Weight-Loss Solutions for Children and Teens

Overweight children suffer. They suffer because they deal with ridicule and rejection from their peers. Often they can't participate in athletic activities or other school- and community-sponsored events. In a sense, they're victims of our fast-food, high-calorie, supersized world of eating and our inactive and leisurely lifestyle.

Even more important, overweight children are at risk for chronic diseases later in life, and, increasingly, even while they are still young. Incidences of heart disease, high blood pressure, and type 2 diabetes, once unheard of in the young, have dramatically increased as young people become more overweight and obese. Other possible health effects of childhood obesity and being overweight are metabolic syndrome, elevated triglycerides, hormonal imbalances, and skin disorders.

Quite often, weight issues for children are a family affair. In this chapter, we discuss causes of childhood weight gain and solutions you can start using today to help your child or teen lose weight and regain their health, self-esteem, and well-being.

Is Your Child Overweight?

You might not be able to tell by looking. The BMI charts designed for adults don't work for children and teens. You'll need to use different techniques to determine whether your child needs to lose weight and how much. Here are some tools you can use singly or in combination.

• The standard weight charts at the doctor's office. If your child's weight is 120 percent or higher than normal for his or her age and height, he or she is considered obese. Use BMI charts for boys and girls as a reference.

• Body fat percentage. Ask your health-care practitioner or at the fitness center whether they can measure your child's body fat percentage. This is an easy way to determine whether your child is overweight or obese.

  Boys: Obese if body fat is 25 percent or higher. Overweight if body fat is between 21-25 percent. Healthy range is between 9-15 percent.

  Girls: Obese if body fat is 32 percent or higher. Overweight if body fat is between 22-31 percent. Healthy range is between 14-21 percent.

• Modified BMI Chart. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention uses a modified BMI chart that accounts for age and normal growth rates—one chart for boys and one for girls. But the BMI charts don't give accurate information for persons with high muscle mass, such as athletes, so be careful in using this tool. Use the BMI charts linked above.

You can use all or any of the tools listed here. We recommend that you use body fat percentage as a gauge for your child and for yourself. That way, you'll avoid the drudgery and fear of stepping on the scales. Plus, you'll have a more accurate measurement.

Set Goals

Establish body fat percentage goals for your child at 3, 6, and 9 months from now, and a year into the future. Measure the body fat only at these intervals. More frequent measuring won't accurately reflect the changes, as they happen slowly. An excellent goal would be to reduce body fat by one to two percentage points every three months. In other words, if your daughter now has a body fat percentage of 30 percent, at the end of one year, a body fat percentage of somewhere around 24-25 percent would represent great success. Then keep going until you've reached your ideal. Hurrying isn't important; health is.

Celebrate each percentage point lowered with a special treat—one that doesn't involve food. Decide ahead of time with your child what the treat will be. It can be a trip to the amusement park, a new soccer ball, new clothes, an overnight slumber party, or any number of other fun rewards.

You're looking for solutions that will help your child. Your first impulse could be to restrict food and regulate eating. Don't do this at first. Your child could be overweight for other reasons that are related to health and his or her body.

Be sure that you understand the full picture of your child's situation before you take any action. Otherwise, you can unknowingly contribute to your child developing a “fat mentality” for no reason.

Check out the following factors first when your child is overweight: allergies, celiac disease, drugs (prescription and illegal), type 2 diabetes, and genetics. Each will be described in the sections that follow.

Allergies

Food allergies as well as food sensitivities can cause weight gain. Yes, it's possible to have no other symptoms. You can't count on seeing runny noses or sneezes with some food sensitivities. Instead, a person's body perceives the food as a poison and limits digestion of nutrients, thus causing the body to store fat.

The most common foods that cause allergies and sensitivities are wheat, dairy, and soy. Second to those are aspartame and other artificial sweeteners. An allergic reaction to sugar is possible, too.

One easy way to determine whether your child is sensitive to a food is to use an elimination diet. For one week, have your child not eat any wheat. If they lose weight in that week, wheat could be the problem. Do the same the next week for dairy, and then for soy and then sugar.

If you find a food culprit, eliminate it from his or her diet. Of course, that's easier said than done. But limiting allergenic foods is definitely easier than spending many futile years dieting with no long-term results.

You can find excellent books and cookbooks on living a wheat-free, dairy-free, or soy-free life.

Another choice is to take your child to an allergist for testing to determine if your child has allergies or food sensitivities and for food and eating recommendations.

Celiac Disease

Celiac disease is a chronic digestive disorder caused by an inherited intolerance to gluten. Symptoms can be irritable bowel syndrome, diarrhea, and weight gain or loss.

