Help Your Child Lose Weight
- By Southern Mom
- Published 03/3/2008
- Parenting
- Unrated
The percentage of obese children in the U.S. has tripled since the 1970’s, and while TV, video games and McDonalds are being blamed, the truth is the problem starts at home. In fact, many parents, like Amy from Houston, TX, ignore the issue, “My child is a good kid, she doesn’t smoke or do drugs and she gets good grades. So what if she is overweight, she’ll grow out of it.”
The problem is that 85% of obese adolescents become obese adults and the health related problems caused by obesity, like heart disease and diabetes, kill more Americans than cigarettes, drugs and car accidents combined. The onset of childhood diabetes has increased over 50% in the last thirty years, children as young as five have plaque build up in their arteries, and high blood pressure is now becoming a common problem in adolescents. While these serious health problems are directly related to a child being overweight, there’s another half of the problem that can be just as detrimental. The social stigmata of being overweight in today’s thin obsessed society has more physiological effects on a child that you can imagine. Their extra weight makes them a target for teasing, can limit their social popularity and studies have shown that suicide rates are higher among overweight children. In fact, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reports that lowered self-esteem is associated with being overweight in girls as young as five.
As a parent you constantly strive to give your child the best, but if you have Amy’s “so what” attitude about your child’s weight issue, you are failing to give your child one of the most important gifts of all, good health. Yet many parents are dumbfounded on how their child got to be overweight and what to do about it. “After all,” Amy says, “I was always skinny as a child and I never dieted.”
Putting your child on a diet and telling them that this or that is forbidden food is not the answer. What your child needs to learn are the behaviors of a healthy and active lifestyle. They learn this first by your example. As the parent you set up what the “norms” are, and if your “norms” do not include the essentials of living a healthy and an active lifestyle, then how can you expect your child to live that way?
The second way your child can learn to live a healthy and active lifestyle is through simple education and practice. Children need to know not just that they need to eat five servings of fruits and vegetables a day, but why it is so important and how it affects it their body. Below are steps you can take to help your child loose weight, but what should be stressed is the success of your child loosing the weight increases if you make these behavioral changes a family affair. It doesn’t matter if your child’s other siblings are thin, the behavioral changes below will help all of your children (and even yourself) acquire healthy habits that will benefit them for their entire lives.
Developing Healthy Habits
Five a Day
The CDC calls for five to nine servings of fruits and vegetables a day. Make this your first priority for improving your child’s health. Fruits and vegetables provide nutrients that no Fred Flintstone multi-vitamin can really replace. Additionally, if your child is eating the full five to nine servings a day, he will less likely to snack on junk food. While serving this many fruits and vegetables a day sounds overwhelming, remember that serving sizes are often smaller than you think, a half of grapefruit counts as one serving as well as 8 ounces of 100% juice. Add fruits and vegetables into each meal and keep your house stocked with cut up veggies and fruits for quick snacks. Do not encourage your child to use cheese or fattening dips with their servings – the natural state is best.
You Are What You Drink
Would you feed your child five desserts a day? That’s what you are doing when you allow him to consume five high calorie drinks a day like soda or fruit drinks. In fact these drinks are even worse than desserts because your child will still be hungry and will still
want to eat something with that high calorie drink, whereas a dessert would at least fill his stomach. The best thing to do is not to buy soda and high calorie drinks. Limit juice consumption to 100% juices and only one serving a day. Buy skim milk only. Encourage your child to drink water.
Water
Getting your child to drink the recommended six to eight glasses of water every day will make a huge difference in their health. Explain to him the benefits of drinking water, including that water is the best drink to hydrate your body, that often when you are hungry you are really just dehydrated and that drinks full of sugar and caffeine only make your body more dehydrated. Give him sound reasons to drink water often, show him how all of his favorite stars always carry around water bottles, let him know that it is not only the “in” thing to do, it is a healthy thing to do. Keep water bottles cold in the refrigerator and encourage your child to bring one with them wherever he goes.
