How fat is too fat for your child? Is your child just overweight or obese to the point of putting their own health and body in danger? This set of tips and guidelines helps you recognize signs of obesity in your kid.
In order to gauge your child’s obesity, you should look at these four characteristics.
1. Weight and Height: Measure your child’s weight and height to see if they’re overweight. A child in the 85th percentile of the BMI is considered “at risk for overweight” and a child that falls within the 95th percentile of the BMI is “overweight or obese,” according to the National Institute for Health. There are a number of web calculators that help make the complicated math of calculating your child’s body mass index easier.
2. Skinfold Thickness: Using a caliper on certain portions of your child’s think will provide a basic, rudimentary measurement of their body’s fat content. This measurement will help you in comparing it to the body mass index to see if you have an obese child.
3. Physical Signs and Characteristics: Obese kids, especially, show symptoms of obesity, including early type-2 diabetes, sleep apnea, early puberty, and high blood pressure.
4. Habits: If your child has a love of junk food, nip it in the bud! If your overweight kid plays video games, or watches television regularly they’re much more likely to become obese.