But is it healthy for girls who haven’t even hit puberty to be dieting?
Nutrition experts don’t like to use the word “diet,” but they say that for some kids, having a supportive educational program can actually be a good thing.
“If you have a kid who’s extremely overweight and needs help with control, a program can be helpful in teaching them how to eat right,” says Dr. Leslie Hayes in the Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine program at Brooklyn Hospital Center.
“With all the obesity we’re dealing with, this can help kids get to a different frame of mind, where they know the amounts of food they should and shouldn’t be taking in.”
Goodwin, now 32, sings Weight Watchers’ praises because their diet is “the only thing on the planet that doesn’t dehydrate her.” And while she says she thinks of herself as “an extremely healthy person,” she can recall the time as a child when she caught on to the fact that veggies didn’t emerge from the ground deep-fried.
“I remember my mom making dinner for me the first night that I was on this new program, and I burst out crying because the vegetable were green, and I thought she was trying to starve me to death,” she told Health.com.
The word “diet” is best avoided when counseling kids and teens, says Dr. Jessica Sessions of the William F. Ryan Community Health Center.
“It’s better to talk about eating healthier and getting more exercise,” she says. “And if the parents choose a program that tell kids how to eat and about exercise, it’s not necessarily negative.”
Parents must get involved for any weight loss program to succeed for a child or teen, Sessions says. Parents are the ones who are selecting, buying and cooking the food, so they can be influential in changing the way their child looks at food.
“There’s a lot to be done to educate the family as a whole,” Sessions says. “If a child is in the overweight/obese range, we do intensive counseling.”