Limit Fast Food
How often does your child eat fast food in one week? Take a week and keep count. Did you include his school cafeteria meals? Those cafeteria meals often consist of fried foods. Count each time your child eats pizza, Chinese food, take out food, drive-thru food, and even high fat microwaveable foods. Count every piece of fried food. So, how many times did your child eat fast food in one week? It could be an eye opener for you. We are a nation of on the go food, but it is killing us, literally. Teach your child the importance of limiting fast food to a once a month treat, not a stationary substitute for a meal. Make sure that your child has meal options that are healthy and fast by learning how to cook low-fat, healthy meals. Make extra large portions and save the leftovers in individual, microwavable containers that your child can take out and eat at any time. If you find that you still end up eating fast food more than once or twice a month, teach your child how to make healthier choices when ordering and lead by example.
Portion Sizes
In the land of super fast food also comes super sized food! Our kids have a warped idea of what portion sizes are because they are always being served super sized portions! Teach your child portion size control. Make them understand that most restraint meals are two servings rather than one, buy proportioned snacks instead of jumbo bags to help control portion sizes. Teach them what the proper portion sizes are for each food group. If you don’t know what they are, then go to www.cdc.gov to brush up on your own portion size control skills. Remember, you must lead by example.
Decrease Inactivity
How many hours does your child spend watching TV, playing video games or sitting behind the computer? Get your child to record the amount of time he spends doing these inactive activities for a week. Then take that total amount of time and try to bring it down, way down. Just about any activity, like art or music, burns more calories than watching TV. Get your child involved in as many hobbies and physical activities as possible and aim to get their inactive time down to no more than an hour a day.
Increase Active Time
A child needs a balance of activities in their life. Mentally stimulating activities like music, art or hobbies are great, but they need to be balanced out with physical activities. Aim to have your child physically active for at least an hour a day. It doesn’t have to be an hour all at once, but rather send him on a walk with the dog for twenty minutes and then pay him to mow the lawn for forty minutes. Every child should be involved in several physical activities that they have a passion for. Whether it is kickboxing, rollerblading, ice skating, team sports or individual sports – get your child motivated and inspired by enrolling them in classes or on teams. Show them how they can improve their performance, because the better they become at their chosen physical activities, the more they will want to participate! But above all, find physical activities that they will have fun doing!
Stay Motivated
Keep trying new healthy foods and new activities with your child. Make it fun! Keeping motivated will make it easier to make this lifetime commitment to better health and fitness!
About the Author: Janene Nusraty is a certified personal trainer specializing in childhood obesity and founder of Youth Fitness Club(http://www.youthfitnessclub.com) an interactive weight loss program designed for children and teens ages eight to sixteen.
The problem is that 85% of obese adolescents become obese adults and the health related problems caused by obesity, like heart disease and diabetes, kill more Americans than cigarettes, drugs and car accidents combined. The onset of childhood diabetes has increased over 50% in the last thirty years, children as young as five have plaque build up in their arteries, and high blood pressure is now becoming a common problem in adolescents. While these serious health problems are directly related to a child being overweight, there’s another half of the problem that can be just as detrimental. The social stigmata of being overweight in today’s thin obsessed society has more physiological effects on a child that you can imagine. Their extra weight makes them a target for teasing, can limit their social popularity and studies have shown that suicide rates are higher among overweight children. In fact, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reports that lowered self-esteem is associated with being overweight in girls as young as five.
As a parent you constantly strive to give your child the best, but if you have Amy’s “so what” attitude about your child’s weight issue, you are failing to give your child one of the most important gifts of all, good health. Yet many parents are dumbfounded on how their child got to be overweight and what to do about it. “After all,” Amy says, “I was always skinny as a child and I never dieted.”
Putting your child on a diet and telling them that this or that is forbidden food is not the answer. What your child needs to learn are the behaviors of a healthy and active lifestyle. They learn this first by your example. As the parent you set up what the “norms” are, and if your “norms” do not include the essentials of living a healthy and an active lifestyle, then how can you expect your child to live that way?
The second way your child can learn to live a healthy and active lifestyle is through simple education and practice. Children need to know not just that they need to eat five servings of fruits and vegetables a day, but why it is so important and how it affects it their body. Below are steps you can take to help your child loose weight, but what should be stressed is the success of your child loosing the weight increases if you make these behavioral changes a family affair. It doesn’t matter if your child’s other siblings are thin, the behavioral changes below will help all of your children (and even yourself) acquire healthy habits that will benefit them for their entire lives.
