Unless your child is extremely overweight or obese, in which case specialist nutritional help is available, you should not put your child on a diet. Dramatically cutting calorie intake or cutting out certain food groups can be damaging to your child’s health and it could impede his growth or natural development.

Diets also cause:

- tiredness

- fatigue

- poor concentration in school – they need enough fuel to be able to concentrate all day.

It is more important to teach your child the value of healthy eating and being active. Then your child will naturally end up in the right weight range using gradual lifestyle changes rather than dieting to hit a target weight.

A combination of improved eating habits and increased activity will be enough to give your child moderate weight loss, or to maintain his weight so that, as he grows taller, he appears slimmer and trimmer.

The scientific reasons why physical activity should be part of any weight management initiative are: - Activity helps preserve muscle mass. If your child goes on a reduction diet without activity, he will lose muscle mass (you burn protein from muscle in response to a drastic reduction in calories) as well as fat.

- He is more likely to maintain weight loss if physical activity is included in his weight loss intervention.

- As your child increases his fitness level, so he has a better chance of continuing to lose weight because he has a greater muscle mass and therefore activity becomes easier and, ipso facto, he is more likely to enjoy it.

- Also, greater lean body mass increases the metabolism, so the more muscle he has, the more calories he’ll burn just sitting around.

- Exercise helps his body burn extra calories even after he’s finished because the increase in his base metabolic rate (BMR) due to activity can last from 6 to 24 hours after 30 minutes of moderate exercise.

- It is possible to be overweight and fit and have a lower mortality rate than someone who is of normal weight and unfit. Therefore, if you do physical activity you will increase your fitness levels and improve your health.