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Mālama Ola Minute: Helping your keiki stay at a healthy weight

Jan. 12, 2022

It’s National Healthy Weight Week! Maintaining a healthy weight can be frustrating, even for kids. Extra pounds can put children at risk for developing serious health problems, including diabetes, heart disease and asthma. Give your keiki a healthy start. Show them a healthy lifestyle, and help them stay active. Try these tips to support your child in developing healthy habits:

Create a safe food environment
Make your home a safe environment in terms of food. Only have foods and beverages that are healthy. Purge your pantry of junk food, soda and juice. Keep fruits and vegetables easily accessible for healthy snacks. Buying and preparing the right foods, make all meals cooked at home healthy.

Be a positive role model
Set a good example and eat the same foods you want your child to eat. There needs to be conscious parenting around food. Convey the idea that fruits, vegetables and whole grains are tasty and try to deemphasize cravings for sweets or salty snacks.

Set limits
One of the most important things you can do for your child is to set limits. This is the case for all dangerous behaviors, including overeating. Children need their parents to set limits for them. You cannot expect your child to self-limit how much he or she eats.

Lean time over screen time
Try to limit the time children play video games and watch television to no more than two hours per day. Instead, encourage children to choose activities that just involve more movement like taking a walk or shopping for and preparing dinner.

Give positive rewards
Keiki benefit from setting attainable goals that are celebrated with age-appropriate rewards that don’t include food. When children have a reward to work toward, they are more likely to succeed.

Help your child be active
The key to getting children to exercise is that it has to be fun. To find the activities children really enjoy, you have to expose them to many different activities. And, as with adults, your child's favorite activities will likely change over time. Let them tell you what they like and what they want to do. And, for almost all kids, physical activity works best if they are doing it with someone else, especially a parent.

These are habits all families should adopt, regardless of whether family members have weight to lose. It's much easier to prevent obesity than to go backward if your child gains weight.

LEARN MORE:

Tips to help children maintain a healthy weight
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Help your child stay at a healthy weight
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

How to help your kid be a healthy weight—without talking about weight
Today’s Parent



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