What you need to know
It’s critical you understand how to help your child make healthy eating and physical activity choices during adolescence. Healthy choices now will help your child avoid unhealthy weight gain and will also influence your child’s future health and wellbeing.
As children move into adolescence, changes to their lifestyle can put them at risk of unhealthy weight gain. For example, young people might:
- do less physical activity, including less intense physical activity
- do more activities that involve sitting down, such as socialising, reading, and using a computer and phone
- eat fewer of the foods they need to maintain a healthy weight, such as fruit, vegetables and low-fat dairy products
- eat more high-energy food, takeaway food and snacks
- make food decisions that are outside your control.
Young people who are overweight or obese have an increased risk of becoming obese adults. Childhood and adult obesity are both associated with many severe health risks, including type-2 diabetes, heart disease and other cardiovascular illnesses, and cancer of various kinds.
Overweight and obesity are terms that describe having an excessive amount of body fat. Obesity is a more severe form of overweight. Overweight and obesity are officially defined using
Body Mass Index (BMI), a scale that identifies healthy, overweight and obese weight ranges. For more information about BMI, talk to your GP.
Helping teenagers with overweight issues
If your child has a weight problem, you have an important role to play in helping your child get back to a healthy weight.
Being a good role model
For a start, you can be a positive role model and encourage your child to have a healthy lifestyle by:
- buying healthy food for yourself and your family, and enjoying ‘everyday’ foods together
- having breakfast every day
- avoiding junk food and drinks and other ‘sometimes’ foods
- trying to limit the time you spend sitting down and doing low-activity things
- enjoying physical activity, and making time for family activities such as walking together.
Talking about weight issues
If you’re concerned about your child’s weight, it’s important to address the issue as soon as possible.
The body undergoes many changes during adolescence, and many young people are very self-conscious about their weight. Children and young people might have poor body image, self-doubt and feelings of low self-esteem. They might even have been teased or bullied because of their weight. There are also lots of negative media messages about childhood obesity that can contribute to making overweight young people feel even worse about themselves and their bodies.
You need to be sensitive and careful when talking about weight issues with your child:
- Work on developing and maintaining good, open communication. This will make it easier to bring up the subject of your child’s weight when you need to.
- If you need to talk, choose a time when you’re both relaxed and calm.
- Be honest and clear about your child’s weight and the need to make healthy changes.
- Choose your language carefully. Most people find terms like ‘obese’ to be negative, hurtful and unhelpful. It’s more positive to use terms like ‘overweight’ or ‘above your healthiest weight’ – these focus on health, not body image.
- Focus on your child’s positive qualities, especially ones that aren’t related to body type and shape.
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Don’t advise your child to start a diet. Dieting isn’t recommended because restricted eating and kilojoule counting isn’t a strategy for developing long-term healthy eating habits. In a small percentage of people, it can even be a risk factor for eating disorders. Weight issues need to be managed by a health professional.
It’s not always easy to talk with your child about his weight. Some parents avoid discussing it with their child for fear of creating an eating disorder, although the risk of this is exceedingly small. But if there’s a problem, your child needs your help to get his weight – and future health – back on track.
Promoting a positive body image
A positive body image is important for children and part of a healthy attitude to eating and weight.
Here’s how to promote positive body image for your child (based on the work of Dianne Neumark-Sztainer):
- Encourage your child to care for her body with good nutrition, physical activity and positive self-talk. If your child wants to make changes to her nutrition or physical activity patterns, make sure it’s for health reasons, not because your child has a poor body image or a potentially harmful weight ‘goal’.
- Encourage a healthy weight that’s appropriate for your child. Seek professional assistance to find out what a healthy weight range might be for your child.
- Reinforce aspects of your child’s identity not related to his physical appearance – for example, you could bring attention to his kindness, effort at school, or sporting or creative abilities.
- Don’t advise your child to start a ‘diet’. You can also discuss the poor outcomes of dieting and unhealthy weight control strategies, and avoid going on a diet yourself.
- Make sure healthy food choices are available in your home for all family members, and support your child’s physical activities.
As children move into the teenage years, they might start buying their own food when they’re not at home. Well-established healthy eating, physical activity habits and positive self-esteem will motivate your child to make good choices when eating away from home.
Getting professional help
If your child has a weight problem, you need to seek professional help. Start by making an appointment with your GP or an accredited practising dietitian.
An advantage of seeing a health professional is that your child might see the professional’s advice as more ‘neutral’ than yours.
Health professionals can help many overweight teenagers achieve healthy weight by focusing on behaviour and lifestyle programs. This is likely to involve helping your child and family establish long-term healthy lifestyle choices, and avoid disordered eating and yo-yo dieting.
A health professional might recommend a weight maintenance program for a young person who still has some ‘height growing’ to do. This means that if the child’s weight stays the same while the child gets taller, the child might be able to ‘grow into’ his weight. For young people who are already as tall as they’re going to get, overweight needs to be managed by weight loss. Weight management in adolescence will be easier than weight loss as an obese young adult.
In extreme cases of obesity, a health professional might look at other clinical management options, such as medications or even surgery. If suggested for young people, these options should be managed in a specialist obesity service.
Meal replacements (very low calorie diets, or VLCD)
Meal replacements are powdered products that are made up into a drink with water, and are used to replace meals. There are several brands and they are very widely advertised. Some of these products might help produce rapid weight loss over a short period of time – for example, they may be suitable if a patient needed to lose weight before urgent surgery. These products need to be managed in a specialised centre where there is expertise in treating adolescents with severe obesity.
There is no evidence for their long-term success in weight management in children and young people.
Books
Books on weight management strategies you might find useful are:
- Kausman, R. (1998). If not dieting then what? Sydney: Allen & Unwin
- Neumark-Sztainer, D. (2005). I’m like so fat. New York: The Guildford Press.
