Many become obese teens and then obese adults. They suffer low self-esteem and are candidates for diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol, and many cancers. Diabetes alone can lead to damaged blood vessels, kidney failure, blindness, amputations, heart attacks, and strokes. The U.S. Secretary of Agriculture predicts that obesity will soon rival smoking as a cause of preventable death. What to do if your child is overweight or obese If your child is still a baby, don't panic.
Baby fat is normal.
If your child is still growing, don't panic. Weight gain precedes growth spurts. It is not unusual for a child to gain thirty or forty pounds and then shoot up ten or twelve inches. Limit couch potato time. A Stanford University pediatrician found that children who watched TV for one hour or less per day were measurably leaner than those who watched as much as they wanted to.