Managing Lifestyle For Childhood Obesity

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What are some of the best ways you can help support your child’s lifestyle, if they need to lose weight? How can you build an environment around them to promote healthy weight loss?

In Part 1, we went over dietary interventions. Now in Part 2, let’s go over lifestyle interventions to help your child lose weight.

1.) Set a good example

Probably the best thing you can do to help your children is by setting a good example yourself as their parent or guardian.

This includes your approach to your own weight, the food that you eat, and the physical activities that you participate in. Ultimately if you want them to do something, it will work best if you also do it yourself.

Children learn by example and observing what their parents do, eating habits are no exception.

So if you don’t want them eating unhealthy snacks all the time, make sure you’re not doing it yourself first, even behind their back.

If you don’t want them to be distracted while eating dinner, don’t distract yourself by going on your own phone or watching tv yourself at dinnertime.

Children frequently mimic the habits and routines of their parents, so be a positive role model.

2.) Make sure they get good sleep

As we get older, we seem to require less and less sleep, but even someone in their teenage years requires around 9 hours of good sleep. Children need even more.

Sleep is important not only for health, but poor sleep can increase the risk of metabolic disorders, and potentially worsen obesity.

If your child is tired all the time and doesn’t want to do much physical activity, a good place to start would be to increase their sleep quality and time.

Set a good sleep routine, not just for your children, but for the whole family.

Power off electronic devices, spend some time with them before bed to help them wind down, make sure their sleep space is quiet, dark, and comfortable, and avoid eating too much before bed.

3.) Encourage physical activities

Encourage your children to increase their physical activity during the day. It’ll help not just with weight loss, but help to ensure a healthy sleep schedule.

You can restrict computer or phone time, but make sure you offer them fun physical activities to fill that time.

Simply telling them to get off the computer and go outside to play is not really giving your child the proper support to build these healthy physical activities.

Children don’t need to go to a gym or personal trainer.

Let your children choose physical activities they want to do, or expose them to different physical activities that they might enjoy, like signing them up for sports teams, gymnastics, or skateboarding.

Try doing activities as a family, and inspire them to follow their passions and stay active.

Praise them when they accomplish certain things, but focus on praise that surrounds their athletic success, rather than looks.

For example, if they start playing basketball, praise them when they score their first goal, rather than how slim their legs have become.

4.) Encourage body positivity

If your child is heavier than their peers, it will be important to teach your child about body positivity.

Let your kids know that healthy bodies come in all shapes and sizes, and emphasize their skills and abilities, rather than just their physical appearance.

You can let them know their appearance will change over time, and that size and weight shouldn’t dictate their happiness.

It’s also important to address what they see on social media and on TV.

Make sure they understand that the media often promotes unrealistic beauty standards and body shapes, and what they see on social media can easily be falsified through modified images and digital filters.

Emphasize that they should focus on improving the function of their body, rather than just how their body looks.

For example, if you want to encourage them to exercise, emphasize the fact that running more will make them faster and a better football player. It’ll be more helpful than telling them to run more because they need to lose their belly fat, or slim their legs down.

Summary

Overall, remember that a supportive weight loss environment starts at home:

1. Set a good example yourself, and offer to do physical activities together as a family.
2. Focus on praising and celebrating the things they do, rather than how they look.
3. Finally, make sure they get good sleep. It’ll be important not just for their weight, but their health as well.

In our next article of this series, we’ll take a look at important psychological and emotional considerations you should keep in mind while helping your child manage their weight properly, so subscribe for updates.

Learn more about

• Managing Diet For Childhood Obesity
• Supporting Mental Health in Childhood Obesity

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