Weight loss? With the right approach your child can lose that weight safely and for the long-term.
In 2018 The Guardian reported that 28% of children between the ages of 2 and 15 years of age were overweight or obese. That’s quite a startling statistic and is increasing with time. Helping young people to lose weight would therefore be the obvious solution and yet it’s rather more complicated than that.
I have worked to help adolescents with many different food-related issues in the past. I have worked with bulimia, anorexia, obesity and food-related phobias (cibophobia and social-anxiety related conditions) in Oxford and Reading on many occasions. However, I’ve always been aware that working with weight, particularly in the young, can contribute to the development of eating disorders if not handled carefully.
I also offer counselling and psychotherapy for weight loss online, using whatsapp or zoom. Please get in touch for details.
Why do young people become overweight to begin with?
Well, it seems plain that there are a multiplicity of reasons which interlink in different ways in different people. The article I linked to above explains the increased availability of cheap fat and sugar filled foods as being one of those factors. People haven’t changed. We’ve always craved fatty and sugary food. However, in times gone by such foods simply weren’t so available and there wasn’t so much of it costing so little. There wasn’t the time pressure on parents either. Cooking from scratch is less possible when parents are running themselves ragged. Ready meals, which often hide surprising amounts of fat, salt and sugar, aren’t helping the matter.
There is also the fact that today’s youth is somewhat more sedentary than used to be the case in previous generations. I spent most of my childhood out in the woods, riding my bike or playing football in the park. Activity burned off the fewer calories I consumed and my body therefore balanced calorie intake and expenditure.
This isn’t so much the case today. Parents aren’t as willing as they used to be to let their children disappear for the day, terrified of paedophiles, increased traffic and other dangers. Besides, children have less need to go outside for their fun. At home the world can be accessed via a variety of screens and friendships can be maintained via social media. Why go out when the sofa and a PS5 is so much more appealing. Gone are the days when being sent up to your room promised nothing but boredom and isolation.
We therefore end up with children who have more calories available and who are often less inclined to burn them off in physical exercise. An obesity crisis was, perhaps, only a matter of time.
There’s also the increased sense of a mental health crisis in our children and adolescents. You can’t fail to have read about this or to have seen it in the news. Food, to an anxious or depressed teenager, can come to mean comfort. Over time the young person becomes overweight. This begins to eat at their self-esteem and so they turn to food for comfort, thus worsening the problem. I see this every week in my adult clients. It’s increasingly common to see the same vicious circle taking place in teenagers and adolescents.
This is a hard time to be young. The future, in our lifetimes, has never been so uncertain. Psychotherapy could help your son or daughter to become more confident in their ability to weather this period of instability and to find their way forwards without turning to food for comfort.
How can I help your son or daughter to lose weight safely?
You’ll already know that there are a million different ways of losing weight. People have been making money out of diets for decades, if not for longer.
Research shows that none of them work in the long run (by themselves) because diets alone don’t confront some of the necessary aspects of sustainable weight-loss and some of them are counter-productive.
They can be counter-productive in encouraging self-deprivation. Eat nothing but specially designed milkshakes, for example, and you’ll lose weight! However, you’ll also build an enormous sense of loss so that when the diet comes to an end you’ll go out on a celebratory binge and quite quickly fall back into old habits.
I work in a way which encourages my clients to eat precisely all the same foods but to balance their diet and to approach all foods differently. This means there is no sense of loss.
Diets don’t address psychological aspects of weight loss. Eating no carbs may help you to lose weight but it won;t address what led you to see food as comfort to begin with.
I work to help my client to overcome the emotional causes of weight gain. I help them to regulate their emotions more effectively without the need for food.
Diets don’t address motivation – the motivation to keep on going with new eating habits, the motivation to focus on the positive, the motivation to exercise a little more or the motivation to accept that obesity will take time to resolve. Sustainable weight loss isn’t a quick win. It takes time.
Neither do diets help rebuild a sense of purpose after a lapse. I work to give my clients the strength to put lapses behind them and to get back on track.
I use a range of approaches dependent on the client before me. I blend traditional forms of child and adolescent psychotherapy, mindfulness, hypnotherapy and more besides.
Of course, I hope I needn’t tell you that therapy isn’t magic. I can’t cast any spells and turn your teenager into a svelte beauty just through the power of my words. I will need their engagement and their commitment to a process. If your child is ready to do what it takes to lose weight then get in touch.
Get in touch to find out more.
If you’d like to find out more about I have helped young people in Oxford and Reading to become slimmer, happier, healthier individuals then please do get in touch. I’ll be glad to talk with you and to discuss how I could help. You could call me on 07786123736 or else use the contact form at the footer of this page. However you choose to get in touch, I look forward to hearing from you. Your child has nothing to lose but their weight.
Best wishes
