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How to empower children to resist overeating

If you have an overweight child and you are at your wits’ end about what to do to control his or her diet, you may be taking the wrong approach.

A recent study in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology noted that long-term success is often elusive when parents rely on current weight control methods that restrict what kids eat, require them to track their food intake, and engage in intensive exercise.

Instead, kids appear far more likely to benefit from awareness training about food and cravings, says Kerri Boutelle, PhD, an associate professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the University of California, San Diego. Basically, they need to learn to stop eating when they are no longer hungry.

Boutelle’s study split obese 8- to 12-year-olds into two groups for eight weeks. The first treatment group, called appetite awareness training, trained children and parents to recognize and appropriately respond to hunger and satiety cues. The other treatment group, called cue exposure training, trained children and their parents to resist food in front of them by helping them to understand their eating triggers and giving them the tools to stay in control.

“We teach children and parents how the environment tricks us into eating foods even when we’re not hungry,” said Boutelle, citing examples of food triggers such as TV commercials, the abundance of easy-to-eat and high-calories snacks, and the use of food as a reward.

Participants also learned how to manage potential overeating situations when they might not listen to their bodies’ signals because of the availability of foods or even their own moods.

The key was in empowering the children, not trying to control them. 

Children and parents in the appetite awareness group brought dinner into the clinic and practiced monitoring their hunger and satiety cues throughout the meal. Children and parents in the cue exposure group brought in their highly craved foods and “stared them down” – holding, smelling and taking small bites of the food – for up to 20 minutes while rating their cravings, after which they threw away the food.

Although both groups had a high success rate, the cue response group in particular reported feeling more in control of their eating, due to the program. A significant reduction in overeating was found in the cue exposure group even six months post-treatment. 

This difference is noteworthy.  “These findings are exciting because they offer a completely new paradigm for controlling overeating and binge eating,” Boutelle said. “By reducing overeating and binge eating, we hope to provide a new way of preventing weight gain and providing children with a sense of control over what they choose to eat.”