(U-WIRE) GAINESVILLE, Fla. — A University of Florida study shows many teenage girls eager to lose weight are willing to let their health go up in smoke.

UF researchers found that adolescent girls starting a diet are twice as likely to start smoking cigarettes.

Data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health was used in the UF study. The study surveyed 7,795 students in the seventh, eighth and ninth grades from the mid-1990s.

“The relationship between dieting and smoking has not yet been examined using a nationally representative [long-term] data set,” said Mildred Maldonado-Molina, a UF assistant professor of epidemiology and health policy research and lead author of the study.

The data included consistent dieters, non-dieters, inactive dieters and those initiating diets.

Researchers excluded students who claimed to have taken more drastic weight-loss measures such as vomiting or use of diet pills. They also didn’t consider those who had already initiated smoking behaviors.

“Dieting is good if kids are doing it in a healthy, balanced way,” Maldonado-Molina said. “We just need to be aware of when healthy behaviors are crossing that line.”