5 Things To Do If Your Child Is Overweight

You try to instill certain values ​​in your children, teach them to control emotions, and teach them to restrain themselves. But why not teach them a healthy lifestyle and proper nutrition? By doing this, you will protect your child from being overweight and obese. If you want your children to get used to proper nutrition, you need to set an example for them. So eat vegetables, greens, legumes, and other healthy foods even if you do not like them.

Obesity In Children

According to recent statistics, around 18% of children living in the United States have the problem of being overweight. This problem is only increasing and requires immediate attention. There are several factors contributing to obesity in children, genetics is one of them. So as a parent how can you help your child? Remember that you can prevent obesity in your children by providing them with family support. Here are some other things you can do:

1. Pay Attention To Eating Habits

One of the most common reasons for obesity among children is binge eating. Due to increased advertisement of fast foods, many teenagers eat burgers, fries, and other harmful products in excess.

As a result, they gain more weight. If not stopped, this can lead to several other health problems. You need to monitor the eating habits of your child and help them get rid of them. Otherwise, the health condition of your child may become worse.

2. Prevent Your Child From Bad Habits

Substance abuse has become quite prevalent among teenagers and is the leading cause of weight gain too. For example, alcohol provides the body with excess calories and its frequent consumption leads to weight gain. Thus, you need to know if your child is involved in substance abuse and if he is, then intervention might help.

Remember that alcohol addiction affects not only one person suffering from it but the whole family. Considering this, there are special programs like family therapy for substance abuse that help the whole family. Such programs aim to help the addict get sobriety and improve interpersonal family relationships.

3. Be A Good Example For Children

We have already written about how important it is to be a good example for your children. They watch how you react to different things, how you communicate with people, and how you do things. They are watching and often reproduce these behaviors. You should try to eat a healthy, varied, and balanced diet that your children must also follow.

4. Support Your Child

Childhood obesity has one very important aspect. Such children are often treated badly at school, subjected to ridicule and humiliation. if at home they feel that their parents do not like their appearance, show the child unconditional support, be attentive to his experiences. Here are a few things, you can do for your child:

• You must encourage children to lead a healthy life, eat right, exercise, with the rationale that then they will feel better because they will be healthier and less tired.
• Try to instill in them that they should treat themselves normally, regardless of whether they are thin or not. Happiness is not about losing weight, you can be happy today, now – and try to take care of your health.

5. Lead An Active Life

The American Society for Sports Medicine recommends the following:

• Children aged 5 to 17 should exercise 3-4 times a week.
• Physical exercise improves the condition of their cardiovascular and respiratory systems, helps to get rid of extra pounds, promotes growth, improves metabolism, increases self-esteem, and improves relationships with peers.
• Do not allow the children to sit at the computer, books, etc. all afternoon after returning from school. Every child can be interested in physical exercises and activities: swimming, karate, dancing, and football.
• If you lead an active life and involve children in it, as well as you, go on excursions, walks, do “bike rides” – all this helps a lot to fight excess weight.

An improved and active lifestyle will help your child to stay fit.

6. Basic Principles Of Nutrition

For our part, we can outline the basic principles of nutrition for overweight children:

• Try not to keep high-calorie foods in the house, such as sweet pastries, sweets, cookies, etc.
• Breakfast is a must. And in general, you cannot skip any of the 5 (per day) meals. But the amount of food in each of them should not be large.
• Serve food on smaller plates so the kids feel like they’ve eaten less. You can use painted plates, kids like them.
• Include those dairy products in your diet that have low fat. Give your children plant-based drinks (oat milk, almond milk, etc.).
• If they are thirsty, tell them to drink water. Drinks like Coca-Cola don’t quench your thirst, let them be for special occasions.
• If your child is obese, juices are not good for you at all. You should not drink artificial and packaged juices and replace them with natural juice.
• Try to prevent children from watching TV during meals. Then they will be more focused on food, they will chew food normally.
• If they are used to eating quickly or watching TV while eating, they do not notice that they are already full and are more capricious.
• Children must eat more fresh vegetables, integral foods so that the bread is whole grain, not refined flour.
• Children are often reluctant to eat vegetables, so you have to try to cook them in an original, imaginative way. If the dish looks funny and attractive, it will attract the attention of the child faster.

Take Away

If your child is overweight and his obesity is increasing to a threatening level, you need to take some action. You can follow the above tips to prevent obesity in your children. Through such methods, the chances of obesity will decrease among your children.