Obesity is one of the leading causes of death and disease in the United States. In 2008 it was estimated by the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry that approximately 16 to 33 percent of U.S. children and adolescents were obese. To distinguish between underweight, healthy weight, overweight and obesity, your pediatrician will calculate your child's height and weight to come up with a body mass index (BMI). Children with a BMI of 30 or more are considered obese. Childhood obesity is a dangerous health condition that can lead to high cholesterol, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, asthma, and even emotional problems.
Step 1
Start healthy eating habits early. If your child is raised eating fast food and snacking on cookies and candies, getting him to suddenly start eating healthy will be a difficult battle. KidsHealth.org, an award winning health media website, suggests that it's never too early to encourage a healthy lifestyle. "Breastfed babies," it reports, "may be more able to control their own intake and follow their own internal hunger cues."
Step 2
Shape food preferences by providing healthy foods and snacks early. Avoid feeding fast food and packaged foods. Develop your child's interest in healthy foods by offering different fruits and vegetables. Keep your kitchen stocked with healthy snacks like fruit, peanut butter and low-fat cheese sticks. Don't cook special meals for her either. The more you accommodate meal requests, the pickier she can choose to be.
Step 3
Involve the entire family in a healthy diet. Singling out one kid to lose weight can make him feel self-conscious and see your good intentions as punishment.
Step 4
Do family activities together. Kids imitate their parents. If you preach that they should get more exercise while you sit in front of the television, they'll think that being sedentary is okay.
Step 5
Reward success with praise, not food. Instead of getting a Big Mac after losing five pounds, reward your kids with a trip to a water park or somewhere else fun. If you reward them with a taboo food, it just undermines all the work the family did to start eating healthy in the first place.
Step 6
Encourage your kids to be active. Limit television time to fewer than two hours a day. The American Academy of Pediatrics suggests not starting kids younger than two on television at all. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that kids get about one hour of exercise on a daily basis.
Step 7
Enforce bedtime. Kids need about nine and a half hours or more of sleep each night. Getting all the sleep they need won't burn calories, but it will limit the hours at the end of the day when the kids are more likely to be sedentary surfing the web or playing video games and maybe even snacking.
Tips and Warnings
- Tell your kids that they're doing a good job. People need to be reminded of their accomplishments. If you only point out when your daughter gained two or three pounds, she's more likely to hold on to feelings of shame and failure.
- Remember your mother telling you that you couldn't leave the dinner table until you cleared your plate? Forcing kids to eat passed the point of feeling full will only encourage over eating. If your child doesn't finish dinner, it's probably because he's not hungry.
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