Study: Parents Can Hinder Teen Weight Loss

Posted By elissa on Jun 7, 2008 | 3 comments

The subject of adolescent obesity came up in the comments yesterday – and it just so happens that the discussion coincides with the publication of a new study on the subject.  The study authors looked at the families of overweight teenagers participating in Project EAT, an investigation into the “socioenvironmental, personal, and behavioral factors associated with diet and other weight-related behaviors.”  Parents were surveyed on:

• how they classified the weight status of their teenaged children
• family meal practices
• home food environment (i.e., availability of junk food vs. veggies/fruits)
• parental encouragement of healthy habits (i.e., food choices, exercise/activity, dieting)

In keeping with a number of other studies, the authors found that roughly half the parents did not classify their overweight children as overweight – 45.9% of the parents of girls and 60% of the parents of boys actually rated their children’s weight as “about right.” 

In other words, about half the parents perceived their kids’ situation accurate, while the other was more-or-less in denial. 

But in this study, the researchers found that parents that correctly perceived their child’s weight status, did nothing different to help their children adopt healthier behaviors beyond encouraging them to diet.  According to the study:

“We found that parents of overweight adolescents who accurately perceived their child as overweight were not more likely to engage in behaviors that might help their child with healthy weight management, as compared to parents who did not perceive their child to be overweight. There were no differences in variables of potential benefit to overweight children, such as increased family meals, greater availability of fruits and vegetables at home, fewer soft drinks at home, and parental encouragement to make healthy food choices or be physically active. Parental encouragement to diet was the only difference found between the 2 groups of parents. Parents who accurately perceived their adolescents as overweight were more likely to encourage them to diet to control their weight.”

(emphasis mine)

Even worse, this sort of encouragement is counterproductive, as:

“Indeed, previous analyses from Project EAT found that adolescents who diet are at increased risk for disordered eating behaviors and overweight 5 years later, even after adjusting for baseline behaviors and weight status.”

The researchers concluded:

“When counseling parents of overweight children, health care providers should inform parents that dieting is not an effective long-term weight-management strategy for youth. In addition, given the high prevalence of poor dietary intakes and low physical activity levels among youth, from a public health perspective, one might question the approach of encouraging only those parents who have overweight children to provide a healthier home environment for their children. It may be more effective to provide all parents with tools to help them create a healthy home food environment, to role model and support healthy eating and physical activity, to engage in effective parenting, and to talk less about weight and dieting at home.”