Do you find yourself stuck when trying to help your teen lose weight? Are your kids sick of diets, exercise, and hearing you nag them to eat certain foods? Do you feel like you keep trying to get your family to change their behaviors, but nothing has lasting results?

If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, we can help.

The emphasis of Dr. Kim Hiatt's Ph.D dissertation was the multiple factors that impact weight gain in children and adolescents. Dr. Kim also researched effective weight loss and weight maintenance and precisely what children and teens need to lose weight permanently. Thin From Within Teens is a collaboration of those findings.

Dr. Kim Reveals Seven Research Findings that make up the Thin From Within philosophy:

1. Diets can harm children and adolescents by causing binge eating, emotional eating, and excess weight. In addition, restrictive diets cause one to deny the body’s hunger and satiety cues and to lose touch with these internal cues. The research shows that for the majority of children and adolescents, diets cause them to gain weight, not to lose weight, in the long run.

2. The quality of life study below on obese children showed that they rated their Quality Of Life similar to how children undergoing chemotherapy for cancer treatment rated their Quality Of Life.

3. In one study, only 12% of pediatricians reported high self-confidence in treating obese children. Most research teams who conduct studies of this sort report similar findings … that pediatricians, pediatric endocrinologists, family practice doctors don't feel confident in their ability to successfully treat children for obesity.

4. Cognitive distortions such as "I will never lose weight", "Everyone else can lose weight except me", "I'll be fat no matter what I do" are more common in individuals with obesity than in normal weight individuals. We must first change these thoughts to more empowering ones before any intervention for weight loss or weight maintenance will work.

5. Overweight and obese individuals report higher levels of stress than normal weight individuals. It is imperative that we help give kids and adolescents tools to handle stress in order to break patterns of emotional eating and binge eating.

6. Enforcing food rules, such as: 1) “You can have sweets only on special occasions,” 2) “You must eat your vegetables at dinner,” 3) “If you put it on your plate, you have to eat it,” 4) “You must try three bites of everything on your plate,” and 5) “You have to your dinner to have dessert” can actually contribute to child and adolescent overweight and obesity. Asking children and adolescents to override their bodies’ hunger and satiety cues by enforcing food rules is never beneficial. It just makes it more and more difficult for him or her to balance their calorie intake and energy expenditure over time. Children are usually very good at balancing their calorie with their energy expenditure by eating when they are hungry and stopping when they are full. The more parents enforce food rules in the home and/or try to get their children to eat less, the more likely the child stops listening to hunger and satiety cues. Over time, children who are asked to “clean their plates” (and follow other food rules) are more likely to be overweight than children who live in homes without such rules.

7. Obesity and overweight are both connected to sexual abuse and other childhood traumas. Many children and adolescents who have suffered traumas begin to overeat to comfort themselves or for protection. Even traumas such as divorce or a hospital stay for a curable condition, incidents that we may think of as rather benign, can contribute to obesity. This point is important as further evidence that it is imperative that an assessment of the contributing factors of obesity is conducted prior to intervention. Otherwise, it is impossible to treat for the underlying cause or causes.

You are not alone!

 

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