How to control weight and obesity as children grow up

WITH THE discovery that obesity is a significant risk factor for people who contract the coronavirus it makes sense to control weight and avoid it.

In the UK about three in ten youngsters under the age of 15 years are overweight and about one in six is classified as obese. Yet parents are often unsure whether their child or teenager is overweight and may simply attribute it to puppy fat.

A study a few years ago of 350 children, followed up for a whole decade, suggests that metabolism slows down during puberty. Each year between the ages of seven and 16, the children had their weight, body composition and resting metabolism measured.

Rather surprisingly, on average, a 15-year-old will use 450 less calories a day, compared to what they used as a ten-year-old. This means that they burn less calories and will tend to put on weight. This is why ‘puppy fat’ appears.

It is thought that this is a physiological happening that has evolved in order to conserve calories during puberty, to help ensure adequate growth and development.

The problem is that nowadays, with ready availability of food, especially high calorie foods, excess weight may be put on. Another factor that contributes to this is the decrease in physical activity that may occur in the teenage years.

One should not castigate youngsters about their weight, though.

Far better to focus on healthy lifestyle, healthy food and exercise, instead of continually drawing attention to weight. The physiological bias is to put on some puppy fat, so the whole thing has to be handled sensitively.

The teenage years are a period in life when things can make a deep impact. When people focus on weight at that time there can be a tendency to use risky methods to lose weight, such as fasting, using diet pills or exercising far to strenuously.

This can lead to eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia.

So at this time of life it is best not to think of slimming diets, but instead talk about healthy eating and healthy lifestyle.

In fact, most teenagers who are diagnosed with eating disorders are not overweight to begin with.

On the other hand, some overweight teenagers can develop eating disorders, because the teenage years are so impressionable.