As many as 1 out of 500 people in the United States have celiac disease. A cure for the condition doesn't exist, but it can be solved by eliminating gluten-containing foods from the diet. The foods that contain gluten are wheat, oats, seminola, spelt, rye, barley, triticale, and kamut.

If you suspect that your child can't tolerate gluten, have him or her tested by an allergist to confirm or dispel your suspicions. The allergist can give you further resources for helping your child make healthy and allergy-free food choices.

Drugs—Prescription and Illegal

Some prescription medications can cause weight gain and also stall or thwart weight loss. Steroid-based medications such as prednisone and those used in asthma inhalers are the worst. So are some anti-seizure medications. If your child is on one of these, ask the doctor whether other medications available won't cause weight gain.

Abuse of some prescription medications can cause weight gain. These are usually pain killers or anti-anxiety drugs.

Illegal drugs are never a fun topic, but use of recreational drugs can cause weight gain or loss. The most notable is marijuana, but also others that soothe and relax. Having a post-marijuana attack of the “munchies” is an obvious way to gain weight.

If you suspect your child is using drugs recreationally, seek counseling to learn how to effectively talk with your child. Cessation of the drug use will be the big gain, but your child may be able to lose some excess weight, too.

Type 2 diabetes was formerly called “adult-onset diabetes.” That was true until more and more younger people were being diagnosed with it. To accommodate the children who had this form of diabetes, it was renamed.

If your child has Type 2 diabetes, it'll be harder for them to lose weight. The same is true if they have metabolic syndrome, which is the precursor to Type 2 diabetes. Elevated triglyceride levels, weight gain, elevated fasting blood sugar levels, and high blood pressure characterize metabolic syndrome. If you suspect your overweight child could have metabolic syndrome, consult with a doctor. You, your child, and your doctor working together can prevent it turning into full-blown diabetes.

When a person is on medication for Type 2 diabetes, it's harder to lose weight. This is true for insulin as well as oral medications. Your child and you need to meet with a CDE—certified diabetes educator—or a Registered Dietitian to learn how to eat to stabilize blood sugar levels and lose weight.

Genetics

Being overweight or having a tendency to store excess body fat can be genetic. But not always. The medical conditions of celiac disease and diabetes have genetic roots.

If your children are also your biological children, you're already prepared for this possibility. But if your child is adopted, you often have no way to know. If you have suspicions that your child might be genetically disposed to health conditions that cause weight gain, don't wait. Consult with a doctor or specialist, get the necessary testing done, and find out the answers. Then you have the ability to assist your child.

Parents as the Problem

Don't be a parent who panics if a child is overweight. The situation can be solved. But not if you get in the way. Yes, this is tough talk, but we've seen it too often. For example:

• A parent who compulsively puts her 9-year old daughter on a highly restrictive diet when she's only 10 pounds above normal weight. We suspect the mother fears social pressure more than the daughter.

• A parent who suggests to her preteen that they embark on a formal diet program together, and attend meetings, and so on. Let her be a child. Too much pressure, too-high expectations. And the mother is in a sense making the daughter responsible for the mother's success at losing weight.

• A parent who sends her 16-year-old daughter to a weight-loss coach and then refuses to let the daughter eat as recommended. This is craziness.

• A parent who refuses to acknowledge that the child is overweight and who does nothing.

All of these are bad examples and usually end up making matters worse. To help you maneuver your way through the steps to helping your child, we've put together suggestions for what to do first, then next, and so on to create a positive and healthy solution.

The Eating Environment

Overweight children come from all kinds of families: large families, busy families, single-parent families, low-income families, and high-income families. So do children who are at their ideal size for their age and height. There's no set formula.

However, you can create an environment that supports a healthy lifestyle for your child to live at his or her ideal size. Here are some suggestions:

• Serve or provide a good breakfast with animal protein and fruit or vegetables. Most children like scrambled eggs, ham, or other simple-to-prepare breakfast proteins. Leftovers will work, too.

• To control portion size, put food on plates at the stove and don't serve family style. Don't put bowls of food on the table and let everyone serve themselves.

• Discourage going back for seconds.

• Provide 5-10 servings of vegetables or fruits daily.

• Don't stock up on processed foods, whether frozen or packaged.

• Don't serve diet sodas and diet foods. Avoid sodas altogether. Just don't buy them or serve them infrequently.

• Serve healthy snack foods and eliminate snacks such as potato chips, popcorn, corn ships, and pretzels from the pantry. Avoid buying the sweet-tasting snacks such as cookies, muffins, breads, cakes, and candy except on special occasions.

• Eat dinner together as a family as often as you can.

• Model good and healthy eating behavior as explained in other sections of this book.

• Teach your child how to eat based on his or her physical food needs, such as eating 0-5.

