Dietary Changes To Help Your Kid Lose Weight
If you want to help your kid lose weight, the kitchen is the best place to start from.
The Standard American Diet is loaded with sugars, fat, processed starches and artificial sweeteners and all these have ways of altering your body’s hormone biology. They also cause weight gain in children.
The good news?
There are different options when it comes to treating obesity and pediatric overweight with dietary changes.
The dietary approaches to treat excess weight gain in children and obesity cases include vegan diet, vegetarian diet, low-carb diet, keto diet, and everything in between.
To make significant progress in the treatment of pediatric obesity, it is important to stay away from commercial cereals, pasta, cookies, bread, cakes, and muffins. They should be replaced with unprocessed, whole foods like beans, whole grains, eggs, fruits, and vegetables.
To improve the weight of child weight and his/her overall metabolic health, getting rid of sugar-sweetened drinks like juice, Kool-Aid, sodas and sports drinks will be a great first step. The American Heart Association recommended that children age 2-18 shouldn’t have more than 5 teaspoons of added sugar every day.
A 12-ounce can of Coke or Mountain Dew has about 11.5 teaspoons of sugar. This is bad for children who consume several servings of soft drinks every day.
Not only does this sugar encourage weight problems, but it can also result in Type 2 diabetes, fatty liver disease, high triglyceride levels, and insulin resistance.
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The problem is not limited to sugary drinks. To improve children’s hormonal biology and metabolic health, it is essential that children have more whole foods in their diet. Examples of these includes
- Seeds
- Vegetable: cabbage, cucumber, broccoli, leafy green, green beans, Brussels sprouts, zucchini, yellow squash, and cauliflower,
- lean meats,
- unsweetened fruits
- whole nuts
- legumes: pinto beans, black beans, and kidney beans
- Beverages: unsweetened tea, non-flavored milk, and water; lots of water without added flavor drops or pack.
It is advisable for a family to make every member have easy access to a healthy, whole food in a convenient way. This can be achieved with proper and regular meal planning and preparation. It would be nice to include some healthy snacks in the plans too. This is a great step to take in order to avoid relying on unhealthy, convenient, processed foods.
Planning and preparing a meal doesn’t have to be a daunting task.
Create a timetable for your meals every week. Then make a grocery list of the foods you need to buy. Set up a time to clean, chop and cook on a weekly basis. Such activities can include the ones as follows:
- Wash and cut fresh fruits and vegetables for added recipes or a quick snack.
- Cook three or more servings of protein on the grill or in the oven. This may include chicken or turkey burgers.
- You may also cook a pot of beans, keep it in the fridge too and use it throughout the week.
- You can use a grill or an oven to roast your vegetables with herbs or oil, put them in the refrigerator and reheat them when you want to eat them. Examples of these vegetables include broccoli, cauliflower, and brussels sprouts.
When you have your foods prepared and you only need to reheat them or just take them from the refrigerator straight to the table, your family will be able to eat convenient, healthy meals each day.
These recommendations can help your kid lose weight at home and restore his/her health.