Newspaper articles and television
reports constantly remind us that a growing number of children
in the United States are overweight or obese. And many
parents are being told to put their kids on a diet or risk
that they
will develop serious health problems. But what is the best
way to get a child to lose weight and keep it off?
The latest
statistics show that as many as 30 percent of children
aged 6-19 in the U.S. are overweight or obese,
which puts them
at increased risk for chronic diseases such as heart disease,
high blood pressure, and diabetes and emotional problems
in adolescence and adulthood.
To get
to the
bottom of it, WebMD
asked experts to cull a sure-fire list of diet dos and
don’ts
to help families triumph over obesity. And it’s about
time.
In children, body fatness changes over time as children
grow, and boys and girls differ in the amount of fatness
considered
to be normal. Overweight is defined as having a weight
that is greater than 95 percent of children of the same
age and
sex.
Obese kids who remain heavy through adolescence tend to
stay that way in adulthood. The resulting illnesses associated
with obesity in adulthood — diabetes, heart disease, high
blood pressure, and several cancers — now claim an
estimated half-million lives per year, costing $100 billion
in medical
expenses and lost productivity.
Here’s what the experts have to say about how to
reverse these alarming trends:
Do be a good role model. “The No. 1 thing that parents
can do is to be a good role model for their children,” says
Dr. Rallie McAllister, MPH, a family physician in Kingsport,
Tenn., and author of “The Healthy Lunchbox: The Working
Mom’s Guide to Keeping You and Your Kids Trim”.
“Parents so often unwittingly set their kids
up for failure,” she
says. “If there are only chips, Ho-Hos, and Twinkies
and no fruit or vegetables when your kids look for snacks,
how can they succeed?” Instead, she suggests, line
your refrigerator and cabinets with fresh fruits, nuts,
low-fat cheese, and things for kids to snack on besides
chips, dip,
or low-fiber, high fat, high-calorie type of snacks.
In a 2000 survey conducted by the CDC, close to 80 percent
of adults reported eating fewer than the recommended five
or more servings of fruit and vegetables daily — not
good role-model behavior.
Do be positive. “Instead of saying, ‘Lose weight’,
say, ‘Let’s be healthy and start taking care of
our bodies,’ McCallister says. “Be positive and
focus on the foods you can eat, not the ones that you cannot.
Say, ‘Let’s go pick out fruits and make a fruit
salad,’ not ‘Don’t eat this or that.’ Instead
of saying, ‘We have to exercise,’ say, ‘Lets
go to the park.’” She stresses that “we can’t
approach this from a cosmetic standpoint and we can’t
even imply that this is about self-worth. Say, ‘You want
to be healthy and we want to keep you around for a long time.’”
Do make healthy eating a family affair. “Make whatever
plans or food preparation appropriate for the whole family
so you don’t single out the overweight child as having
a special meal, which is like saying, ‘You are fat, so
you can’t have this serving of mashed potatoes,’” says
Arlington, Va.-based obesity expert Denise Bruner, chairman
of the board of the American Society of Bariatric Physicians.
And let your kids help you prepare the meal. “Whether
male or female, your child may have to live on his/her own
one day and should know how to cook because relying on fast
foods has certainly contributed to the obesity epidemic,” Bruner
says.
“Make cooking fun and interesting.” And
when you are finished, eat together. A family that eats together,
eats better, according to a recent study in the journal Archives
of Family Medicine. Children who report frequent family dinners
have healthier diets than their peers who don’t, the
study showed.
Do avoid portion distortion. “When serving the food,
institute portion control, as in ‘this is what you
are allocated,’ not a buffet-type or family-style situations,” says
Bruner. Potentially making this endeavor easier is the fact
that Kraft Foods has announced plans to change serving sizes
on its food labels. Many obesity experts suggest the supersizing
of portions at fast-food restaurants plays a role in the
obesity crisis in America.
Do start the day off right with a good breakfast such as “a
bowl of low-sugar cereal with low-fat milk, low-fat yogurt
with a granola or breakfast bar, or an English muffin with
peanut butter, rather than a doughnut or muffin,” says
Dana Greene, MS, a Boston-based community nutritionist whose
work with overweight children puts her on the frontline of
the obesity crisis.
Do pack a nutritious lunch for schoolchildren. A study by
University of Minnesota researchers showed schoolchildren
who have access to high-fat, low-nutrition foods at school
will consume more unhealthy meals overall than children who
have access to healthier options.
And a national poll commissioned by Harvard University showed
that more than eight in 10 Americans support providing healthier
school lunches. “One of the major sources of fat and
sugar in a child’s diet becomes school lunches,” McCallister
says. So try and “make packed lunches fun and give
a bottle of water, not soda or sugar-flavored juice, and
a piece of fresh fruit as opposed to a fruit roll-up, which
is loaded with sugar,” she suggests. “Encourage
the child to have whole-grain breads to eliminate a white-flour
and white-sugar rut.”