• Make regular exercise a part of family life. Go swimming, hiking, or biking. Play tennis, racquetball, basketball, or other sports together and make it fun.

• Emphasize body fat percentage over weight.

• Lobby your school board to remove sodas, candy bars, and salty snack foods from vending machines. Suggest they replace them with bottled water and fresh fruit.

An unexpected positive consequence of helping an overweight child develop healthier habits is that it will improve the health and well-being of everyone in your family.

Before we give you this list, we want you to realize up front that making some of these changes could be tough to do. In fact, you might balk at these suggestions because, if you implement them, you'll need to make personal changes, too. But the bottom line is that making the lifestyle changes will help your child lose weight and keep it off. So here goes.

• Have set times for family eating and snacking. Turn off the TV when you eat meals. And no snacking when watching TV or working on the computer.

• Have a set time for “lights out” at bedtime. As best you can, ensure that your child sleeps 7-9 hours a night. Lack of adequate sleep often triggers weight gain.

• Require that your child be involved in some form of extracurricular learning activity—things like chess club, art classes, acting, piano, or many other choices.

• Be sure that your child does some form of exercise or athletics daily. This means that you might need to shoot hoops with him or her after school and do recreational exercise alongside them, which will be good for everyone concerned.

• Don't center fun times, recreation, and family life around food and eating.

• Limit television viewing to one hour on school nights and two to three hours a day on the weekends.

• Remove the television set from your child's bedroom if you think it's a factor in your child being overweight. Ditto the computer if it interferes with sleep and interest in outside activities.

• Limit video games if you find your child is spending too much time immersed in playing, or you sense that he or she is addicted or compulsive about them.

• Make sure that your child gets outside for sunshine every day. We all need the great outdoors.

With these changes in place, you'll be setting up a supportive environment for your child to lose weight and to develop a healthy lifestyle throughout his or her life.

Supplements for Overweight Children

Your children need vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants, just as you do. Supply them with a high-quality children's formula, and when they reach their teens, give them an adult formula. This will meet most of their needs.

Make certain that your children eat enough fiber and roughage to ensure that they have regular bowel movements. (Just don't tell them why, or you'll get an “Oh, mom, that's gross!” reaction!) You can, if necessary, supplement their fiber intake with a plain psyllium or a psyllium-based product, but make sure that it doesn't contain artificial sweeteners such as aspartame or Splenda.

Taking dietary supplements ensures that your child receives all the necessary nutrients he or she needs to build and maintain a healthy body. But supplements alone don't offer a magic bullet for weight loss. Think of them as support for weight loss and overall health while supplementing a healthy diet.

Avoid giving your child supplements specifically formulated for weight loss. No research has been conducted on the safety of these for children. Some of the ingredients might actually interfere with normal growth processes.

One very important “supplement” for weight loss is sunshine. The body needs at least 15 minutes of sunshine a day for the hormones to function properly. And that's important for people of all ages. So join your child outside to catch some rays.

Eating disorders usually start in adolescence. Their roots are psychological. The results can be devastating. They can ruin a person's quality of life and, in extreme cases, can lead to serious illness and death.

As a parent, you want to know the warning signs. Eating disorders affect both men and women, boys and girls. When the problems are caught early, children with eating disorders have an overwhelmingly good chance of correcting their eating behaviors and regaining their mental, emotional, and physical health.

Here are the warning signals:

• Overly high concern with body image. You'll be walking a fine line here, be-cause adolescence is the time of acute body awareness and comparison with others. A high concern is normal. An overly high concern could lead to problems.

• Constantly telling everyone around them that they're fat. Some of this is normal, but too much is out of bounds.

• Overeating but not gaining weight. This could be the result of bulimia, which involves bingeing and purging (self-induced vomiting). Warning signs of bulimia include (1) making excuses to go to the bathroom right after meals; (2) odd smells emanating from the bathroom after meals, often covered up with room sprays and fresheners; and (3) use of laxatives or diuretics.

• Unexplained weight loss. This could be a sign of anorexia. The warning signs are (1) highly regimented eating patterns or not eating with family and friends; (2) thinking they're fat no matter how small they get; (3) denying feeling hungry; and (4) exercising excessively. Anorexics often become socially withdrawn.

• Eating large amounts of food and feeling guilty or acting secretive about it. This could be a sign of a binge-eating disorder.

If you suspect a problem, first do your research. Read about the problem, search the Internet, and consult with an expert. Solving the problem is beyond the ability of your family and friends. You need professional help. So does your child. Get it.

Excerpted from The Complete Idiot's Guide to Healthy Weight Loss © 2005 by Lucy Beale and Sandy G. Couvillon. All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. Used by arrangement with Alpha Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

To order this book visit the Idiot's Guide web site or call 1-800-253-6476.