Helping Your Overweight Child

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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:

• Set a good example. If your children see that you are physically active and have fun, they are more likely to be active and stay active throughout their lives.
  
  
• Encourage your child to join a sports team or class, such as soccer, dance, basketball, or gymnastics at school or at your local community or recreation center.
  
  
• Be sensitive to your child's needs. If your child feels uncomfortable participating in activities like sports, help him or her find physical activities that are fun and not embarrassing.
  
  
• 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. If your children are not used to being active, encourage them to start with what they can do and build up to 60 minutes a day.

Fun physical activities for your child to try:

• Riding a bike
• Climbing on a jungle gym
• Swinging on a swing set
• Jumping rope
• Playing hopscotch
• Bouncing a ball

Discourage inactive pastimes

• Set limits on the amount of time your family spends watching TV and videos, and playing video games.
  
• Help your child find fun things to do besides watching TV, like acting out favorite books or stories, or doing a family art project. Your child may find that creative play is more interesting than television.
  
• Encourage your child to get up and move during commercials and discourage snacking when the TV is on.

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 a lifetime.

Find more help
Your health care provider
Ask your health care provider for brochures, booklets, or other information about healthy eating, physical activity, and weight control. He or she may be able to refer you to other health care professionals who work with overweight children, such as registered dietitians, psychologists, and exercise physiologists.

Weight-control program
You may want to think about a treatment program if:

• You have changed your family's eating and physical activity habits and your child has not reached a healthy weight.
• 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.

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:

• Include a variety of health care professionals on staff: doctors, registered dietitians, psychiatrists or psychologists, and/or exercise physiologists.
• Evaluate your child's weight, growth, and health before enrolling in the program and watch these factors while enrolled.
• Adapt to the specific age and abilities of your child. Programs for 4-year-olds should be different from those for 12-year-olds.
• Help your family keep up healthy eating and physical activity behaviors after the program ends.

Excerpted and adapted from The Weight Control Information Network.