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Helping Your Overweight Child
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Learn healthy eating and physical activity
habits that may last for a lifetime.
HEALTHY
EATING AND PHYSICAL ACTIVITY habits are key to your child’s
well-being. Eating too much and exercising too little can lead
to overweight and related health problems that can follow
children into adult years. You can take an active role in
helping your child—and your whole family—learn healthy eating
and physical activity habits that may last for a lifetime.
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Is my child overweight?
Because children grow at different rates at different times, it
is not always easy to tell if a child is overweight. If you
think that your child is overweight, talk to your health care
provider. Your health care provider can measure your child’s
height and weight and tell you if your child is in a healthy
range.
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How can I
help my overweight child?
Do not put your child on a weight-loss diet unless your health
care provider tells you to. If children do not eat enough, they
may not grow and learn as well as they should.
Involve the
whole family in building healthy eating and physical activity
habits. It benefits everyone and does not single out the child
who is overweight. Try to:
 | Be
supportive |
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Encourage healthy eating habits |
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Encourage daily physical activity |
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Discourage inactive pastimes |
| Be a
positive role model. |
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Be supportive
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Tell your child that he or she is loved, is special, and is
important. Children’s feelings about themselves often are
based on their parents’ feelings about them. |
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Accept your child at any weight. Children will be more likely
to accept and feel good about themselves when their parents
accept them. |
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Listen to your child’s concerns about his or her weight.
Overweight children probably know better than anyone else that
they have a weight problem. For this reason, overweight
children need support, acceptance, and encouragement from
parents. |
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Encourage healthy eating habits
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Buy and serve more fruits and vegetables (fresh, frozen, or
canned). Let your child choose them at the store. |
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Skip buying soft drinks and high fat/high calorie snack foods
like chips, cookies, and candy. If children do not see these
foods at home, they will be less likely to ask for them and
you will not have to say “no.” Choose healthy snack foods. |
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Eat breakfast every day. Skipping breakfast can leave your
child hungry, tired, and looking for less healthy foods later
in the day. |
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Plan healthy meals and eat together as a family. Planning the
week’s meals and grocery shopping can help save you time and
money. Sitting together at meal times helps children learn to
enjoy a variety of foods. |
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Eat fast food less often. When you visit a fast food
restaurant, take advantage of the healthful options offered.
Here are more tips to encourage healthy eating habits: |
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Do not get discouraged if your child will not eat a new food
the first time it is served. Some kids will need to have a new
food served to them 10 times or more before they will eat it. |
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Try not to use food as a reward when encouraging kids to eat.
Promising dessert to a child for eating vegetables, for
example, sends the message that vegetables are less valuable
than dessert. Kids learn to dislike foods they think are less
valuable. |
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Do not try to control the amount of food your child eats. It
is up to you to provide your child with healthy meals and
snacks, but your child should be allowed to choose how much
food he or she will eat. |
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Fruit canned in juice or light syrup, such as mandarin
oranges, peaches, or pineapples
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Small amounts of dried fruits such as raisins, apple rings,
or apricots
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Fresh vegetables such as baby carrots, cucumber, zucchini,
or tomatoes cut and served with low-fat salad dressing for
dipping
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Reduced fat cheese served with whole-wheat crackers
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Low-fat yogurt with fruit
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Bagel spread with small amount of peanut butter
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Graham crackers, animal crackers, or low-fat vanilla wafers
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Tortilla spread with low-fat refried beans
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Foods that are small, round, sticky, or hard to chew, such as
raisins, whole grapes, hard vegetables, hard chunks of cheese,
nuts, seeds, and popcorn can cause choking. These foods are not
good choices for preschool age children.
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Encourage daily physical activity
Like adults, kids need daily physical activity. Here are some
ways to help your child move every day:
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When appropriate and safe, let your child walk places such as
to school, the store, or to friends’ houses. |
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Encourage your child to take physical education (PE) class at
school, if available.
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Encourage your child to join a sports team or class, such as
soccer, dance, basketball, or gymnastics. |
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Be active together as a family. Assign active chores such as
making the beds, washing the car, or vacuuming. Plan active
outings such as a trip to the zoo or a walk through a local
park. |
Because his or her body is not ready yet, do not encourage your
pre-adolescent child to participate in adult-style physical
activity such as long jogs, using an exercise bike or treadmill,
or lifting heavy weights. FUN physical activities are best for
kids.
Kids need a total of about 60 minutes of physical activity a
day, but this does not have to be all at one time. Short 10- or
even 5-minute bouts of activity throughout the day are just as
good.
Fun physical activities for
your child to try:
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Riding a
bike |
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Climbing on a
jungle-gym |
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Swinging on a swing
set |
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Jumping rope |
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Playing hopscotch |
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Bouncing a ball |
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Discourage inactive pastimes
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Set limits on the amount of time your family spends watching
TV and videos, and playing video games. |
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Help your child find FUN things to do besides watching TV.
