Medical Health Information

Overweight in children is defined in two stages:

• Firstly by calculating the BMI or body mass index, which is the ratio of weight (in kilograms) and height squared (in meters);
• Then watching the corpulence curves of health records which curve corresponds to BMI: overweight is called if the resulting percentage is above the 97th percentile (shown on the right of the BMI curve).

The three main objectives childhood overweight are:

• Provide nutrition education of the child and his entourage;
• Analyze the relationship that the child toward food;
• Fight against inactivity adopting regular physical activity that must be chosen by the child.

Power childhood overweight

Power childhood overweight based on nutrition education, beginning with the family. Parents and the whole family should be aware of the different dietary errors of the child and / or family.

Power childhood overweight is not a restriction in food, which is poorly monitored and may be dangerous for the growth of the child, but a balanced diet normocalorique.

The importance of food diary food against obesity

The first tool is the simplest proposed to the overweight child is the food diary, in which the child can write every day what he ate and drank and what he feels.

The food diary is an important tool because it can raise several important parameters for the management of overweight:

- Pace and place of meals;

- Choice of food and beverages;

- Cooking modes;

- The quantities of food consumed;

- Snacking.

What are the main dietary errors?

The main dietary errors in children are overweight:

- Breakfast inadequate or absent;

- A snack often made biscuit or industrial chocolate bars rich in sugars and bad fatty acids;

- Excess confectionery;

- Excess sugar-sweetened beverages (sodas, fruit juices) implicated in the very overweight child;

- Snacking;

- The meal times are not respected.

Overweight children have to follow a diet?

Feeding the child is overweight to change their behavior in relation to food frequent mistakes and to adopt in daily dietary advice.

Overweight children are not really diet or undergo a series of prohibitions. It is rather a development of a consciousness of dietary errors that allows the overweight child to change their behavior and adopt in the daily dietary advice.

In practice:

- Do not miss the breakfast, even getting up a little earlier;

- Establish rhythms food to stop snacking and diverting to a balanced snack;

- Do not eat too late at night and if possible with their families;

- Increase the intake of vegetables and starchy foods to stave off hunger and impulses of sugar;

- Replace industrial cakes and chocolate bars by bread with some jam or two or three squares of chocolate and fruit;

- Replace sodas with bottled water flat or slightly sparkling fruit juice or fresh squeezed;

- Adopt dietary cooking methods that reduce or cancel the contribution of fat (steam oven, wok ...).

What should I be wary?

Be wary of snacking, frequent childhood overweight including watching television or computer.