Developing Healthy Habits
Five a Day
The CDC calls for five to nine servings of fruits and vegetables a day. Make this your first priority for improving your child’s health. Fruits and vegetables provide nutrients that no Fred Flintstone multi-vitamin can really replace. Additionally, if your child is eating the full five to nine servings a day, he will less likely to snack on junk food. While serving this many fruits and vegetables a day sounds overwhelming, remember that serving sizes are often smaller than you think, a half of grapefruit counts as one serving as well as 8 ounces of 100% juice. Add fruits and vegetables into each meal and keep your house stocked with cut up veggies and fruits for quick snacks. Do not encourage your child to use cheese or fattening dips with their servings – the natural state is best.
You Are What You Drink
Would you feed your child five desserts a day? That’s what you are doing when you allow him to consume five high calorie drinks a day like soda or fruit drinks. In fact these drinks are even worse than desserts because your child will still be hungry and will still
Water
Getting your child to drink the recommended six to eight glasses of water every day will make a huge difference in their health. Explain to him the benefits of drinking water, including that water is the best drink to hydrate your body, that often when you are hungry you are really just dehydrated and that drinks full of sugar and caffeine only make your body more dehydrated. Give him sound reasons to drink water often, show him how all of his favorite stars always carry around water bottles, let him know that it is not only the “in” thing to do, it is a healthy thing to do. Keep water bottles cold in the refrigerator and encourage your child to bring one with them wherever he goes.
Limit Fast Food
How often does your child eat fast food in one week? Take a week and keep count. Did you include his school cafeteria meals? Those cafeteria meals often consist of fried foods. Count each time your child eats pizza, Chinese food, take out food, drive-thru food, and even high fat microwaveable foods. Count every piece of fried food. So, how many times did your child eat fast food in one week? It could be an eye opener for you. We are a nation of on the go food, but it is killing us, literally. Teach your child the importance of limiting fast food to a once a month treat, not a stationary substitute for a meal. Make sure that your child has meal options that are healthy and fast by learning how to cook low-fat, healthy meals. Make extra large portions and save the leftovers in individual, microwavable containers that your child can take out and eat at any time. If you find that you still end up eating fast food more than once or twice a month, teach your child how to make healthier choices when ordering and lead by example.
Portion Sizes
In the land of super fast food also comes super sized food! Our kids have a warped idea of what portion sizes are because they are always being served super sized portions! Teach your child portion size control. Make them understand that most restraint meals are two servings rather than one, buy proportioned snacks instead of jumbo bags to help control portion sizes. Teach them what the proper portion sizes are for each food group. If you don’t know what they are, then go to www.cdc.gov to brush up on your own portion size control skills. Remember, you must lead by example.
Decrease Inactivity
How many hours does your child spend watching TV, playing video games or sitting behind the computer? Get your child to record the amount of time he spends doing these inactive activities for a week. Then take that total amount of time and try to bring it down, way down. Just about any activity, like art or music, burns more calories than watching TV. Get your child involved in as many hobbies and physical activities as possible and aim to get their inactive time down to no more than an hour a day.
Increase Active Time
A child needs a balance of activities in their life. Mentally stimulating activities like music, art or hobbies are great, but they need to be balanced out with physical activities. Aim to have your child physically active for at least an hour a day. It doesn’t have to be an hour all at once, but rather send him on a walk with the dog for twenty minutes and then pay him to mow the lawn for forty minutes. Every child should be involved in several physical activities that they have a passion for. Whether it is kickboxing, rollerblading, ice skating, team sports or individual sports – get your child motivated and inspired by enrolling them in classes or on teams. Show them how they can improve their performance, because the better they become at their chosen physical activities, the more they will want to participate! But above all, find physical activities that they will have fun doing!
Stay Motivated
Keep trying new healthy foods and new activities with your child. Make it fun! Keeping motivated will make it easier to make this lifetime commitment to better health and fitness!
About the Author: Janene Nusraty is a certified personal trainer specializing in childhood obesity and founder of Youth Fitness Club(http://www.youthfitnessclub.com) an interactive weight loss program designed for children and teens ages eight to sixteen.
