The best way to help a child lose weight? Encourage overweight children to exercise, eat healthy food, and achieve a healthy weight. You may want to start by changing your own behavior. The expansion of Internet brought many technological developments that allow people to stay in touch with their friends without face-to-face interaction.
The same is true for kids, which is exactly why they are not motivated to spend more time playing with their peers outside. Instead, they are chatting online with their virtual friends. This may be the primary reason for more and more children being overweight nowadays, which is devastating. Motivating them to eat healthy and be active is not an easy task, however, it is not impossible.
Here are five tips on how to help your child lose weight in fun and healthy way.
Balanced Diet
The process of losing weight has to start with balanced diet and healthy eating habits. Since parents are the ones in charge of buying food, they have the most important role. It is essential that children eat homemade meals that are rich in nutrients.
That can be done in the best possible way by combining different kinds of lean meat, such as chicken breasts, with any kind of vegetables. Children love snacks that are packed with artificially added fat and sugar – however, there are some healthy alternatives.
Instead of munching on chocolate chip cookies, they can be given canned tuna on whole-wheat cracker. It is an extremely delicious snack, as well as very nutritious at the same time.
Healthy Drinks
Forget carbonated drinks and sugary juices and teach children that drinking water is essential. Besides making them hydrated all day long, which is very important for their physical and mental health, it boosts their metabolism.
This means that drinking at least 8 glasses of water per day will speed up the process of losing weight and make it more effective. Besides it, unsweetened herbal teas will do the trick, too.
Different Activities
Different activities will help kids not to think about food very often. This is exactly why parents should include them into doing the housework. Also, there is a wide range of equipment that can be extremely useful – yoga ball, hula hoop, jump rope, roller skates, bicycle – possibilities are infinite.
These will increase children’s strength, improve their balance and coordination and enhance the process of burning calories. Also, signing them up for different sports, such as football, basketball or even gymnastics, will have multiple benefits for kids and their overall well-being.
Jump!
Besides different kinds of sports, trampoline fitness is certainly one of the ways for children to lose weight without even realizing it. In terms of burned calories, 10 minutes of jumping equals 30 minutes of running, which is the first indicator of its effectiveness.
Parents should take their kids to trampoline fitness centers where all of those activities can be done under professional supervision. On the other hand, they can rent an jumping castle which will be brought directly to their backyard.
This kind of entertainment is becoming more and more popular nowadays, since parents have the opportunity to exercise together with their children. It is certainly the best way to burn calories and have fun at the same time.
Family Time
Going for a long walk somewhere out of town is a great way for the whole family to spend a day together. Choosing some hilly landscapes is the best possible option, and if children start complaining – offer them some healthy snacks and plenty of water.
Take a break and sit on the grass, eating some fresh fruits and homemade snacks. The best way to make children physically active is definitely through some entertaining activities.
Forcing them into something they do not like is not how that should be done, since there is a wide range of different activities that can make them work out without them even noticing it. Motivation is crucial, and that is what parents should provide to their youngest ones in the first place.
Tracey Clayton is a full time mom of three girls. She loves cooking, baking, sewing, spending quality time with her daughters and she’s passionate for writing. She is contributor on Fashion Trends Blog and her motto is: “Live the life you love, love the life you live.”
