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5 servings of fruits and veggies per day (1/2 cup per serving)
<2 hrs of screen time
>1 hr of moderate or greater exercise
~0 sugary drinks (drink lots of water instead)
Other proven tips include eating breakfast, eating more meals cooked at home, getting enough sleep.
A visit to your doctor would be important to look for complications and to think about medical causes. A nutritionist is also a great idea to customize a nutrition plan.
One other tip, try to incorporate exercise into her favorite activities. If she loves to read, then consider some mini-exercise pedals so she can work out while reading. Or maybe when watching TV have her dance or do jumping jacks during the show.View Thread


Children who have 2 parents with weight issues are at higher risk of obesity that is 13 times higher than the baseline, so you are doing a great job.
Just like I would counsel parents with a child at the 75 or 80th%iles not to worry, likewise feel good about your child being at the 20-25%ile.View Thread



glad it is helpingView Thread

In general, it is best to keep the focus on healthy eating and activity. It sounds like you are already doing a great job of emphasizing healthy habits. Physical fitness, basically how well your child's body works as she plays and learns (for exampler her energy level, endurance, strength) and not size is key. Combatting the media's and society's biases about physical appearance is not easy.
Offering counter-examples of healthy (and realistic) body types might be something to try if she is a fairly mature 5-yr-old. Also maybe showing the graph of BMIs on the growth chart to your daughter might allow you to show her that she is tracking along just fine and that she is in the healthy range.
I think this sounds like something that should be explored in depth with your pediatrician or a counselor. It is interesting that her distress seems to be isolated to body image.View Thread

http://www.nichq.org/childhood_obesity/tools/ServingPortionByAge.pdfView Thread

here's the right one
http://www.cdc.gov/growthcharts/data/set1clinical/cj41c023.pdfView Thread

The pattern for a kid BMI is like a wave through childhood. Toddlers are natually a bit heavier relative to their height and have a bit less muscle mass relative to their weight.
As kids become preschoolers they start to slim down. As children approach puberty both the boys and girls start to add muscle mass (which is a healthy increase in BMI) and the girls start go through their body changes, the BMI goes up again. This change over time means that we have to follow percentiles to track whether the height and weight are a healthy match.
For example, 50%ile for a 2 yr old girl is a BMI of 16.4.
By age 3 the 50%ile drops to 15.8
And by age 15 it is 20. It's easier to follow on the graph.
Here's the BMI chart for girls
http://www.cdc.gov/growthcharts/data/set1clinical/cj41c024.pdf
Here it is for boys
http://www.cdc.gov/growthcharts/data/set1clinical/cj41c021.pdf
And to top it all off, BMI is not just a simple ratio of weight to height. It is actually weight per body surface area (which is related to height.) So while a 90%ile height and 90%ile weight would seem to be exactly proportional (i.e. 50%ile BMI) the numbers don't come out that way. It would be more like 85-90%ile BMI.View Thread
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