calorie cutting produced the best results

New research which was presented to delegates at the European Congress on Obesity shows that in the case of overweight and obese children the emphasis should be on healthy eating as opposed to an increase in exercise. The researchers claim that encouraging obese kids to get exercise will have no effect on their weight loss.

The researchers went on to explain that obese children shun exercise because of their excess weight but they are not overweight because of their inactivity. The researchers looked out over 300 children over a period of five years and noted that calorie cutting produced the best results and that telling children to get involved in sports was not effective.

There is also the problem that overweight and obese children do not enjoy exercising and find it far more difficult because they tend to get out of breath quicker. Trying to make children do what they don’t want to do is difficult and therefore those parents and teachers often fail in their attempts to encourage overweight children to undertake physical activity.

The research was done at the Peninsula Medical School based in Plymouth in America and Brad Metcalf who headed the team of researchers noted that in France where rules say that vending machines for chocolate are banned in schools and junk food adverts have been curtailed, the effects are significant on childhood obesity.

If you can get your children to lose a little bit of weight they will become more active automatically and this will therefore help them to lose more weight creating a virtuous circle. Children naturally have a lot of energy but obesity curtails that energy and makes them lethargic which creates a vicious circle of weight gain. It is important that children eat healthily when they are young because that eating habits are more difficult to change as they grow older.