What Kurbo is wrong about children and weight

Recently, WW, the company formerly known as Weight Watchers, launched a child health coaching app called Kurbo. This is obviously meant to lose weight, even though dieting is not suitable for many children and can lead to eating disorders. Healthy weight management practices for children should aim to create healthy eating and exercise habits, not dieting, as recommended by the guidelines.

The experts argued that the application approach has implications for habits and patterns of thinking that underlie eating disorders in adolescents. So, if you are thinking about downloading this app (or if you think your child might be interested), here are some of the approaches you might want to consider.

Talk to your child's doctor

If you are concerned about your child's weight or eating, talk to your doctor. A professional can help you determine if your child needs help managing his weight and what type of help is the most appropriate.

According to the National Institutes of Health, a good weight management program for children adapts to the age of the child and:

• involves a variety of care providers, including psychologists and dieticians (so you probably will not want to start with the general advice of a pediatrician, although this may be a solid starting point)
• assess the weight, growth and health of a child throughout the program
• helps the whole family to adopt healthy eating habits and exercise even after the end of the program

WW claims to have based its application on a successful program from Stanford University, which uses a traffic light system to help children identify high-calorie, low-nutrient foods. But despite this similarity, there are major differences between this application and a program in person supervised by doctors. As Brad Stulberg pointed out, the Stanford program screens children at the time of entry, makes them meet regularly for educational sessions and involves the whole family. An application is not going to do that. It is also not able to catch any signs of eating disorders if you do not pay for health coaching fees, which is an optional function.

Avoid diets

The American Academy of Pediatrics notes that dieting is a risk factor for both eating disorders and for obesity. This is even the case when the child is not really overweight, which is why it is particularly important to start a conversation with your pediatrician.

Kurbo classifies food according to the traffic light system mentioned above, with green for foods that you can eat in unlimited quantities (mostly fruits and vegetables), yellow for foods that you can eat but that you must follow, and red for foods you should not have. too much. In a program similar to Stanford's, this approach could be useful. But classifying foods as "good" and "bad" is also characteristic of eating disorders. You can easily gorge on "good" foods or consider the "bad" as forbidden fruit. So it's easy to see how this app, or such restrictive programs, could encourage this behavior and do more harm than good by helping children develop healthy habits.

Eating with family

Eating together helps children adopt healthy eating habits, and children who eat with their families are less likely to have unhealthy eating habits. Family meals give you the opportunity to serve healthy foods and allow kids to see these foods on the table and be eaten (even if they do not choose to eat a particular food this time). Adults and children tend to eat better at structured meals than if we eat during the day. In addition, meals are an opportunity to build social relationships with each other. It's a good idea to know if you are concerned about a child's eating habits or not.

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Make them move

Exercise can help kids manage their weight, but it's also a healthy thing to do, no matter how small. The guidelines already say that children should do at least one hour of activity each day. In this setting, they should do muscle building exercises three times a week, bone strengthening exercises three times a week and vigorous aerobic exercises three times a week.

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This may seem like a lot, but it is not difficult to do so much exercise for pleasure. If your child is playing a sport, he may already meet the requirements. Younger children can stay active by climbing playgrounds and playing running games like the tag. So, if your child is not doing a lot of exercise, there are many ways to start. It is important to note that you do not need – and probably not necessary – to present the exercise as a tool to lose weight or a way to gain food (even if our brains of adults in difficulty go there at once); it can be just play, fun and an opportunity to go out or see what our body can do.

Avoid talking about weight

When we talk about body weight critically, children absorb more than we realize. They hear us say negative things about our own bodies, too. The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics recommends listening to what your child has to say about his weight, without adding any negative comments (and consulting a pediatrician or other professional about his weight) . We can eat healthy foods and exercise a lot without putting our body while we do it.

Even if the size of your child proves it, he needs help to adopt healthy eating habits and exercise, focusing on his weight is not necessarily the best way to do it, even in his own head. Weight loss is rarely successful in the long term, but people of all sizes can develop better habits and be healthier, whether they have a weight change or not. For example, the principles of health at every height recommend finding the joy of moving one's body, eating when one is hungry and stopping when one is full, and learning to remove the emotional baggage that you eventually have attached to the food. Dietary programs and applications such as Kurbo do not really help to achieve these goals.

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