How to help your children lose weight

It is well known that obesity or being overweight is a growing epidemic among children, leading to increases in diabetes and other serious health effects.
It is also well known what you have to do to lose weight, by eating less and exercising more. The problem is that it is hard to stay motivated to do these things.
And if it is hard for adults, you can expect that it is even harder for kids, who don't necessarily understand the negative health effects of being overweight.The best approach is a general approach which incorporates the following:

1.Encourage your kids to make changes to their general lifestyle

2.Encourage them to become more physically active

3.Make it easy for them to eat healthily

4.Set a good example for them, yourself


It is often easy tell when a child is overweight.
Figuring out his body mass index can help make the diagnosis more official, but you often don't need to go that far. Instead, for most overweight kids, you can just use the more old-fashioned 'pinch an inch' or two inches of body fat to know that your child is overweight.

The hard part is knowing how to help your overweight child.

First Goals for Overweight Kids
Surprisingly, the first goal that most experts recommend is not to go out and try to lose a lot of weight. Instead, they recommend a much more modest goal of simply not gaining any more weight.
If you remember that your child is going to keep getting taller as he approaches and goes through puberty, it makes it easy to understand why simply not gaining weight can be helpful. Even if your overweight child isn't losing weight, as long as he isn't gaining weight or at least isn't gaining weight as quickly, he can slim out and reach a healthy BMI as he gets taller.

However, this method only works for kids who are a 'little overweight' though and haven't gone though their growth spurt yet. Other overweight kids will likely need to lose weight once they have reached their first goal of not gaining weight for a few months.


Weight Loss Goals
Once your child has reached his goal of not gaining weight for a few months, you can set a new goal for actually losing weight. Again, it is important to set a modest goal so that your child doesn't get overwhelmed and give up. One pound each month is a good weight loss goal to set for most kids.
Teens who are very overweight may need to loose even more weight, once they meet their initial goals, and may even move to a more aggressive goal of losing two pounds every month or even every week to get to a healthy weight.

To help support your child through these goals and monitor his progress, set regular follow-up appointments with your pediatrician and/or a registered dietitian.

Meeting Weight Loss Goals
Unfortunately, you don't just tell your child about these weight loss goals and watch him lose weight. It takes some work. Having goals can be a good motivator though.
How do you meet the first goal of not gaining weight?

The first step is figuring out how much extra weight your child is gaining each month, so that you know how many fewer calories he needs each day. For example, if your nine year old is gaining an extra three pounds a month, and each pound is equal to about 3,500 calories, then he needs to cut back on 10,500 calories each month to stop gaining the extra weight. While that seems like a lot, it works out to only 350 calories each day.

How hard is it for a nine year old to cut 350 calories out of his diet each day? It shouldn't be that hard, but it gets even easier if you cut half of the calories from his diet (175 calories) and encourage extra physical activity to burn the other 175 calories (about 30 minutes of moderate exercise).

Remember that you have to make these changes beyond what your child already does each day. That means that if your child is already exercising for 30 minutes each day, then he has to now exercise 60 minutes a day for this to work.

The child in this example could likely cut 350 calories from his diet just by cutting out of the high calorie, high sugar items that he likely drinks, including soda and fruit drinks, etc. You can also cut calories with a healthier diet, such as by eating less fast food, changing to low-fat dairy products, serving smaller portions, limiting second helpings of main courses, and eating healthier snacks.

Once your child stays at a stable weight for a few months, you can go after the next goal of losing a pound a month. Since you already know that a pound of fat is equal to 3,500 calories, you know that you just have to cut another 115 calories a day from your diet to lose about a pound a month.

Calories, Calories, Calories
While you don't have to know where all your child's calories come from to help him meet his weight loss goals, it can help. For example, if your child chooses to eat three Oreo cookies (160 calories) after dinner instead of six cookies (320 calories), he would be saving the 160 calories if he normally eats six cookies each day. If he usually doesn't eat any cookies, than those three cookies would actually be extra calories.
If you can't have strict calorie counts, try keeping a drink diary to record general trends in your child's eating habits, like how many calories he gets from snacks, etc. You may find that he is actually getting an extra meal's worth of calories from a big after-school or bedtime snack.

What You Need To Know•If even not gaining weight seems like to high of a first goal, then perhaps start with slower weight gain as your first goal. So if your child has been gaining two pounds a month, set a goal of only one pound a month of weight gain for a few months.


•Encourage healthy eating and a healthy weight instead of pushing "dieting" on your child.


•Getting the whole family involved in eating healthy and being more physically active can greatly help kids stick to their weight loss goals.


•The fact that children normally gain about four to five pounds a year, which can increase as a child nears puberty, can complicate your child's weight loss goals. Most overweight children don't necessarily need this 'normal weight gain' though.



Sources:

American Academy of Pediatrics Policy Statement. Prevention of Pediatric Overweight and Obesity. PEDIATRICS Vol. 112 No. 2 August 2003, pp. 424-430.