Forget ‘Vogue’: 10 Healthy Tips To Help Kids Lose Weight

child weight lossDara-Lynn Weiss has created quite a controversy. All she wanted to do was share her story of publicly shaming her 7-year-old daughter into a healthier weight and share it in the pages of Vogue. Then, all these pesky internet nay-sayers had to get involved and cry “eating disorder.”

The problem is that Weiss’s approach to helping her young daughter Bea lose weight had nothing to do with health and everything to do with appearance. She didn’t guide her little girl to healthier choice, she berated her in public for making bad decisions and turned all high-calorie food into “bad decisions.”

The goal of Dara-Lynn’s journey was to help her daughter achieve a healthy weight. The means by which she got there were a deplorable mix of fat-shaming and parental controls.

Katie J.M. Baker of Jezebel did an amazing job of showing just why Dara-Lynn’s approach was so harmful to her daughter and how it broke from professional nutritionists’ teachings on healthy weight loss for children. The sad truth is that even though Weiss started out on an admirable mission, confronting childhood obesity, she reached her goal by hurting her daughter, not helping her.

Through this controversy, we’ve seen an example of how not to help your kids make healthy choices. We now know exactly what we shouldn’t do. But what steps can moms take to help their little ones avoid junk food and learn a healthy lifestyle. If Weiss’s approach was all wrong, where is the right way to help kids lose weight?

Here are some healthy tips to help your kids make their own good choices. And I’m sorry to say, turning these common sense approaches into reality in your house probably isn’t as easy as simply demanding you kids put down the hot chocolate. It takes much more determination to teach kids to make their own healthy choices. But the outcome is worth it.

(Photos: Thinkstock & Quirky Blogger)

[ITPGallery]

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