Your child may find that creative play is more interesting
than television. |
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Read together instead of watching TV. Read at home or
volunteer to read to others. Read to adults and children at
your local hospital or sign up to help people learn to read. |
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Encourage your child to get up and move during commercials and
discourage snacking when the TV is on. |
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Fun things for you and your child to do besides watching TV
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Take turns acting out favorite books or stories, or
singing along to favorite songs. Use old clothes for
costumes.
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Make instruments out of kitchen items and dance to
the music you make. Shake a jar filled with macaroni and
beat on a plastic bowl with wooden spoons.
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Play schoolyard games at home. Make a hopscotch on
the floor with masking tape, play follow-the-leader or
“Simon says,” and toss balls into a basket.
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Do a family art project. Trace cookie cutters on
paper, make masks out of paper bags, design a paper
airplane, or cut and glue pictures to a piece of paper.
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Go camping at home. Make a tent by putting a sheet
over a table or use a big box as a tent, make a sleeping bag
from a blanket, and sing “campfire” songs.
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Be a positive role model
Children are good learners and they learn what they see. Choose
healthy foods and active pastimes for yourself. Your children
will see that they can follow healthy habits that last for the
rest of their lives.
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Find more help
Your health care provider
Ask your health care provider for brochures, booklets, or other
informational materials about healthy eating, physical activity,
and weight control. Your health care provider may be able to
refer you to other health care professionals who work with
overweight children, such as registered dietitians,
psychologists, and exercise physiologists.
Your local library
Ask a librarian to help you locate books about weight control
for children. Books should be written by a health professional
and should encourage the whole family to build healthy eating
and physical activity habits. Avoid books that promise quick
results or encourage fad diets.
Many libraries sponsor talks about a variety of topics,
including health. Ask a librarian if any talks about healthy
eating, physical activity, or weight control for children are
scheduled.
The Internet
Look for websites about healthy eating, physical activity, and
weight control for children. When searching the Internet, avoid
websites that promise quick results, encourage fad diets, or ask
you to buy something such as pills, food, or exercise equipment.
Here are some resources that you can look at on the Internet:
County extension office
Locate the cooperative extension
office for your county by looking in the government section of
your phone book under the name of your county. Your extension
office may offer free or low-cost materials or classes in
cooking and nutrition.
Your local recreation center or community center
Sign up for physical activity
classes or programs for families or children.
Weight-control program
You may want to think about a
treatment program if:
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You have changed your family’s eating and physical activity
habits and your child has not reached a healthy weight. |
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Your health care provider has told you that your child’s
health or emotional well-being is at risk because of his or
her weight. |
To locate a weight-control program for your child, you may wish
to contact your local hospital, university, or college.
The overall goal of a treatment program should be to help your
whole family adopt healthy eating and physical activity habits
that you can keep up for the rest of your lives. Here are some
other things a weight-control program should do:
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Include a variety of health care professionals on staff:
doctors, RDs, psychiatrists or psychologists, and/or exercise
physiologists. |
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Evaluate your child’s weight, growth, and health before
enrolling in the program and watch these factors while
enrolled. |
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Adapt to the specific age and abilities of your child.
Programs for 4-year-olds should be different from those for
12-year-olds. |
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Help your family keep up healthy eating and physical activity
behaviors after the program ends. |
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Weight-Control Information Network
1 Win Way
Bethesda, MD 20892-3665
Tel: (202) 828-1025 or 1-877-946-4627
Fax: (202) 828-1028
E-mail:
win@info.niddk.nih.gov
The Weight-control Information Network (WIN) is a national
service of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive
and Kidney Diseases of the National Institutes of Health,
which is the Federal Government’s lead agency responsible for
biomedical research on nutrition and obesity. Authorized by
Congress (Public Law 103-43), WIN provides the general public,
health professionals, the media, and Congress with up-to-date,
science-based health information on weight control, obesity,
physical activity, and related nutritional issues.
WIN answers inquiries, develops and distributes publications,
and works closely with professional and patient organizations
and Government agencies to coordinate resources about weight
control and related issues.
Publications produced by WIN are reviewed by both NIDDK
scientists and outside experts. This fact sheet was also
reviewed by Leonard Epstein, Ph.D., Professor of Pediatrics,
Social and Preventive Medicine, and Psychology, University of
Buffalo School and Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, and
Gladys Gary Vaughn, Ph.D., National Program Leader,
Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Services,
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).
This e-text is not copyrighted. WIN encourages users of this
e-pub to duplicate and distribute as many copies as desired.
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NIH Publication No. 03-4096
April 2003
e-text posted: June 2003 |
Source:
http://www.niddk.nih.gov/health/nutrit/pubs/helpchld.htm
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