Do rise to the challenge. “We all know that diets don’t
work, they are short-term solutions to what will be a lifelong
challenge,” she says, referring to the challenge of
eating properly. “The goal is to learn to eat today
the way you have to eat for the rest of your life,” she
explains. “Can you eat steak and eggs and butter for
the rest of your life? No. Take a few weeks and learn what
a healthy diet is ... and then you don’t have to diet.”
Do make time for physical activity. “Make physical
activity a family activity,” Kava says. “Every
night after dinner in the summer, go for a half-hour walk
and make it an activity that kids look forward to. If you
can afford it, enroll your kids in dancing or a sporting
activity that they enjoy because they need to enjoy it to
keep doing it.”
Thirty-four
percent of U.S. adults are considered overweight, and
an additional 31 percent are obese. Anyone
with a body
mass index (a ratio between your height and weight) of
25 or above -- that’s someone, for example, who is
5-foot-4 and 145 pounds -- is considered overweight, according
to
the National Institutes of Health. Anyone with a body
mass index of 30 or above -- such as someone who is 5-foot-6
and
186 pounds -- is considered obese.Three hundred thousand
people die each year due to obesity-related causes, making
it the second-leading cause of death after smoking. Being
overweight or obese increases the risk of hypertension,
heart disease, stroke, diabetes and some cancers.Fifteen
percent
of youngsters ages 6 to 19 and 10 percent of children
2 through 5 are considered seriously overweight. About
45 percent of
women and 25 percent of men are trying to lose weight
at any one time, but only one-fifth are using the recommended
combination of fewer calories and increased exercise.Americans
spend more than $33 billion a year on weight-loss products
and services. However, the economic cost of obesity in
the
United States was about $117 billion in 2000.Choose low-fat,
lean foods from the five major food groups; eat sensible
portions, and use fats, oils, sweets and salt sparingly.
Total fat intake should be no more than 30 percent of
daily calories. Exercise moderately for at least 30 minutes
on
most days. If you need to lose weight, do so gradually
-- aim to lose about 10 percent of your body weight over
6 months.
Or just
turn on some dance music and have a dance party around
the house.
Do try again. “Some parents say, ‘My kids just
don’t like broccoli or cauliflower or string beans,’ but
sometimes it takes more than one introduction to a food.
And remember, she says, “a child is not going to sit
at the dinner table and eat broccoli if everyone else is
eating ice cream,” Kava says.
Do think outside the box. Consider weight-loss camps,
such as the New Image Weight Loss Camps, which are based
in Stroudsburg,
Penn., Lake Wales, Fla., and Ojai, Calif. “It’s
a very typical summer camp experience [replete with] lakes,
swimming pools, tennis courts, and all mainstream camp activities
along with nutrition classes, cooking classes, aerobics,
weight training, and calisthenics,” says Tony Sparber,
owner of the camps. “The average weight loss is three
to four pounds per week. Kids who need to lose 70 to 100
pounds may lose five to six pound per week.” The more
weight a child has to lose, the larger the weight loss is
going to be, but the amount of weight is not as important
as changing lifestyle, he says. “The failure of most
programs is that there is too much temptation, such as having
to deal with other kids eating french fries. At a [weight-loss]
camp, everybody is on pretty much the same program and all
the food is normal food — pizza, BBQ, hamburgers and
hot dogs, and things that kids enjoy. The difference is that
it is prepared healthfully.” They serve low-fat frozen
yogurt instead of ice cream and Baked Lays instead of fried
chips. The cost is about $7,000 for eight weeks, but children
can go for shorter sessions. “We give them a program
that they can continue at home,” Sparber says. “A
lot of programs look to take off as much weight as possible
in the shortest period of time. We are into trying to create
a healthy lifestyle for these children.” (For more
information, contact New Image Weight Loss Camps at www.newimagecamp.com.)
Don’t count calories. “I am opposed to putting
kids on caloric restrictions,” McCallister says. “It’s
damaging emotionally because they feel deprived, and it’s
damaging physiologically because they can’t get the
nutrients that they need.” Instead, she suggests, shoot
for cutting out 100 to 200 calories a day. “That
is one soft drink, and it will result in weight loss.”
Ruth Kava, Ph.D., RD, director of nutrition at the American
Council on Science and Health, has this to say: “The
bottom line is not to restrict them, but to help them grow
into their weight because children need extra calories to
grow. Don’t put kids on a strict diet because they
are probably going to resent it.”
Don’t say diet. “Put your child on any diet and
you are setting them up for an eating disorder — whether
binge eating or closet eating or another type of disorder,” McCallister
says.
Don’t take supplements. These days, so-called dietary
or herbal supplements that promote weight loss are hawked
to everyone — including children. But whatever you
do, say no to weight-loss supplements for kids, Kava says. “You
don’t really know what’s in them, and most
have not been tested in kids to determine their safety
or effectiveness.”
WebMD
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WebMD. The MSNBC editorial staff does not
participate in the creation of WebMD content and is not responsible
for WebMD content. Remember that editorial content is never
a substitute for a visit to a health care professional.
