Adolescent Weight Management
What is "child obesity"?
Childhood obesity is actually not a scientific term. It's more of a social term. When it comes to children, we classify them as 'at risk for overweight' or 'overweight', maybe even 'severely overweight'. This is determined by their percentile BMI for their age. BMI for age above the 85th percentile means a child is at risk for overweight. BMI for age at the 95th percentile and above means that the child is overweight for their age.
Can toddlers or young children be overweight?
Toddlers between two and five can become overweight, this is where you use BMI to figure that out. If your child's BMI for age is above the 85th percentile, then your child is overweight.
What are some of the main causes of overweight children?
There are three main causes for children to be overweight. The first and easiest one to change is soda consumption. One can of soda will have 38 grams of sugar. By drinking this one little can of soda, you are just basically opening these test tubes of sugar up and just pouring it into your mouth. The other contributors to overweight as a kid are activity levels. Our kids aren't as active and they're not using all the calories we used to burn when we were playing and riding our bikes outside. The third one is television watching or screen viewing. Studies have shown that children who watch more than two hours of television tend to be overweight and at high risk for obesity as an adult. Kids who watch less than two hours a day of television or use computers have a much more normal weight.
Should children go on diets?
We don't want our children to diet because we don't want to start them off early in life having food issues. We don't want them to associate food with self esteem. We don't want children to become preoccupied with diets at that time. We just want them to learn how to eat healthily and maintain their activity.
Can a child outgrow being overweight?
A child can definitely outgrow being overweight. If you find that your child is overweight, you want to just stabilize that weight, or slow the rate of weight gain down, and allow your child's height to catch up.
What is "metabolism"?
Metabolism is our body's rate of energy use. If we go for a long period of time without eating, our body's metabolism slows down. And the reason for that is because our body knows we need to survive, and in order to survive, we cannot use our energy as we used to. Vice versa is also true. If you're giving your body what it needs, your metabolism is going to work efficiently. Exercising definitely will help to increase your metabolism. Eating small, frequent meals also helps metabolism work effectively.
How do I encourage my child to be more active?
You can encourage your child to be more active by participating as a family in activities, going to the store and finding different tools that they can use at home to increase their activity, for example: jump ropes. Jump rope is great to have, it doesn't require any space; you can do it inside, you can just do it right outside the front door if you want, and it is a great activity source for kids. Even dancing, turn the music on, have a dance half-hour where the whole family's dancing, or the kids are maybe developing a production of some sort, or a dance recital that they then give to the parents. Find unique ways get that activity into your kid's life.
