Child Obesity: how to help your overweight kids get fit

Obesity is a problem that children face increasingly more often. Lately, in addition to the parents educational efforts to teach them how to eat healthy and take exercise regularly, children began to be treated for obesity as adults. These treatments include drugs that control weight but also gastric type bypass surgery.

Like adults, children are in a difficult spot when it comes to losing weight and so obese children turn into obese adults.

The first objective in bringing the child to a healthy weight should not be in a first phase of excessive weight loss, but stopping the process of weight gain and thus in time, as the child grows in height, distribution pounds will change.

Generally speaking weight loss should reduce the number of calories consumed as solid food and liquids, to make more movement and more importantly, to combine the two, to better explain the process two pounds of fat contain 7,000 calories so 7,000 calories must be burned to lose two pounds or to swallow 7,000 calories to put on two pounds.

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For example, for a child to lose two pounds every two weeks, he should reduce daily caloric intake by 500 calories. At the same time, it is necessary to permanently count calories, if a calculation is made weekly, you will see where the excess is.

Helping overweight children lose weight is important, but it is also essential to prevent obesity. This process should begin since childhood and it is not easy, especially if the parents are overweight. Bad eating habits and physical inactivity are the first manifestations of child behavioral tendency to weight gain.

Here are some preventive measures that can also be curative and that can help obesity predisposed children:

1. Limit the number of calories the child takes from liquids. Many children drink too much fruit juice daily and carbonated liquids.
2. Avoid frequent fast food meals.
3. Watch your portion sizes. A common problem of overweight children is that portions are too large. 4. Children should not be forced to "clean the plate". To learn to eat healthy, they need to know to stop when the are full.
5. Daily physical activity should also be a priority, walking with her parents and grandparents, playing outside the house, cycling, and team sports.
6. Limit TV and computer time and avoid eating during these activities.
7. Communication and discussions about healthy nutrition are important but excessive insisting on notions of "calorie", "fat" and "diet" in general, may frustrate the child and lead to imbalances.

It is essential that the father and mother be a role model for their children by eating well and doing physical activities daily.

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