Help Your Child Lose Weight With Healthy Eating and Exercise

What's the best way to help an overweight child? Here are some specific diet and exercise strategies from professionals at Lehigh Valley Hospital and Health Network:

Make smart food choices

Eating well doesn’t mean giving up good food and feeling hungry all the time. "If you get your child's metabolism under control, he'll lose weight and lower his risk for heart disease and diabetes," says Arnold Slyper, M.D., pediatric endocrinologist. "Do this by limiting high-glycemic * starches and foods containing lots of sugar. When you stabilize your blood-sugar swings, you feel less hungry."

Slyper recommends a Mediterranean-style diet rich in whole grains, vegetables, fruits, beans and nuts. Serve your family more fish and poultry than red meat. Stay away from trans fats (they're listed on food labels), but do use olive oil, which is good for you. Embrace healthy eating as a lifestyle, not a diet.

"People who lose a lot of weight quickly will probably regain it," he says. "A child is more likely to lose weight and keep it off if healthy eating and exercise are regular parts of her life."

Registered dietitian Jennifer Acevedo and weight management dietitian Jane Banach offer more tips:

• Plan ahead; portion out meals for the week in containers.
• Stock your snack bin with healthy alternatives like low-calorie fruit and granola bars, and 100-calorie snack packs.
• Keep healthy "on-the-go" food at the ready—fruit, nuts, cheese sticks, yogurt packs.
• Serve healthy snacks like popcorn, peanut butter and apples, mini pizzas on whole-grain English muffins, or rice cakes with cottage cheese.
• Choose baked snacks over fried.
• Get rid of chips and cookies.
• Look for ways to build in fiber; add beans to soups and salads.
• Watch portions, and don't automatically offer seconds at meals.
• Teach children how to make healthy choices where they can—for example, in the school cafeteria. Another good option: pack their lunches.
• Teach children how to read labels, especially for sugar content in soda and fruit drinks. Better alternatives are water, milk and citrus juices.
• Teach children the difference between healthy everyday foods and occasional fun foods like ice cream or fries.
• Eat fewer processed foods.
• Look for recipes using lots of natural and fresh ingredients.

"Children's taste buds are changing all the time," Acevedo says. "Set an example by eating good foods yourself, and keep serving healthy foods to your family. Children may try something eight to 10 times before they like it. Serve foods in different ways—in casseroles or on pizza, for example—or spice them up with a little flavoring, like soy sauce or lemon juice."

Get active

Just like meals, physical activity needs to be planned into your family's day. The question, Banach says, isn't "Am I going to exercise today?" but "How am I going to exercise today?" Take a walk, dance together or "work out" at the mall by using the steps, not the escalator, and parking far from the entrance.

Children enjoy unstructured, play-type activities with you or their friends, says exercise physiologist Holly Schmitt. "They like high-intensity bursts of activity followed by short rests, instead of long endurance activities." Swimming is especially good for overweight kids, she says. "They feel good in the water and can excel at it. Overweight youngsters often enjoy weight training, too—another sport they can excel at. Just make sure they receive proper instruction from a certified or degreed exercise professional."

More tips to help your family stay active:

• Get outside. Walk the dog, go to a park or pool, or play backyard games of touch football, basketball, badminton or volleyball.
• Get involved in local soccer or tennis teams.
• Look for community programs that feature a gym and physical activity in a child-friendly setting. Children feel more comfortable with others their own age.
• Seek out programs that offer low-level competition for children who are not athletic.
• Seek out programs with physical and emotional coaching and instruction geared toward children with weight problems.
• Take family hikes or nature walks. Look for birds or animals, or collect leaves.
• If you're stuck indoors, play active games like Wii, Twister or ping-pong.
• Create a play area in your home where children can romp and play without getting hurt or damaging furnishings.
• If you have a brick home, play games off the house exterior with a medicine ball or tennis ball.
• Keep exercise equipment like stability balls available; children will figure out a way to use them.
• If you work out at a gym, bring your child along for a tennis or swim lesson, or to play basketball or volleyball.
• Try something new. For example; if you like riding a stationary bike, try mountain biking.
• Help your teen find motivators such as an exercise log or personal records, or an exercise buddy.
• Don't forget to make it fun.

"If you lay your expectations of success or failure on your child, it can ruin an activity. The point of physical activities, especially during the ups and downs of adolescence, is to enrich life in a spiritual, emotional, mental and physical way. This also can bring family relationships to a new level."

*The glycemic index measures how fast and high blood sugar rises after you eat a particular food.

This page last updated 4/27/10 03:46 PM