Tips to Help Your Overweight Child

Ira Green’s, Director of Camp Shining Stars,"Where Winners Lose, Tips to Help Your Overweight Child.

1. Children need a support system; they cannot tackle this problem on their own.

2. The more structure in their life the better. Children gain the most weight during the summer months, because they do not have the structure of school anymore.

3. Weigh your child once a week, but do not say anything negative to them. We have had a 100% success rate by children and parents that have done this weekly throughout the year. Recording their weight on a graph, also had tremendous results.

4. Weighing yourself as a support system is highly suggested.

5. A reward system is very important for your loved ones. The rewards do not need to be expensive.

6. Try to have your child plan their meals to prevent them from eating compulsively.

7. If your child has a relapse, the tools they can learn to get back on tract are the most important factors in controlling an all out uncontrollable binge that may last for many days. Again, this is where a very strong support system needs to be available for your loved ones.

8. Any type of exercise is important, try starting off by just taking a ½ hour walk with them. If they can find an exercise buddy (instead of you) this would be even better.

9. Overweight children have gained weight and lost weight their entire life, what they have never learned to do is to maintain a weight for a long period of time. By doing the graphs by their scales, children will track their progress better. Tell them how proud you are of them, even when they are just maintaining in a range, they always need encouragement.

10.Never, never, never tell them they may not eat certain foods. Every food is okay, by knowing what portion size is acceptable for their daily food plan. Children can learn about calories and to start looking at labels to make choices.

11. Children need to have fun things to do, the more the better.

12.All goals should be realistic and reachable. A good example is, “When we go to the mall let’s park at the first open space we see and walk to the entrance; instead of looking for a closer spot.”

13.Children need love and support daily, I cannot emphasize this enough.

14.Camp Shining Stars, “Where Succcess Soars!”, www.CampShiningStars.org, is a wonderful environment for your child to receive structure; be accountable for their actions; make healthy lifestyle changes; make new friends that will be their support group when they leave; receiving love and support from campers and staff; be educated about nutrition; “Jump Start” their weight loss program; learn the tools necessary for year-round progress; and most of all to have FUN,FUN, and MORE FUN!