet soda bottles.

No trips to Wendy's for deep-fried chicken tenders. No pasta alfredo at the Italian restaurant where she works two shifts a week, walking a mile to work.

No Oreos.

"All year I talked to my friends about going on a diet," Jaime says, noting that her closest girlfriends are thin. "They'd get mad at me when I talked about it, thinking it was starvation. But now they say, if it makes me happy and I'm doing it in a safe way, it's OK."

Jaime says she knew something was wrong with one of her childhood idols, Mary Kate Olsen, even before the news media reported last month that she was under treatment for anorexia nervosa, an eating disorder.

"She didn't look healthy," Jaime says. "Her bones were showing."

Jaime doesn't want to look like that, she says. But she wouldn't mind looking like another of her favorite celebrities -- movie and pop star Hilary Duff.

The August issue of Seventeen magazine features Duff on the cover with the caption, "I feel pressure to fit into my clothes."

"I was surprised when I read that, that she was worried about the way she looks," Jaime says. "I'd take her body any day."

Then Jaime looks down.

"I guess we all go through it," she says. "If something doesn't look right on you, you feel like the whole world is watching."

JAIME TALKS easily about things she enjoys -- spending time with her family, going to the movies with friends and playing the piano. She wants to attend the University of Rhode Island to study psychology and work with children.

She's a good student and says she "likes being around people with positive energy." She considers herself compassionate and a good listener. She laughs a lot. She thinks she's a good dancer. "But nobody sees that," she jokes. She likes her hands. "They're the one thing on my body that's thin."

There is one other aspect of her appearance Jaime doesn't criticize -- her smile. She likes the way her eyes and mouth look when she is happy.

"If I saw someone with my smile, I'd say 'Oh, she's a good person,' " Jaime says.

Staff writer Jennifer Jordan can be reached at jjordan [at] projo.com