weight-related health without talking about weight,” Puhl says.
Dr. Stephen Pont, founding chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Section on Obesity, says he encourages families to do three things to be successful when making healthy changes.
First, make small changes that will stick, which might include letting the child pick the change.
Then, make changes as a family, which are more likely to be maintained. Healthy nutrition and physical activity are good for everyone in the family, according to Pont.
Lastly, it’s important to keep it positive.
“Guilt and blame don’t tend to motivate long-term healthy changes, instead they just make people feel bad. And when people feel bad, they are often more likely to be less active and to eat less healthy food,” says Pont, who is medical director at the Texas Department of State Health Services Center for Public Health Policy and Practice.
Eileen Chaves, a pediatric psychologist at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, says she thinks that using the words that patients use to define themselves helps them feel empowered, invested in their treatment and understood.
“When kids start to recognize that people are actually hearing them and listening to them, I think, one, it makes them so much more receptive to what you’re saying,” says Chaves, co-author of an editorial published with the study.