Obesity has become a big problem from a lot of us and today we'll talk about how
to help your overweight child lose weight.
Obesity, being overweight, huge
problems and it's hitting our kids too. In order to help our kids the best, we're
starting with a place that's going to completely shock and surprise you if you
know me at all. I want you to focus on your job as a parent. What is your job? To
love them no matter what and even if. Okay, connect with that for a
moment. Now I also want you to review if you haven't recently reviewed it, there's
a video you can link to it right up here click on that and it'll queue it up so
that you can watch it next for the influencer quadrant. Now this is a model
that I shared with you before about how our focus matters and if we're focused
on ourselves and how we feel about ourselves then we're not in a position
to help our children the best. Our focus really needs to be away from us and on
them, how do they feel about themselves. It's not about me, how I feel is only
secondary so if you haven't reviewed that in a while, please go to that video
and check in with that particular process because that's all prerequisite
to what I'm going to share with you. If you lose track of your job as a parent
to love them no matter what even if then everything that I share with you is
simply manipulation. Come from that place and that the green quadrant is we talked
about it in the influencer quadrant and then we're in a position to really help
our kids. So that's all the preliminary stuff, let's get into the weight thing
specifically. Your kids are going to watch and model after what you do.
Okay, I know that steams a little bit, let it sink in because sometimes what we say
is completely lost in what we're doing and as we talk
weight for example, weight is only one measurement that we can do on our bodies
to see how we're doing health-wise, it tends to be a fairly accurate indicator
of a number of things and there's a lot of reasons why kids might be overweight.
The research is extremely consistent on this point and you'll know this from
your own experience, there are two things, two reasonable things that you can do to
lose weight. Now what are they? Yeah, you'd know, don't you? Exercise and diet. Now
let's talk about both of those from and especially as it relates to our kids.
Diet is simply defined as what we eat, okay. This is the energy and the food and
the fuel that's coming in, diet does not mean restriction. You could take your
kids to the zoo sometime, you know the little placards that they have on the
wall there in each of the animal enclosures and it says "Spotted leopard.
Diet: rodents" or whatever, right? I don't know if that's even know what spotted leopards
eat but diet means what you eat, it doesn't mean restriction and
restricting is not a surefire way to lose weight. I think it's very unhealthy
for example to say something to your child like "I'm going on a diet." Well why
would that not be helpful? Because it calls attention to the wrong focus I
think. It would be better to say, let's eat healthy food, let's put good fuel
through our body. Now I'm not a nutritionist so I'm not here to
lecture you about that but connect with this concept, that weight gain or
weight loss is tied to calories in and calories out, it's a math equation at
that point. There are there psychological components. Yes, we're going to get to a
few of those in just a second but notice that
it's calories in, calories out. Calories in has to do with your diet, calories out
has to do with your activity level that's why diet and exercise are the
only two legitimate weight loss strategies on the planet.
Now there's other things that people will try to sell you, supplements or
whatever that contributes to your diet but don't buy into the Magic
Bullet idea, diet and exercise, that's what we're
talking about. Now we've talked a little bit about diet, make sure that the food
you're making available to your kids is of the kind that will support your goal
in being fit and healthy and incidentally, let's change the focus
because psychologically, losing weight carries a lot of connotations to it.
First of all, from a psychological perspective, if you lose something, you go
into scarcity mode and it's like, "Oh, I lost something. Where is it?" and your mind
wants to find it so instead of focusing on losing weight, let's focus on what it
is that we want like being fit and healthy and energetic and looking and
feeling good, okay. Does that sound a little better to you? So we change the
culture around this conversation at least at home to something that's much
more positive and that's going to support some of the behavioral changes.
Diet also implies a lifestyle change. Remember diet isn't restriction, diet is
what you eat. Could we approach this in a way that instead of having our kids
feeling restricted or depleted of something, it's simply what we eat and we
don't eat certain things that don't serve us well, it's not a restriction so
again, that's kind of the mental side of this and it's a lifestyle change. This
implies something for mom and dad too because are we going to put this kid on a
special restrictive diet, I don't see that working very well, do you? No, we're
going to make lifestyle changes within the family. Now this is going to
apply to the exercise part of this too. By exercise, I just mean activity. I have
a couple of friends who are amazing physicians and they have consulted with
me about this. One in particular shared with me that our activity level triggers
different signals in our body, it triggers different things in our
metabolism so just increasing the energy level, even if we don't look at it or
call it or define it as exercise can help this process because it's sending a
signal to our body to metabolize those things a little faster and the calories
out part of the equation becomes a little more manageable so a couple of
tips that I thought of. How about park farther out? You know, if you go to the
store or the library or the zoo, park farther out, don't look for the closest
parking spot. Why? Because you're going to get out of the car
with or without your child. Can I just emphasize that? What if you made this a
lifestyle change? Just saying. Okay, so you get out of the car with your child,
you're at the grocery store and you're clear out in the north 40, you walk
all the way into that grocery store, you walk around that grocery store and then
you walk all the way back out to your car, you just increase the activity level.
What you make available is important. Most kids are really drawn into
their little electronic games, right? That doesn't give a lot of activity level.
Sometimes it's healthy and appropriate to do what I call a media fast and
that's where as a family, you create a culture where, hey every Thursday
afternoon is our media fast, we don't do electronics or screen time on
Thursday afternoons. Okay well what do we do then? Well that's a pretty good
question and if you can encourage your kids to address that question and start
coming up with creative answers to it, we just increase the activity
level.They're going outside and playing ball or they're doing something
with their siblings, they're in the house, it's more physically oriented. Here's
another suggestion, take the stairs especially if it's only a flight or two.
Take the stairs, that increases the cardiovascular
activity that you're doing and it also starts to trigger those signals in your
body to metabolize things and we get the calories out going a little better for
us. Choose to walk especially if it's less than a half mile. Can you take your
kid with you? Absolutely in fact, that'd be a great idea but do it without them.
Choose to walk when you can. Usually if it's less than a half mile, you're not
going to spend a whole lot more time when it comes to driving and parking and
all of that stuff too so choose to walk when you can. Here's another fun one, most
people are familiar with the fitness trackers that are out there. You know
those little electronic wristbands and things that you can wear that actually
track your steps in your activity? Well a lot of these have a social component to
it as well and you can team up to have a little competition for the week who can
get the most steps, who can get the most flights upstairs. Kids jump onto this
stuff quickly because they're a little competitive to start with anyway,
it's just another way to increase the activity level so there's a few ideas
for you. I am not a physician, I'm not a nutritionist so don't mistake
any of this for that kind of advice, I'm coming from a psychological standpoint
where you remember your job is to love your kids no matter what and even if,
it's not your job to get this weight off in fact, if we change the culture to
instead what we want, frame it in a positive way and then focus on the two
most reliable standbys when it comes to calories in, calories out, we're going to
look at diet, we're going to look at exercise, we're going to model that and
create lifestyle changes within the family because that's a whole lot easier
than imposing it on your child. I think you can get this. Heavy duty science,
right? I mean exercise and diet, we kind of
already knew that but our example as a parent makes a big difference too.
I'll see you tomorrow at Live On Purpose TV.