Dieting can be reduced into a single, basic principle: eat fewer calories than you burn, and you'll lose weight. Calorie shifting uses that basis and adds a secondary element, strategically varying your daily eating habits to help your metabolism burn calories at optimal efficiency. While no scientific trials have assessed whether this diet is safe for children, it's generally best to avoid extreme diets for kids. Opt instead for more well-rounded, kid-friendly approaches that generally cut out junk food and include your child's favorite forms of physical activity.
Calorie Shifting Basics
Calorie shifting is a dieting practice aimed at weight loss. The basic strategy is to work with your body's expectation of a particular calorie intake, resulting in the most efficient metabolism of the calories that you consume each day. You must monitor your caloric intake and keep it below certain maximum levels on a daily basis. However, unlike a typical calorie-based dieting plan, you get some variation in your caloric allowances from one day to the next. For example, after you've spent two weeks setting a "baseline" intake of 2,000 calories per day, you add 300 calories on a few days during week three. However, during week four, you lower your intake by 500 calories on a few days.
Calorie Shifting for Kids
A calorie shifting diet requires precise tracking of calories. The methodical activity of logging calories makes the diet inappropriate for younger children, especially. Among older children and adolescents, tracking calories so exactly can interfere with social eating. Especially among teenagers, putting a diet in opposition to normal socializing can interfere with social skill development, create stress or stigma and foster unhealthy eating habits or even disorders.
Dieting and Children
If your child wishes to lose weight, schedule an appointment with your family pediatrician or physician for a medical assessment of body mass index, a measure of body fat that takes into consideration a person's stature. If your doctor recommends weight loss, help your child to set reasonable goals, with a balance of exercise and healthier eating habits. An extreme diet, such as calorie shifting, can create unnecessary stress, set up excessively steep goals and exacerbate a negative body image. If you suspect that your child's wish to lose weight has an emotional component, enlist the help of a qualified therapist or counselor.
Reasonable Calorie-Counting
If you or your child adopt a calorie-based diet such as calorie shifting, make sure that your approach doesn't reduce healthy eating to numbers. Lowering your overall calorie intake is often an effective means of weight loss. However, it's important that you cut out the "empty calories," or food items with no nutritional value, while continuing to consume nutrient-rich foods. For example, a diet soda may have fewer calories than a glass of milk; however, in terms of vitamins and minerals, the milk is a much healthier option. For well-balanced meals that are also low in calories, fill up half your plate with fruits and vegetables at every meal, keep fatty or sugary foods to a minimum and practice portion control.
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