Get a healthy weight for your child: a parent’s guide to better eating and exercise

OVERALL RATING Excellent

STRENGTHS This book contains all the facts written in short easy-to-read sound bites

WEAKNESSES Perhaps overly optimistic that the daily diaries will, in fact, not become tedious and overwhelming even for motivated teens

AUDIENCE Parents and motivated youth; family physicians, pediatricians, or other primary care providers

I recently read in the Globe and Mail that 29% of Canadian adolescents are overweight or obese. I learned that only 14% of our children eat 4 or more servings of fruit and vegetables daily and that, of every 4 vegetable servings, 1 is a fried potato.

In my family practice during the month of January, when everyone takes a fresh look at New Year’s “resolutions,” I saw many concerned parents asking about their children’s weight. Was it a normal weight gain since their last visit? Were their children overweight? Why was their child not eating well? What should they be eating so as not to gain too much? High fat? Low fat? No sugar? No sweeteners? No white flour? No trans fats? More omega-3 fatty acids? Less meat?

This motivated me to pull out Get a Healthy Weight for Your Child: A Parent’s Guide to Better Eating and Exercise. This book is a great resource for these curious parents.

The authors begin by defining the problem. This epidemic of obesity is not news for us. We have all been made aware of the problem through media and through day-today practice. One wonders why we can talk about this so much, yet find it so difficult to change real-life practice. They discuss the conflicting challenges that get in the way of making overweight the first priority for Canadian families. Being overweight was rated by parents of teens as last of 6 choices, with illegal drugs being first, followed by violence, smoking, sexually transmitted infections, and alcohol.

Next they describe in detail how to calculate normal weight and how to judge overweight, using body mass index percentiles. Once target weights are calculated for age and height, the authors go on to fully explain energy balance, metabolism, and the math equation of “calories in” and “calories out.” They do an excellent job on describing food makeup and how to understand labels on foods. They explain recommended daily allowances, percent fat content, glycemic index, and what that all means. They give clear guides on limits of sugar to be eaten, which fats to choose, and the role of fibre and how to quantify intake. All of this is done in a friendly style, with many short tables and tips written in small boxes on most pages, which allows you to “graze” on the book, rather than read full chapters at a time. Case studies that span the book add a fun way to see the relevance of the material. All of this makes this book a timesaving resource for me as a doctor interested in teaching my patients about nutrition.

The last part of the book is dedicated to a detailed action plan, explaining food diaries, setting personal goals, and choosing healthy food. This is not an all-or-none diet that prescribes foods, rather it is an education about choices, and a way to make more of the healthy choices and fewer of the unhealthy ones.

This book appears to be a very useful tool for motivated parents, and an educational resource for less motivated ones. It fits in as 1 practical approach, among many needed, to reduce Canadian children’s burgeoning waistlines. This book is a practical tool we can definitely use in counseling patients interested in weight-loss science.

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